6 GROUNDCOVER NEWS WHERE I SLEPT How did you sleep last night? When I was first homeless in Ann Arbor in 2018, I did not realize it because I had so many safe spots. I was a journeyman union painter in Ypsilanti, in the Ypsitucky world, from 1977 to 1981. I discovered the kagyu Tibetan Buddhist Center in January 1980 and quickly became a practitioner. The meditation on compassion became a life focus. The People’s Food Co-op in Ann Arbor was an important community from day one. I was still based in Detroit, sharing a home and helping raise four kids. I also shared a two bedroom in Ypsi with one of my painter friends. I soon had a room in the Buddhist Center so I had three homes at once. As I explored Ann Arbor in 2018, two garages and the YMCA quickly became kinds of homes. Mercy House, the Breakfast Church (St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church) and Delonis became backup spots. As Peggy at Mercy House put it, being homeless would not be so bad if you didn’t need to sleep.There is so much to do in Ann Arbor that homeless folk disappear during wakeful hours. If you need to sleep homeless you are in trouble; if you have no secure lodging your choice will be the park or the alley. You may search a wooded area for a spot. If you are handy you can put up a tent, build a lean-to or sleep in the open. Hopefully you have a sleeping bag or two. You learn to be a camper. In my experience, how well you sleep is more important than where you sleep. A good night’s sleep is a treasure of energy. The relationship of location and quality is complex. For over three years, I’ve had an “efficiency apartment” in a location where it’s difficult to make a home. Avalon Housing, who runs it, is lost in a bureaucratic quagmire and, in all honesty, I must say that I don’t get a great night’s sleep there. In my memory, the best sleep I experienced was in West Park and the KEN PARKS Groundcover vendor No. 490 adjacent woods behind Miller and Fountain. I had a welcoming tree as a companion. Also excellent was most of the sleep on a futon in a garage loft on Third Street. It becomes obvious that housed or unhoused is not the decisive factor you might think. It's more like where are you at home in your body. Sleeping near the earth may be more important than a legal roof over your head. Sometimes homeless people sleep better than housed people. The best literature on this is an article by Christopher Ellis in the Nov. 15, 2022, Groundcover titled “Housed, unhoused or homeless?” Reality is never what you think it is, as most of us discover to our dismay when we realize that our expectations may have little to do with the outcomes of our actions. The socialization process creates many taboos and illusions that reside in our sub- and unconscious, as Freud and others have shown. I think Ernest Becker has done good anthropological science in looking at Homo sapiens' increasing propensity for evil and the cultural need to be or worship heroes who have defeated death in battle or mastered the key to eternal life. Shamans become priests as bureaucracy corrupts our natural power into opportunistic power. A culture which promotes belief in the seen world but ignores the unseen is not able to experience the completeness of reality. Data are helpful in the proper context, but without it they’re worthless. I recommend two of Becker’s books. “The Denial of Death” is a landmark book of the 1970s and his final book “Escape From Evil” is a great companion book to his search for a science of Homo sapiens. His quest to analyze and critique the large amount of anthropological and archaeological data is amazing. His intellectual work brings art and science together for a creative view of our evolution and history over the past estimated 300,000 years. Our awareness of death is largely repressed through cultural norms that feed on our desire to continue the experience of this body as if there is no end in sight. We are now struggling with the extremes of eternalism and nihilism; Buddhism proposes the Middle Path which avoids those extremes. The view of a permanent soul as a separate entity captures many Christians, Muslims and other theists. What is it separate from? If the answer is the highest and most powerful God, what does it mean to be a believer? If sin is separation, is this separate soul an illusion? Is there an all good expanse of primordial purity that is not separate but yet our true nature. These are the issues that mindfulness training may resolve. When you observe your breath you will come to the question: “Who is the observer?” When you observe your state of mind, what is the nature of the observer to the observed? We know from physics that Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle shows that the act of observation influences the experiment. Therefore you cannot know the precise location and velocity of a particle at the same time. You must choose one or the other. In meditation, resting at ease in the natural state is difficult largely due to our habit of self and other projections. Look for a teacher who is at ease with observing the observer and can help you reach a single-minded focus on the experience of a calm and clear mind. The karma kagyu Tibetan Buddhist meditation masters have been the most helpful for me. Christian believers like the Berrigan brothers,Thomas Merton and Martin Luther King are important examples of Jesus as a living presence and guide to a life of truth in love. As Dion Fortune from the Fraternity of Inner Light taught, “Love is the Law.” Facing reality is the task for every Homo sapien. Cultivate your inner confidence that we can do this together. You must do it yourself but you don’t do it alone. Tune in to earth, water and sky. You will sleep well surrounded by all the holy beings of your creative imagination which invites them into your dreams. FEBRUARY 7, 2025
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