Z is for Zen-Buddhism—from Arrowheads to Enlightenment

It’s here — the final day of my writing marathon, otherwise known as the A to Z April Bloggers Challenge, where a certain subset of us cyberspace masochists dedicated ourselves to posting something every day but Sundays. Back on April 1st, I introduced my theme: the humans, habits, hidden joys and heartaches that shaped my world. And now that I’m a hair’s breadth from the finish line, it feels like I’ve written my entire life story one letter at a time. I’ve covered:

• April, the most important month of my year

• Brother, my only sibling

• Cottage, where I spent every summer of my youth

• Dogs, my four‑legged babies

• Education, a never ending saga

• Friendships

• Goofs I’ve made

• Happiest Day of my life

• Independent Living, where I’m at now

• July Fourth, my favorite holiday

• Keith, of the Toby variety

• Letters — so many letters

• Manual for the Care of Me

• Nieces and Nephews

• Overtime Employment

• Philosophy

• Questions I Wish I’d Asked my Mom

• Romance

• Stories, the ones I didn't tell

• Toys, lost and found

• Unexpected Joys

• Volunteering

• War Music

• X’s in the Margins

• Yearnings

And now can I have a drum roll? My final entry is: Zen Buddhism.

According to Google, Zen Buddhism is “a Mahayana school focusing on direct experience, meditation (zazen), and mindfulness to achieve enlightenment, emphasizing that individuals already possess Buddha nature.”

Lovely. But my path to Zen didn’t start with enlightenment. It started with an allergy to Christianity. I don’t say that to offend anyone. I say it because, from the time I was in first or second grade, Christians weren’t always kind to me starting one day when a little girl in pigtails informed me she couldn’t play with me anymore because I was a heathen. We’d played at her house the day before and apparently I’d failed the neighborhood’s Litmus Test: my family not only didn’t go to the “right” church, we didn’t go to any church.

I didn’t know what a heathen was, so I asked my mom. I don’t remember her answer, but soon after that my brother and I began walking to one of the four or five churches nearby. Mom didn’t care which one and we sampled them all.

My only memory of Sunday school was sitting in a basement where a woman used a felt board and cut-outs of cows, clouds, Jesus and other figures to teach us Bible stories. I liked the stories but it was years later before I figured out why I didn’t fit in. In my high school class I was one of only four kids with brown hair and eyes in a sea of blue-eyed blondes who mostly all went to the same Christian denomination.

Eventually my brother got sick of the whole Sunday routine. Instead of church, he took me to the nearby Indian mounds. We looked for arrowheads while my parents thought we were learning about Moses. Those quiet mornings in nature—imagining ancient lives, listening to the wind—were my first taste of meditation, though I didn’t have a name for it yet.

My mother eventually discovered our little rebellion. I suspect an arrowhead in my brother’s pocket gave us away. Years later, when I asked why she’d sent us to church in the first place, she said, “You needed to know the Bible stories.” She wasn’t wrong. In America, biblical references are woven into everyday conversation whether you’re religious or not.

In high school there were the usual cliques. The cheerleaders. The drama queens. We four dark haired, brown eyed kids who didn’t fit in with the sea of blue-eyed blondes. Oddly enough, I did manage to get a date for the junior prom, a kid from a different school and the son of a deeply religious dairy farmer who beat him badly for dating outside their church. He showed up at my house a week after the prom, still black and blue with raw bruises, to tell me he had to break up with me or his father would disinherit him and give the family farm to his cousin. He love farming, and said it was the only future he could imagine himself doing.

I got over the breakup, but that set me up for searching for an answer to the question: Why would a God worth worshiping condone cruelty toward children? Between a priest pretending to throw dad into a fire for throwing spitballs, a little girl in pigtails ostracizing me on a playground and a boy beaten for liking me, I spent the better party of the next two decades trying to understand why religion so often seemed to bless the bullies, and why He tolerated wars.

Over the years, I learned a lot about many faiths. If you doubt it, click over to my satirical take on the Seven Deadly Sins. But I eventually accepted that I’m too scarred—and too cynical—to ever belong to any Christian denomination. So when the Church Question comes up, I do what I’ve always done: lie through my teeth and say I’m “between churches.”

It was the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi who gave me my first taste of formal Meditation, even before he became a guru to the Beatles and the Beach Boys. I was never very serious about it but somewhere in the back of my head was implanted the principles he taught about self-realization, deep meditation and the idea that stillness could be a doorway, not a punishment.

Earlier this year, the Walk for Peace led by Bhikkhu Pannakara rekindled my interest. He says Buddhism isn’t a religion. Google’s AI disagrees. I’m not here to referee. What matters is that something in that walk reignited a spark I’d forgotten I carried.

A path back to myself.
A path without gatekeepers.
A path where no one gets beaten for loving the wrong person.

The next time someone in my City of Churches asks me where I worship, if I’m in the right mood, I might just tell them I’m studying to be a Buddhist. I know it would shock more than a few people. But more than likely I'll lie. Again.

Some things never change.

You’re probably still wearing yours socks—a joke you’ll get if you read yesterday’s post—but that’s okay. I’m just happy you got to the end of this one. ©

Note: I'll be back to my regular schedule of posting on Wednesdays. If  you normally get notices by email, I'm not sure if that will resume right away, or not. I'm on the 'free' plan and it might take until the end of May for that to straighten out. Posting daily has screwed things up. I just added the follow by Google feature at the bottom of the right hand column if you're interested.

Trying to Find Stillness in a World Determined to Shake It

Some weeks feel like a collision between the headlines and the heart, and this was one of them. Between a new war unfolding, a conversation group that didn’t want to have the conversation, and Jean’s attempt to study Buddhism without tripping over her own attachments, she realized her thoughts were staging a full‑scale mutiny. What follows isn’t a solution or a sermon — just a clear‑eyed walk through the contradictions, fears, and questions that have been crowding her head...AI

Spoiler Alert: This One Gets Serious. I can’t help it. I feel like I need to write about the following things because writing is the best way I can bring any clarity to my thoughts, and God only knows where my head is at half the time, if you know what I mean. If you don't, it's that feeling when so many contradictory thoughts are running laps in your brain that you’re afraid they’re going to break out into a blood sport to see which one gets top billing. 

I was with my Liberal Ladies Conversation Group last week and I thought, finally, I'd get to compare opinions about the war with other human beings. But the twelve of us sat around the table, talking about art and music and making plans to get together to make signs for the upcoming No Kings Protest on March 28th. Mind you, this was two days after 45/47 started his war with Iran, and yet no one was bringing it up. As the waiter was dropped off our checks I couldn't stand it any longer and I said, “So we’re not going to talk about the elephant in the room?”

Silence. Then it was as if Hans Brinker pulled his thumb out of the dike. Everyone started talking at once. And there was no consensus on why he did it. The theories flew:

• To distract from the Epstein files

• To line his son‑in‑law’s pockets when it comes time to rebuild the Middle East

• To line his own pockets when the rebuilding starts

• A secret deal with Israel 

• To create a pretext to halt the midterms

• To bring about a regime change 

Not one person mentioned the party‑line explanation, that the bombs were dropped to stop Iran from becoming a nuclear power. Which I’m not buying. If that were the goal, why tear up the 2015 agreement that allowed the International Atomic Energy Agency to aggressively monitor Iran and ensure they were reducing their enriched uranium stockpile by 98% on a timeline approved by five countries? Oops, I know the answer. It's because that agreement was brokered by the Obama administration. Ding, ding, ding! Give the lady a Kewpie doll.

Now we have eleven countries involved in a destructive war that Republicans insist “isn’t really a war,” which conveniently allowed them to vote against Congressional oversight. And is it naïve to think it won’t eventually reach our shores, likely in the form of cyberattacks? Yes, it's naïve. Here's another doll, of you!

Alongside all this political garbage vying for attention in my head is my study of Buddhism. I’ve been doing daily lessons with an app called The Karma Path since the end of the Walk for Peace. Each lesson is only 20 or 30 minutes, but they make you think. This isn’t my first time studying Buddhism seriously. If the third time is a charm, as the saying goes, this time I might actually stick with it and become a practicing Buddhist for the rest of my life.

Being old helps. Letting go of attachments should, in theory, be easier. In practice, it’s still my greatest challenge. I’m far too sentimental. But if I fail at that part of the Buddhist philosophy, death will eventually pry my creature comforts and memory‑vessels out of my hands anyway. I’m certainly not wealthy enough to build a pyramid and have slaves stockpile the tomb with all the things I hold near and dear.

Of course, it’s not just material things a Buddhist learns to release. It’s people. Expectations. The belief that someone else is responsible for our happiness (which is something I thought I'd learned a long time ago but clearly I didn't, judging by the wee little hurt feelings I wrote about in my last post). I’ve just begun studying meditation and the Noble Eightfold Path (the heart of Buddhism): right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration, right vision and right intention. And I'm batting 100% on The Karma Path's periodic quiz's.

What I don’t understand about any religion (and Buddhism doesn’t claim to be one) is how so many can be so certain their way is the only way—certain enough to go to war over ideology, century after century. In the Middle East, every peace plan ever put forth eventually falls apart over who controls the holy places. You’d think letting go of sentimental attachment over such small patches of earth would be a reasonable price to pay for lasting peace, says the lady who hasn't let go of her grade‑school report cards.

And then, to make this current war even more complicated, we have a commander telling U.S. troops that Donald Trump “has been anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran” and that the bombings are the beginning of Armageddon and the “imminent” return of Christ. This is according to several sources including a HuffPost article titled Military Commander Tells Troops Bombing Iran Is ‘Part Of God’s Divine Plan’. We could have seen this coming when Pete Hegseth started hosting prayer meetings at the Pentagon and bringing in Christian Nationalists to lead them.

Unfortunately, no amount of meditation, no amount of looking the other way, no amount of sticking our fingers in our ears and singing “la la la!” is going to set our country back on a path where elected officials can be trusted to do the right thing for all the people, not just their buddies with the biggest wallets or the biggest sticks. It's going to take time and effort by all of us i.e. we need to study the crap out of those running for the midterms and beyond and never, ever miss an opportunity to vote.

So there you have it. The reasons why I say I don’t know where my head is half the time. And I suspect many people across the nation are having the same meltdown, judging by the massive impact the Walk for Peace monks have made as their movement builds quietly in the background of everything happening in Washington, D.C.

Maybe that’s the real story here — not the war, not the politics, but the silent truth that millions of us are trying to hold our center while the world keeps shifting under our feet. ©

Until Next Wednesday….

 Three Things to Release in Life
Shen Yu, Buddhist Monk 

Stop chasing other people, What is meant for you will stay without force.
Stop trying to return to the past. It exists only to teach, not to live in.
Let go of regret. It holds the mind in places you can no longer change.

 

Buddha Offerings and Circus Tricks

Dog grooming day was Monday. Drop off time was scheduled for noon with a pick up estimated at 4:00 and in between I ran errands and had lunch at a curious little hole-in-wall Chinese restaurant that had a countertop filled with coins crowded around a tall, jade Buddha. The pile was at least five inches deep and four feet long and I’m guessing it was offerings to the Triple Gem: The Buddha, Dharma and Sangha although there was no neatly printed place card denoting the meaning of all that money sitting there waiting for a snatch-and-run robbery, assuming the would-be criminal came in with a large bucket. If I’d been in a Buddhist monastery with steel bowls lined up for visitors to drop coins in I’d know they were for the monks and maintenance on the building but coins on a countertop in a restaurant? When it came time to pay my for my lunch special of $6.62 I handed the cashier the exact amount and to my surprise, the coins went on the Buddha’s pile and the bills in her cash drawer. I wondered briefly if customers are promised good fortune if we add our extra change to the pile. The cynical side of me thought it could be a clever way to make more money---like coins tossed in a tourist trap wishing well---but the idealistic side of me thought something inspirational was going on that I didn’t understand. I may have to go back again and ask some questions.

The dog grooming salon is close enough that I could go home to wait for Levi but I don’t like being home without him. It’s too quiet and I can’t hear the doorbell anymore without the dog jumping up to see who is standing on the other side of the glass, an action that lets me know how much I depend on him to be my ears when my hearing aids are sitting in their box. I should do something about that---wear those Resounds full time or buy a louder, old person’s doorbell---but I can’t bring myself to do either one. When my husband lived alone he was a heavy sleeper and he wired up a factory break bell to a timer that he used for an alarm clock, mounted it on the wall above his bed. He could sleep through it but the neighbors from across the street couldn’t and after listening to it for 10 or 15 minutes they’d come across the street and bang on his bedroom window while having their daughter dial his phone. The combination of the alarm, the phone and the banging would finally wake him up. Except for the time when it didn’t and they called me, knowing I had a key. After a half hour of bells and banging he still hadn’t woke up and they were afraid he was dead. Fast forward many years later when Don went in for a sleep study and he came out with a biPAP machine and that ended the era of nagging him awake with bells, whistles, water and letting the dog get involved in the action. Just the idea of getting a louder doorbell gives me flashbacks. Do I really want my neighbors to know every time someone comes to my front door?

I ate too much on grooming day. A protein shake for breakfast, Mongolian beef for lunch and a hot dog bun filled with chicken and cheese for dinner plus two---count them---one, two bowls of ice cream with peanuts and chocolate sauce. Why do I do that to myself? When I cut my personal trainer loose at the YMCA I cut myself loose, too. The half-gallon of ice cream in the freezer is the first I’ve brought home in months and I can’t leave it alone. I have no self-control when it’s around. I’m cheating myself in other ways, too, like recently I figured out if I go to the gym on Sundays, I can count that as both the third workout in the previous week and the first workout of the coming week. I do like summer Sundays at the gym, though. It’s relatively quiet except for this past Sunday when a weird woman dragged a cycling bike out of the cycling studio and into the hallway where everyone passes by and she was singing every third or fourth sentence coming through her ear bugs. “Get it on!” “Yeah, one more time!” "I like it like that." I would have told her to get a room but she had one and gave it up in favor of being an exhibitionist. 

Most people don’t talk or use cell phones at the gym. Most people respect each other’s concentration on their workout programs. I broke that rule this week with Circus Guy. I call him that for two reasons: 1) He has red and green tattoos covering every inch of skin what shows except his face and, 2) he does this thing where he stands one-footed on a soccer ball while holding a twenty pound weight plate in each hand. And he does this for several minutes on each leg, then he repeats that set two more times! When I walked past him on Sunday, I pointed to the ball he was balancing on and I said, “Now, that’s impressive!” He laughed and replied, “Comes from spending my childhood on hockey skates.” That was the longest conversation I’d had in days. Woo is me.  ©