Happy Buddhists really annoy me

No, really. They bug the shit out of me.

"What crawled up your culottes?"

Buddhist sophistry.

Seriously, Buddhists who talk-tweet-blog-chirp non-stop about how happy they have become are really just projecting how miserable they are. But rather than deal with their unhappiness in an honest and direct way, they figure if they just keep telling others they are happy that maybe they'll be able to conjure up Manjushri's sword to cleave their miserable heart, revealing the pulsing bliss of Kwan Yin.

"Simply talking a lot doesn't maintain the Dhamma."

There's not a lot to be happy about. I'm a 55-year-old gay man surrounded by men who think they are 10s (some of them seriously are) and they're all looking for an 11. They go to the gym to get these bodies that they've become enslaved to, because as soon as they stop working out, their body goes to hell.

Well, I shouldn't cast stones. I go to the gym. Not as often as I should, but I go. I want to stay ahead of this bulge I have. Seriously, I can't even see my penis anymore. Well, I can see it when I have an erection, or when I tilt my head down, or when I'm lying on my back and my belly flattens out because gravity pulls all the fat down toward the mattress. And I kid myself that, yeah, I'm going to return to that svelt 180-pound gorgeous man I was in my 30s, I just need to shed, you know, like 30 pounds. And I need to watch my health. After all, I've had a stroke and a heart attack, so I should take care of myself.

Wait. I was going to the gym before I had a stroke and a heart attack, and I still had a stroke and a heart attack. So there you go. A lot of good it's done me.

But I digress.

All too soon, this body

will lie on the ground

               cast off,

bereft of consciousness,

like a useless scrap

               of wood.

Now there's a happy thought, eh?

Don't get me wrong. There are plenty of happy Buddhists and I admire them, I want to be like them, and I pay attention to what they say and do. And you know what? The really, truly happy Buddhists never talk about how happy they are. They don't have to because you can see it for yourself.

Happiness is just like any other feeling, it comes and goes. Anyone who says they are happy are lying. Because to be aware of your happiness means to kill your happiness. Consider the basics of meditation: when thoughts or feelings arise, you pay attention to them and observe them rather than indulge them, and when you observe them, they go away, the mind settles. So as soon as you acknowledge your happiness, you just killed the buzz.

Real happiness, the "Buddhisty" type of happiness is a happiness you never think about. It's just there, like the shadow that never leaves.

Give me a miserable Buddhist over a self-professed happy one any time. He or she will be the better teacher and companion than the halcyon Buddhist with his or her deluded saccharine silliness.

Don't get lost in the details

For 2 years in a row, the date March 9 has brought me face-to-face with the frailty of the human body.

This normally inconspicuous date has also held for me interesting coincidences.

On March 9, 2012, I awoke shortly after midnight with a splitting headache. It was the worst headache I ever had in my life. It was as though a large Bowie knife had been shoved through my skull. My vision was distorted by shimmering lights, like an aura. Because I had lived with migraines most of my life, I deduced it was just an exceptionally bad migraine. I took some Excedrin and went back to sleep.

Later that morning the headache persisted. I stayed at home and worked, but the throbbing pain in my skull was getting to me. I took a handful of aspirin later in the afternoon. The pain diminished slightly. I was beginning to notice that I had lost vision in my left peripheral field. It was the normal blind spot I get when having a migraine, so I thought.

The next day, the headache and the blind spot were still there. Perhaps this was not a migraine. I called one of those "phone a nurse" lines and described my symptoms. It was suggested that I get to an emergency room. I drove myself there. They did a CT scan. They told me I had a stroke.

On March 9, 2013, I woke up feeling fine. I went to make the coffee. I returned to my room and started my laptop, started to look through my email. When I heard the coffee had stopped brewing, I went and got a cup. I poured the soy creamer into the mug and then added the coffee like I always do every morning. I took the mug of coffee back to my room, took a sip, set the mug on the side table, then sat in the chair to resume web surfing.

Suddenly there was an intense pain in my chest. It was as if a giant hand wearing one of those metal medieval jousting gloves had gripped my chest all about the left breast and was squeezing with the pressure of an hydraulic vice. The pain radiated to my left arm, went under through the arm pit, then down my arm to my fingers. This intense pain went up the left side of my neck as well to my jaw. My breathing became shallow, I felt clammy.

I knew what was happening. I stood up, went to my medicine cabinet, grabbed an adult aspirin and chewed it. I returned to my chair and focused my mind on the pain, on my heart, on the blood vessel that was shutting down. I waited a few moments, but the pain was not subsiding. It was steady; a black knight had me in his grip and he was not letting go. Mara be damned. I was going to have to go to the emergency room. Again.

I told my roommate what I thought was happening and he and his boyfriend drove me to the emergency room. I never felt like I was going to die. But I was thinking about the irony.

Two hugely significant medical emergencies in my life, both occurring on March 9. In both incidents, I had Phô for dinner the night before. In both situations I had recently picked up my friend Curt at the airport upon his return from Malaysia where he had spent three months. And on both occasions, Curt returned from Malaysia with some type of lung infection.

Coincidences. Silly facts to mess with your mind.

At the emergency room, it had been at least an hour since the symptoms first showed and my chest was still gripped with pain. This is not a hackneyed metaphor. It literally felt as though my chest was caught in some giant vice. My blood pressure upon arrival was 188/107. They gave me a nitro. A swelling headache developed, but the chest pain had only slightly subsided. Morphine was next. At last, the pain was receding.

They drew blood to see if the tell-tale enzymes would show up indicating a heart attack. It could be severe angina or some other less serious event. These enzymes show up when there is heart tissue damage, and the only thing that causes that type of damage is a heart attack. The first draw was necessarily zero, but it would be the second draw that would reveal all.

Nammo tassa bhagavato arahato samma sambuddhasa. Say it three times. Say it six times. Say it a hundred times. I wasn't afraid. I knew I wasn't going to die. But I was embarrassed. And I was confused. I don't follow the best diet, but I eat reasonably well and I exercise a lot. My cholesterol numbers are fabulous. My EKGs have been normal. I have never felt chest pain while exercising or exerting myself. All I did was sit down after getting my coffee. Now I was annoyed. They told me I would be spending the night for observation in a regular room. Dennis and Stephen went home to get me some things.

Then the first enzyme test came back. They were canceling my room. They were sending me to ICU. The enzymes were there. I was 54 years old and I had a heart attack. My father was 58 when he had his first one. My brother was 62 I think when he had his, one that required a quad-bypass. But this couldn't be. I knew I didn't have blocked arteries. I just knew it! But what was happening?

An angiogram done two days later confirmed my belief; there was no arterial blockage. They started talking about a spasm, like a cramp in the artery that caused it to pinch shut, blocking the blood flow just as effectively if it had been blocked with plaque. But there was a problem with this diagnosis. Had it been plaque in the artery, they would cite a source, whether it was my diet or something else leading to the plaque buildup. There were procedures for this, whether surgery or angioplasty, doesn't matter - there was a protocol with that scenario.

Without the plaque, well now, they couldn't tell me what caused the spasm. And without knowing what caused the spasm, they couldn't very well tell me what to do or not do to prevent it from happening again.

It was like the stroke all over again. The stroke was caused by a blood clot - at least that's what they tell me - but they could never identify the source of the clot.

My roommate Stephen said it best: "You are a medical mystery."

Fuck that.

But now, when I chant the Five Remembrances, the significance is hard to ignore. I got things to do. And not silly things. Now the Bhaddekaratta Sutta has meaning unlike anything its held before. And yet I am still the same person. I'm not quite acting differently, not yet. But I am looking at others much differently. And I'm looking for opportunities. Opportunities to help. Opportunities to be kind. Opportunities to smile. And most important of all, opportunities to be present.

Expect some more of the same, but a little bit different.

Are you too sexy for your body?

Even though the Buddha renounced a lay person’s way of life, he remained a good father and did an outstanding job teaching his son, Rahula. We can conclude by the results that Rahula was probably an apt pupil, but that may only be because the Buddha was swift enough to re-focus his adolescent son’s mind on the proper topics for contemplation, or Rahula might have been a Brahmin-style Right Said Fred.

Rahula was hot, and he knew he was hot. Or at least that’s how the stories go. For example, in the notes to the Maharahulovada Sutta (MN 62), also known as The Greater Discourse of Advice to Rahula, we learn the reason why the Buddha directed his then-18-year-old son to perfect the meditation technique of contemplation of the body as body.

“According to (Majjhima Nikaya Atthakatha) … While Rahula was following the Buddha, he noted with admiration the physical perfection of the Master and reflected that he himself was of similar appearance, thinking: ‘I too am handsome like my father the Blessed One. The Buddha’s form is beautiful and so too is mine.’ The Buddha read Rahula’s thought and decided to admonish him at once, before such vain thoughts led him into greater difficulties. Hence the Buddha framed his advice in terms of contemplating the body as neither a self nor the possession of a self.” (Notes are from the hardbound text, not the online text)

So dang! Rahula was a hottie twink thinking he had it goin’ on, but the Buddha was wise to that nonsense and immediately re-directed his son before he started wearing Daisy Dukes and dancing on a box at a backwoods discotheque.

Contemplation of body as body is also a technique I use from time to time when I have difficultly remaining focused on my breath. It’s just a different focus point and it is very effective. Besides being a necessary step in meditation – if all you do is focus on your breath, you’re in a rut – when you learn to see body as just body, you come to realize that body isn’t so glamorous. As my teacher once said: “Isn’t it funny that the items we attribute beauty to on our body are dead – like the outside of our skin, our teeth, our hair – but the living parts of our body – internal organs and such – we describe as gross.”

Rahula learned well and became a significant member of the Sangha. A section of the Theragatha is attributed to him where Rahula explains how the root of sensuality has been cut out of him: “Cooled am I, unbound.”

I’ll say so.

Saigon suicide or supreme renunciation?

My unintended hiatus from blogging has been extraordinarily unsatisfactory. While I can certainly continue to write posts, I am hampered because I don’t have access to my image library until I purchase a new laptop and have my data from my old laptop transferred. My preference is to accompany my posts with images I made, photographs I took. I know I could get an external drive and just have the hard drive from my former unit removed, a route I may eventually take should I take much longer in determining what laptop to purchase. But today, I have a subject and I have an image (not my image, mind you).

As I have mentioned in the past, I have been reading the Lotus Sutra, the Leon Hurvitz translation. Along with this, chapter by chapter, I have been reading Thich Nhat Hanh’s, “Peaceful Action, Open Heart: Lessons from the Lotus Sutra.” Today I read the chapter “The Former Affairs of the Bodhisattva Medicine King.”

Thich Nhat Hanh’s commentary on this chapter revealed something to me I had not known, and that is the Vietnamese monk who self immolated on a Saigon street in 1963 did so based on this particular chapter of the Lotus Sutra. For years this riveting image troubled me. Why would a Buddhist monk commit suicide? Because that is how I, and I imagine many others, viewed this act – suicide.

The monk’s name was Thich Quang Duc, with whom Thich Nhat Hanh had a personal relationship. Thay, a familiar name used to address Thich Nhat Hanh, had studied with Thich Quang Duc and had for a time stayed at the monk’s temple. But before detailing the background leading to this spectacular act, an image that spread throughout the world nearly as quickly as the flames spread about and consumed the monk’s body, let’s examine the root of this seemingly desperate action.

This chapter describes how the bodhisattva Seen with Joy by All Living Beings transforms into the Medicine King Bodhisattva. Thay’s description of Seen with Joy by All Living Beings as being someone who brings joy and happiness to others just by his presence includes the suggestion that we probably all know or have encountered such a person before. When I read that, I immediately thought of my late Uncle Alvin. As a child, I remember seeing him with others and regardless of whether it was an adult or a young child, everyone he met smiled and was happy.

This bodhisattva studied with the Buddha Pure and Bright Excellence of Sun and Moon and came to realize a state of deep concentration in which he understood clearly that his body was just one of many bodies he would have. Contemplation of the body as body is one of the key parts of the meditative practice with the goal of understanding that “I am not my body, my body is not me; body is just body.” While on one level I understand this idea, I have not “realized it.” Seen with Joy by All Living Beings did realize this ultimate truth and, using supernatural powers, he made many offerings to the Buddha Pure and Bright Excellence of Sun and Moon. But after this, Seen with Joy by All Living Beings decided he would make a final offering of his own body through self-immolation, before which he made this vow:

“Those buddhas who cough or who make a sound by snapping their fingers are informing all this world and this world sphere in all 10 quarters. These and other miraculous qualities do they show who have compassion for the world, thinking, ‘Now how shall they joyfully bear this scripture at that time, when the Well Gone One is at peace? For many thousands of millions of cosmic ages will I speak the praises of the sons of the Well Gone Ones, who shall bear the supreme scripture when the leader of the world is at peace.’”

As Seen with Joy by All Living Beings’ body slowly burned, it sent a light throughout the world. The gist of all this is that the Buddha Pure and Bright Excellence of Sun and Moon was so pleased that he said he would leave this world to enter Nibbana and that Seen with Joy by All Living Beings would take his place as the Medicine King Bodhisattva.

Fast forward to Vietnam circa 1963. Thich Nhat Hanh reports in his book, “Peaceful Action, Open Heart,” that Thich Quang Duc had been writing many letters to the government in Saigon to end its persecution of Buddhists. Despite Vietnam being overwhelmingly Buddhist, its president at that time, Dihn Diem, was a Catholic, a relic of the days when Vietnam was a French colony. President Dihn Diem had banned celebration of Vesak, the Buddha’s birthday. Christmas, instead, was declared a national holiday. Despite his many peaceful attempts to persuade the government to rescind its edict, Thich Quang Duc was rebuffed. On June 11, 1963, he sat down on a busy Saigon street, poured gasoline over his body, and in a serene meditative pose, he lit a match.

In a few months, Diem was ousted in a military coup. Of course, not all was well again in Vietnam as there were many bloody years still ahead. But reporting of Thich Quang Duc’s act was so quickly spread around the world others noticed, perhaps for the first time, that the people in a small country in Southeast Asia were suffering.

A person who commits suicide does so out of desperation; it is a selfish act to relieve oneself of his or her own personal suffering. Thich Nhat Hanh explains that Thich Quang Duc’s act was not selfish, but done for the benefit of others, out of compassion for the suffering of his countrymen. For most of us, this concept is probably difficult to grasp. I know it is difficult for me. But on some level, I get it.

And yet, when I think about Thich Quan Duc and what he did, and then think about my own practice and my own understanding of the Dhamma, I am acutely aware of how I am so like an infant; a whore for sensual pleasure, so easily distracted by the ephemeral enticements of this world.