Full Moon: Speaking to the Righteous

actualizing the fundamental point

Our walk in Hyland Park, April 21, 2024. Four months since Karlene died. Rebirth of spring evident in the green buds on the thicket of birch against blu, blue skies.

I began this lunar rotation series, Speaking to the Righteous, on the New Moon of February 9 with writing I did for Karlene’s memorial service.¹ I continued the series with this first quarter moon post, an exploration of whale song and a promise to work for you during the election season.

I wrote those two posts and then I put the series aside with the intention of returning to it today. That is how we got here.

In the meantime, I took an Ethics Meditation Course on the 10% Happier App that Karlene had recommended to me back in November. At that time, she tried to give me a free guest pass that I was unable to use. I didn’t qualify for it, because I had already used one that she had given me before. So in February when I switched gears, I subscribed to 10% Happier in order to study ethics.

Karlene was the one who introduced me to the app years ago. I used her free month and ever since I have taken advantage the free offerings and challenges that 10% Happier have offered. This recommendation when I remembered it, felt like a gift, a project to pursue even after she’s gone, like an ethical will of sorts. Karlene had thought this was worthy and through it, she is passing on her values. It was a way to feel close to her and live in her footsteps.

The course covers the Buddha’s ethical guidelines called the Five Precepts of Buddhism. Which are roughly, do not kill, do not take things that are not freely given, be careful with your sexuality, use speech wisely, and do not use intoxicants that can lead to heedlessness.

Johanna Hardy teaches this course from a bar in San Francisco. The premise is that these guidelines are to be practiced from the real-life, sticky circumstances of our social-lives. She begins the course with an admonition of sorts, you are to take the judgement of others out of it, no one else has a say in your evolution with these guidelines. They are meant to be a practice, to be explored, reflected on both during mindful living and in meditation. As you live into them in your real life, you are to be the judge of which causes and conditions lead to your heart’s freedom. The course takes you through discussions of each precept with Dan Harris, the teacher, and a live audience and then guided meditations that bring the precepts into your practice. The awareness and time leads you to your own discoveries of what frees your heart and what entraps it. You get to feel into the impact of these precepts on your life, develop intentions about how to respond differently to what comes up and adjust your life trajectory accordingly.

Karlene and I often spoke about how we were bringing our learnings into our lives and during her years battling cancer, we often practiced together. Karlene had the wisdom to create her own healing community. A group that was curated by Karlene from her life and brought together on a text chain. I am proud to say I was included.

She didn’t do it all herself. She knew how to enlist the help of others. Our sister Becka, coordinated the digital infrastructure of scheduling 1:1 support for Karlene during times of greater need. She enlisted our sister Elena, in passing along necessary updates and communications. And we all participated, brought our hopes and dreams and encouragements to the circle and stayed present as Karlene fought to stay in this world with us. It was a privilege to be a part of her fight and to have learned from her how to be strong, brave and vulnerable at the same time, how to gather the group even as she wasn’t sure what she was doing.

There are two important things to being truly righteous. First is to have the intention to do what’s right, and second, of equal importance, have humility, remember that you don’t know.

There is a teaching of the Buddha called the Kalama Sutra. When the Buddha travels to visit the Kalama people, they ask him, People come to us claiming to have the answer, how do we know which teacher to follow?

The Buddha says, don’t listen to them. There are a lot of authorities with loads of advice out there. See for yourself, investigate, what leads to harm for yourself and for others? What leads to greater happiness? Let direct experience teach you.

The reason I am here quoting the Buddha to you is because his lessons, of all the lessons in my life, have felt the most true and right. And Karlene and I shared this search and discovery. We both gained a lot of traction from our Buddhist studies. The investigation that the Buddha promoted provided ground for our paths.

Like the Kalamas, multiple realities are presented to us all the time. Each one professing to know the way. How do we know what teacher to follow?

“Now, Kalamas, don’t go by reports, by legends, by traditions, by scripture, by logical conjecture, by inference, by analogies, by agreement through pondering views, by probability, or by the thought, ‘This contemplative is our teacher.’ When you know for yourselves that, ‘These qualities are skillful; these qualities are blameless; these qualities are praised by the wise; these qualities, when adopted and carried out, lead to welfare and to happiness’—then you should enter and remain in them.”

It was an MBSR ala John Kabat Zinn (Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction) class series that brought me to Common Ground and the Buddha’s teachings. I am not Buddhist, but his instructions do resonate with me. Somehow, maybe because his teachings describe the minutia, in an unfamiliar language that takes your mind down to its component parts, on a moment to moment basis. And he says, don’t take my word for it. Try it for yourself.

It’s very experiential. In those moments of practice, the cynicisms and hypocrisy that have been so confusing, don’t disappear, but are driven from their primacy.

On a visit in 2017, Karlene and I walked from her house with her dog, Eva. We discussed our lives as eldest, the ways we were similar, and the ways we were different. Somehow we got on the subject of Myers-Briggs Personality Indicators. We had both taken those questionnaires at our jobs in the 90s. We found we nearly matched, she an IMFJ and me, IMFP. We discussed our histories, the divorces that brought our families together, the difference that one letter meant, the judging, liking to have a matter settled, and the perception, liking to keep the decisions open. How things changed and how they stayed the same.

At one point in the walk, something out of the blue came upon Eva. She stopped and searched around as if something that we couldn’t see was there with us. She kept going back to Karlene as if beseeching that she understand, but all we could do was stand and comfort her, ask her, what is it? what is going on?

Neither Karlene’s empathetic mind, nor my more abstract one, could make meaning of what was happening for Eva. Karlene had just said she was a P originally, but she became more J over her lifetime as a result of her training.

We paused there on our way back to the house. It was Eva who made me remember that conversation. How easy the time was that we spent together. That our big sister pact began that day.

Eva was telling us that we had arrived at the whole ingredients that we needed. No longer relying on others to tell you what to do and how to behave, just relying on practice, and your own investigation of what is right and wrong. Do right and stay humble.

This conversation happened before Karlene’s cancer diagnosis, before she created her healing circle, and all the learning and growing that has come to pass since then. We have a healing circle again, some of us from that original group, plus her partner John. She has created a legacy of community, as we said in her obituary, her journey brought much life-giving healing to so many. She is a force of Metta in this world.

I recently came across the zen buddhist term Genjōkōan, translated as, actualizing the fundamental point. According to the teacher, Jeff Warren, Genjōkōan is “the particular koan that life has given you - your life challenges.” I find his follow-up question so beautiful and I will leave you with it: Can you be inside the koan of your life, without needing to solve it? Can you just live it instead?

1. My sister Karlene died Winter Solstice, 2023. Here are some links to previous writing about her: (I wrote more about Karlene during my consolation series, here (on consoling ourselves), here (on forgiveness) and here (on Duck Medicine).) Looking back at those posts, I see how beautiful the skies were during that time of winter darkness.