November 1, 2011 · 11:42 am

Seven Billion Bodhisattvas

“Imagine all the people living life in peace. You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one. I hope someday you’ll join us, and the world will be as one.” ~ John Lennon, IMAGINE.

We live in the Autumn of Occupy. People of diverse national, social and economic backgrounds have risen together to highlight the injustices that have been perpetrated by a small group of corporate pirates who’s greed nearly brought the world to its knees. Human compassion has lost its place in the governance of the world, if it ever had a place to begin with. Americans love to think that we are the international symbol of goodwill. Most other countries will tend to dispute that, seeing us more as a hegemony that intervenes only when it is in our corporate interests. It is this compassion, or lack thereof, that I expound upon today.

All around the world, people are taking to the streets to trumpet the excesses of the ruling class. These same people who are sitting out there in Zuccoti Park, or in front of the Ohio Statehouse, or any of the thousands of other Occupy sites are putting their lives on indefinite hold for the hope of a better world for the children of the world. They are exercising compassionate leadership. Buddhists have a word for someone who places the need of all others above the needs of self. This is called bodhisattva. It specifically means that a Buddha will wait to achieve nirvana until all others have ascended to that plane. I cannot think of a better term to describe the many people who are standing for the rest of us.

The naysayers of this movement like to deride occupiers as “dirty hippies” “living on the government dime” “who need to get a job” and “take a shower.” How is this any different that the ascetics who trained the Siddhartha Gautama before he became the Buddha? They are not. The people of Occupy have come to a collective awakening that the world’s resources are being gobbled up and that greedy corporations are swarming the carcass of the earth like so many maggots on a corpse. Mother Nature is under attack and it will take a legion of bodhisattvas like James Hansen, Bill McKibben, Tim DeChristopher, and my friend Climate Hawk to hold the vultures at bay. The ruling class refuses to regulate their own greed. Who can blame them. They will be dead before the earth breathes its last breath, but they’ll have yachts and mansions and diamonds and dames in the meantime.

You’re probably thinking that I am crazy. There’s no “ruling class,” brother terry. We are a democracy and we’re turning the world into a hundred other democracies just like us. We are changing the world from a bunch of oppressed states into little mini-me’s. But is that what we really want? And do we really have a true democracy? How is having the choice between two rich white guys, with apologies to the random woman or person of color who manages to sneak into a race, representative of our populace. The system has been gamed to make it so that we have an overwhelming number of lawyers, captains of industry and career politicians making all of our decisions for us. Politics has been subverted from public service to corporate service. The politician who spends the most money wins Ninety-five percent of all elections. It’s all about who writes the biggest check.

So, how can we get around this conundrum of rich versus poor? They control all of the money and the use it to keep their boot on the neck of the rest of the populace. We have to devote all of our time and our energy to feeding and housing our children. If we are fortunate enough to own a house, they take more money away in taxes to fund their corporate welfare. It seems like the poor are fighting a losing battle right? It seems overwhelming and futile. We should just give up, let the bastards have whatever they want. We can’t win. I have to admit that the task is daunting. It will be hard work. Many if not all of us will be dead before the battle is won. So, does that mean we just give up?

A funny thing happened on the way to the bank. The banker looked up and a dozen people wanted to close their accounts. And that dozen turned into a dozen dozens. And then a thousand dozens. The supermarket opened on Saturday morning and nobody came into shop. The Exxon station opened up, only to watch watched all of the bicycles go riding by. A week went by where nobody bought a single product from Monsanto, Georgia Pacific or Proctor & Gamble. Big Macs, whoppers, three-piece chicken dinners and Godfather’s pizzas sat dying on the warmer because families decided to start cooking at home. The people decided to redirect their resources.

We have one thing that the ruling class will never have. Seven billion people. Each and every one of us has the ability to become an economic bodhisattva. There are some of us who stand in the street with a sign. Others go to jail day after day to stand for what they believe in. Some donate time to the movement. Others donate money and resources. Others still inundate their “representatives” with correspondence of their frustration and ire. Even if the masters dominate sixty percent of our resources, that still leaves the other forty percent. We can choose to withdraw that from this shadow economy designed to leech every dollar from us.

Every one of us has a finite amount of resources available to us. I’m not saying that we need to hoard every dollar and wait for the apocalypse. What I am saying is make conscious decisions on how you spend every dollar. Give your dollars to family run businesses. Source you food from local sources. Use local tradespeople for your material needs. Support indigenous vendors. Boycott the firms run by the pirates. Become an economic bodhisattva.

We all have the ability to lead. We have become a population of sheeple who allow ourselves to be diverted with television, video games, computers, sports and intoxicants. We have become over-medicated by a medical industrial complex that seeks to control us and siphon even more of our resources. It is time to rise up. It is time to throw off the anime and rebuild our communities. I’m not talking about cities and towns. I’m talking about friends and neighbors. I’m talking about extended families of the ones we love and care about. I’m talking about building a shield of universal love and using it to repel the cockroaches raiding the carcass. I’m talking about occupying our own minds and leading through compassion. This battle has only just begun and it can be won. Take the way of the bodhisattva and anything is possible for yourself and for humanity.

Leave a comment

Filed under Blog, Slacker Revolution

October 31, 2011 · 11:09 am

The Age of the Pusher/Junky Relationship

1. Never give anything away for nothing.
2. Never give more than you have to give. Always catch the buyer hungry and always make him wait.
3. Always take everything back if you possibly can.

William Burroughs – NAKED LUNCH (the original introduction)

It’s an exciting time to be alive. We are on the cusp of a great schism that threatens to shake the every core of the world as we know it. Already the pillars are starting to topple. The people, long fat and complacent in the throes of decades of prosperity, woke up on September 15, 2008 to a huge slap in the face. Thirty years of systematic deregulation of the financial markets grew a bubble so big that when the balloon finally burst, twenty percent of the accumulated wealth of the United States of America disappeared into thin air. It seems like common sense that we should have protections against this type of reckless behavior. I could go on and on about commodities and credit default swaps and insane bonuses for criminal transactions, but that would be neither accurate nor productive at this point. But I am not an economist.

At the same time that the bankers are sucking the last of the lifeblood from our necks, the energy companies are ravaging our insides like a case of stomach cancer. The gas companies have come up with the controversial and dangerous practice of hydrofracking to extract natural gas from layers of shale that lay miles beneath the earth’s surface. At the same time, the oil companies are racing to exploit the Canadian Tar Sands oil fields. The jury is still out on the environmental impact of the extracting the tar sands, but James Hansen, one of NASA’s leading climatologists, believes that exploiting the tar sands will be game over for the environment. And all of this at a time when technology is making renewable and sustainable energy more affordable and accessible, yet is being suppressed by the purveyors of carbon based fuels. It seems like common sense that Mother Nature might not take kindly to machines boring into her insides and jets of wastewater breaking up her dermis. She has been providing all of the necessities for life on this planet through natural means of wind, sun and water, yet we subject her to unnecessary surgery for profit. But I am not a scientist.

Not to be outdone, another powerful industry is burrowing into another soft spot of humanity. The health care industry has spent the last two decades perpetuating a society of addicts. It is a two-pronged attack. Doctors are over-prescribing pharmaceuticals for the elderly in order to keep them chemically and financially dependent on a cocktail of drugs whose costs are spiraling out of control. At the same time, they are focusing on younger generations of children who are diagnosed as ADHD, clinically depressed, bi-polar and any number of other conditions that were unheard of thirty years ago. We are over-diagnosed, over-prescribed, and indeed over-doctored. We need to go cold turkey on the prescription drugs and get straight. But I am not a doctor.

Beyond our addiction to pharmaceuticals, we have developed an unhealthy taste for processed food. Restaurants and grocery stores have gotten away from preparing fresh food every day, instead mass-producing boxed canned and frozen foods and shipping them thousands of miles to end up in our pantries, or more concerning, at our drive-thru windows. This “food” is kept artificially cheap to make it cost prohibitive to maintain the ritual of the nightly home-cooked family meal. Family farming, one of our most noble and fulfilling professions, has been co-opted by multinational corporations. Our seed catalog, which should be forever sustainable and renewable, has been subverted and poisoned by genetically modified seeds. The effect is two-fold. First, the seeds have been engineered so that they necessitate the use of specific fertilizers and herbicides. Cows, pigs and chickens, once raised free-range on grass and other natural feeds, are now raised in warehouses where many of them never see the light of day. They are grown bigger and faster using mass amounts of the same genetically modified feed corn, steroids and antibiotics. The antibiotics are necessary because the size of the farms negate the ability to maintain a clean and safe environment. And because it is such a large and unclean environment, the waste that is produced is excessive and toxic. It inundates our water supply, forces us to use ever-increasing measures to ensure the safety of said water. But I am not a farmer or a nutritionist.

Families have become stratified. While the income of the richest one percent has grown three-fold in the last thirty years, the income for the rest of us has remained stagnant. Men and women have taken to working two and three jobs to keep their families at the same standard of living. And that is only if they can find a job, let alone two or three. Family time has become a fairy tale. Most families are lucky to have a night or two a week where they can all get together for a meal. To make matters worse, States across the heartland of America have launched attacks on organized labor. While many believe that the purpose of this attack is to limit the wages, benefits and bargaining power of the public servants that are served by these unions, I believe that it is an attack on the unions themselves. They are the only entities in this country that can organize millions of people to take to the streets. They are the only huge voices of dissent. The attack is to divide us so that the vultures can continue feeding on the spoils of our labor. We all know the story of David versus Goliath. It seems like common sense that all of the little guys should band together to take on the big guys. But I am neither a father or a religious man.

The common theme in all of these threads, indeed the villains of this story, are the multi-national corporations that control our food and water supply, oil and gas, monetary assets, job creation and even our politicians. They have made themselves too big to fail,. They have conspired to attack the bleeding carcass that is our world like a swarm of insects attacking a dying body. They are drunk with power and think that they are above the law. If fact, they think they are the law. It is only through a long, concerted and potentially bloody effort, that mankind can show them the error of their ways. I am not any of the things that I mentioned in the above threads. But I am an organizer. And there are now seven billion people on this planet for me to organizer. So let’s get started.

Leave a comment

Filed under Blog, Introduction, Slacker Revolution

October 5, 2011 · 11:49 am

Battle Lines Being Drawn

Where to begin?

We’ve come to a point in this year of 2011 where every little thing seems to press the buttons of one group or another. Currently we have “occupations” going on in numerous US cities, we have a huge stalemate in congress that has all of the banks and corporations hunkering down to wait for the next election and we have a gaggle of Republicans traveling the country debating each other with flame throwers and anti-personnel mines.

The election of 2010 caused a wave of states to turn red, a 60+ Tea Party Caucus in the House of Representatives, and two handfuls of Republican Governors across the Midwest. These elected officials pushed through austerity legislation designed to slash public funding of numerous programs while at the same time attempting to weaken a perceived at-risk labor movement. What they didn’t reckon was that their course of action would serve to reenergize the movement and lead to massive protests in Wisconsin and Ohio, leading to direct targeting of the legislation and the officials behind said legislation. In a word, the people are pissed.

The dissatisfaction spans the globe. Since December 18, 2010 there has been a rash of uprising in the Middle East, including revolutions in Egypt and Bahrain, a civil war in Libya and minor to major uprisings in almost every other country in the region. In many cases they used the same civil resistance techniques that successful for Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., the South Africans against apartheid, the dethroning of Marcos in the Philippines and the Shah of Iran and the various revolutions that led to the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

We have all seen and heard the stories of the anti-war movement. Some still long for the days when tie-dyes and bell-bottoms were the armor of the moment, where in a time of great conflict love was the bottom line, where flowers had power, where young people would throw themselves in front of the Machine of government. They had their Woodstock, their Kent State, their draft dodgers and their disgruntled veterans speaking before congress.

What brought the people out to the streets in the 1960’s was a war, disguised as a police action, that even the most casual observer could see was futile and unjust. The young and disenfranchised marched in the streets, for the most part peacefully, and made their voices heard. They still feel the camaraderie to this day, the feeling that even if they didn’t get everything they wanted, even if their dreams went unanswered, they still put their asses on the line, got beat down, went to jail and in some cases even died to have their voices heard.

Fast forward to 2011. We have two wars that many feel are unjust. We have participated in the ouster of formerly friendly heads of state in sovereign countries. We have an incalculable unemployment rate because so many have given up looking for work. We have skyrocketing health care costs because of a powerful insurance and pharmaceutical lobby that bankrolls everyone who will take their checks. We criminalize a person’s sexuality and their use of recreational drugs. We murder condemned criminals even when the evidence shows that they are possibly innocent. And we are all prisoner to a banking system that cares not about the accounts of their depositors, like it used to, but only about the welfare of their executives and major shareholders. They foreclose on houses when many times an adjustment in payment would solve the problem. They speculate and lose ever-increasing lumps of our dollars, and then cry out that they are “too big to fail.”

If the banks are too big to fail, then what about the people? In New York City on this day in 2011, hundreds of protestors are “occupying” Liberty Park in Lower Manhattan. Many of them have been arrested and tased for their peaceful actions. They have been on the site for 19 days and show no signs of giving up. Today, some of the biggest unions in New York are coming on board to join the protests. What do they hope to accomplish by sitting in the lotus position and making signs and singing songs? They hope to shine a light on the banks that take the funds of their depositors and investors and run up their debt, profiting every time they trade it back and forth between them. They hope to shine a light on the shady maneuvers that manipulate the stock market and sink the retirement funds of thousands of Americans in a matter of minutes. Our own Ohio Governor took a $400,000 bonus for helping us lose $480,000,000 in the collapse of Lehman Brothers. While I’d like him to pay restitution, all that the 99 Percenters want is an honest banking system that works for everybody and not just the one percent at the top.

I have a confession to make. Early this year I criticized my fellow Americans as being soft in a time when we need to persevere. I pointed to the Egyptians in Tahir Square, the Tibetan Independence Movement, and even the Chinese in Tiananmen as examples of long drawn out resistance to the machine. I found myself disappointed that my beloved Ohioans couldn’t find a way to occupy our statehouse they way the people of Wisconsin did. I found myself doubting the validity of a movement that packed up and went home when the sun went down or the weather got cold. A funny thing happened on the way to the 2011 midterm election. The rabble got organized. Fifteen thousand people volunteered to circulate petitions. Over one million signatures were gathered. When it was obvious that Senate Bill 5 was going to get its day at the polls, the opposition attempted to suppress the vote with what amounts to a poll tax. So we gathered the signatures to get that put on the ballot as well. The people of Ohio (wo)manned up and stood up for each other against a government that is looking out for the One Percent.

I’m sure that I’m not alone in feeling echoes of the 60’s. In the immortal words of Stephen Stills and the Buffalo Springfield, “There’s something happening here…”
What it is remains to be seen. It’s encouraging, but the heavy lifting to get some real change has only just begun. Namaste, amigos!

Leave a comment

Filed under Uncategorized

September 4, 2011 · 10:40 pm

The Truth About The Truth

***Disclaimer: I’m about to tell you that everything that you believe to be the truth is patently wrong!***

Today I am thinking about the Truth. Humankind has been fascinated by the truth for a very long time. From Plato and Socrates, Epicurus, Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, Locke and Kant, da Vinci, Einstein and Hawking, the great minds of every era have been obsessed with the meaning of life.

Now I know what you’re thinking, (said in my best Thomas Magnum voiceover). What does the Meaning Of Life have to do with the Truth? And what can a self-obsessed mofo like brother terry tell you about that you don’t already know? If you’re still on board we might as well find out. Let’s start with a challenge. Think about the one thing that you believe to be the truth. Do you have it fixed in your mind? Got it? Okay, here are a few for starters:

1. The sun will rise tomorrow morning.
2. The only sure things are death and taxes.
3. All of the earth’s creatures evolved from a primitive life form.
4. In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
5. The only way to pay of the national debt is by raising taxes.
6. Raising taxes will cause a depression.
7. Governor Kasich is the man to turn Ohio around.
8. Governor Kasich is trying to destroy the middle class.
9. Jim Tressel would never cheat.
10. All college football teams cheat.
11. She really loves me.
12. He really hates me.

I could go on and on but you get the picture. For every possibility there is a perfectly rational alternative. No matter how much you study on a subject you can never be absolutely sure that you find the right answer. Most times there are many more than two choices. The best mathematicians and physicists in the world cannot be sure between Relativity, Quantum Physics and Super String Theory.

Let’s get back to that challenge that I opined for you. What is your ultimate truth? Fix it in your mind again. Think back to when you first decided that it was your ultimate truth. Where did you first hear about it? Did it come to you in a dream? Did you read it in a book? Did you see it on Fox News or CNN? Did you mother tell you about it in a bedtime story? Did it come from your third grade teacher? Did your favorite college professor lecture on it? Did your pastor write it in a sermon? Was your source unimpeachable?

There is no such thing as real news anymore. In this age of instant information, often the insta-story is completely off-base. Here’s a hypothetical for you: Let’s say the national guard is having maneuvers in the Wayne National Forest. Joe Citizen in Dayton sees a convoy on I-675 and tweets that troops are on the move. A few minutes later, Jane Taxpayer sees a similar convoy rolling down Route 23 and sends a Facebook update. Joe and Jane both happen to be “friends” with Johnny Fever, a local radio personality. You know Johnny. He’s the smartass who likes to get a rise out of his listeners, so he hypes it on his broadcast as an emergency. Another outlet picks it up and soon it is widely reported. Parents start leaving work and racing to pick up children. I -270 turns into a demolition derby. The next thing you know, Joe, Jane and Johnny are all facing charges for inciting a riot.

Preposterous, you say. Not so. There are two journalists serving thirty years in prison in Southern Mexico for tweeting the same sort of idiocy. A lot of people, myself included, are getting their news off of Twitter these days. It’s a recipe for mass hysteria waiting to happen. You see it everywhere. Over the last three years we have seen hundreds of stories about President Obama that would have been libelous, seditious or even treasonous just twenty years ago. You see elected officials saying the most outrageous things about each other that are taken at face value by their constituents. Hell, all you have to do is witness Rick Perry backpedaling from a book that he released less than a year ago. We are governed by the politics of fear and disinformation. It is win at all costs and damn the consequences.

And then you have our “news” networks. These days you have to choose between the Right Network and the Left Network. You will be hard-pressed to find a news story that is not colored by ulterior motives and ideology. And try to find a newspaper that doesn’t lean to one side or the other. A lot of people don’t even bother to read American papers. That is why they are dropping like flies. But I’m thinking that even foreign sources have their own editorial views of what we silly Americans are up to.

So maybe you read about your ultimate truth in a history book. They say that history is written by the victors. The greatest example of this is The Holy Bible. One has only to look at the books that were purged to see the conundrum of taking it literally. You either have to choose a version or translation and then decipher the poetry for meaning. It is maddening. Even the alternative history books and commentary by people like Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky are colored by their ideology and disenchantment with the status quo. Every commentator wants to be taken at face value, but every commentary seems contradictory.

So who can you trust? You can certainly trust your parents, right? But what happens if your father and your mother have different beliefs or interpretations of every single thing. Your father might see red and silver where your mother sees scarlet and grey. Your father might prefer white rice and your mother brown. Snoopy or Scooby Doo. Desperate Housewives or Grey’s Anatomy. Football or figure skating. NBC or CBS. You get the picture.

I’m not here to tell you that your beliefs are wrong. But I am here to tell you that they might be. My beliefs are.. I know beyond the shadow of a doubt that nothing I know is without doubt. I have no unimpeachable sources. I am skeptical of everything that I am told in print, video, audio or dreams. I read hundreds of books but am forced to doubt every word because I don’t know the motives of the author. Even the most esteemed of non-fiction books is really no more than entertainment. Does Plato’s REPUBLIC accurately depict a philosopher named Socrates, or is it a clever work of philosophical fiction? Can Walter Isaacson’s EINSTEIN: HIS LIFE AND UNIVERSE be taken word for word at face value? A biographer can never really know 100% of the story. Same with the historian, the physicist or the anthropologist. Even the teacher in the classroom is handcuffed by the textbooks selected by the school board. The best we can hope for is a version of the truth. Not the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

There are no Ultimate Truths. You can believe whatever you want, but chances are you will never know if you are right or you are wrong. The best we can do is commit ourselves to a value-based existence. Determine the values that are closest to your heart and be true to them. Only you can be sure you are living a good life and no other opinion matters.

So what is the meaning of life? If God were to whisper the meaning of life in my ear right now, I’d be hard-pressed to distinguish it from the voices in my head, I’d contemplate it for the rest of my days and die confused and wondering. Does this sound like purgatory to you? To me it sounds like bliss.

Live well, my friends. Until next time, your brother terry.

Leave a comment

Filed under Uncategorized

May 17, 2011 · 9:57 am

Btw- I Love You

 “There is an immeasurable difference between late and too late.” ~ Og Mandino**

Syzygy is coming. The alignment of the first four planets in our solar system. It’s got a lot of people in an uproar. A lot of folks are saying that the world is going to end. This week. Could it be the Rapture? The second coming? The apocalypse? I don’t purport to know the answer to this. I suppose that anything is possible.

Okay, so the world is not going to end. In reality, all of the believers will be ushered up to heaven, to sit at the right hand of God for all eternity. The rest of us, heathen Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, Taoists, atheists and the like, will be stuck here in an earthbound purgatory, counting down to October 21 and the bitter end. If I only have five months left I should probably go back being a carnivore, right?

A lot of people are ridiculing the syzygists (I love that word), calling them all sorts of names. Quite correctly, they are using the event as an excuse to party. I approve of this message. I have two syzygy parties to attend this weekend. I view this as covering my bases. If the world ends, I’ll go out with my friends. If the world survives, then we’ll have something to celebrate the next day too. At any rate, the event got me to reflecting on the fragility of life and the human fiber that can band us together or rip us apart.

It has been proven that human contact is one of the most important tools in keeping us happy and healthy. If a baby is born into this world and isolated from human contact, the baby will die. We cannot be all that we can be without contact with others. Therefore, it is tantamount not only to nurture the relationships that we do have, but to reach out to others who we come into contact with. I’m not saying that you have to become best buds with mechanic at the service station, the bank teller or the pizza delivery guy. But just because you’re never going to socialize with someone doesn’t mean that you have an excuse to be rude to them.

It happens to me all the time. In my job I meet as many as fifty new people a night. Some of them would be my friends if we lived next door to each other or hung out at the same tavern. Others are socially or ideologically incompatible on a base level. It would be very easy to discount or dismiss them at a glance. Many times I receive this treatment from them. But I make it a point to treat everyone the same way, I treat them ‘as if” we’re going to be best friends some day. I try to get a smile from every single one of them.

I know what you’re thinking. “But Brother T, it’s your job to be nice to all those people.” Or, “Brother T, you are nice to everyone.” Not necessarily and not for all time. I have been a dick in the past and no matter how much I try to suppress it, every once in a while it still happens. I am not perfect and I don’t expect you to be either (though you probably are). But I certainly am not.

I’ve had a long-standing issue with perfection. I expected to be perfect. And I expected you to live up to that standard as well. This is best illustrated by a number of people who I have left along the side of the road during my long journey. I have given up on friendships for the most trivial of reasons. A number of times I have given up out of shame. Other times it was imagined slights that any rational person would laugh off and move on. Shame still prevents me from picking up the phone and calling them to apologize. In this regard, I am still very juvenile.

But my biggest regret of all is my father. It seems as if we’ve always been out of sync. Our anxiety with each other goes back almost to the beginning. I have (too) infrequently reached out to him over the years, only to be pushed away by something that he did or didn’t do. More often than not it was either my fault or my bad interpretation. Nonetheless, we are still off-kilter. This is my reminder to myself to keep working at it until I fix it. Indeed, to keep working to repair all of the old friends who are still salvageable. And no, I’m not going to pull a John Cusack from High Fidelity and contact all of my exes from across the years. Those boats have surely left the dock.

“Terry, I really hope that you don’t grow old alone.**”

Tell me about it. I’ve been doing a damn good job of growing old alone. Just because I’m good at it doesn’t make it all better. I guess the point is that I have to make an effort to connect with the people who matter. It doesn’t cost a dime to say, “I love you.” When I call you brother or sister, it means that I want you to be in my life until eternity, even if the syzygy doesn’t crack the world in half and bring out the four horsemen of the apocalypse. When I say “I love you,” it doesn’t mean I want to sleep with you or have your babies, unless of course that’s what you want, but maybe we should go out on a date first.

So this goes out to all my friends, Romans and country(wo)men. I wish you glad tidings on the eve of the syzygy. I hope that you get all that you want out of the event. I hope we get a chance to hang out before the bitter end. And by the way, I love you.

* Og Mandino – American author and psychologist

** Mike Burns – back at the old Sawdust Lane apartment, 1995

Leave a comment

Filed under Common Sense, Life

May 12, 2011 · 2:57 pm

The Bottom Of The Bowl

“Once I knew only darkness and stillness… my life was without past or future… but a little word from the fingers of another fell into my hand that clutched at emptiness, and my heart leaped to the rapture of living.” Helen Keller*

I sit here in front of my high-tech laptop, sipping on a cup of organic Sumatran coffee, sunshine pouring through my window and a light breeze ruffling the curtains. I have already had a nice breakfast of scrambled eggs with cheese, diced onions and hot sauce along with ‘ vegan cornbread (I done good with that!). I’m looking forward to not one but two events tonight in my hip town of Columbus, Ohio. They are both can’t-miss, so I have scheduled the day off from work and will try to shoehorn them both in. I feel guilty about missing the work, but I will live frugal the next two weeks to make up for it. After all, even though I am a working-class American, I still make more money than about 95 percent of the people in the world.

I think as working-class Americans we sometimes don’t realize how good we have it. We lament about not being able to get that new car this year or go to that music festival this weekend (at least I do). We buy the generic versions of products to save a few bucks and then complain that the cheap toilet paper fell apart or is not soft enough. We swing through the McDonalds drive-thru for a one dollar McDouble that is basically a fat, sodium and cholesterol sammitch, then we complain that our tummy hurts or we got no energy. That one dollar spent and 390 calories is more than a lot of the people in this world get to live on for a day. Every day. There’s a good chance that those same people don’t have access to clean water or sanitation, let alone the cheap toilet paper we are bitching about. In fact, 1.1 billion people have no access to clean drinking water. And sadly, 1.8 million children die every year from the effects of diarrhea. Yes we are fortunate. It might be instructive fast for a day every once in a while to really feel what it’s like to be hungry.

I have been lucky. I’m pushing a half-century and I am still relatively healthy. I’ve abused my body with food, drink and lack of exercise. I have lived the life of excess that is common among my contemporaries. The only significant health problem that I have encountered is a few gout attacks over the last couple of years. They are directly attributed to my aforementioned lifestyle. The worst things that a man with gout can consume are red meat, shellfish, and alcohol. I have binged on all of those in my day. Now I pay the price. Other than that, I am healthy. I have all of my senses in tact. I have turned vegetarian to reverse my condition. I have dropped about fifty pounds in the last three years. I’ve been biking to work every day. I repeat. I am a lucky man. I am better off than six billion or so people around the world.

Imagine just for a second what it was like to be Helen Keller. Imagine being a perfect, healthy baby girl one day, only to be deaf and blind the very next. She was literally cut off from the world by a short bout of fever. Yet she continued to try to communicate, made up her own set of signals, eventually becoming the first deaf and blind person to obtain a Bachelor of Arts degree. She eventually became an accomplished lecturer and activist, championing the causes of socialism, pacifism and suffrage. Helen Keller refused to let he affliction get her down. Even though she had a severe condition that would for most people kill their development like a lightning strike killing a tree, she rose above. She kept her beautiful mind open to every other form of stimulus. She rose above.

Sometimes I look around me and all I see is sloth and laziness. I will go into a dicey neighborhood where it’s probably not safe after dark. I see the boarded-up houses, debris-strewn yards and people sitting on their porches in the middle of the day. It is very easy to feel holier-that-thou in these situations. It is very easy to discount these people and judge them unworthy. It is natural for me to want to retreat back to my lair and my laptop and coffee mug. Why don’t they rise above like Helen Keller? After all, she had a lot more hurdles to overcome than them. If these people don’t want to help themselves then why should I bother? Because it is my chosen profession. I am in the business of standing up for working (and not-working) people. I came to this profession because I was weary of working for causes that I couldn’t believe in. I may not be able to help all those people without water or sanitation, but I can help folks in my own community.

“To practice Right Livelihood, (samyag ajiva) you have to find a way to earn your living without transgressing your ideals of love and compassion. The way you support yourself can be an expression of your deepest self, or it can be a source of suffering for you and others.” Thich Nhat Hahn**

Right Livelihood is the fifth spoke of the eight-fold path to enlightenment as it was laid out twenty-five centuries ago by the Buddha. In this day and age it has come to mean not sacrificing your principles for monetary or social gain. In short, making a lot of money is not going to guarantee your happiness or fulfillment. But if you can look at yourself in the mirror at the end of the day and say, “I did my best. I helped instead of hindered,” then you are practicing right livelihood. I have worked jobs that paid a lot of money. At times I could face myself in the mirror. But many other times the reflection that stared back at me was one of shame. I didn’t like that feeling.

It doesn’t matter what your profession. What matters is that you are making daily positive impact on those around you. I have numerous friends who have chosen to make far less money in order to pursue their art. I commend them. I say it to all who will listen. Follow your bliss. The world cannot have too many blissful people. Listen to your heartbeat. Thump-thump. Thump-thump. That is the bass line of your life.

Helen Keller lost her ability to hear. But she didn’t lose her ability to listen. That is the important distinction here. In this regard, maybe she had an advantage over the rest of us. She had the ability to concentrate within herself. With her senses deprived, the touch of a human hand upon her own was the most precious of all things. Imagine if all you could do was taste, smell and feel. Imagine the flooding of these senses if you were smack dab in the middle of a pine forest. Imagine the feeling of the sun’s rays beating down on your face. Imagine the explosion of a ripe strawberry as you bite into it.

Focusing your senses is like pouring milk into a bowl.*** If your concentration is scattered, it is like you have a crack in the bowl. The sensations will still pour into it, but they will quickly drain out. If the bowl is too full, there is no place for new sensations or ideas to populate. But if you stare down into the bottom of the bowl, see the bowl (your mind) for the empty thing that it is, you can focus your energy on the task at hand. I hope it’s that ripe strawberry. I would love one right now.

 

* Helen Keller (1880-1963) American author and activist.

** Thich Nhat Hahn (born 1926) Vietnamese Buddhist Monk

*** Adapted from a Zen koan. I ain’t that smart.

Leave a comment

Filed under Life, The Way

May 10, 2011 · 11:12 am

My Universal Theory Of Everything

From the day we are born we are flooded with sensations. Assuming that all goes well with the birth, we are placed in our mother’s loving arms. We immediately start to bond with her. Over the course of days and weeks we are bombarded with wondrous things. Smiling faces, stroking fingers and the words of loved ones fill our wakeful moments. This is universal, whether you are born in a suburban hospital in middle America or in a wooden and tin hut in one of the poorest slums in the world.

Today I deal in universals. As we begin to grow the wonders of the world keep on coming. For the American kid it comes in the form of toys and playgrounds, sports and music, television and games. For the poor kid the wonders come in the form of natural phenomena, puddles, grass, dirt and mud, discarded objects and trash, and hopefully a soccer ball or jump rope in the best of times. These two kids live in different universes but they share the one joy of all children, curiosity.

As children we are all deluged with new things. We sit up on our own for the first time and become cognizant of our surroundings. We notice ordinary things and take pleasure in them. We hear the sounds that people make around us and learn to recognize what they mean. We learn to form words and take wonder in the sounds that we can make. We discover new tastes and smells. We develop our dexterity by first squeezing fingers, then by grasping objects and finally we manipulate those objects. We learn to roll over, then crawl and finally take those first tentative steps. This is universal.

As we grow older, we start to recognize the beauty in things. At first it might be our mother’s face. We gradually learn to discern light and color. We hear music for the first time, or the sound of a truck backing up, beep, beep, beep. We jump in a puddle for the first time, luxuriate in the water squishing between our toes. Or we run outdoors for the first time and feel the brisk wind in our hair and whistling in our ears. For the first time we see that little girl or a boy who seems meant for us alone, we love their smile, their eyes or their hair, and we know that they are the most beautiful person in the world. We share that first kiss and we know that this is what life is all about. This is universal.

We grow. Our bodies change and we begin to know longing. Life’s challenges and stresses become tantamount. We begin to plan for our future. We dream of professions, of owning things, of moving off to the big city. We want the next big thing, whether it’s a gaming system or a real soccer ball, a new dress or pair of shoes. We long for things that are realistic and we long for things that are impossible. We continue to experience the joy of new sensations, but that joy is tempered by What Might Be. This is universal.

We become enmeshed in school. We try to decide what we want to be when we grow up. Images flood into our awareness. Movie stars, doctors, lawyers. Gentleman farmers, store owners, taxi drivers. Our dreams narrow into our realistic possibilities. Some of us take the path of least resistance. Others embark on a path to greater things. There is suffering in each path. The easy path to the future might lead to a life of hard work, of necessity rather than luxury. The hard path with start with the hard work and the hard work will continue until late into life. The luxury that is experienced will come at the cost of time and effort. Some will accomplish great things through luck and timing. But most will achieve it day by day, year by year. There are plusses and minuses along the way. This is universal.

We emerge from the exuberant time of youth into the burgeoning time of adulthood. Most of us will still dream. Dreams of a better car, a house in the suburbs, a second degree. Dreams of owning a car, having a job, emigrating to another place for a better life. We save for things, we forego experience of today for the possibility of tomorrow. We settle into a day-by-day grind. We value our off-time above all else. We watch the clock until it’s quitting time. We stop after work to self-medicate. We play with our kids, our pets or the toys that we accumulate. We plan for vacations to “get away from it all.” Because we are adults we forget what was most important to our child-selves, joy, wonder and curiosity.

So I challenge you to search for that feeling again in your life. Break your routine. Find your bliss. Park in the farthest spot in the parking lot at the grocery, or better yet, walk there. Be mindful of your steps and the cool fresh air. Go into the produce section and breathe in the smells of the fruits and vegetables. Do the same in the bakery. Go down to your local waterway and stand, listening to the rushing water and the wind in the trees. Be mindful of the air as it tingles the nerve endings of your exposed skin. Follow the tingles all the way to your heart.

If you are fortunate enough to have a child, look at the world through her eyes. Experience things as she does for the first time. Jump in a mud puddle. Put aside your worries about getting dirty, being presentable. Laugh, just laugh. Turn off the television for a day and read a book. Unplug from the technical world so that you can plug-in to the real world. Find your bliss.

Leave a comment

Filed under Common Sense, Life, The Way, Uncategorized

May 9, 2011 · 11:41 am

One Good Moment

“I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.” ~ Tennessee Williams[1]

I mentioned that I have a new career. I am a political activist for a labor union. My job is to take the message to the people. The message right now is the attack on workers rights in Ohio and around the nation. I’ve spoken to the notion of standing up for all is right and good in this world. And I’ll speak to that again. But this chapter is all about connecting with strangers.

I knock on doors. That’s what I do. This is the third time working in this kind of job. It can be frustrating. Many times I am the last person they want to see at their door. That’s okay. It is my job to get around that. So I use every tool at my disposal to break through that barrier and show them that we are on the same team.

As I walk up to the door I am plugged into the moment. I am observing everything that I can discern about the person who is about to answer the door. I can usually tell if he are an owner or a renter. I know what kind of car he drives, the bumper stickers that she has plastered on it, whether or not she have kids and how old those kids are. When I knock on the door, and I always knock, it is with a playful little ditty like “shave and a haircut.” It makes him wonder whether or not it is a friend at the door. I am her friend. She just doesn’t realize it yet. If he make less than a half million a year, I am sticking up for him.

She answers the door. She could be fifteen or ninety-five. It doesn’t matter to me. My first order of business is to make her smile. Once I crack her armor, she is on my side. Then I explain to him, in very thoughtful and truthful terms, what brings me to his door. I draw out her profession and what issue that she holds nearest to her heart. It could be health care, education, jobs or retirement. It doesn’t matter, I will speak to him of the attack on that which he holds dearest. We will agree or not. She will do what I ask of her or not. In the end, I will walk away from her door leaving her with one thought. That Terry is a good guy. I’m glad he’s on my side.

So that is what I do to make a living. Now I apply it to life. I’ve mentioned that I have been a shut-in. I’ve hidden behind drawn curtains for decades, ruminating in my toxic thoughts. Now I force myself out into public. I go places where I wouldn’t have been caught dead before. I greet each and every passerby with a smile and salutation. I try to make them all smile.

I truly believe that we all have the ability to make a stranger’s day just by giving them one good moment. It doesn’t matter if it’s the bus driver who’s been stuck in a seat for eight hours, the student cramming for the biggest test of his life or the harried server at the Waffle House[2], they all need one good moment in their day. I am just the guy to give it to them. It costs me nothing. But it pays back in smiles, and smiles are more precious than dollars in this day and age. Smiles are infinitely more valuable.

[1] Tennessee Williams (1911-1983) American Playwright

[2] I used to do the steak and eggs, but I don’t think they have fake steak.

Leave a comment

Filed under The Way

May 8, 2011 · 11:06 pm

The Time is Ripe

“Non-violence is not inaction. It is not discussion. It is not for the timid or the weak. Non-violence is hard work. It is the willingness to sacrifice. It is the patience to win.” ~ Cesar Chavez

 

Just because you’re disenfranchised doesn’t mean you’re dead. I mean this in the most serious way possible. Except for the few friends and family that I’ve managed to hold close over the years, I am alone in this world. Many of you probably feel the same way. You have a cadre of friends that you can count on, but you don’t have a real movement that can speak for you in times of injustice. We are the young, the old, the weak, the poor, the disassociated and the disenfranchised. It is easy for us to say that our vote doesn’t count. It is easy to say that the rich will always win. It is easy to say that the struggle is not ours. And it is easy to blame someone else.

All right. So blame me. It is my generation and the generations that came after that have let our country get away from us. We have grown obese and dependent. We have gotten away from home-cooked meals and real food. We guzzle fossil fuels like they are going out of style (I wish they were). We have become addicted to prescription drugs. We defer our payments until next year when we should be balancing our budget.

I’m not talking about the government. I’m talking about we the people. How many of you know someone who is taking ten, twelve, twenty prescription drugs per day? It could be mom or grandma, but I’m sure you know someone. How many of you know someone who has run up massive credit card debt or student loans? How many of you know someone who is unemployed or has filed bankruptcy? All of the wealth in this country is held by the banks, the insurance and pharmaceutical companies, and the top two percent of Americans. This is not by accident. This is by design. It is time for it to stop. I’m talking about an economic revolution.

I know what you’re thinking. It seems futile if you look at it from an individual standpoint. It’s like being outmanned in a playground basketball game. The other team keeps dunking on you and all you can think to do is take your ball and go home. But there is another way to look at it. If you bring twenty of your friends to the court, it is suddenly twenty on five and there is no way to cover all of you. If twenty is not enough then you bring forty, or one hundred, or one hundred million. There is a tipping point to be reached, but it can only happen if we heed Cesar Chavez’s words at the beginning of this chapter. It takes sacrifice. It takes perseverance. It takes patience. And it takes dedication.

You are probably scratching your head and saying, this guy is full of crap. Maybe I am. By the crap that’s been fed to me by the mainstream media for almost fifty years.  It took me that long to pull my head out of the sand and see what is happening. It is an audacious power grab. It is an attempt to subvert democracy. It is a foreclosure on the American dream. I may not have all of the answers but I have a good idea how to get started. It’s called banding together.

Think about your friends. Do you know someone who is truly rich. I’m not talking about someone who makes a couple of hundred thousand a year, because those people are just as close to economic disaster as you and me. I hear it all the time from them, the small business owners. They are not the enemy. They are actually being crushed between the rock, the really rich, and the hard place, the working poor. They’re battling to save that extra one percent in taxes that they might have to pay. The argument is that they are supporting the eighteen or twenty families that they employ. If they had a smaller tax burden, they might be able to support a few more. I get this argument. It’s just that I think it is a moot point without real reform.

The rich that I’m talking are the CEO rich, the captains of industry. These are the guys that are pulling down millions a year, but only if they can capture an increasing market share and pay back their investors. The banking and insurance CEO’s tried to game the system with elaborate shell games, trading their debt back and forth and charging for every transaction. It worked great until they got caught with their pants down and we had to bail them out with funny money. They lost a lot of our money and still managed to get paid. Now they are back to the same crap again. The only way we can change the paradigm is to hit these guys in their wallets and put economic pressure on them to reform their ways.

And then we have the captains of energy, the admirals of chemicals and the titans of pharmaceuticals. You’ve got companies like Exxon/Mobil and BP who are among the top four companies in the Fortune 500 and they are allowed to do business in America for free. The only time they have to pay anything is when they spill enough oil to make the evening news. And in the meantime they can hold us hostage for ever-increasing fees at the pumps. You’ve got companies like Monsanto who want to monopolize our food supply so that we have one brand of corn, one of beans, one of wheat, where we used to have hundreds of each. And we wonder why our health is going into the crapper. And then there is big Pharma. Our population is aging and they are taking advantage of it. They incentivize doctors to distribute their pills to the point of addiction and then keep the costs moving up. I hope that whomever it was that came up with lifetime treatment programs is burning in hell right now. I repeat, The only way we can change the paradigm is to hit these guys in their wallets and put economic pressure on them to reform their ways.

I’ve put the targets on their backs, so now I give you the next steps. One, pull all of your money out of the big banks. They do not have your best interests in mind. They are using your money to make profits for themselves. There are plenty of good local credit unions that will keep your money in the community and working for you.

Two, change your shopping habits. Your grocery store is poisoning you with processed foods. Stay out of the drive-thru line. Go to the farm stand. Go to the local market. Get some real, fresh, non-GMO food. Put a garden in your yard, or your windowsill. Join a community garden. Learn about edible plant-life.

Three, Question your doctor, your parent’s doctor and your grandma’s doctor. Talk to your parents about their ailments. Try to find alternatives to taking a pill for every symptom. Look into holistic cures, changing diets and herbal therapies. It is important to wean everyone off of the prescription addiction.

Four, and this is the big one, band together. Chase Bank is not suddenly going to change their ways just because you pull your money out. In fact, when I did it the guy was incredulous. “No one switches from Chase to a credit union. It’s always the other way around.” But imagine if twenty of your friends, the same twenty from that basketball game, all walked into Chase and pulled their money out. That will send a message. Giant Eagle is not going to stop giving money to politicians if you stop shopping there, but if you and twenty of your friends all stop shopping there, and you write a letter telling them why, it will make an impact. The list goes on and on. We must band together and coordinate to change the paradigm. This is the only way to make a difference.

We may be disenfranchised, but that doesn’t mean we are dead.

Leave a comment

Filed under Uncategorized

May 7, 2011 · 3:11 pm

Spirit In The Sky

“The prayer of the monk is not perfect until he no longer recognizes himself or the fact that he is praying.”

~ St. Anthony[1]

 

When I look back on the first half of my life I can point to a few things that have short-circuited my growth into the man that I could have been. One thing that stands out is the complete lack of faith. I didn’t have faith in the people around me. I didn’t have faith in any religion. I didn’t have faith in myself. As I type these words I don’t know if I’ll have the wherewithal to finish this.

I was raised in a broken family. I could go into all the reasons why this screwed me up, but I am done placing blame on others for my shortcomings. I was confirmed into my church about a year before my parents split up. I stopped going to church shortly after confirmation and never looked back. I have always had my doubts about Christianity. It wasn’t that I doubted there was a God. I had my objections with the very institution of the church. I had a problem with the fact that churches sponsored wars and crusades. I had a problem with the fact that churches always seem to be in need of money, despite the huge cathedrals and the sleek Town Cars that the minister always seemed to ride around in. I had a problem with the hypocrisy of a church that would erect a pulpit in the bedrooms of the faithful, and then hide the fact that their forcefully celibate priesthood was prone to deviant and criminal acts. Indeed, the very rule of a celibate priesthood is unnatural and seems readymade for disaster.

Over the years that I was away from the church, I communed with God in times of trouble. God was kind of like the dentist. I only went for a visit in times of extreme trouble. I had my fair share of those times. In my later years my beliefs tended to look to the east. Taoism, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Confucianism seemed to have a truer ring than the monotheistic religions that sprang from the loins of Abraham. These religions are so close in doctrine that they could only speak of the same God, yet innumerable lives have been lost under the banners of cross, crescent and star. I cannot fathom a God that would encourage this. I know that this might make me your enemy. Just know that I will never reciprocate. Life is too short for such animosity.

Whenever the subject of religion came up, my answer usually defaulted to Taoism. I identify with the earth and the environment more than any set of manmade doctrines that are obviously designed to control the hearts, bodies and minds of the faithful. But I never really took it any further than that. Sure, I would quote Buddha, Lao Tzu, Rumi and the like, but my study was superficial at best. When I came to my tipping point last year, career switch, health problems, relationship imploded, it was time for me to reexamine all of the beliefs of my life.

I started reading all of the classics. I found a website that broke down one hundred of the greatest books of philosophy and psychology of the last 2500 years. I read about Buddha, the Bhagavad Gita, Rumi, Joseph Campbell, the Tao Te Ching, and many others. I took a long hard look at myself. With my eyes wide open, I decided that Buddhism most closely resembled the values that I hold closest to my heart. That done, I started to transform myself by doing the things that a good Buddhist does.

The great thing about Buddhism is that it is more of a philosophy and practice than an actual religion. There is no restriction on what you can believe or disbelieve. There are many Buddhists who believe in Christ, as well as Jewish Buddhists and many others. There are certain guiding precepts that are meant as suggestions on how to attain enlightenment. They resemble the Ten Commandments but they are not considered laws. Since there is no hell in Buddhism, then there is no palpable punishment for breaking them. That is the essence of Buddhism. You are only accountable to yourself, so you are the only yardstick to your success.

There are a lot of different forms of Buddhism. There are Buddhists like the Tibetans who believe in reincarnation. The 14th Dalai Lama is believed to be the latest in a line dating all the way back to 1391. There is convincing evidence that these Lamas are an unbroken succession of reincarnates. I’m withholding my belief on that one. I believe only in the possibility. I fall into the Zen camp of Buddhism.

There are three main schools of Zen. The Rinzai school is known for its use of rigorous training methods and koans, riddles or mantras, to attain nirvana. Ōbaku Zen is a monastic sect follows the precepts much like Commandments, and has very strict rules governing its practice. The Sōtō sect is much more freeform, perfect for a slacker like me, and revolves around a practice called shikantaza, or “just sitting.” The goal is to meditate on the very essence of your being. The more that you mediate, the better you understand yourself. Eventually you break through the barrier that separates you from the universe. This is the Sōtō form of enlightenment. I have my doubts that I will ever show the discipline to make that happen. But that is not my goal.

My point in assuming this line of practice is that it closely resembles my personal values. I am a peacenik. I believe that there is no good reason to take another person’s life. In this week of the death of Osama bin Laden, my stance is a controversial one. Somehow I am less of a patriot because I can’t rejoice in the murder of a murderer. Alas, different strokes and all that jazz.

Above all the Buddha preached mindfulness. It is the ability to submerse yourself totally in the moment, whether you’re doing the dishes, taking a walk in the park, or making love to your darling darling. Use all five of your senses to be the moment. Taste the air, smell the grass, feel the texture of the ground underneath your feet, hear the wind whistling through the trees and see the vibrant colors of the vegetation and flora. A distracted moment is a moment you will never get back.

Another convention of Buddhists is vegetarianism. Once again, this is a suggestion and not a law. A lot of good Buddhists eat meat. I choose not to, both for common sense and health reasons. If I was going to live to be one hundred, I needed to change my eating habits and start exercising more.  So I got rid of the car, got the bike on the road, and started cooking my own meals. I finally broke through the Mendoza (waist) Line. I’m at two hundred pounds and dropping.

The first precept that Buddha gave his followers those many years ago was this: “I undertake to abstain from causing harm and taking life (both human and non-human.” I choose to follow this with open eyes. I am not an animal rights activist, but I do not support the mistreatment of animals to produce food. Factory farming has gotten out of hand. I will not contribute to it or two grocers who contribute to it. So I downsized. I shop local and independent every chance that I get.

Who am I to tell you what to believe in? All I ask is that you believe in something. Have faith in your God, your family or your country, or all of the above. But have faith. It’s entirely possible that I will go to hell when I die, but based on my Gandhi versus Manson rule, that might be where I belong. Even the various sects of Buddhism can’t agree on the right way to practice. The best thing that you can do is live in the moment. Be in touch with yourself and your environs every minute. Attack your practice with all of your being. Take a bite out of life before it takes a bite out of you.

[1] St. Anthony of Padua (1195-1231) Portuguese Franciscan Priest

Leave a comment

Filed under Uncategorized