Something About Buddhism. No, Really.

July Swim for Distance Total to Date: 11 k (whoo hoo!)
Playing in the background: Brilliant guitarist Pat Methaney

In between swimming and writing and oh yeah, looking for a job, I also read stuff once in a while. Recently I've been plodding through Zen, Its History and Teachings, by Osho. Sound like heavy reading? Well, it is, kind of, but the book itself is of moderate size. It also has nice color photos of various soothing things like river rocks, gardens, spiral patterns in the ground, fish, etc. (nothing enhances a book on religion like nifty photos, in my humble opinion). It's also divided into reasonable chapters, which is nice when your main reading time is the last five or six minutes before you fall asleep.

A few words about Osho: That I'm reading his book doesn't mean I'm espousing his philosophy, or even that I agree with most of the stuff he writes. Osho used to be Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, an Indian philosophy professor who slipped into religious prophethood at some point, caused trouble virtually everywhere he went and is kind of notorious for founding a commune in Oregon and driving Rolls-Royces. Well, the commune itself got to be kind of notorious when some of its members staged the first bioterror attack on U.S. soil by poisioning about 800 people to influence a local election. Stuff like that tends to get you kicked out of the country, whether you had anything to do with it or not. Osho wandered around various parts of the world for the next five years before returning to India, where he died in 1990. The definitive bio of the guy is called Autobiography of a Spiritually Incorrect Mystic, and I think that pretty much sums it up.

Moving on: If you want to get a good grasp on where Zen came from, you can do a lot worse than read this thing. Buddhism, like Christianity, doesn't fit into a convenient "this is what we believe" box. Most religions that spread out over large regions and different kinds of people don't so much "take" as they "go native." Just as you can go into an Irish Catholic parish and have a very different experience than you can in a Norwegian Lutheran church, Thai Buddhism is not Burmese Buddhism is sure as heck not Tibetan Buddhism and so on. In Osho's view, Zen is a fusion of Buddhism and Taoism, so complete that it's impossible to tell what came from what. Like most things about Zen, it just is.

I came across this passage yesterday, and somehow it's very soothing to me:

The Great Way is not difficult for those who have no preferences.
When love and hate are both absent, everything becomes clear and undisguised.
Make the smallest distinction, however, and heaven and earth are set infinitely apart.
If you wish to see the truth, then hold no opinion for or against.
The struggle of what one likes and what one dislikes is the disease of the mind.

--Sosen, as quoted by Osho.

Interpret that however you want, but what I get out of it is, "There are much easier ways to get through life than to drag yourself kicking and screaming." In short, things just are. Which, oddly enough, echoes something I've heard over and over again at OA meetings: "Surrendering doesn't mean I take no action. It means I take the action and surrender the results" or, alternatively, "I'm in charge of the planning committee, not the results committee."

Hmm. I wonder if the Twelve Steps aren't America's contribution to Buddhism. That would be a great idea if Mel Ash hadn't thought of it first. (Hi, Mel!)

Buy No Accounting For Reality between July 1 and July 31 and $1 per copy goes to Childrens Medical Center! Follow the old fundraising efforts here.

Jenz Book O'The Decade

Humming merrily in the background: The air conditioner
Meters swum today: None. Overslept. Again.
Kilometers swum in July, Swim for Distance month: 7.7 of 40.2

I'm pretty sure I've plugged Mel Ash before, but I've just reread his book, The Zen of Recovery, and it's just so darn cool I'm gonna do it again. I stumbled uponst this particular paperback Stone of Wisdom during a rather trying time in my early OA career. OA, and all the other A's, have a spiritual component, in case you didn't know. For some people that can become overtly religious. I was in this "90 meetings in 90 days" phase where I was trying to go to as many meetings as I could (it helped that I was unemployed). I went to one that took place in a Babtist church in Mesquite, which, in itself, wasn't that big a deal (I've been to meetings in lots of different kinds of churches). BUT, this particular meeting was where somebody told me that I'd never recover until I asked Jesus Christ to become my personal Saviour, and this particular meeting also closed with the Lord's Prayer. Both of these things are major OA no-nos. One of the whole points is not pushing any particular religion but inviting each person to define his or her own Higher Power. And the Lord's Prayer to close? Even some way Christian OA people I know told me later that they thought that was pretty weird. I didn't know any better, though, being new, and I came away from this meeting rather mopey.

Look, I dig Jesus, okay? Guy was cool. Long-haired rebel, wise one, scholar, poet and holy man. Plus, everything he ever said makes perfect sense if you consider who he was saying it to: the Jewish men of his time. Calling them to be better men. Insisting that they take care of the widows and orphans and do what they were supposed to do, according to God's law. Not letting them get away with this "Well, the Romans permit this sort of thing, and they're the bosses right now" bullshit. Unfortunately for Jesus, the Jewish men of his time were much more interested in chasing away the Romans, and thought Jesus was this general who would call them to arms. Imagine their surprise when he said "Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's, and unto God what is God's"; in short, it doesn't matter who the boss is, do the right thing because it's right. Which didn't end very well, for Jesus personally, although it did sort of save the whole human race from itself. (Would that he could do it again.) So I like the guy. He's awesome. I just can't get behind the whole religion thing. It doesn't make sense to me.

Anyway, I called Joan at work and asked if she could find me some books about 12 Steps and Buddhism, figuring A. there had to be some and B. she's a librarian and that's what she does. She came up with Mel. She rocks. I started reading and found out that Mel had exactly the same experience with somebody telling him he had to become a Christian to recover (from alcoholism, in his case). He goes through the Twelve Steps, one by one, and draws stunning parallels to Buddhist theory and philosophy. Which is awesome. And which, finally, cleared up my whole confusion about what to call my Higher Power. He calls his Zen. I don't call mine anything. Both are fine, as is Jesus, Allah, Great Spirit, or whatever else you wanna stick in there. The point is that you rely on it. What you choose to call it is less than important.

So, anyway, this is my new Book o'the Decade. Anybody interested in Buddhism, Twelve-Step groups, or a really cool beatnik writer guy who has learned hard and painful lessons and used what he learned to save himself from himself, would appreciate it. Find it. Read it. Love it. Tell your librarian Jen sent you.

ps. In case you're wondering, I'm at Step Four, and I've been there for months. It's slow going sometimes.

The Saga of the Speckled Moth.

Playing in the background: some serious rock en espanol from the gardeners working on the house across the way. My floors are vibrating.
Meters swum today: 1900. Whoo-HOO!

Meditation: I does it. What is meditation, you ask? Well, it's sitting around, doing nothing, looking at the floor and thinking as little as possible. (Thanks, Mel.) Seriously, there are books on the subject. Check 'em out at your local library. Stop by ours and Joan will give you a hand. What do I think meditation is? Twenty minutes a day when everyone has to leave you the hell alone. (Except cats in search of warm laps.)

I tend to meditate right after I get up in the morning. With luck, my brain isn't awake enough to make a lot of noise. I also do it on the way to bed, so if I miss a session someplace I don't miss a whole day. And for the most part everyone does leave me alone, but a couple days ago, I was peacefully counting breaths when Joan suddenly called from the shower, "JEN!!! A fellow being needs your help!!!" (Yep. Three exclamation points. It's pretty soundproof, is our bathroom.)

Grumbling, I got up and made my way to the bathroom. See above re: everybody leaving you the hell alone. What, oh what, could be happening in there? Could a cat have gotten into a predicament? Could there be a spider hanging out in the shower? Doubt that; scream wasn't loud enough. Maybe she just couldn't reach her frick'n towel. Possibilities abounded...

Anyway: I got there and Joan says, "There's a speckled moth in here, and I'm afraid if I start splashing around he'll drown." I got closer and sure enough, a white speckled moth was hanging around on the white speckled tile in our white speckled bathroom. Pretty sharp guy, finding the one place in the house that was safe from marauding cats. His wings were wet. He was flapping em but he wasn't going anywhere.

I fetched a glass from the kitchen, trapped the moth under it and coaxed it up onto the glassy surface so I could put a piece of paper between himself and the wall. As he crawled around he left a little trail of white scales--I think they have scales--from his wings. So I took the glass outside, and after a while he crawled to the edge of the glass, fluttered his wings a few times and took off. When last I saw him, he was hanging around near the porch light.

Over the next few days I found and similarly dispatched either the same moth three more times, or three of its friends, hanging around on the ceiling or the bathroom tile or, in one instance, the front of the oven door (!). While I was at it, I caught a few long black wingy ant-looking things and sent them outside, too. In the same time frame, however, I spotted, and stomped hell out of, a cockroach in the kitchen.

Okay, the questions are obvious. What did the speckled moth have that the li'l cockroach did not? Why would I go to a lot of trouble to save one form of life and stomp on another form of life the same day? I guess speckled moths are kind of cute, whereas cockroaches are ugly and creepy. Plus, they spread disease. Plus, they're a sign that you're a lousy housekeeper (I wouldn't say Martha Stewart lives here, but the house is pretty clean, actually.) Plus, and perhaps here's the point, they scare me.

Pay attention, there's a lesson here. Things that scare us need stomping on. Things that are kind of cute, and happen to be in trouble and have wet wings and so on, just need a hand getting back to their natural environments. Might this not apply also to humans? Humans that are kind of cute--disabled youngsters, little African babies, hard-luck white kids from inner city schools, honest bright hardworking Asian immigrants--get our support and so on. Humans that scare us, like homeless people, little African insurgents, hard-luck black kids from inner city schools, and honest bright hardworking immigrants who speak Spanish as their first language--get stomped on. Yet, we are all made of the same stuff, from the hard-luck black kids to the Asian immigrants to the speckled moths. To stomp on one of us is, in effect, to stomp on ourselves. Sooner or later our feet get sore.

I wish cockroaches wouldn't come out where I can see them. Then I'd never stomp on them. Maybe a border fence would keep them out. My south Texas friends tell me that wouldn't work, though. They would just fly right over. They're gonna keep coming as long as I have something they want, so I might as well learn to live with them.

Besides, I'd miss the sunshine.