[MD] Drama

[Heather Perella]

Hello all,


     Arlo said:  "The manufacturing of fear, and its
subsequent "crisis addiction" (or as SA proposes
"drama"), is demonstrative of how the manipulation of
fear sustains power in the hands of the self-appointed
"saviours". "Hell", of course, is the most obvious
religious use of fear manufacture. "Subserviate your
life to the Church, or suffer eternal pain at the
hands of demons and devils."

     The age old 'where does all the suffering come
from'.

     "Why do you involve yourself in the drama?" I ask
a resident.
     "I can't avoid it.  You yourself are caught up in
the drama, too.  The drama is here."  She says.
     "Can't you walk away from such things and just
stay out of the drama?"  I ask.
     "How?"  she says.
     "By not hanging around other residents that stir
trouble?"  me
     "They are my friends." her
     "I understand what she is saying.  She can't just
give up on them being her friends."  another staff.
     "Why not stay clear of trouble?  Especially
trouble that sucks you into the drama, too?" me
     "They ask me for help, and anyways since they are
my friends why would I leave them?" her (resident)
     "I understand.  They're still your friends." 
another staff
     "Yeah," her
     "I understand, but what about the drama and how
you are hurt by this.  You can't get away from it,
even when they are not around, you are still bothered
by it."  me
     "That's MHY," her (MHY stands for Mars Home for
Youth.  The place I work at.)

     She's right.  She is not running away from the
problem.  She is encountering it head on with
friendship.  This happened over a month ago and the
girls involved in this particular dramatic episode are
still friends.  I would guess, probably better than
ever friends, because they stuck with it - together.  
     Even though at the time they probably didn't
realize they were sticking it out together.  She
didn't want to leave their friendship, but at the
time, she was bothered and unclear.  The drama was
consuming their lives, and trouble was all they could
find between themselves.  I guess this is true
friendship.
     Where is the drama?  How do we face the fear and
trouble?  How do we define the fear and trouble?  Is
it the suffering that comes with birth into this
world?  Can we truly fight it and defeat any form of
suffering with guns and even medicine?  Do we find a
band-aid solution, as I heard one staff say, or do we
go to the heart of the problem?
     I asked this same resident before, "Why do people
get so involved in the drama at times, by gossiping
about it, and not letting it go?"  
     She said, "It's boring here - what else is there
to do?"
     I asked her at another time, later on (weeks
later), "What could we do that would not make things
so boring?"
     She said, "We need to get off the unit
(residential building) and go outside.  Walk, through
football and stuff.  All's we do is sit around and we
have to constantly follow the rules while were on the
unit.  If we where outside we wouldn't have to 'ask to
cross from one room to another' or 'ask to interact
with each other', and stuff like that.  We could just
have fun and not just sit around doing nothing."
     She's right, and I have tried to take them
outside when I can.  It's more relaxing outside, she's
right.  The tension isn't so high to have to be aware
of this rule or that rule.  When they play games they
unwind and forgot about MHY for awhile.  
     Now recently gym has become a problem.  The
competition is becoming too serious, and points, if
off even by one, has the residents become
argumentative.  We have solved this by having them
walk around the gym for the hour they are there
without talking to each other.  After doing this once,
the next gym was much better.  They did not lose sight
of playing the game.  They did not literalize the
situation so much.  
     When the situation becomes too literal, the life
or death of this world becomes too static.  By too
static I also mean too literal.  This is opposed to
dynamic quality, which lacks static quality, therefore
is not literal at all.  Sure we live and die.  The
world is this.  The universe is nonother than life or
death.  All philosophies when they become too literal,
too static, fall into the life or death action of the
world.  We can not run away from this life or death.  
     Yet, when the world becomes literalized too much
and the life or death that this world is becomes
literalized and thus a static notion of what life or
death is - hardens.  When life or death hardens into
something as solid as the most solid 'things' of this
world that we know about such as rocks or human
bodies, then what does life or death become to mean on
these levels?
     The life or death of a rock is of the rock either
being or not being.  Yet, the life or death of a human
being as either being or not being is a very literal
notion.  If any situation in this world becomes too
static (literal), then the most static any level can
become in this world is whether or not the value is
either going to be here or not be here.
     Life or death is the most static notion anything
can have.  Why?  Because to make something very static
is what we could also call objectifying it.  Can you
think of anything more static or concrete than
something either being here or not being here?  This
is the basis of being objective in the recent modern
sense in this current culture.  According to this
doctrine of objectification or 'as static as anything
could possible be', to classify anything as existing
is to place such an 'object' in a category that puts
it on the highest pedestal of human condoning of value
(according to this doctrine).  
     When this doctrine says something exists it is
also saying it is true.  If it doesn't exist, then it
is not true.  Therefore existence in the objectifying
doctrine puts emphasis on the most highly static
notion that is possible - life or death.
     Let me go back to the residents and drama.  When
anything becomes too literal, too static, too
objective (to add that doctrines understanding), then
life or death notions become more and more real.  More
and more true, and soon a volleyball game in gym
class, when it loses its' play (which is very
dynamic), becomes too literal and serious.  The most
static this world can be, becomes literalized and life
or death in the game is all that is noticed.
     Is the world this most static quality that is
possible - life or death?  Is it that clear cut?  I
ask, "What is life?  Could you answer this question?" 
I ask, "What is death?  Could you answer this
question?"
     I don't believe these questions can be answered
with only a static quality answer.  Dynamic quality is
involved, too.  This involvement of DQ makes these
questions unanswerable.  Thus, the hardening of life
or death becomes not so distinct and clear cut.  
     The drama that we may suffer only intensifies as
each moment becomes literalized into a life or death
answer for us.  We do this to ourselves.  We try to
harden an answer to a question that cannot be
hardened.  
     DQ will pound at our experience dynamically
bringing into question our view.  If we ignore this
ever-question that cannot be answered with trying to
place an ever-increasingly static hardened value of
identity upon the drama event, then even though the
uncertainty is DQ, we will only view this uncertainty
as something to rid.  This puts tension on what the
MOQ calls real, which is SQ and DQ both exist.  
     There is nothing wrong with having truth or
reality.  Yet, how we get ourselves involved with any
event and the seriousness or literialization of such
an event is not quality for what quality is known to
be, which is not just an SQ of an event, but a DQ of
an event.  This understanding has any drama have
either all kinds of life ways or death ways become an
open-ended wake up in the morning, go to bed at night
ordinary breathing that keeps intact a balance in what
quality stands for.  
     Is the grass green or yellow?  Are they evil or
saints?  Where is corruption based on conservatives? 
Where is the corruption based on liberals?  The very
static notion that hardens and literalizes too much
kicks DQ into an uncertainty that breeds a fear to the
uncertainty that DQ is.  Any one of these questions
answerable by their respective 'too static kind of a
viewer' will entail a response that is a very serious
life or death experience.
     
     Quality keeps digging deeper and deeper into how
I viewed the world and yet, what I felt about the
world seemed to be once in contrast until quality came
along to help put more definition into something I
knew was here but couldn't put my finger on it in such
a way that quality becomes not just individualistic or
interpretation from different understandings such as
Zen and shamans.  Quality is transferable to others on
the MOQ.org and thus, a community establishes itself
here in the current U.S. and other countries.
     It is going out into the woods and camping, but
now understood by others in a deeper sense by others,
because of the studying and understanding we have as
common assumptions that must be cultivated by reading
ZMM and Lila do become ritualized.  The assumptions
behind our postings become our rituals to reach beyond
the mere SQ typed wordings on the screen. 
Assumptions, though generalized by a common study,
become also freely oriented so each unto his own
because of the wide-open declaration that DQ brings
from the overall quality we discuss.  
     I find similarity in what I am trying to say in
the epilogue to Shunryu Suzuki's talks compiled in a
book called "Zen MInd, Beginner's Mind".  He said,
"And I think one day you will have your own practice
in America... I think we must establish an American
way of Zen life.  I am not saying this jokingly, I am
pretty serious.  But I do not want to be too serious. 
If we become too serious we will lose our way.  If we
are playing games we will lose our way.  Little by
little with patience and endurance we must find the
way for ourselves, find out how to live with ourselves
and with each other."
     Later on he says, "We must have beginner's mind,
free from possessing anything, a mind that knows
everything is in flowing change.  Nothing exists but
momentarily in its present form and color.  One thing
flows into another and cannot be grasped.  Before the
rain stops we hear a bird.  Even under the heavy snow
we see snowdrops and some new growth.  In the East I
saw rhubarb already.  In Japan in the spring we eat
cucumbers."
     Quality provides a notion that does not defeat
what I might fish or walk.  Quality is not too
serious, but is not too much play.  Quality goes on
and on and is beautiful in the rising sun, but is not
grasped at all when is beautiful in the rising sun.  
     I am hearing the birds sing, which they do in a
wave ahead of the rising sun.  The first signs of
morning brings on the first signs that I need to go to
sleep.  I have written many postings recently due to
me having to prepare myself to work two midnight
shifts at work.  I said up all night, heard my wife
sleeping, the dog came out a few times and barked a
little to what sounds I know not.  I hushed at her to
calm her voice, and now I send this so I may sleep.

Day Good,

SA
   

     

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