Observations on returning to Philly/Facebook/etc. after a week in a Buddhist monastery

 

 

Oh my god, people are fucking crazy....

 

Breathe...

 

Breathe...

 

Breathe...

 

(That's about it, for now).



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(Calligraphy by Thich Nhat Hanh)
(Thanks to all the kind people at Blue Cliff Monastery)

There's No Such Thing As An Original Sin

...driving Philly’s infamous corridor of angst, the Schuylkill Expressway, with the radio on, heard an old Elvis Costello song...I’m Not Angry....with one line that goes:  there’s no such thing as an original sin...which I’ve always thought was kind of a clever play on words and traditional Christian doctrine...

...sin isn’t a word I use much...associating it, as I tend to do, with traditions in which any baby worth knowing seems to have drowned in the guilty bathwater a long, long time ago, leaving a tub I have little interest in entering....though I do think an awful lot about faults and mistakes...and all kindsa not particularly commendable behavior...mostly my own...

...and, gotta admit, even while basking in recrimination and self-loathing, I tend to look at these little blemishes on my character as kinda special...unique, even...enough that the world might recoil in horror if the charges against me were read in public...

...like, y’know, I’m one badass evil kinda dude...

 

...but, the truth is, it’s the same old tired crap...stuff millions if not billions of people around the world are probably guilty of at this very moment...that’ve been causing problems for a hundred thousand years...not particularly good, maybe, nothin’ to be proud of, some of it best apologized for, with reparations made, in fact.......but that’s all...

 

...like somebody I was helping with her college application essays a little while ago, who wasn’t sure what to say about a period of her life which was notably blank on her résumé...said she didn’t want to mention that she drank herself into jail and rehab...which was understandable...

 

...and yet, I told her, you’ve had a drinking problem....you’re not an axe murderer....half the people on the admissions committee have probably had drinking problems....that it was best be to simply be open about it...

...and she got in....one of those admissions officers even noted how touched she was by the honesty of her essay...

 

...(it should be noted, that, even if you are an axe murderer, that’s hardly a groundbreaking accomplishment....have you cleaved as many heads from necks as Genghis Khan? I don’t think so....so if that’s how you’re planning on making your mark, might as well forget it...it’s been done)...

...there’s no such thing as an original sin....and not need to go through life as if our faults are anything special...

Possible Yoga Terrorists and Paranoia Striking...Somewhat Shallowly

...back when I was a serious political activist, my friends all thought they were being watched...positive all the vegan potlucks were under tight surveillance...spies in every circle of self-affirmation....the international combine quaking in fear at the thought of kids temporarily out of school knocking on doors to save whales, smoking bongs till they couldn't form coherent sentences, talking about but not actually reading Marx, and blasting early Zappa at three A.M....one guy I knew went for months telling all the freaks at the local co-op the CIA was watching his every move, getting little in response but yeah, I’m pretty sure they’re watchin’ me, too before finally being diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic....

Just because you’re paranoid don’t mean they’re not after you....
Kurt Cobain

...which is not to say that I don’t think anybody’s out to get me...hell, every time I get stuck behind some jalopy going ten miles under the speed limit, I’m sure it’s part of a conspiracy to mess with my life...for that matter, in the late 60’s, when I was a little kid, my dad, a psychiatrist—yeah, I know, that explains a lot...shaddup—ran into a guy he’d had committed...on the street...and the guy said I know where your children play...and, as it turned out, he did...Rittenhouse Square in Philly...whenever I’m down that way I keep my eyes out for that guy, likely in his eighties or so, possibly moving about with a walker, still looking to abduct me after all these years....

Until they become conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious.
George Orwell, 1984

I’ve been asked to be a community organizer for my local yoga friends...or sangha if ya wanna get all spiritual, sanctimonious, and Sanskrit-like about it...creating some kind of on-line entity, I think, and maybe more...might have to hug people or something...not too clear on that point at this juncture....anyway, I know what yer thinking...how might this community organizing crap impact any plans I might have to run for the Office of the Presidency of the United States of America?

Jesus was a community organizer...
The Internet

It’s a real concern, too...just who are these people?...how do I know none of them have dark pasts as yoga terrorists? how do I know, a few election cycles from now, I won’t be seeing video clips at every commercial break showing a seemingly mild and benevolent yoga teacher saying as you move from uttanasana to utkanasana, visualize death to America...?

Meditations on Nirvana

it was shortly after finishing the Appalachian Trail that I found Nirvana... oh...wait a second...excuse me...I meant the band...sorry for any confusion...as mentioned, I’d tumbled down from the mountains pretty hard...no money no job no home no girlfriend no plans no nothin’...worse yet, I felt I’d found my paradise only to realize I couldn’t stay there...which, I understand, is actually a common experience among those who’ve gone off to the Far East to do the Buddhist thing...at least that’s what Bill Murray said in The Razor’s Edge...so it was fitting that a friend I stopped in with in Boston on the way down to Philly from Maine took me to a series of bars and in, I think, the one after the strip club, put “Smells Like Teen Spirit” on the jukebox...hello hello hello how low...and then that, living at my parents’ house that Fall, reliving adolescence at 26, I bought the Nevermind CD, which was still new then... and anything else they put out as 26 turned to 27 and '92 became '93 and I really got into...I’m a negative creep I’m a negative creep I’m a negative creep and I’m stoned!...and I liked the fact that Kurt Cobain was about my age, when up to that point I’d mostly listened to people who were a good deal older...even though he was a rock star and I wasn’t...though he still seemed just about as miserable...I’m so ugly that’s okay cuz so are you...and that then, a year and a half or so later, when I was on my way out to Arizona to start grad school...leaving mid spring though school didn’t start till Fall...to spend a wasted summer in the high desert before starting the work of getting my life together...kinda thrilled and kinda revolted that the grunge thing had suddenly made my worn out jeans, flannel shirts, shaggy hair, and tendency not to shave too often stylish...when I stopped with some friends in Boulder and got snowed in at their geodesic dome in the mountains...I'm on a plain I can't complain...I heard that Kurt Cobain had blown his own face off...aqua seafoam shame...and felt like I’d dodged a bullet myself...