Tag Archives: Buddhism

Happy New Day and other Words that Turn

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noisemakers

Happy New Year.

Well, maybe this year, we should work on something more realistic. How about, Happy New Day?

Not that I don’t expect you to have a great year. It’s just ‘Happy New Year’ is biting off a whole lot more than anyone can reasonably chew at one time. As Jonathan Larsen reminded us, there are 525,600 minutes in a year. There are going to be good minutes and bad minutes. Let’s face it. That’s life. If you get all Pollyanna and try to take on the whole year at once by pasting the word ‘happy’ on it, you are 1) being unrealistic, 2) will be disappointed, and 3) need to keep smoking that stuff for the next 364 straight days to actualize, and frankly I wouldn’t advise it.

Then there’s this problem that by saying, feeling, resolving, and determining Happy New Year on January 1 that you feel you must be happy for a whole year or that the year will naturally be filled with constant joy. And that resolve lasts until the first obstacle approaches which is usually 9am on Jan. 1, when you have to get out of bed because you promised your mother you’d walk the dog since she’s away and if he doesn’t get walked by 9 he has a habit of peeing on the clean laundry in the laundry basket.

Health clubs love January 1 and 2, and sometimes the Happy New Year effect lasts until January 3 or 4.  All these people come streaming in to join and pay the annual fee, and the clubs smile and welcome them, knowing that they won’t see 99 per cent of them again, until next January. Happy New Year.

Or you could have the opposite problem. I have a friend whose mother damns the past and by extension, the future. This morning she’ll write her new message to put on her refrigerator as a reminder, “2016, worst year ever” and take down the old one, “2015, worst year ever.”

Someone said to me last night, “I hope this new year is better,” as if a unit of time were responsible for him having a good or bad year. The only person, place or thing responsible for whether you have a good or bad year is you. If something you think is bad happens to you on the first day of 2017, and you turn around and blame the year (and then by extension somehow curse the other 364 days of your beautiful life that is trying to blossom every day), then you’ve just lost a year!

And when that bad thing happens, because let’s face it, things you deem as bad will happen, then the opportunity for challenge and redemption from that bad thing is also being tarnished. “Oh shit, it’s just a bad year all around,” you might say.

Words matter. So when you fling them around, thinking they’re not important, don’t act surprised when the chickens come home to roost.  Words are the reality you are committing to, whether you know they are lies at the time, or not. They change reality. Look at fake news.

So here’s another one: The Pursuit of Happiness

No wonder we’re so miserable! 241 years later Americans are running around like chickens with their heads cut off pursuing happiness. You can see it in the arrogant way we chase the dollar.

Thomas Jefferson was a smart guy. Why didn’t he use his own inner wisdom to make the Declaration of Independence read: “…life and the liberty to find the happiness within”? Then all this ridiculous, ambitious, American “pursuing” would be nullified and we would do what we must – look within for our answers; for that is the only place where our real happiness lies. Imagine a government that was actually created to protect the unalienable rights of helping human beings find the happiness within? Yikes! That would be a different animal from the one we have entirely.

And while we’re talking animals, let’s talk about this one from those early Bible superstars Adam and Eve: “…dominion over the animals.” Here’s another instance where one word in the wrong place has had disastrous effects.

Over? Really? What arrogance! No wonder the planet is in such a mess. This change in the bible story that occurred by those in charge of putting the Bible together in 200 AD was a kind of Dick Cheney sort of thing. (Remember the Clear Skies Act of 2003 which actually loosened controls for pollution?) It was there, it was easy. It was fun to play with words. Animals are stupid and had no vote. So why not make the story that God said we had “dominion over”, instead of the way it originally read “dominion with” the animals.

‘With’! Like share the planet with them for christ sake! Like it’s not all for you. What were you thinking? You have to share! There’s a Native American reservation in Montana where great money, effort and expense have been summoned to build bridges over the highways for heavily travelled animal trails. Like that!

Think about the words we live with. Think about the words we take for granted. Then don’t always take them for granted. 2017 just might be a good year to examine everything. And I mean everything!

Share. Think. Live tougher. Respect. Repeat.

Happy New Day!

 

Here you stand

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vitruvian-manHere you stand. In the middle of a working universe. You are a sentient, conscious, flag-waving human being and you have certain rights, tendencies and beliefs.

This universe is exclusively yours because you had the audacity to wake up in it. As much as you can experience is yours. Though other people’s universes can be similar to yours, enough so you can compare prices of wide screen TVs at a cocktail party, they are not yours.

No one can argue with your perception, your beliefs, your judgements or understandings; because they are yours and you are the one who woke up here.

Do you know what anyone else is really thinking or experiencing? No you do not. Not really. Do you think cheese makes a mouse happy? You will never know. You are not a mouse.

You could be a lone wolf type human, living in the wilderness, shunning all human contact, but since one of your human tendencies is to need the love and protection of other humans, no matter how far out you go, you will always desire, or expect, or go on Facebook to prove to other humans, that you and your universe exist and that this is your set of beliefs and guiding principals and these are what you stand for–John Doe, major human–attention must be paid.

Esho funi means the non-duality of life. There is no separation between life and it’s environment. You are the life in this equation. Your environment is everything else you think is outside you — family, animals, villages, houses, Cheezits. But the surprise is that there is no separation. Those things that you think are outside you and happening to you, are what you actually have pulled into your universe. That’s why cause and effect is so important to consider. Make good causes have good effects in your universe, bad causes, bad effects.

The question is, what do you need to wake up happy each day at the center of your universe?

Encouragement plays a part, but if you are always looking outside yourself for answers then any number of crazy humans can influence what you mistakenly think is your wisdom; but, as it turns out, it’s really CNN’s, your mother’s, Bill Maher’s, your girlfriend’s, President Trump’s or  something you saw on the internet. Time to tune out,  unplug, turn off.

Confidence plays a part. The confidence to take action, to keep going when things look dire, so that eventually you become “naturally confident.” The more you face your problems honestly, the stronger the connection, the more confident you become, the more you understand where your answers are, you just have to face yourself to get to them.

Challenge plays a part. The nature of human existence on this planet is challenge. So now you know why your boss is so tough or why your mother was addicted to pain killers. They have to be. They are the circles of your karmic universe that only you can struggle against and win. You are at the center of the universal super weave, and the actions you take to change things, good or bad, are the bricks and foundations of the houses you create. They can be mansions or crack houses.

But I believe that the most useful answer is Faith. Faith is good. In fact it turns out that faith is a human necessity. Your hope, spirit, belief allow your universe the engine of faith. If you don’t believe or half believe, just in Church on Sundays, or just on Tuesdays when the girl from Ipanema goes walking by; if your belief is shoddy; holy, as in there are plenty of holes in it; filled with sarcasm one day and doubt the next and then sure, why not, a little bit of hope on Thursdays, but then you turn around and blame God or your mother for what is wrong in your universe and  no one can change the karmic dynamic of the universe you have been born to, only you can do that; then it’s not much of an engine and you might want to increase your horsepower.

So next time you roll out your long list of things to blame for your life, burn it instead. Your life, your environment comes from you. Period.

That’s where you stand: in the middle of a working universe. It’s working because you work there. It is extraordinary because you are extraordinary. Awaken to you. Embrace you. Seek your answers in the U. of you. Build faith. Take action.

 

 

 

 

 

That’s why I like to sit facing the emotional mirror of myself and chant. Together we are part of the infinite–my mesh net universe that I am at the center of. The more I chant, the stronger the connection, the more confident I become, the more I understand that all my answers are in me. I just have to chant to get to them.

This is a good feeling. Plus the knowledge that though I have the answers, I can’t possibly execute them without the other beings in my universe. I need them as much as they need me.

 

Negativity

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balanced_rock

Beautiful photo? Or OMG run for your lives!

I live with negativity. My hunch is that you do too. It’s part of the human condition.

Now here’s the surprise. All that negativity?

It comes from me.

When my boss calls my work scattered, it is my response to his comment that creates the bad feeling in me, not the comment itself. Is he right? Am I going to get fired? Do you think he’s been talking to the baker I worked for when I was 16 who yelled at me for not keeping my mind on my work and dropping a tray of custard creams?

I label it negativity. I judge him as negative. I become depressed because his comment on my work pushes my buttons. I blame him for my paranoia about losing my job and leaving my family homeless. But, in reality, all those buttons are MINE.

My wife says, why don’t you EVER take out the trash. If she hadn’t said the word ‘EVER’ we’d be fine.

Is she actually saying I’ve never taken the trash out in our nearly 20 years of marriage? She exaggerates. She’s making a point. I get that. And if she has her way it will have its intended effect. I will get angry, yell something mean back at her, take the trash bag out and throw it against the refrigerator. Then I’ll feel bad, pick it up, wipe the smelly stains off the floor and take it out. See? That was my fault.

When I verbally attack the owner of a local bar for serving underaged drinkers and staying open ’til 4am so the police have to patrol and stop the fights of the drunks at all hours which is giving the town a bad name, he tells me politely but firmly that the town changed the parking rules to feed the meters until 11pm so no one goes to his bar anymore and he’s had to hire a chef to actually sell real food and change the dynamic of his establishment. I am left with this creepy feeling that my negativity got the best of me; that if I had just asked him how’s business, he would have told me the same thing without me throwing verbal punches.

Why do I need it so badly? What does all this negativity give me? Evidently I need to be right. The side of good is always my side, right? Whether I’ve thought two seconds about what I’m saying or not.

It’s surprising because when I look into the mirror in the morning, I’m pretty happy with my self, but sometimes when I look in other people’s eyes, and see the fear and trepidation and knee-jerk yesses on their lips, I’m a monster. Which is the real me?

That’s why I figured I needed a better mirror. One that shows that negativity so I can face it BEFORE I go out into the world.

That’s what my Buddhist practice does for me. The absolute worst thing looks better and becomes much more well-considered from my side of the mirror when I have chanted in the morning. I have no idea how it works. I know how it doesn’t work though. It doesn’t work on a level of intellect, knowledge or consciousness that my rational brain can predict or understand. It pushes me out of the brain roads I tend to travel. I just know that if I don’t face myself each day this way, all the negative stars come out shooting. This practice is like the sun. When I do it daily, the sun comes out and the shooting stars disappear. When I don’t…watch out for me.

If you need a hedge against your own negativity as I do, make a practice of taking a faith action strong enough to remind you that the thing that’s really bugging you…is you.

 

What if…Buddhism

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lionWhat if there was a confused but entitled prince who left his father’s castle to seek himself amongst humanity and succeeded? What if he wondered why there was so much suffering, since his castle displayed so little suffering on the surface?

And what if he was a pretty bright guy, so as he travelled, sought and learned, he shared what he learned with the locals, wherever he was and then they went back to their friends and spread his teachings of the moment to their friends making them teachings of their lifetimes?

And what if he thought that the human suffering he saw everywhere was a product of the greedy desires people had and that if you could just extinguish those desires you’d be okay, but then realized that even the desire to extinguish desires is a desire, that desires are a part of the human experience of life, so he chilled out on that teaching, and talked instead about the desire to be happy, ‘absolutely’ happy, which doesn’t mean you go around like a clown with a big smile painted on your face but that you understand that obstacles are the way of life and learning how to deal with them on a daily, weekly, lifelong basis makes you in fact confidently, healthfully, groundedly,  ‘absolutely’ happy?

And what if he thought that every human being has this beauty in them which when they are spiritual and in touch with themselves as part of the whole, they are happy and have lives of value and when they weren’t they didn’t, and that there were endless ways to get trapped in negative karma ‘accidents’ but as soon as people brought their true heart spiritually to the fore they were okay again and realized there are no accidents just karma catching up with us?

So, what if he crafted a set of tools, stories and metaphors that spoke to the spiritual side of humans and that they could use to bring out their own goodness, and what if one of these was a story/metaphor about how children, left to their own devices, drink poison, and how this great physician, their father, had the medicine and tools to counteract the poison, but since children and people are so often headstrong and are trapped in their own negative greed, anger, foolishness and arrogance,  they said, “Screw you dad. I’m not taking that damned medicine”?

And what if the doctor/father was so upset at this that he gave out that he was dead, I think the word he may have used was extinct, and when that happened, you know how these things go, the kids were like “Oh gee Dad, I’m so sorry you’re gone. I do kind of miss you. I probably should have taken that medicine you offered me and now that you’re gone and all that candy I ate did not make me feel so good, I’m gonna”?

And what if when they took that medicine, they started to realize what the old man was talking about all along, in fact, they started feeling good, so good that they recognized their old man’s good spirits in themselves–I don’t know, maybe the way he’d smile for no reason and hum a tune, the way he treated other people with such deep respect and appreciation–and before they knew it, they looked in the mirror and saw their father, the good doctor, staring back at them and they liked what they saw; and so they practiced the tools he’d given them and kept taking the medicine so that they could feel good and encouraged others to do the same?

And what if the medicine was his last teaching, the Lotus Sutra, that says no matter what cave people wall themselves off in, they will always be connected to other people and the interconnectivity of the universe in general, which is essentially what science and the new physics now concur on,  and what if the most important tool was facing yourself in a kind of mirror that when polished through chanting minute after minute, hour after hour, with your heart as open as you can make it, that you discover the answers to all your questions inside, not outside yourself?

What if?

Connectivity

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IMG_0495More people pass through Grand Central Station in a single day than live in the state of Alaska. For perspective, each Alaskan has 1.26 square miles to roam around in each year, New Yorkers at Grand Central have 2.7 square feet to roam in each day. Are there too many people in New York? Alaskans might think so.

I was not brought up in Alaska, but in Southern California. Some city planner claimed that my home was within the LA city limits, but compared to NYC it was hardly city living.  Three families carved out house plots on a large hill at the end of a fire road covered with sagebrush in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains. We were 1/5 mile apart and our nearest neighbors were another mile or so across a gully on a ridge. When I looked for play friends as a boy, I hiked down into the gully or sometimes when the mustard weed had been cleared as a fire break from the top of the hill, slid half way down on large pieces of cardboard only to slide face first into the sagebrushy prickles.Then I’d go pile rocks as ammunition in case another boy, a prospective friend, might challenge my position. So I feel pretty spiritually close to the 1.26 square miles Alaskans bask in.

The first big city I ever experienced was Disneyland–the crowds, the waiting in lines for things, the myriad people watching. It trained me for what I might find when I moved away from home to a real city–Chicago.  How different life was with people as witnesses. How the people had to behave differently because they were always always being seen by other people. It was a house of mirrors.

It must have satisfied though, some part of it at least, because for the next 40 years I have lived in cities, and never returned to my cowboy and indian roots, meeting friends by throwing rocks in the canyon.

So it is somehow otherworldly, but in other ways completely natural that I now share Grand Central Station with 750,000 other people each day. And each day I disembark from my train and walk from 42nd Street to 19th Street where I work, passing 900 people just on the sidewalk I’m on. ( I counted.) I’m not even talking about the people walking on the other side of the street.

In my rock-throwing canyon I could watch another boy approach my position from a mile away. They tended to leave their backyards that spilled over the hills into the canyon, so you could see them as they skittered down their side of the hill. And with the binoculars that I kept hidden in a metal box dug into the dirt at Eagle Rock, I could see who they were long before I had to decide whether they were friend or foe.

This is different. It’s like viewing 900 photographs in 15 minutes. Some stick with you, most are a blur. But they are a blur of something human. If you saw 900 porcupines walking downtown it would be remarkable. Somehow this isn’t. And yet 900 arms, 900 noggins, 1800 eyelids–it all adds up so fast, and, it is completely indigestible. There is no time to size anyone up and see if you have enough rocks. Instead you have this too up close and personal view of nose hairs and elbows as they flash past. It takes some getting used to. Any one of them could be a serial kiler. Or more likely, your second cousin, future dishwasher, life of the party, lunky linebacker, someone’s friend from China. They all seem to pass the test for correct number of body parts. But what do they want? They whiz past like bullets.

My Buddhist practice says that we are all connected. But to my naked eye, it sure doesn’t seem that way. On the other hand, take a moment to stand on the mezzanine above the main floor of Grand Central station. From here you can see the big picture: bodies in motion. At this time of the morning there must be roughly a thousand different bodies all going which way. Here comes a big, aggressive late-trainer, he’s moving at a speed 2.4 times faster than anyone else. And the other bodies move around him, make way for him without even really noticing he is there. This is a rock thrown in a pond. This is physics. This is the Buddhist principal of dependent origination.

Nothing exists independently of other things. If this exists, that exists; if this ceases to exist, that also ceases to exist.

Hence this morning’s experiment. I am donning my guerrilla mask and going to walk at an even pace across the entire floor length to watch interconnectivity at work. What am I proving? Nothing. I’m just having fun. I’ve already told you I believe in dependent origination, so what more is there to say. Besides, it’s almost Halloween.

Probably though, I am also proving to myself that the reason I don’t live in Alaska is that it is much harder to be connected to the herd there. You have to assume that other people exist and care about you there. Here in New York, you know they exist and you know they don’t care about you.  So what do they want? Why are they here? Is it just the safety of the herd?

The tattoos may explain it. New York City has some definite over achievers in the tattoo, hair color process, look-at-me-I’m-different attention getting department. There are more tattoos per square body inch here than in Alaska, I guarantee it. Roses on butt-cheeks, hashtag Jesus on neck napes, the Loch Ness Monster swallowing entire arm wings. They came here to be part of the herd and then to prove they were different. Like me, they gave up their rocks for the expression of themselves as art. Take that Alaska.

Moreover, in moving here, my pile of rocks has been bronzed and sits on my desk as a paperweight. My new weapon, retardation. Bullets would be happier metals if they slowed down to a point where they can’t hurt anyone; that they dribble, retardedly, out the end of a gun and wobble across to their target and give it a little kiss.

So it is with the interconnectivity of people. Retard my friends, retard. Decelerate.

Alaska may be an extreme but so is Grand Central Station. Get out of there. Go to Starbucks. Or better yet, to the corner diner. Smile. Say hello. She’s nice. He’s a great guy. Are you reading Dickens? I am too! How about those Mets? Let’s take a selfie with everybody here.

Women understand this. But sometimes when they’re dressed for business they forget. Heart to heart. Whether we like it or not, we want to be connected, we are connected.

 

The Devil King of the Sixth Heaven Explained

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Monkey God

Monkey God by Gina Freschet. More art at Freschet.com

The Devil King of the Sixth Heaven. This is a Buddhist phrase or principle. A way of reminding ourselves just how our human is natured.

Let’s start with Heaven. This is where you live. This is where you find yourself. Picture it without the angels, the harps, the clouds, the need for perfection, St. Peter, or gates that lock. Think more of a staging ground for your life; an off season county fair ground waiting to come alive. Bring your best to it and suddenly it’s open, enlightened. Ride the Ferris Wheel. Have a good time. Your Heaven is what you put into it.

And why the 6th Heaven, not the Fifth or Fourth? Because the Sixth Heaven is the intersection of your five senses. The heart’s brain. The place that is supposed to make sense of all the input coming in to you and then suggest action.

And the Devil King? He’s your doubt, your poison, your karmic shadow. And He’s all yours. No one else can claim Him. He is specific to you. You can scale the sheer walls, you can invent a single coptered flying machine powered by bicycle pedals, but if you listen to Him telling you you can’t, you won’t. When you make His voice King, you’re one fucked monkey.

In fact, He may be talking to you right now: “Why are you reading this? Do you buy this load of crap? Monkey schmunkey. Get off your ass and get a job you worthless piece of shit. And stop eating those Cheetos you obese douche bag, you’re getting orange grease on your PhD. Your friends are crap, your life is crap, you are crap.” So that’s Him. The Devil King of the Sixth Heaven. And just imagine what kind of action you’ll take when His voice reigns — the lottery could make me a millionaire, my nose is too big, why can’t I win an Oscar? Any Faustian bargain you care to make for money, youth, beauty, fame is the product of the Devil King of the Sixth Heaven. And He is so familiarly personal. He is part of you and me because we are human. In fact, He’s at least 9 of the 7 Deadly Sins. His nickname is Freely Enjoying the Fruits of Others Efforts. (His doppelgangers are Freely Complaining about Others Without Understanding that it Takes Two to Tango, and Freely Judging Others without Taking Steps to Improve Your Own Damn Self.)

Hey I want to enjoy the fruits of others efforts as much as the next guy. Why not? Italian silk ties made in Bangladesh on sale at TJ Maxx for $3.99? Throwing away good food by the truckload because it’s not to my liking right now. And what about Donald Trump? He doesn’t deserve all that money.

But the more I chant, the more I realize that Donald Trump, despite his bad hair, knows more about money than I will ever know. In fact, his father was a wealthy real estate magnate. So he studied money and real estate at the foot of his mentor/dad. And, in fact, he probably suffers the disease of knowing money so intimately. Yes, he could beat me at Monopoly. But the treasures of his heart’s life only he can know. I can’t know his treasures, I can only know mine. End of story.

How do you get to know your treasures? You have to see the Man. Because He stands between you and them.  And since He’s all yours; He’s so much a part of who you are; He’s the king of your obstacles, always telling you why you can’t do things…well, since He’s yours, anyway, you might as well own Him. Put Him to work. Harness your Devil King.

Here’s the list of why you’re not happy right now. A_____ B_____ C_____ and D_____ E_____ F_____ and more. Let’s be honest. He’s behind every single one of them. Narcissus drowned, don’t forget That’s right. Know how to identify Him. The more you put him to work for you, the happier you’ll be–understanding that He’s negative, understanding that He’s gonna look for the easiest way out, understanding that He has forces of sugar and salt, sex and drugs, mindless music and mindless video techno game pastimes arrayed behind Him–understanding this you are stronger, happier. And when your family doesn’t invite you to Easter dinner because they hate your girlfriend, you show up with cake and a smile and tell them your girlfriend  had to be with her family. Because though the Devil King may think differently, you love your family. You want them to be happy, you want to be happy with them, see them succeed, stand strong with them as they take on every difficult adventure.

Besides do you take even one moment each day to appreciate what you already have? Ah ha! If you do, then you can defeat the Devil King of the Sixth Heaven at his own game–today. Tomorrow you’ll have to do it again. You’ve got to be consistent. Keep meeting Him, eye to eye, and saying no. No, stop talking in my head and telling me I’m not fit to sell corn dogs at the Ritz; no, I don’t look as foolish today as you say, besides I like the tie with the blue diamonds; no, I won’t put up with people who have learned to sadistically victimize me because I try to be a nice person; no, my friends may be odd but who are you to judge because they’re my friends; no, I won’t allow a lower standard for my dreams, my dreams are too important to allow laziness, tiredness, fuzzy brain, life of this moment’s needs, bad hair cuts, relatives who think they know me better than I know myself, or stale pistachios that cracked my teeth and gave me astronomical dental bills, to stop me.

Take that Devil! And I’ll be here tomorrow too. And I’ll be awake too. And I’ll look Him in the eye. And together we’ll understand that He could be my greatest asset. That even He has an enlightened side. That He could help me look for, understand and control my obstacles. That we’re a team. That there’s nothing we can’t do together, day by day. Each day. That together we can enter the 7th, 8th and 9th consciousnesses without talk of devils. Just us. Just interconnectivity. Just the music of the spheres. Just the beautiful humans squeezed so tightly on this subway car that I can’t exhale, and yet one girl in a nice red coat is actually doing her make up, running a Q-tip along her eyelid while the train jolts forward. Yikes.

And then we’ll be in. Today. Because the Devil King of the Sixth Heaven is the GATEKEEPER of the 7th 8th and 9th consciousnesses. And once you reach those, you could be so calm, so happy that the Devils and the Heavens are left behind and you’re flying at a low altitude but high enough to see the peaks and valleys and you’re firmly at the controls keeping an eye out for Him in your rear-view mirror. Don’t hit the peaks, don’t fall into the valleys. You want to be connected to your past, to THE past, to your family’s past, to your ethnic origin’s past, and the presents and the futures. You want the happiness of the flight, and the knowledge that all you have to do is just lift the joystick up one inch to get over the obstacles, not be down there like bumper cars getting turned around by every little obstacle you bump into. Obstacle after obstacle. You want to fly toward the consciousnesses that can’t be written, because they must be experienced. Seven, Eight and Nine aren’t heavens in the true sense because Heaven is an invention of the human mind and they are not an invention of any mind.To say that they are love is to limit them. They are chance. This chance that we are living, appreciating, acknowledging, aspiring with…and that we know where our Devil is.

The Skeptic

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vectorstock_1956607I’m skeptical about everything. So when it comes to religion my brain has a field day. The media aids and abets. Every abusive priest, every soldier who kills in the name of his God. Let’s put it this way. I’m old and I’ve seen too much. I know how easily God is twisted to the purposes of men. It is soma. It is control. It is a tool of dictators and power fools.

So when someone suggested I needed more personal faith, I laughed. I scoffed. I was, in a word, superior. The fact that it was a pretty girl who I was dating at the time made no difference. My religion was certain. It was of my own making. It included leaves and trees and the other obvious signs of Mother Nature. I got that the Earth was ours to ruin and we were doing a pretty good job. I believed that Native American drumming and other practices before white people polluted the land were probably pretty spiritual. I believed in signs — the croaking raven, etc. Looking back, my religion was basically a positive, media- driven, pollyana for a day and depression for a week, panoply of the senses that deserted me in crowded malls and during the evening news, and flourished during long hikes and days when my personal star rose.  Kind of a patched together, now-you-see-it-now-you-don’t sort of religion.

I had this health problem — nothing fatal — but something kind of scary and inexplicable that I was freaking out about. My girlfriend told me to chant Nam-myoho-renge-kyo. I told her I hated salmon-colored robes and finger cymbals and to leave me alone. She persisted. She made me get a pen and write the words down. When I got off the phone I tried it once. It was ridiculous. It was everything I hated in religion: a stupid mindless magic bullet that was supposed to make me feel like a happy gummy bear. I might just as well chant “Mary had a little lamb.”

So I did.

“Mary had a little lamb. Mary had a little lamb. Mary had a little lamb…” Ok. This wasn’t particularly revelatory. After two minutes of chanting, I didn’t give two shits about Mary, and I wished the worst for her pet (lamb chops and a sweater). So I tried my girlfriend’s chant. Equally ridiculous. What does it mean? It’s simply gobbledy gook some Asian person who can’t speak English came up with to make himself feel better about having a bad day. It probably translates as “Mary had a little lamb.” Enough of that.

Fast forward.  Despite my misgivings about her religious counsel, I married my girlfriend and that’s when the real fun began. Sometimes I would come home from work and she’d be light as a feather and other days she’d be heavy as Hell itself. On the feather days I figured she’d gotten good news or something else that made her spirit light. But come to find the only actual difference between a feather and Hell was that she had chanted the feather days, and hadn’t gotten around to it on the Hell days. How could saying gobbledygook make that big a difference? This was problem that required study.

Moreover when I walked into the house and she was chanting, her body was posessed, or more truthfully just anchored at its deepest source. My wife is fun-loving, Italian, expressive, girlish at times, free-spirited, playful — her voice is sexy, sweet, and so honestly open that at first I fell in love with her voice in those early years as I talked with her on the phone from Boston. What it isn’t, is anchored, solemn, from the gut, resonant, bass, focussed. But when she chanted, her voice was all these things. It was like this beautiful girl was suddenly possessed with a priestly James Earl Jones.

Being a Buddhist she would have other Buddhists over to the house to chant or she would drag me to a meeting somewhere and I would experience the transformation of a bunch of knuckleheads into serious, resonant, instruments of God.

It was a feeling my brain couldn’t wrap around. But okay. I got it. There was more to this than met the eye.  But really, I was too deep in my need to control my surroundings and my image to fall for it. I, my career, my life was just way more important than being the flying Buddhist nun. Sally Fields and the Dalai Lama could have it.

Besides, I’m a mind person. You have to appeal to my mind to get my respect. So my wife gave me a Buddhist book by Daisaku Ikeda called “My Dear Friends in America.”

It was good. A little Japanesy for my pioneer American mindset, but still I would agree with almost all the things he said. On top of that, he had some great metaphors and some great examples. He spent a little too much time telling people he didn’t know how great they were, but whatever. It was a good book. Since it appealed to my brain, unbeknownst to me and against my better judgment, my brain started a dialogue with my heart. I started to feel this chanting thing and it was hard to deny the results. Overall this was pretty good shit.

My natural shyness that can turn anything into a punchline held me back though. Take away a barrier and I’ll erect three more. At meetings at our house I would hover around the edges. Stall. Stand. Chant a little. Go do dishes. Use putting my children to bed as an excuse not to participate. Someone has to do it! I was a busy father for christ sake! Who has time for this!

But in those moments, days, weeks that we’ll call depression (doesn’t everyone count his toes while staring down from great heights and admiring just how far the drop really is?) it was my heart that spoke the loudest–trying to reason with my brain about actual tools that might keep me from this ledge a few less times.  What did I have to lose, except my life, my depression, my superiority…except my life. Besides marriage was proving to be a hiccup and a half from my logical, ivy-league mind’s point-of-view. It followed no pattern I could follow from math class. Just when I thought that x equalled the square root of four, I’d have a fight about finger nail clippings in the sink. Holy shit. Really? It turned out there was no square route. You couldn’t get there from here. So I broke down. (I admit it fellow superior beings, so sue me already!) I chanted. 

It makes no sense at all to a Vulcan, but damned if I didn’t start to feel better. Sometimes I’d look back three months and couldn’t remember the last time I’d counted toes from a high angle.

But it was my secret. No one must know. What if my friends in the Atheist’s Club found out? My membership card would be spirited out of my pocket and burnt at the stake.

But then, month by month, the atheists themselves began to fade from my life. Really, they were so stuck in their ways: demanding that life had no spiritual component whatsoever; that there is nothing outside of their little selves that mattered. No wonder so many also belonged to self-help groups and Hemlock societies. If I don’t act like myself, kill me. I’m in control damnit.

No you won’t, Atheistas! What you is, is beautiful, irreplaceable human beings who’ve lost the instruction manual. Look the Tin Woodsman in the eye and tell me you have no heart.

Today, I can’t even spell ‘skaptic’. Because a ‘skaptoc’ is someone who doubts, and doubt is the lack of faith, and I know enough, when my toes start itching for the ledge, to chant. It’s an everyday tool. It’s a practice. A mindless activity. Literally. My skeptical mind is along for the ride, but basically it’s just humming at the curb, waiting for instructions from my heart wisdom.

Mary was a beautiful soul who will never come again. When the lamb touched her life, together they became as white as snow.