Cleanliness

The old Puritan ethic said, "Cleanliness is next to Godliness." This is one of the very rare instances where I agree with Puritanism. Cleanliness also lies at the core of Zen Buddhist practice, a traditional practice with which I more readily identify.

American culture has become slovenly. I feel it is an outward symptom of America's post-traumatic stress syndrome (PTSD), a result of the narcissistic injury of September 11th, 2001. Hair styles, clothing styles and public spaces all display a greasy sloppiness that is indicative of low self esteem, lack of civic pride and depression. The parallel obesity, alcoholism and drug dependency come as no surprise.

The routine of maintaining the body and one's environment is part of any serious practice of personal responsibility and development. Making this routine a source of meditation and joy is a goal for the experienced practitioner. The inherent benefits of developing this aspect of personal practice are wonderful: Increased health, regular exercise, a sense of accomplishment, attractive appearance and more efficient use of personal space.

I have developed daily and weekly routines of cleanliness in my practice. For example, I have reduced the objects in my environment to make it easier to keep surfaces free of accumulated dust. Each object in my home has its place. After I use an object, I return it to its place. This applies to books, flatware, dishes, clothing, etc.. This is a daily practice.

Once a week, I do an afternoon cleaning meditation. I live in a small apartment. I thoroughly dust and wipe down all the wood floors. I vacuum the carpets. I wash down and disinfect all the surfaces in my kitchen and bathroom. Since I have to conserve my energy, I do this in stages which may take more time than it would for someone with more vigor. But, the meditative aspect is my concentration on the objects I am cleaning. An appreciation of the texture of wood. The structure and shine of tile and porcelain. The awareness of my body as I make the cleaning motions.

The process of routinely maintaining an orderly and clean environment mirrors the maintenance of an orderly and uncluttered mind. Japanese Buddhists have a key saying, "Person environment one." In my experience, this holds basic truth.

Stress

So much of becoming well in our bodies is adaptation to unavoidable stress. Stress is actually a negatively nuanced word for our natural reaction to inevitable realities, such as time, gravity and physical limitations. Our brains have the ability to visualize goals that exceed our physical and psychological limitations. Stress is often the conflict between the goals or desires and the reality of performance or ability.

Modern medicine has turned to drugs to medicate stress reactions. Tranquilizers and antidepressants are often used to combat stress reactions by alleviating anxiety, depression and insomnia. Often this approach enables individuals to cope with existing stress and to actually increase their stress levels under the influence of the drugs. Then other, more serious, symptoms of stress reactions arise. Drugs become less effective. The quest for the perfect enabling drug becomes a new stressor. A vicious circular process.

A more practical way to address stress is to diminish the stimulus of the stress. This entails mastering the mind (brain) and bringing it into a realistic accord with the rest of the body. This approach is simple and difficult. It is simple because it requires regular maintenance of the body which anyone can do. It is difficult because modern life distracts us from healthy choices.

The simplest way to begin is with your own body. A daily periods of exercise are essential. If you are overweight, that extra weight is a stressor which applies its pressure on your life 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It should be addressed as a top priority by adjusting your diet, increasing your activity and scheduling regular exercise. Yoga, walking, weight-training, bicycling, aerobics, tai chi....all forms of exercise are helpful when done regularly in moderation.

As the body becomes less stressed, the mind can be placed in better sync with the body through regular sleep, regular meditation and regular socialization. For some, this translates into less late-night TV, less self-centered obsessing and less isolation. For others, this entails sticking to a structured schedule, joining a mediation group/class and watching less TV. It's all about balancing your natural capabilities and tastes with healthy activities which are enjoyable for you.

Without the recognition of stress, we would not function well. Stress can often be a helpful motivator. It is our reaction to stress which causes us gain or loss in the quality of our lives. Mindful and intentional coping with stress can be a tremendous way to learn about yourself and life in general.

Depression

As I sit here on a cold, gray New England morning in the supposedly "merry" month of May, I think about several recent encounters I have had with depression. My own fleeting depression was recent. It was reactive, easy to pin down the source. Selling a house, floods in March, other complications. The upside was that I lost that nagging three pounds I am always wanting to shed at the belt line. Well, the causes of the depression have resolved. Things are moving along. My mood has bounced up and so have the three pounds on my belt line. I am a veteran of dealing with depression. I know its cycles all too well.

Others are less fortunate. Their depression is entrenched. Genetic biochemistry, deprived childhood, trauma...all of these can contribute to a primary, inner-sourced, depression, with which many people must struggle on a daily basis. The advent of anti-depressant drugs and their mass marketing by pharmaceutical corporations for huge profit has masked much of this depression in society. Frankly, these drugs are so over-prescribed now, that it is hard to know who is depressed and who isn't. The percentage of people with primary depression is rather low, but anti-depressants are handed out like candy by irresponsible doctors, spurred on by drug salesmen.

The great tragedy in this is that anti-depressant drugs all have serious side effects and limited efficacy. They were originally designed to work in concert with professional psychotherapy. The insurance companies took care of that. They basically gutted the payment mechanisms for cognitive and behavioral psychotherapy in favor of paying for the quick-fix drugs. So, in response, the medical profession transitioned away from therapy and into psychopharmacology, almost exclusively. After all, doctors in the U.S. seldom pass up a method for becoming richer. The slack has been absorbed by psychologists and social workers, whose work is poorly covered by most health insurance.

Frankly, Americans are over-medicated and under-treated. All the social networking sites in the world will not cure depression. In fact, I will speculate that their virtual nature and ease of access only increase real-time social isolation. The drugs eventually lose their effects and require changes and dose adjustments, all accompanied by physical, toxic side effects. The side effects then cause a whole new barrage of anxiety and depression. Yes, this is a serious, wide-spread American problem.

The health insurance companies are crying poverty. How is this possible? The hospitals are crying poverty. How is this possible? The pharmaceutical companies are bemoaning losses on drug research. How is this possible? It isn't. It is all bullshit. And, I think we are beginning to see the turn-around.

The good news is that some depressed people are turning their own depression around by getting in touch with their anger. The bed news is that this anger can be extremely volatile and unpredictable. I offer the recent riots in Thailand as an example of this volatility. In the U.S., our history of race riots has been suppressed, but I assure you they were quite real and not really that long ago.

Yes, I am suggesting that corporate America has profited from under-treating depression in the population in the hopes, perhaps, that it would ensure their political power and profits. Keeping people medicated and isolated from therapy groups or therapists is an effective way to temporarily squash dissent. After all, the group therapy movement, along with various self-actualization movements, in the 1960s could be credited with waking Americans from the materialist malaise of the 1950s. This fueled, at least in part, the social revolution of the 1960s and 1970s.

The poor, who have not had access to anti-depressant drugs or therapy, have fallen behind even further in this aggressively materialistic period of the 1990s and early 2000s. Obesity rates have soared as they have eaten their way to some level of comfort. Corporate America has gladly sold them cheap foods filled with corn, soy and chemical additives. Obesity is a good way to keep people immobilized, mentally dulled and powerless.

If this exploitation of the American people for profits is not intentional, then why does corporate food manufacturing spend millions of dollars every year in Congress to prevent regulations which will end this decimation of American health? Why does the pharmaceutical industry do likewise? And, why would a health insurance industry, crying poverty, want to stay in business when the government proposed single-payer health care, which would end their misery?

Preliminary election results in recent primaries across the nation herald a change. Unfortunately, as I have said, the anger that arises out of depression without proper cognitive treatment is volatile and unpredictable. It often manifests itself in ways that are counterproductive for everyone. Ultimately all the people pay the price for the greed and corruption of the few who hold wealth and power.

One of the first interventions made in cognitive therapy for people with depression is the assertion that the depression will not last forever. As Americans awake from the depression of the last decade, in which they have been lulled to sleep by hollow materialism and propagandized nationalism, they will inevitably experience anger and frustration with their government and themselves. Hopefully, they will look to leaders who, like responsible healers, will advocate truly democratic change which is in the interest of the whole American family.

"I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers.

In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in.

I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street.I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints.

The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents." Major General Smedley Butler.(1881-1940.) As quoted in the 2/10/10 issue of http://www.globalresearch.ca/

The international decline of financial capitalism presents a crossroads for humanity. Awakened from the miasma of the Bush-Cheney years by sudden financial discomfort, Americans and others find themselves potentially bankrupt and enslaved by large financial institutions, who have robbed national treasuries with impunity.

Perhaps the fog of war-mania will also lift, as governments turn to internal spying, political incarceration and martial law to control their angry citizens. South Carolina's legislature is reportedly considering a law to suppress free speech by forcing critics of the U.S. government to register as dissenters. There has been a general use of 911-ism as an excuse to discourage street protests and marches in the U.S. generally. State police organizations increasingly back neo-con candidates.

To those who are currently untouched by the collapse in the American economy, I say, "It isn't over yet." Ancient wisdom dictates that disaster teaches a society compassion and levels the great economic divide which causes greedy domination by the wealthy. The cycle of history. The financial collapse may well take the bloated wind out of the military-industrial complex which has gotten us here.

It will be increasingly important for each person to adopt a daily practice to get through these changes. That practice may include brave activism for social and economic justice despite potential harm. Clinging to the selfish materialism and blind nationalism of the last two decades will not cut it when the whole world is in crisis and one rising force, China, starts calling the shots.

America can perhaps be resurrected by its loss of its superiority and its acceptance of a place as less militaristic part of a coalition of nations who believe in universal human rights, true democracy and world peace.

Materialism

Today I have been bombarded with breathless accounts of people shopping by journalists at National Public Radio, considered by some to be the font of intelligent reporting. What is wrong with this society?

Several months ago people were assaulting politicians who were finally trying to do something to help people by reforming a broken health care system. Today they were rushing into stores to charge gadgets, for which many of them have no money. The brainwashing to buy is coming from those disproportionately unaffected by the current Depression, in which millions of middle class people are spiraling into poverty.

Wake up, America. Wall Street is not your friend. Mainstream media is no longer objective. Your future is at stake.

Summer

In the 'developed' world, millions and millions of dollars are spent every Spring and Summer in attempt to prey on the insecurity of people, whom corporations view simplistically and cynically as customers. Advertising is focused on bodies and sex. Bathing suits and underwear adorn the buffed and flawless bodies of twenty-somethings everywhere you look.

This corporate self-hate industry, including diets, bogus exercise gadgets and unattainable goals for most people, makes many millions every year by inducing insecurity and offering magical solutions. Perhaps the best evidence to show the failure of capitalism as a model for human evolution is the massive number of obese and depressed people who sit and watch these advertisements over and over. Yet, obesity is rampant. Depression is rampant.

It is essential for individual human evolution to accept one's own being, including one's own body with its flaws and also its benefits. This acceptance is a first step to treating yourself with the respect and nourishment you deserve and need to advance in your life.

By embracing and accepting who you really are, you can then look to who you wish to be. This is just the beginning of a lifetime journey.

Boundaries

I ride the subway every week. I have found that the walls around people in that social space have become all but impenetrable. Eye contact is avoided. Facial expressions are flat and devoid of emotion. Occasionally, while reading an advertisement above the heads of passengers opposite me which solicits subjects for a depression study at a local medical center, I fight the urge to direct my fellow riders' attention to the ad above them.

Is this just post-911 ennui? I do not think so.

Boundaries are necessary in a civil society and in healthy relationships between friends or family. Yet, in this society, which is increasingly uncivil, the boundaries erected by individuals against social contacts with strangers are not symptomatic of health. Rather, these are walls built out of fear. And the fear is quite justified, when teenagers are carrying illegal firearms and all the mental institutions have been emptied onto the streets.

My practice is simple. I try to remain open in social situations, yet I also respect the boundaries obviously erected by those who are afraid. I do intervene when I see criminal behavior. I report it or directly address it. Recently I told a teenager to stop defacing the interior of a subway car with a permanent marker, for example. He was so humiliated, he sat like a turnip with his head bowed for the next several stops when I left the train. Part of practice for me entails doing the work of determining the boundaries and responsibilities of being a responsible citizen, friend or family member. Avoiding that work is irresponsible and will only make matters worse for everyone.