Ben and the Fanatic

from Zen Without Zen Masters
by Camden Benares

In his teachings, Ben stressed that Zen was his path because it allowed him to become himself. All the other routes that allegedly lead to cosmic consciousness seemed to put him in conflict with his own nature. He advised all seekers to examine carefully what each system asked of the potential initiate, keeping in mind three rules:

1. What you are required to believe is what the system cannot prove.
2. Anything that you are asked to keep secret is of more value to the teacher than to the student.
3. Any practice that is forbidden offers something that the system cannot sucessfully replace with an alternative.

One listener asked, "Don't you believe that giving up the pleasures of the senses will produce a different consciousness?" "My personal experience," Ben replied, "was that it produced the consciousness of fanatacism."

The Guest House

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
As an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they're a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

--Rumi, 1230

Natural vs. Industrial Childbirth

Some of y'all know that this is one of my pet topics, and has been since early 2008. It began when I was in massage therapy school, working on my final project, which our class chose as Postnatal Massage. Throughout the course of researching the project, I studied the physiological effects of labor and delivery, and it was then that I began to learn how many problems a so-called "traditional" hospital birth in the lithotomy position can truly create for so many women and their babies. (The lithotomy position is where you're put on your back, legs up in stirrups. Yeah. That position actually closes off the birth canal by up to 30%... making childbirth more painful, more dangerous, and therefore "justifying" more interventions that would otherwise be totally unnecessary, such as episiotomy, or in many, many cases nowadays, cesarian section. So why are women put into that ridiculous posture to give birth? Because it makes it easier for the M.D. to see what's going on. Godforbid he be uncomfortable.)

I also learned about the epidural-pitocin-epidural-Cesarian vicious circle: Most women are never taught anything about how to prepare for the pain of childbirth, much less how to actually get through it. They arrive at the hospital, and they're usually offered an epidural, which numbs them from the mid-torso down. This almost invariably slows down contractions and the labor fails to "progress" (hospital-speak for, "you're not having this baby quickly enough for our convenience"). The slowing down of contractions then "necessitates" the use of pitocin, which is a synthetic version of the hormone oxytocin, except that it provokes much stronger contractions than oxytocin would, which in turn create more intense pain. At that point, the mother may be offered another epidural. Either way, the baby is still subjected to those unnaturally intense contractions. This often puts the baby in distress-- often the fetal heart rate will begin to slow, and at that point you've got a full-on "crisis"- necessitating a cesarian section. Surprise surprise. Seems rather obvious that there is something wrong with this picture. For one thing, it's just plain bad medicine.

From there, I started to study a bit about the history of midwifery in the United States, and how midwives were demonized by the AMA (notorious for stamping out competition-- just ask any chiropractor), and how midwifery was made illegal in poorer communities, where women were herded towards the hospital system to be treated by obstetricians-- who are trained surgeons-- to give birth. Hmm. Is it any surprise that by the year 2005, 1 in every 3 births in the United States was done via Cesarian section, which is a major surgery, with risk factors of its own, including serious infection?

As part of the same reserach project, I also looked into alternatives to hospital care, and I discovered home birth and waterbirth. It is amazing how many clips of beautiful, peaceful, serene waterbirths you can find on YouTube! No screaming bloody murder. No agony. No trauma. I was shocked and amazed the first time I witnessed these clips. I was looking at an image of childbirth I had never been exposed to before. I just couldn't believe it.

It also happened that, around the same time, my friend Stacy, one of the yoga teachers at the Bikram studio where I practice, was pregnant. She chose a natural birth with a midwife, at a local birth center, and she shared with me about her experience as well. At this point, my eyes were opened, and there was no going back.

In November of last year, I decided to enhance my massage therapy training with a Pre- and Perinatal Certification, which I completed with the fabulous Carole Osborne-Sheets and her assistants. Once again, we studied the physiology of pregnancy, labor, and delivery in great detail, and once again, it was just so clear to me how natural, empowering, important and yes, very intense, this process is for women. It isn't something to be feared, avoided, sedated, drugged, or operated away! I feel very, very strongly that this is a feminist issue. Women need to take back pregnancy and childbirth for ourselves in this country, or we run the risk of losing natural childbirth altogether.

Here are four resources I found extremely interesting:

Adbusters October 2008: Industrial Childbirth

Consumer Reports October 2008: Maternity Care: High Tech vs. High Touch

The Business of Being Born


Orgasmic Birth


If there are any women in your life who are giving birth in the near future, might choose to become mothers, or if you may do so yourself some day, then I truly can't recommend these resources highly enough!

Tribal Fusion: The Lighter Side

A couple of my absolute favourite performances from The Indigo, showing their lighter side, not to mention incredible theatricality and technical perfection!

The Pleasures of Hating

I just heard this poem read aloud by Garrison Keillor on NPR. It's funny cause it's true. It's also funny (and charming) 'cause it's a "gob of spit" (to borrow Henry Miller's expression) in the face of political correctness and all those who say that a truly "enlightened" or "spiritual" person should never feel hatred, much less its pleasures.

Whenever the word "should" creeps in to the conversation (or the internal dialogue, as the case may be), you can bet that the ego has crept in by the back door, the tricksy little bastard.

Judith Lasater once advised a roomful of yoga teachers to "stop shoulding all over yourselves". I love that. I've endeavoured, ever since, to more or less remove that word from my vocab.

So here's my little fuck-you in the face of all that I supposedly "should" be, as a yogi, as a bodyworker, as a seeker, as a "spiritual person". (What IS a "spiritual person", anyway? That phrase always strikes me as completely redundant. We are spiritual beings by definition. It doesn't make any of us special. Deal with it!)

So without further ado,

The Pleasures of Hating
by Laure-Anne Bosselaar

I hate Mozart. Hate him with that healthy
pleasure one feels when exasperation has

crescendoed, when lungs, heart, throat,
and voice explode at once: I hate that! —

there's bliss in this, rapture. My shrink
tried to disabuse me, convinced I use Amadeus

as a prop: Think further, your father perhaps?
I won't go back, think of the shrink

with a powdered wig, pinched lips, mole:
a transference, he'd say, a relapse: so be it.

I hate broccoli, chain saws, patchouli, bra—
clasps that draw dents in your back, roadblocks,

men in black kneesocks, sandals and shorts—
I love hating that. Loathe stickers on tomatoes,

jerky, deconstruction, nazis, doilies. I delight
in detesting. And love loving so much after that.

"The Pleasures of Hating" by Laure-Anne Bosselaar from Small Gods of Grief. © BOA Editions, 2001.