“You can plan all you want to. You can lie in your morning bed and fill whole notebooks with schemes and intentions. But within a single afternoon, within hours and minutes, everything you plan and everything you have fought to make yourself can be undone as a slug is undone when salt is poured on him…” – Wallace Stegner, Crossing to Safety.
Aging is one of life’s great adventures, being young absolutely pales in comparison to the thrill of it. I think older people love to look back so much and wallow in nostalgia because looking ahead can be so overwhelming. Our journey is a story that is, by definition, not all that long, and that has the same ending every single time – we will all fall and die from one thing or another, and there are an awful lot of possibilities, most of them awful.
Meeting Bernie Glassman was an experience in life, not death, but I could not help reflecting on my own life, and to ask the questions that often afflict people of my age, sometimes obsessively: could it happen to me? How would I react to it.
I am 69, I understand that I will die of something, perhaps sooner rather than later.
Glassman, a renowned spiritual thinker and leader is recovering from a massive stroke. The first night, he could not talk or move much of his body, he thought he was dying.
Talking to him about it Sunday in his home was a revelatory experience for me. His experience tells both sides of the story – the pain and suffering, the sense of fulfillment, discovery and rebirth. There were no illusions, no sugar-coating, no whining or self-pity.
And on the way home, and last night, I am thinking: I am so much better at being older than being younger, I feel most days as if my life is just beginning. Is that a bubble just waiting to be burst? Or is does the search for a meaningful life affect its end?
Like most of the extraordinary people I have had the pleasure of meeting, Bernie Glass man is man of humility, humor and quiet wisdom. He has every reason to be a bit arrogant, his story is remarkable. He has lived and is living a remarkable life.
Glassman went to college, became an aeronautical engineer, then received a Ph.D. in applied mathematics. He first encountered Zen Buddism while studying a book in an English class in 1958, at UCLA. It altered his life. He began meditating and began studying Zen. He was a founding member of the Zen Center of Los Angeles and went on to become Zen master teacher, a roshi.
In 1982 he organized the famed Greyston Bakery in Yonkers, New York, one of the country’s leading social enterprises. The bakery, still expanding, was created to help the homeless and also provide jobs for inner city residents with criminal or prison histories, or who lived in poverty or lacked education and skills.
The bakery has successfully hired the homeless and the “unemployable” and eventually partnered with Ben & Jerry’s of Vermont to supply brownies and fudge for their best-selling ice cream. He has performed as a clown, written books and articles, lectured all over the world.
Glassman left Greyston in 1996 to create the Zen Peacemaker Circle, an international organization dedicated to promoting peace and healing the earth. He became an American Zen Buddihist roshi and is famous for his teaching and spiritual thought. He is married to an another remarkable human named Eve Renko, a friend, writer, social activist and teacher.
The two have traveled the globe promoting peace, community and equality. At various times, Glassman and Marko have lived on the streets as a homeless person to understand what it was like.
This accomplished man had a stroke six months ago that paralyzed much of his body and his mind, he is working hard every day to recover, I was gratified to meet him Sunday in Massachusetts, Maria and I drove down to visit with Eve and meet him.
Glassman and I had never spoken or met, I don’t think he was at all familiar with me or my work. Our meeting touched me on so many different levels, it will take a while for me to sort them all out.
I could see from watching Bernie how much of a struggle he has had to regain some control over his mind and his body. He does not yet have full use of his right hand or complete memory. He walks stiffly and with a cane, but he can get up and down stairs. His condition, he says, has vastly improved in the past few months, he participated fully and actively in a wide-ranging conversation, asked and answered questions easily and clearly, smiled often and missed little or nothing.
He said that he did not recognize himself after his stroke, and that he has changed – he is, say he and Eve – more emotional and this sense of re-discovery, even rebirth, is both unnerving and exhilarating. Bernie’s journey inspired me to be accepting of my life as I begin to be old. I have no illusions about where I am or where I am headed, but I am caught up in the wonder of life, the possibility of change, the power of love and connection, my faith of creativity and encouragement.
It is a miracle to be alive at any age.
I believe these values carry me forward and will help me deal with what’s ahead as best as I can. That is what I saw in Bernie, and what I feel reflected in my own life – I do the best I can for as long as I can. In writing photography, books, love, community and work.
People tell me every day that I should appreciate every day that I have while I have them, and before the inevitable comes, but that does not really work for me. I appreciate every day that I have because I can and want to. Because it is there. Every day, I ask myself, do I want to live? And the answer is always yes. It is not that I am counting down the days left, but celebrate every day for its own sake.
it is precious, for all of its heartaches and disappointments. Bernie said he emerged from his stroke knowing that he had to be active, he had to move. I said I felt the felt the same thing after my open heart surgery, I knew I had to move and keep moving.
I can do with life what I will. I will not speak poorly of my life or of the things that happen to me.
At one point in the conversation, we were talking about change, and wondering if it were possible for people late in life to change. I said this was a subject close to my heart, I did not really change until I was into my 60’s, and this has transformed my life. I am changing still, and hope to change into the future.
Aging is complex, illness can be unimaginable dispiriting and difficult. But when all is said and done, life is what we make of it, just like Grandma Moses said. In two hours, I did not hear a word of complaint come out of Bernie Glassman’s mouth, nor an expression of lament. The experience, he said, was traumatic, but then his eyes lit up. “I am going to some new places,” he said, smiling.
Then, he said, he was tired, and went off upstairs to rest.
I have often wondered if people who are awakened, and who have lived a deeply spiritual life face aging and illness and death in a different way. My conversation with Bernie suggests to me that this is true. It is never easy to be stricken, but the experience can bring us to new and meaningful places.
We control very little, but that part is up to us. Bernie said he considered suicide in the first hours and days after the stroke, but then choose to work hard to recover and live. He and I both live out of our minds, and I believe as long as I can think, I can live.
I imagine he will get to many more new places in the coming weeks and months. I hope to do the same.
I started to say creativity was about change, and also a spiritual change, but Bernie Glassman, watching me closely, smiling and nodded interjected and finished my thought.
“Spirituality is change,” he said towards the end of our two-hour conversation.
“So is creativity,” he added. “They are the same thing.” I don’t know what he was like before the strong, his mind seemed powerful and clear to me.
At that moment, I think, I connected strongly with this man, we saw and felt this in so much the same way, it was my turn to be humbled. He is working so hard to re-acquaint himself with the precious thing that had shaped his amazing life – his mind. How surprising to me to see and feel that this gift stranger and I saw something so important in much the same way.
You can plan all you want to, but everything you have fought to make yourself can be undone… Sometimes, it feels as if we are slugs, just trying to stay away from the salt.
