The Fifth Precept and Other Fun Things

Playing in the background: Deuter, "Sea and Silence"

Every now and then I think I'm maybe taking this Buddhism thing a little too serious. Is it possible to be too serious about one's religion? Well, if it is then I am. What I've tripped over this time are the Five Precepts, which are sort of a simplified Ten Commandments phrased as "I promise to refrain from" instead of "Thou shalt not". These are, of course, the Big Five for laypeople; monks and nuns have scads more, I think numbering in the hundreds, and I think part of the job of being a monk or nun is just memorizing the silly things, never mind living by them. Anyway, the Big Five things for laypeople to promise to refrain from are killing living beings, taking that which is not freely given (stealing), sexual misconduct, lying and abusing intoxicants. It's number five that's getting me into trouble this time, and I don't even drink.

Reason this comes up: My cow orkers and I went out to dinner Friday night. Copious amounts of alcohol were consumed by just about everybody except me. This was a fancy restaurant, drinks were on the house (or on my boss, more to the point) and everybody was having a good time. And then there was me, sipping my ginger ale and dodging diet Coke jokes. (It was such a classy joint that I thought it'd be rude of me to drink diet Coke. Besides, ginger ale is kind of amber colored, fizzy and could look like an alcoholic drink if you squinted at it really hard.) A colleague had ordered a dessert wine, and I asked if I could have a sniff of it because it smelled good. She then got annoyed that I didn't actually want a taste of the stuff, and snipped at me "one swallow won't get you drunk, for God's sake" and was, I think, mightily offended that I turned it down.

Hey; I used to drink. I remember liking dessert wine a lot, especially ice wine. And she's right, one swallow probably wouldn't have done any harm. Still, precept number five. And here's where I wonder if I'm maybe taking this too serious. It says to refrain from the abuse of intoxicants. One sip of ice wine is probably not abuse of anything. It wasn't likely to lead to the ordering of a glass of the stuff for myself, either, because that would have occasioned even more comment and I'd already had my fill of diet Coke and ginger ale jokes for the evening. I'd rather just be invisible at these gatherings.

So what is abuse of an intoxicant, anyway? Most Buddhists I know take it seriously, too, and don't drink at all. Some drink a little bit but avoid getting drunk. And some drink a lot, which is I guess a reasonable cross-section of the rest of humanity, never mind Buddhists. But there are good religious reasons for not drinking alcohol if you're a Buddhist. Alcohol basically undoes all the stuff you do when you're meditating. Sure, it's relaxing, but it's relaxing in exactly the wrong way. Instead of teaching you to let go of your troubles and tread the Middle Way, it instead suggests to you that your troubles don't exist at all and won't as long as you keep drinking. Which is basically false. Besides, most people who drink socially drink to "take the edge off" of a situation, such as a dinner out with co-workers, that they'd rather avoid. By skipping the drink and instead exploring in meditation why you'd rather avoid it, you do yourself more good in the long run. Or so goes the theory.

I have even better reasons for avoiding alcohol; it messes with my medication, and can in fact turn one of them toxic. But my cow orkers don't know about that. So they make jokes about diet Coke and ginger ale, and I cling to the Fifth Precept with fingernails and teeth - which, let's face it, is probably not what the Buddha had in mind. Still, it's worked all these years, so I think I'll plow ahead. Or drink to that, as they say. With ginger ale. Or diet Coke.

Eat. Pray. Love. Whine.

Playing in the background: Another episode of Criminal Minds. The good guys try to outsmart the bad guys and I try to ignore everybody.

My shrink (which is to say, my psychologist-I also have a psychiatrist but since those folks go to school much longer and have advanced degrees and all that and also hand out drugs, I'm afraid to rile them by calling them shrinks, so let's just agree that shrinks are psychologists, okay? Good) gives me the occasional homework assignments. This is partly because I can't afford to see her every week like a good little patient and also, I think so I won't get bored. Anyway, last week's homework assignment was to read the book Eat, Pray, Love. So I have. I haven't finished it yet but I have startled hell out of myself by actually liking it, especially the middle section about India. So I'm recommending it as my new Book o' the Decade. Go forth and read it. It's fun. And yes, the title character whines a lot, as others have pointed out. It's still pretty good.

I'm also pleased to report that while we're still broke, the circumstances are slightly less dire than they were last month. Huzzah. And Joan has found a group of D&D players she really likes and is having a lot of fun with that. Huzzah again. And January has been a rather sucktackular month and I'm glad it's over.

No, Really, I'm Still Here.

This hasn't been a good month for blogging. Not a lot going on. Well, lots of stuff going on but nothing to write about, really. I've done my anxiety fits to death. I knocked three query letters out of the laptop today, so nothing exciting there. I continue to swim and bead and do just about everything except write stuff. I seem to be in a lull. I hope it is a lull, anyway. Every time this happens I start to wonder if I've perhaps just dried up, if I have nothing else to say and I'll spend the rest of my life in complete silence. Then everyone I know starts laughing hysterically and even I have to admit this scenario is a tiny bit unlikely but seriously, what if I've dried up? What if I've run out of things to say and I'll spend the rest of my life in complete--yeah? I mean, the possibilities boggle the mind. Especially when you consider that I have at least five, maybe six decent ideas for novels, including one I tried to write back in '93 that kind of crashed and burned but left me with a fine cast of characters for Mindbender. I got all the way to page 240 before it crashed and burned, too, which for the record really sucks. I mean, if something's going to die on you, can't it do so on page ten? I've since gone back to it and determined that it's basically unfixable but it's still got this odd hold on me so I may try it again anyway. And then there's the five, maybe six other ideas that I've never done anything with but sort of want to but sort of can't figure out how to start. So it's not like I've dried up but more like I'm stopped up. Somebody pass the Ex Lax for the brain. Ew. How's that for a pleasant metaphor? On the other hand if this is the level I'm composing these days maybe it's best if I don't. I mean, it's not like I'm famous. As Dashiell Hammett once said, it's not like anybody will miss me. I'd miss me though. Next time, paragraph breaks. Promise.

And Now For Something Really Scary

I have to admit I haven't seen a lot of scary movies lately. This is unusual, because I love scary movies. I think I've been too scared in real life to bother with scary movies. Why buy fear prepackaged at the theater when you can get it for free just by waking up in the morning, is what I'm thinking.

You see, I'm having this little problem with anxiety. Well, make that a great big problem with sharp pointy teeth. Remember Scaley, my nervous wreck of a T-rex that shows up whenever I'm trying to write query letters and howls about the impending apocalypse? Well, he has an older brother, and this guy is sweating everything from getting fired to not getting fired to imminent death to the horrors of living to be 97 to buying a new car to never being able to afford a new car and on and on and on. Set this guy off and he won't shut up without the use of prescription medication. And unfortunately I don't know what sets him off. Sometimes I wake up and he's right there in bed with me. Sometimes I go days without seeing him. I don't even know what to call him, though if I did it wouldn't be something as cute as Scaley. He Who Shall Not Be Named, perhaps.

The weird thing is, when I'm crawling with anxiety (or rather, when it's crawling all over me, like, I dunno, angry red ants or something) it's impossible to imagine that there's ever been a time I haven't been crawling with anxiety. When I'm not in that mode, having ever been in that mode seems completely ridiculous. I mean, of course anything can happen at any moment but I really don't THINK I'm about to get fired, die, not die, or need a new car. And even if I did, would it be the end of the world? No. But all logic flies out the window when this is going on. It's just Imminent Doom and to hell with anything you say to the contrary.

Well, you would say something to the contrary, except that you don't know this is going on. I don't bother to tell you. On the outside I probably appear Quite Normal, or as normal as a fat lesbian Buddhist Democrat in Dallas ever manages to look. If you could look inside my brain, though, you'd probably need to sit down for a minute. And through it all I keep going to work, swimming, doing what I need to do. I'm not sure how some days, but I do it.

It's called the "kindling effect". See, bipolar disorder is a lot like epilepsy (!), which is why a lot of the drugs they use to treat it are epilepsy drugs. If you have an epileptic seizure, that somehow lays the foundation in your brain to have more seizures, so the more you have, the more you're likely to have. At first something sets them off, like flashing lights (though that may be a myth) or being startled. If you have enough of them, though, they can start happening all by themselves. For no reason. Purely at random. Which is why epilepsy is such a hard disease to treat and why they'll do crazy things like cut your brain in half at the corpus callosum to stop the seizures. I mean, really, that's pretty radical.

Anyway, I think this may be what's happening to me. I think maybe the anxiety has started to happen all by itself, at random. And this is bad, because--well, hell, it's bad for all kinds of reasons. The good news is that the aforementioned prescription meds definitely do help. The bad news is, when I don't take them, or it's a weekend and there's less structure around to steer me from point A to point B, it gets lots worse. It gets to where I need to make myself lists on a Saturday just so I won't wander around bumping into things and wondering what in hell I'm supposed to do now. Ain't mental illness grand?

The only positive, if it can be said to be positive, is that Scaley seems to have gone into remission. Or rather, there's so much anxiety in the house that what little gets generated by writing query letters gets lost in the flood. So I've knocked a lot of them out lately. I dunno how many, I'm not really counting, but I think I have at least seven or eight of them out there being ripe at the moment. So hey, literary agent checking out my blog, how you doin', request a few sample chapters and throw me a bone, okay? Rather, throw Scaley the bone. I'll send the sample chapters.

One of the most valuable things I learned from Buddhism is that you can't trust your brain. It will lie to you. Mine is lying to me so much that I have to tune it out completely to get anything at all done. So, again trying to stay positive here, maybe I'll reach enlightenment sooner. I mean, if you can't trust your brain, what can you trust? Maybe the ultimate reality of all things isn't ultimate, or even real. Certainly nothing setting off the anxiety is real or I'd be dead, undead, fired, not fired and have a new car all at the same time.

Barring that, though, I think I'll go in my room and lie down.

Happy New Year and Friday Frights (on Saturday)

Playing in the background: The penultimate David Tennant episode of "Doctor Who." Part Two airs about 7:30, so count me out for the duration.

Happy New Year everybody! If you're like me, you're not nearly so happy that 2010 has started than you are that 2009 is finally over. I'm certainly glad it's over. Seriously, wasn't it the year from hell? Okay, we had a brand new president, and the economy got marginally better. I'll give you that. But here in Jen and Joan Land, we got older, tireder, sicker and seriously low on dough. Cats got fleas (and worms) and upper respiratory infections, Jen bled cash from a bipolar wound all over the pharmacy and the therapist's couch, Joan needed an expensive sleep study, and just in general, things kind of sucked. Kellum's ferret suffered an untimely demise. Even Dr. Who is about to kick the bucket, though being the Doctor, he'll come back in a new body and go on to save the galaxy countless more times. But seriously. Enough, already. Let's move on.

For our last Friday fright of 2009 (even though I didn't see it until today), we have Paranormal Activity, a weird little flick about a haunted house (more like a haunted human) shot documentary style. Whatever you've heard about this movie doesn't begin to do it justice, so let's just say it: SEE THIS MOVIE. I'm giving it an AWESOME (four stars) but that aside, it's just really frick'n scary. The doc-shoot style makes it seem very real and in your face. Plus, it was filmed in San Diego. Gotta love my former hometown.

And that's all I've got to say today. Strange, huh? Bring on part two of "The End Of Time," Mr. Davies. I'm ready.

It's A Wonderful Town, George

Playing in the background: "Wings to Altair" by David Arkenstone

I love "It's a Wonderful Life." I watch it every year on Christmas Eve, all three and a half or so hours of it (with infomercials) and sob all the way through the last reel. Yeah, it's kind of sentimental and smarmy, but you really don't get the full emotional impact unless you watch it from the beginning. It's kind of like Sibelius's Symphony No. 2 in D-minor that way; the fourth movement is momentous, but you won't really understand it unless you watch the whole thing all the way through. (Get a copy of Symphony No. 2, preferably a nice Deutsch Gramophon pressing, and sit down with it for 45 minutes, uninterrupted. You will totally see what I mean.)

In case you recently arrived in America and they don't have TV or the Internet where you're from, here's the story: George Bailey, all-American family man and failed businessman, misplaces a lot of money belonging to his business on Christmas Eve (through no fault of his own). Facing bankruptcy and scandal, he considers suicide. Enter Clarence, Angel Second Class, who shows George what life in his home town of Bedford Falls would have been like if he had never existed. It's not a pretty picture. By reel's end George wants to live again, is restored to his life, and there's a big redemption that I wouldn't dream of spoiling for you. Believe it or not, the film was a flop when it first came out; the subject matter (suicide) was one of those things we don't talk about in 1946, and the fact that it was set on Christmas Eve relegated it to the "Christmas movie" category and it got little promotion. But this is a wonderful little movie. Every time I watch it I see something I hadn't noticed before.

This year, I noticed something that totally shocked me. George Bailey actually did everything he set out to do with his life.

Well, not in literal truth. George, again if you haven't seen the movie, dreams of seeing the world, going to visit lots of exotic places, and then to college, where he's going to become an architect. "I'm going to build things. I'm going to build skyscrapers a hundred stories high, I'm going to build a bridge a mile long." Instead he ends up stuck in Bedford Falls, running the family business, the Bailey Building and Loan, the only competition to rival Mr. Potter's bank and, for the most part, the only place ordinary folks in the town can get mortgage loans. This is what I mean, when I say that George did what he set out to do in life. He builds a town.

Mr. Potter's rent collector, a "scurvy little spider," explains this to Mr. Potter in a pivotal scene; "You can't ignore this Bailey Park anymore. Dozens of pretty little houses, each one worth twice what it took the Bailey Building and Loan to build." Back up a second, there. Dozens of pretty little houses. George didn't build skyscrapers or bridges, he built dozens of houses, and made a huge difference in the lives of dozens of families. See what I mean? He built a town.

As for seeing the world, no, George never got to do that. But he saw a world. He saw a world nobody else had ever seen before; the world without George Bailey, where Pottersville (no longer Bedford Falls) had become a place of gin joints and strip clubs, all his friends were leading wretched lives, Bailey Park was never built and perhaps most important, his brother Harry died at the age of nine and never grew up to become a war hero and save the lives of hundreds of soldiers. After seeing a world like that, you can't wait to get home. And so George came home - having done everything he set out to do. Weird, huh? That Frank Capra was a pretty sharp guy.

(Side note: George Bailey also got me through paralegal school. No, really. The stuff we were reading was so dry I needed a glass of water before I even sat down, and the only way I survived it was to imagine George Bailey reading it out loud to me. Jen as Jimmy Stewart: "Now, when we have a contract, we have first an offer, then an acceptance, with consideration. Minus any of the three elements, a contract is not a contract." Mr. Smith from "Mr. Smith Goes To Washington" also works, but George Bailey does it better.)

I bring this up for two reasons. One, it's Christmas. Two, practically all of us have dreams we never lived out. I, for example, have never moved to El Salvador and taught the dharma out of a little temple somewhere in San Marcos, thus doing my bit to spread Zen through the Spanish-speaking world. Nor have I written the book that will change publishing forever (well, I have, actually, but I haven't gotten it published yet. Still working on that though.) But I've done small things that I hope have helped some people somewhere, and maybe injected some new ideas here and there. Y'all are reading this, you tell me. But again, y'all are reading this. I haven't bored you senseless yet.

So anyway, I'd like to propose that this Christmas and on into the New Year, we stop kicking ourselves for the skyscrapers and mile-long bridges we never got around to, and take a look instead at the towns we built. George Bailey did, and look what happened to him. The rest of us don't even need to consider suicide first.

Happy Christmas, Already

Playing in the background: "Earthlight" by Deuter

It occurs to me that there kind of isn't a Buddhist equivalent of Christmas. At least, I don't think there is; I'm kind of a casual Buddhist - the Buddhist equivalent of a Christmas and Easter Christian, I guess. I know there's one big holiday in the spring, which is your Lunar New Year or your Wesak or whatever it's called in your part of the world, and any number of smaller festivals scattered around, but I don't know of one around now-ish. Maybe there's a Winter Solstice holiday or other. By the way, I love the Solstice. It means the days are going to start getting longer again and there's some hope that light will return to my benighted corner of Dallas. But I've already ranted about how much I don't like this time of year, so, onward.

A colleague asked me yesterday if I celebrated Christmas. I kind of blinked a little and said, "Sure. I celebrate everything." Which was a typically flip answer but still true. I have a li'l Christmas tree up (more of a bush, but it looks pretty) with gifts under it, and we're having friends over for dinner on the appointed day, and so forth and so on. But if I'd grown up in a Jewish household, I'd probably have had up a little menorah and other Hanukkah decorations two weeks ago. I mean, it's a tradition. Even if it doesn't have a part in one's current religion, that doesn't mean one can't celebrate at the same time as the rest of the world.

By the way, Christmas isn't really a Christian holiday (!) Well, not in the sense we think of it. Christmas as we celebrate it was once called Yule, and in preChristian Britain it was the pagan festival where the Oak King kicked the Holly King's butt and reigned over winter. Which was why you decked your halls with boughs of holly and threw the Yule log on, Uncle John and drank wassail and went from house to house singing. When St. Paul showed up in Rome, the Roman equivalent got drafted into a new holiday celebrating the birth of Christ, who was probably actually born in April, and probably in about 4 or 5 B.C. and not the year zero, and who probably, knowing the guy, wouldn't have wanted a big festival for himself. Christmas celebrations were banned for several years when Cromwell was dictator of England on the grounds that they were pagan, and so when they came back, they came back in a big way, and that's why a comparatively minor Christian festival is this big universal hoo ha of presents and good cheer and "It's a Wonderful Life." And that's your history lesson for today, thankewverymuch.

I know a lot of nonChristians get annoyed when people wish them a merry Christmas. I also know a lot of Christians who get annoyed when people wish them "Happy Holidays," seeming to obliterate the above-referenced hoo ha in favor of some bland insignificant good time being had by all. And while I sympathize on all counts, I'd still like to suggest, in the spirit of the season, that we all just LOOSEN THE HELL UP about what holiday it is and think about, for a second, what "Merry Christmas" or "Happy Holidays" or "Scintillating Solstice" actually means.

I mean, you say it all the time. You say it to total strangers. You say it at the post office, to colleagues you try not to speak to the rest of the year, to casual friends at parties. I'd like to postulate that "Merry Christmas" is the rough seasonal equivalent of "Have a nice day," said with about the same amount of sentiment and for about the same purpose; a social salve to soften the end of an interaction. And if you don't get het up when people tell you to have a nice day, why lose one's cool when one is wished a Merry Christmas? Or Happy Holiday? It don't mean anything different, folks. It's just an expression of goodwill. And let's face it, goodwill is one thing we could all use a lot more of these days.

So Merry Christmas. Happy Holidays. Scintillating Solstice. Happy Hanukkah. Merry Kwanzaa. Joyful Buddhist-holiday-to-be-named-later. Celebrate everything, says I.