Colbert to the left of me, white men to the right

And here I am, stuck in the middle with Assalayana.

Lately, I've been feeling like the legendary Assalayana, a 16-year-old student of the Brahmans who was given the unenviable task to dispute the Buddha's assertion that all castes are capable of enlightenment. And not just to dispute that assertion, but argue it head-to-head with the Buddha himself.

Needless to say, Assalayana didn't like this task. While he was an excellent student of many subjects, he knew that the Buddha was unassailable in debate. And it was quite possible that even before his personal encounter with the Buddha, he agreed with the Buddha's premise: he tells the Brahamans that the Buddha teaches Dhamma, which, when capitalized, is the Pali word for truth (lowercase it more closely translates as "dogma" or "doctrine"). So Assalayana tries to get out of this assignment. The Brahmans, however, impose their will, telling the erudite teen that if he's going to go down a loser, do it in battle.

And indeed, Assalayana goes down. So hard, in fact, that the youth droops into a deep depression right before the Buddha's eyes. Seeing this, in his immeasurable compassion, the Buddha shares with Assalayana a final Dhamma lesson that immediately convinces the youth to devote himself as a lay follower of the Buddha.

I've been thinking about Assalayana's experience recently in connection with the divisiveness regarding the #CancelColbert trend and the incendiary debate it has sparked.

For background, it began with a Tweet from @ColbertReport, an account connected with the Colbert show. The Tweet, which reportedly has been deleted, read: "I'm willing to show the #Asian community I care by introducing the Ching-Chong Ding-Dong Foundation for Sensitivity to Orientals or Whatever." That Tweet, in and of itself, was extraordinarily offensive and struck me, at least, as being very much out of Colbert's character.

The Tweet launched the hashtag #CancelColbert, thanks to @suey_park, which rallied hundreds, if not thousands of non-white people expressing their outrage.

The Tweet came from this segment on his show, which was largely devoted to lampooning Daniel Snyder.

It also ignited a litany of counter-tweets from predominately white people whose message was essentially, "shut up all of you, it's satire you stupid .... (insert racist expletive/ad hominem of your choice)." That activity attracted attention from a multitude of ostensibly liberally-leaning news and information websites that most of which, in my opinion, immediately adopted a defensive and reactionary point of view.

Suey Park was invited on to HuffPo Live to talk about the issue, but was gaslighted by the host who shut her down as soon as it became apparent to him - a white man - that he wasn't interviewing a subservient, docile Asian woman (her segment appears at roughly the 30 min mark). It's worth pointing out it was Suey Park who behaved absolutely professionally despite the circumstances.

What astounded me was I found myself defending that anger regarding the Tweet, as well as its original context within the segment it was attached, against liberal white men and journalists that I normally would have thought to be allies in these circumstances; I was not deflecting attacks from right wing reactionaries (although they came out of the woodwork as well, as expected). My sense of astonishment soon became dismay as I realized from the many others I engage with on Twitter that this was not surprising at all, that white liberals remain blinded to a large degree by their privilege. And that blindness was glaringly apparent.

Of course, I was ridiculed for failing to grasp satire and how it works. And yet, presumably liberal-minded white men couldn't hear my message when I said that white men need to stop presuming they are the arbiter of what is or is not offensive to non-whites. But as the writer in this post so prosaically points out, satire is meant to punch up, not down; it's designed to ridicule power and those that hold it, not the victim of that power. No one, however, was listening; it was a perfect storm of white men clamoring to justify another white man's behavior because it was "art."

"He's playing a character, you dumb shit, don't you get that?" opined one on Twitter.

I had others "explain" to me the full context of the original episode while they arrogantly presumed I had not seen the full clip, that I was reacting only to the original Tweet.

I felt my shoulders metaphorically slump just as Assalayana's had. The premise that Assalayana was sent to defend against the Buddha was a very racist notion that the Brahmans were the highest caste, that no other caste was equal, and the only way to become part of that caste was to be born in it. The Buddha methodically destroys that delusion, yet all Assalayana can say is, Yes, I agree with you Goatama, but this is how the Brahmans believe.

It is the delusion of privilege, and Assalayana is feeling the pressure of having been sent to defend that privilege while simultaneously clearly seeing it is delusion. He feels helpless and overwhelmed, and right there in front of the Buddha, he slips into despair (It really is a fantastic sutta to read).

But the Buddha does give him an out by offering the compassionate hand of the Dhamma and Assalayana readily accepts the gesture. By doing that, the teen willingly walks away from the Brahman culture that gave him his education and taught him many vitally important lessons. Yet that single delusion, so tenaciously held by even the most erudite of the caste, made being part of that system of thought unpalatable for the teenaged Assalayana.

I do wish I had the Buddha's debate skills. For now, I will continue to muddle through life, shedding a bit more of my privilege every day because in the end, it is my karma that I carry, no one else's, and I create my karma on my own, no one else creates it for me.

Why I don't own a gun

The last time I fired a weapon was almost 40 years ago. My decision to not ever fire a weapon again since has been resolute. A blog post I wrote nearly four years ago explains why. But there's a more fundamental reason for me to not own a gun.

Owning a gun means I have formulated the intention to kill. I may never kill anyone or anything while owning a gun, but the intention would be there, for why else would anyone own a gun?

First, let me clarify something. I do not begrudge people who hunt, nor do I view them with any form of disdain, and nor will I attempt to take their opportunities to hunt away from them. Having said that, hunting involves killing, regardless of the purpose, or, more precisely, the intent. The Buddha teaches that nothing occurs without consequence - "when this is, that is ... when this isn't, that isn't" - and that all actions are preceded by an intention. This is the core of his teaching on kamma.

But while kamma has everything to do with cause and effect, it is not linear; rather, it's more like loops of feedback that occur in our lives because we always have the opportunity to eliminate our kamma with the creation of every new intention and subsequent action. The Buddha's teaching about The Salt Crystal is pertinent here. As the Buddha teaches, if you put a teaspoon of salt into a glass of water, the water will taste salty; but if you put a teaspoon of salt into the Ganges, the water will not taste salty. So a single act within the greater context of your lifetime - or multiple lifetimes - holds negligible consequence because of all the other actions you can take to "dilute" the salt's presence.

That's important to remember, that we can "dilute" our actions, but we can never eliminate what has already happened; the salt does not disappear, it just cannot be tasted.

Hunting, to me, is like the teaspoon of salt in a river, but even that depends on the reasons behind why a person hunts. A person who hunts to provide food for his or her family creates kamma different from the person who hunts for sport.

Killing another person? That's a tablespoon of salt in a glass of water. Even with saying that, however, all homicides are not equal and the kamma created will be as varied as the intention behind the act. The point is, no one is immune from the consequences of killing, regardless of intent.

Which is why I will not own a firearm. Particularly a handgun. There is no other purpose for a handgun other than to kill another human. Even if self-defense, owning a handgun is done with full knowledge that it may be used to kill another person. Anyone who thinks otherwise is deluding him or herself.

And this is why I believe that Michael Dunn is guilty of murder, plain and simple. I have seen some comments on Twitter following the jury's verdict wondering how difficult it will become in the future to prove intent behind premeditated murder when it comes to self-defense. For me it's quite simple. Michael Dunn had formed the intention to kill someone long ago, and I suspect his intention was to specifically kill a black youth. All Dunn was waiting for was the right opportunity.

That is why I will not own a firearm of any kind.

A person unknowing:

the actions performed by him,

born of greed, born of aversion,

& born of delusion,

whether many or few,

are experienced right here:

               no other ground is found.

So a monk, knowing,

               sheds

greed, aversion, & delusion;

giving rise to clear knowledge, he

               sheds

all bad destinations.

Nidana Sutta

Someone tell Mark Sanford about Angulimala

Mark Sanford is a funny guy. After embarrassing himself and his state - but seriously, is it really possible to embarrass South Carolina?- by carrying on an illicit love affair in the Southern Hemisphere while governor and attempting to throw off discovery by claiming he suddenly decided to hike the Appalachian Trail, he has seen fit to rise from political exile and run from Congress.

As if people would forget about, oh, I don't know, that whole marital infidelity thing.

But Sanford's no dummy, because while most voters will remember their former governor's previous juvenile horn-doggery, they just might ignore that transgression and choose, instead, to view Sanford as an opportunity to throw more obstruction at that evil black president.

We'll have to wait and see how Machiavellian South Carolina voters really are. And if they're not so inclined to give Sanford another chance at public office, we shall then see how Machiavellian Sanford had been. Because in his effort to turn over a new leaf, it appears that Sanford has become, well, Buddhist.

I was enlightened about Sanford's "practice" by this article in Yahoo! News. Apparently after Sanford's political demise, he retreated from the spotlight and began learning about Buddhism and even asserts he has begun meditating; at least that's what he calls it. It's difficult to tell just what type of practice Sanford has begun, what were his influences, and how serious he is about it. The article was scant on detail.

Understandably, people are skeptical. It's likely that the only Buddhist thing Sanford is up to is working a little bit of mindfulness into his life. After all, if he's really taking a serious look at Buddhism, he will need to confront one of its basic concepts: Karma.

Someone needs to tell Mark Sanford about Angulimala.

Angulimala was a murderous thief who killed travelers and cut off their fingers to wear in a gruesome necklace about his neck. Despite the wide-spread fear Angulimala inspired in others, the Buddha successfully tamed this beast and turned him into a monk.

 But Angulimala quickly learned that simply becoming a monk and following the Buddha didn't erase his past, unlike the concept of being "born again."  In fact, even after the Buddha accepted him into the sangha, Angulimala's past continued to catch up with him.

At first, Angulimala couldn’t get anyone to offer him food during his alms rounds because he remained feared and despised for all of his past murderous actions. Even after the Buddha set up an act of truth to show others Angulimala’s new noble birth and he became accepted by more villagers, there remained a group who refused to believe that Angulimala was nothing more than a murderous monster. Whenever he went for alms, these holdouts threw rocks and sticks at him. One time he comes to the Buddha, his head bleeding, to show the Buddha what had happened. The Buddha tells Angulimala to buck up and endure this because he is lucky to be suffering this torment now as the continuing fruits of his past actions rather than to suffer those consequences by spending eons in a hell realm.

Angulimala does buck up and eventually he attains the fruits of the holy life, but it wasn't easy. It took considerable time for him to work through all the karma he had accumulated as a murderous thief.

Will Mark Sanford buck up and comprehend that he doesn't get a free pass? That he may be suffering the consequences of this extramarital excursions to Argentina for years to come? Should Sanford lose his bid for Congress, we shall see whether he continues his dabbling in Buddhist practices, or abandons it as a failed expedient device. And even if he wins, who knows how his past karma will continue to manifest itself. The mere fact that he might win is no indication that he has completed that karmic journey.

As the farmer in a fable about the various fortunes and misfortunes of his son said to his neighbor: "We'll have to wait and see."

Image courtesy of Buddhism - Being Truly Human.

40 years after Roe

Forty years ago we got Roe v Wade. And the battle has waged ever since. Forgive the length of this post, but I want to share my thoughts on this divisive topic. And while my thoughts are not necessarily "Buddhist" in construction, how I feel about this topic is guided by my Buddhist understanding of how the world works.

First, I must clearly state that personally I believe that taking another person's life, including that of an unborn person, is simply wrong in any and all circumstances -- even in self-defense. I believe that way because killing another person represents an outcome one has hurled him or herself toward through a series of extraordinarily poor decisions that could have been interrupted just about anywhere along the way.

Having said that, should I find myself in a situation that defending my own life means taking another's, I suspect I will fight to the death. But if I should emerge from such a fray victorious, there will be consequences for my actions. Even if I am found legally innocent of any criminal act, I will nonetheless face the karmic consequences of my actions, consequences that may manifest themselves in any number of ways, not the least of which will be an unsettled mind that will on a daily basis struggle with what I did and how I might have avoided it.

I cannot foresee every situation, but I can take steps right now to avoid potential situations that may put me in a position of behaving in a manner contrary to the way I believe. And on occasion, despite my intentions, I do act unskillfully and find myself in awkward situations.

But I got there because of the choices I made, even when I thought the choices I was making were good ones.

Which is a long, round-about way of explaining why, despite my personal belief that taking someone's life, including that of the unborn, is always wrong and never without consequence, I will fight to ensure that abortion is kept legal and easily accessed.

To impose my personal belief on another person about whom I know nothing, about whose life challenges I know nothing, strikes me as a supreme form of righteousness that frankly makes me sick. Yes, perhaps that person made a series of poor decisions, but they were his or her decisions and to suggest that I know what consequences he or she should suffer and how these consequences out to be delivered when my own life is far from perfect - well, I'm not a Christian, but it seems to me that Jesus said something about fretting over the speck of dust in another person's eye while ignoring the rock in my own.

The Buddha taught us also that all our actions have consequence and that we cannot always predict the outcomes of our actions. Besides, there are some things, the Buddha taught, that we really don't need to know. Despite that he gave us tips, such as his guidance to his son Rahula, to avoid making unskillful choices, and with the simile of the salt crystal he explains that we have the ability to mitigate future consequences via our current actions. The Buddha is also quite clear with the story of Angulimala that while we have the option to renounce our past completely and pick up a new, more virtuous life - sort of like being 'born again' - we can never escape our past and the consequences we have set in motion.

Believing this, I know that anyone facing the ominous decision of abortion has been through a series of events leading her to that choice and that she will experience consequences unknown to me - and frankly none of my business - that she may or may not be able to resolve in her current life.

Even if you don't believe as I do, there are societal benefits to having legal access to abortion, and one of these benefits is not always part of the public discussion: The impact legal abortion has on crime.

What raised this connection was a 2001 study that is highly cited within the scientific literature and at the time of its release got a fair bit of attention in the popular press. But since then it has oddly disappeared from the primary discourse. The study notes that crime rates in the U.S. began a decline roughly 18 years after Roe v. Wade, and in states where abortion was already legal and widely available as early as 1970, crimes rights there began a similar decline much earlier than the rest.

While purely correlative, it does strongly suggest a causative relationship when you consider certain key facts about crime: who commits the most crime, and what environmental circumstances are more likely to lead a person to crime than others. Let's start with the last and work backwards.

For starters, it's pretty well established that low income areas have higher crime rates than more affluent neighborhoods; that low-income households produce more members who commit crime; that substance abuse is strongly connected with crime. In my journalism career I've worked with many police chiefs and sheriffs who repeatedly said that if we, as a society, could get a handle on substance abuse, crime would drop out of sight - especially alcohol abuse. While things like meth and crack and other harder drugs certainly are connected with crime, the law enforcement folk I worked with universally said alcohol abuse is the number one problem.

It is also pretty well established that those who regularly commit crime are individuals with a number of behavioral and character flaws. Often these flaws develop in childhood while being raised in highly stressed households, either economically or emotionally. For about 15 years I worked with delinquent and emotionally disturbed children and not a single one of them was unable to sense on some level that their parents just really didn't want them. As one boy told me, "My mother had a choice to keep me or the dog. She kept the dog."

Growing up in that type of environment frequently leads to substance abuse, which law enforcement will universally will say is the sin quo non of most crime. Substance abuse impairs one's decision making skills, and criminal activity is the result of flawed decisions.

Next, who commits the most crime? Crime statistics year after year report the same thing: most crime is committed by young men between the ages of 18 and about 26. In fact, it is mostly young men of color.

Maybe it's starting to become clear how abortion plays into this. Because a reasonable hypothesis to make based on the above information is that there ought to be a decline in the population most likely to commit a crime roughly 18 years after abortion becomes legal, which in turn should result in a decline in the number of crimes committed.

And that's exactly what this country saw. Just take some time and look at this chart. Starting in 1960, the data shows crime continuing to rise along with population. But low and behold, beginning in 1991, we see that trend reversing! And when we look at the specific types of crimes more likely to be committed by a young male - property crimes, robbery, and vehicle theft - the reversal in trend is even more pronounced despite a few stutters between 1991-93. There's even a reversal in murders committed started in 1993.

Granted, this does not on its own suggest a causative relationship, but it's nonetheless worth noting and worth further study. It's quite reasonable to conclude - and Occam's razor would suggest this as well - that with abortion legal and widely available, you have fewer unwanted children born and being raised in highly-stressed conditions that are very closely associated with anti-social behavior such as substance abuse and criminal activity.

In Buddhism, virtually all unskillful behavior arises out of either greed, hatred, or delusion. As a man, let alone a gay man, imposing on women this notion that they must carry to birth all pregnancies no matter how conceived is far more evil than terminating an unwanted pregnancy.

Any woman who faces that choice is facing a terrible decision, and not all of them do so with caprice. In fact, I firmly believe that most do not look at such a choice without it weighing heavy on their hearts and minds.

It is their choice and should remain so.

Requiem for a true friend

On Thanksgiving Day before my brother and his wife and my sister and her husband arrived for the weekend, I got in a workout at the gym and then met a friend afterward for lunch. We went to Chinatown on the north side in Uptown and ate at Pho 777 where Stephen filled me in on how his medical internship was going.

Stephen speaks English very well. He’s from Taiwan and here on a visa completing a medical residency/internship program that has been really difficult for him at a Chicago hospital. Although he speaks English very well, his listening comprehension isn’t quite as good, particularly if the English speaker is a non-native English speaker. It’s been very stressful for him; at one point he was ready to give up and go back to Taiwan where he is already a licensed radiologist. But he selected internal medicine for his residency program in the U.S.

Anyway, we had lunch and I listened to him, encouraged that his really difficult rotations were about to end. He was optimistic that his next two rotations won’t be as difficult.

After lunch I returned home knowing that I would need to feed Symba again. Following the surgery in early October that removed a horrible infection in his mouth – and which revealed that he had a very aggressive form of cancer – he could only eat soft food from a can. The surgery removed most of his teeth and he needed to gain weight. His appetite was voracious, and he managed to keep the food down as well. His coat was gradually getting shinier, although he wasn’t grooming himself. However, brushing him we both enjoyed as it gave me some quality time with him. I knew his days were numbered.

When I returned home Symba was snoozing on his usual spot – a small pile of brown grocery sacks on the kitchen table. He perked up when he saw me, anticipating his feast as I got the canned food out as well as some dishes. He meowed nosily as usual. When he jumped down from his spot on the table I noticed some dried blood on his right front leg. There was no injury to the leg, but it looked like he may have been bleeding from the mouth. This happened before and the incident was brief despite being quite alarming. It was a small amount of dried blood, so I just made a mental not to keep track of these incidents.

Symba wolfed his food as usual. It was quite obvious there were no issues with his appetite, not that there ever was really. I gave Tazz some soft food also, although just a tiny amount as Tazz was able to eat the dry food left out for him. I then went to clean up some new hairballs Tazz had hurled on the carpet. I had returned to the kitchen where I was rinsing out the rag I used to clean these spots up when I noticed Symba at the kitchen doorway.

Although sitting on his haunches, he was very unsteady, his body teetering side to side, and there was bright red blood dripping from his mouth. He then took his paw and furiously pawed at the side of his head as if there was something crawling all over his face. I crouched down next to him to get a closer look, to try and determine what happened, what I should do. I petted him as I examined his mouth – he immediately sensed my petting and responded with affection – and saw with this incident there was a lot more blood than before.

And he was still bleeding.

Then the most extraordinary event occurred, something I will find hard to forget. Symba’s entire front end, his front legs and all just collapsed as he fell face-first to the floor, his hind legs still up. His body was stiff and he uttered a baleful meow that was quickly followed by his back end falling sideways to the floor.

Alright, I’m not sure of the exact sequence of events, but somewhere in all this I got my phone and called my vet, who I knew wouldn’t answer, but I also knew the message at the office would have the phone number for the pet emergency hospital. Symba seemed to recover somewhat. He sat up, shook his head, which nearly knocked him over because he was so unsteady, and then he got back up on the kitchen table to be on his pile of grocery sacks just like he always did after eating. The hemorrhaging had abated, but there were drips of blood coming from his mouth. Symba looked really out of it.

I got the pet emergency hospital on the phone and began describing what was going on. When Symba collapsed, it was just like the videos I had seen in the past of farm animals when they founder – the collapse begins at the front of the body with the back end falling 2 to 3 seconds later. I got directions to the hospital, then went to get the travel cage as I called my brother to find out where he and his wife were. It was about 3 p.m. I think and I was expecting them around 5. He said they were in Indiana, so they weren’t that far. I told them I might not be home when they got to my apartment, so would they mind waiting in the street until I got back?

“I think Symba is dying,” I said.

It was difficult for me to drive at first. Seriously, I was freaking out and starting to cry. Symba was starting to bleed again. But I told myself it wouldn’t do anyone any good if I crash the car because I’m blubbering and couldn’t see the road or wasn’t paying attention. So I pulled it together and began the drive. One thing nice about Chicago on Thanksgiving: traffic is not a problem. Symba traveled as best as can be expected, but I think he went through another one of those collapses about half-way to the animal hospital.

The pet emergency room was a bit busy when I arrived with at least a dozen other people there. I put the pet carrier on the counter as I told the receptionist I was there and that I had called just a bit ago.

“And what is Symba’s problem?” The receptionist kindly asked. Consternation is such a mild term, but it described her expression as she looked at the pet carrier while I spoke.

“He’s hemorrhaging from the mouth and I think he’s been seizing.”

I didn’t have to wait; she took me to an examination room and called for a physician. They began examining Symba as I retold the sequence of events. When they went to weigh him, he seized again as he was being placed on the scale. They took Symba to another examination room where they sought to raise his body temperature and observe him. The doctor came back and we talked options. She explained that she believed that he was almost blind, that he saw motion, but it didn’t appear that he could clearly see forms. The size of his head and the shape of his skull suggested that the cancer was not just in his jaw, but very likely in his brain. There were tests if I wanted them done …

I had heard enough.

They brought Symba back to me. He was wrapped up in soft blankets to keep him warm. I held him in my arms and gently stroked the back of his head. I was left alone with him for a while. He responded affectionately to my petting, pushing his head against my hand as he always did. But one thing I noticed right away: he wasn’t purring.

After a few minutes the doctor returned and explained the procedure. I requested that I be allowed to hold him when it happened. They took Symba for just a few minutes to insert a catheter into his left foreleg, then returned him to my lap. First they sedated him. He quietly went limp in my arms. Then they injected him with propofol, the same drug that killed Michael Jackson.

I kept petting Symba as I told the vet about how I had Symba since he was a kitten, that he was rescued from the pound when he was 6 weeks old. I then handed Symba to her. Would I like to take his ashes home, she asked?

I shook my head. “Symba’s gone. That’s just a body.”

They did make a paw print, however, and gave that to me. A very cute Asian boy cleaned the blood out of his carrier for me. And then I drove back home to meet my brother and his wife. We later went out to eat dinner.

So why am I telling you all this? It’s not for sympathy. I guess it’s partly to get things out of my head in a thoughtful, cogent way. But it’s also to talk about kamma.

Yes, I created some kamma that day when I agreed to have Symba killed. You can call it euthanasia, “putting him down,” “putting him to sleep,” whatever pretty little name or phrase you like. It doesn’t change the fact that Symba is dead because I killed him. You can rationalize all you want, but Symba died at the moment that he did die because I authorized someone to kill him. You can say he was going to die anyway, but that can be said for all of us. We’re all going to die. In this case I deliberately and with forethought had Symba killed.

But here’s where I think many are wrong. Some may say that it was the compassionate thing to do. Perhaps. Some may say that by my doing this, I’ve interfered with Symba’s experiencing his own kamma. Maybe. I say the truth lies somewhere in the middle.

Symba’s kamma and my kamma are not isolated from one another. Just as the Buddha taught, kamma is not linear, but involves multiple feedback loops over time and even lifetimes. With the simile of the Salt Crystal the Buddha teaches us that even with very bad things that we’ve done, we have every succeeding moment to work through and eliminate the kamma we create.

But we don’t create kamma alone. My own kamma and Symba’s kamma were intertwined. We were both suffering. While one may say that to kill him would be interfering with Symba’s kamma, one may also say for me to allow “nature to run its course” could potentially interfere with my kamma. It’s simply not black and white.

No living creature wants to die. Even the tiniest spider will do all it can to preserve its life. Heck, even an amoeba will flee from pain. Which is why, when given the opportunity and even the advice to kill Symba earlier on as soon as cancer was even a possibility, I rejected the idea of killing Symba despite most advising it. If that’s really how we’re going to manage life, then my parents should have killed me when I was 2 years old and stricken with pneumonia. We’re all going to die anyway, right? Why go through all that suffering?

Symba didn’t need the power of speech to tell me he didn’t want to die. And it’s not difficult to conclude that I didn’t want to see him suffer any longer. What I wanted to avoid for both my own and Symba’s sake was turning this event into a matter of convenience.

Some may say my decision was still ultimately made around a notion of convenience. I do not disagree. Just remember, you weren’t there.

Symba: May 1, 1996 - Nov. 24, 2011

There’s a Little Wayman in all of us

What can a Jataka tale about a dullard novice whose brother attempts to expel him from the Buddha’s Sangha teach us about our own potential as gay practitioners? Quite a bit, it seems, as long as we persevere even when facing what seems to be the darkest of times and we allow ourselves to be guided by the calling that comes from within our own hearts rather than the admonitions and even shouts from the world around us.

This isn’t always easy, particularly when stories like this continue to occur.

The Buddha taught that how we live our present life will determine the condition and circumstances of our rebirth. The simplistic way of looking at this leads us to conclude that living a good, moral life will not only bring us happiness now, but also greater happiness in our next life. But kamma isn’t so simple, not so linear. And it’s easy for us as gay people to fall into a line of thinking that the fact we are born gay is a negative consequence for something we may have done in a previous life – that is if you accept the notion of rebirth. Not all Buddhists do.

In some instances within the Tipitika, the Buddha explicitly states that living a good life now will lead to a good or better next life, but these situations usually involve the laity and times when the Buddha crafted his teaching according to his audience. When one considers the entirety of the Tipitika, however, one sees that what the Buddha was more likely attempting to convey was that living a good moral life would bring one closer to Nibbana, to total release, with each successive rebirth, regardless of the specific circumstances one was born into each time.

Humans in general have many hang-ups regarding sex, so it stands to reason that many Buddhist teachers – even very well-respected teachers – have hang-ups not just about sex in general, but about homosexuals in particular. Many of these teachers suggest that being homosexual is a consequence of our previous lives, the results of kamma. I agree with this, but not the same way as these teachers suggest. This is because I don’t subscribe to a linear notion of kamma and rebirth, that not every successive existence is necessarily better than the last even when the prior existence was an exemplary life. And I offer the Cullaka-Setthi-Jātaka to explain this.

In this Jātaka tale, we have two brothers, Wayman and Little Wayman, who come from humble beginnings. The elder Wayman joins the Buddha’s Sangha and, finding the monastic life to be fulfilling, entices his younger brother to become a monk as well. But Little Wayman proves to be a dullard, unable to learn the teachings and fails to remember even the simplest of gathas. So Wayman takes it upon himself to expel his brother from the Sangha.

Being omniscient, the Buddha becomes aware of this and intercedes. There are some really wonderful passages in this story, but I don’t want to bog things down, so I will skip over many of the details. But the Buddha gives Little Wayman a clean cloth for the novice to wipe his face and head. When Little Wayman does this, he sees how the cloth becomes soiled and eventually comes to realize that it represents how he is removing the soil of his delusions and expelling them from his mind. This young novice was ready for this teaching and became an arahant. The Buddha explains to the others how this happened by revealing what he knows about Little Wayman’s previous lives.

In a previous life, Little Wayman was destitute and poor, but, as a young man then, he overheard a wealthy treasurer make a statement about taking an opportunity and profiting from it. That young man took that advice and within four months became extraordinarily wealthy. He returned to the wealthy treasurer (who was the Buddha in a previous life) who gave the young man a job and allowed him to marry his daughter. In this previous life, Little Wayman was no dullard, but a very apt pupil with the potential to realize great things as long as he persevered. But here’s an interesting twist.

Despite rising to be a wealthy merchant in that previous life, Little Wayman was re-born poor to parents of mixed parentage. His mother came from wealth, but she married a slave, bringing shame to her offspring. So Little Wayman was not reborn into steadily rising social circumstances; rather, he was reborn into circumstances that prepared him for his eventual enlightenment.

As homosexuals we aren’t reborn gay as a negative consequence for something that we did in a previous life. And heterosexuals aren’t reborn straight as a positive consequence. It just simply is. But the circumstance of our present life is the result of what has happened before and probably reflects our growing ability to “hear” the Dhamma with the right ears. We are where we are because of the path we took, regardless of whether we are conscious of how far we have traveled over the eons. Those who sit in a self-exalted state to proclaim they know why we were born gay are only revealing their stubborn clinging to delusion.

Little Wayman almost gave up because he believed his older brother who told him he failed. As a result, they both were about to fail by giving up not only on each other, but on themselves. The cycle of their rebirths, fortunately, brought the two of them to the Buddha who helped them see release despite their humble beginnings.

The photo with this post is not mine, and I want to express thanks for the permission to use it.

High Plains Dhamma

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Who’d of thought that a Clint Eastwood movie would provide an excellent medium for teaching and exemplifying Right Livelihood and the consequences of Wrong Livelihood? It was probably not Eastwood’s intention when he made “High Plains Drifter,” but while watching the movie last night it struck me as excellently portraying what happens when we even tangentially are associated with Wrong Livelihood.

Consider the story line.

Operators of a mining company contract the murder of law enforcement official who discovers the mine lacks the proper permit for being located on federal land. Those hired to commit the murder are later framed as thieves to be sent off to prison.

While the original murder was fashioned by those directly affiliated with the mining company, everyone else in the town silently accepts it because their livelihood is dependent on the town continuing to thrive. Everyone from the barber to the storekeeper and saloonkeeper, even the church minister know that if the mine is closed, the town disappears, and so does their own livelihood.

As a result, the townspeople are suspicious of everyone and of each other. They blame “the stranger” for causing them to turn against one another, but it is their own doing. They’ve created their own Hell, which is so aptly shown when “the stranger,” Clint Eastwood, has them paint the entire town red and he rename’s the town.

Even a “proper” job or profession can be an example of Wrong Livelihood if one knowingly and willingly allows his or her income stream to be connected with another’s Wrong Livelihood. Folks can escape this, however: this is also shown in the movie with the innkeeper’s wife realizing and voicing her own doubts and desire to remove herself from all connections with the town’s kamma. It’s not a painless extraction, but it can be done.

If you’ve never watched the movie, I urge you to do so. And even if you have, do it again, but this time with your Dhamma eyes watching.

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Buddhist Warfare, Chapter 1

In the song, “With God on Our Side,” Bob Dylan sings of how peoples and nations rationalize war against each other, that their aggression is necessary and justifiable because they have God on their side. This notion of having God on your side is an important concept when looking at the first essay in “Buddhist Warfare,” a piece written by Paul Demiéville titled “Buddhism and War.”

Demiéville correctly points out how the Dhamma has been rationalized throughout the centuries following the Buddha’s death. One of the simplest rationalizations, he notes, is that life is suffering and if killing ends life, then it also ends suffering. This rationalization, Demiéville shows us, is at the heart of many Mahayana traditions that largely developed in China where a militaristic culture already existed and which was ready to co-opt Buddhist doctrine to lend legitimacy to its politics (kind of sounds like the Republican Party in the U.S.).

The author points out how China, Japan, Korea and other parts of East Asia already had well-established warrior cultures that were largely supported by Confucian thought. The rulers and warlords adopted Buddhism to gain a military advantage, rationalizing and altering the teachings to show that their actions were right and good and their enemy’s actions were wrong and evil. At the same time, Buddhist monks were looking for political favoritism and weren’t shy about re-interpreting the Dharma to please their kings. Even the Buddha walked a delicate line regarding this issue (which is covered a bit more in the next article in the book).

During the first thousand years CE in China, for example, we see may Buddhist cults arise each with militaristic behaviors and practices led by charismatic monks who professed to have supernatural powers. This made these monks very attractive to the rulers and warlords who saw befriending and supporting such monks and their followers as politically astute.

However true this may be, I am troubled by the way Demiéville portrays these histories as being “Buddhist,” laying the groundwork for the assertion that Buddhism itself is at fault for the arising of these warlike doctrines. These histories are no more “Buddhist” than Cromwell’s attacks were “Puritan” or even “Christian,” despite the fact that religious beliefs and doctrines played a key role in Cromwell’s war mongering. Demiéville’s citing the rise of the Shaolin and other warrior monks is not evidence of “Buddhist violence,” but rather evidence of people who identify as Buddhist being violent.

Demiéville also makes a few really weak assertions by drawing connections so vague as to be rightly ridiculed with uncontrolled laughter. For example he writes: “We know that the Boxers who rose up against foreigners at the end of the nineteenth century, and besieged the Peking delegation in 1900, were part of a secret society with more or less Buddhist origins.” Italics are mine. When I read that, I was like, WTF?

What I really found interesting was Demiéville’s mentioning of Yi-hiuan, a ninth-Century Chinese monk who is credited with the ubiquitous phrase, “Kill the Buddha.” It was revealing enough that he would cite the founder of the Lin-tsi sect to lend credence to the concept that Buddhism inherently lends itself to the arising of violent doctrines; but what really caught my eye was all the attention this part of the book garnered on the Internet. When you Google “Yi-hiuan” the results are dominated by a review of “Buddhist Warfare” by Katherine Wharton. Her referencing this particular item in Demiéville’s article was in turned referenced multiple times by many others, including an article by Marin E. Marty in The Christian Post, whose comments also get reprinted all over the Web. Kyle at The Reformed Buddhist had plenty to say about Wharton’s review, thanking Barbara O’Brien for her dissection of Wharton’s review and sophomoric conclusions.

I found this discussion interesting because of how it reflects something the Buddha warned Ananda about just before his death. Ananda asks the Buddha who will lead the Sangha after the Buddha dies, to which the Buddha replies that there will be no successor because there is no position to be succeeded. He directs Ananda and the others to be “islands unto yourselves, refuges unto yourselves, seeking no external refuge…”

It is worth pointing out that transmission of the Buddha’s Dhamma was initially oral. The Buddha knew that writing down the Dhamma would present problems and he cautioned against those that would come in the future and change his teachings. And when things get written down, they can suddenly take on an undeserved credibility.

This seems to be what happened with Katherine Wharton’s review, which if you read it closely seems to suggest that the only part of “Buddhist Warfare” that she read was the chapter penned by Demiéville. Her words get picked up by others, such as Marty, and are spread about the Web and get read widely despite the suspect nature of her conclusions.

Even Demiéville shows how this happened with the development of Zen in Japan, which began as a very well-cultured and educated school of Buddhism that required strict discipline in the practice. These very traits were used by militaristic individuals, including Zen priests, to train soldiers in the correct use of weapons. This is cited as another example of the alleged warlike nature of Buddhist doctrine. These elements of Zen were in turn bifurcated into other schools and doctrines. Ryogen encouraged the preservation of the “real law,” or Mahayana, against the lesser counterfeit laws of the Lesser Vehicle, or Hinayana, that of the pratyeka-buddha, which he likened to be weed-like akin to underbrush that cannot rid itself. Nichiren advocated ignoring the precepts because if an action is protected by the Greater Vehicle, it was justified. Ergo, we see the development of the line of thought that killing and war can be justified as means to reach a higher, nobler end.

In the end, what Demiéville demonstrates are numerous fine examples of how individuals twisted the Dhamma to create their own lineage and to justify the elimination of enemies. These efforts were rewarded and protected by the rulers and the powerful of the times. But to use these examples to support the assertion that Buddhism condones violence, that it rationalizes violence, is in my opinion just plain wrong. Yes, there are “teachers” and those who founded new schools of Buddhism long after the Buddha’s death that advocate, condone and rationalize violent behavior, but to suggest that these new lineages are correctly interpreting the Buddha’s guidance on such matters is weak.

Yes Virginia there is right and wrong

Within Buddhist circles, you eventually hear someone say that there is no right and wrong, that these terms merely represent a dualistic form of thinking that creates imaginary categories that are empty.

On one level, I believe that to be true. On another level, I believe such talk is total nonsense. And it is this type of Wrong Thinking that in my view leads others to conclude that Buddhism is amoral.

There is right and wrong in Buddhism. In fact, the Buddha made a list to show us that there is right and wrong. He called this list The Noble Eightfold Path. Because in order to have Right View, you must abandon Wrong View; if you want to develop Right Intention, you must abandon Wrong Intention; if you want to develop Right Speech, you must abandon Wrong Speech; to develop Right Action, you must abandon Wrong Action; to engage in Right Livelihood, you must abandon Wrong Livelihood; to develop Right Effort, you must abandon Wrong Effort; to develop Right Mindfulness, you must avoid Wrong Mindfulness; and to achieve Right Concentration, you must abandon Wrong Concentration.

That’s the Buddha’s rap folks – there is Right and Wrong.

These items in The Noble Eightfold Path are further categorized by the Buddha pertaining to how an item in the path relates to one of the three basic elements of the Buddhist practice: Panna, or wisdom; Samadhi, or concentration; and Sila, or virtue. That’s right! Virtue is a key element of the Buddhist practice. It’s what following the Five Precepts is all about – developing virtue!

Where the confusion arises is in the way we Westerners tend to view these terms right and wrong. While these terms are synonymous with “correct” and “incorrect,” when speaking about human behavior, these terms are generally imbued with moralistic tones that derive from our shared monotheistic background. Something is morally right or morally wrong because an action is considered morally right by the assertion that it is a directive from a higher power or that it pleases a higher power, and if an action is contrary to that higher power’s directive or displeases that higher power, then that action is deemed morally wrong.

But that’s not the way these terms work in Buddhism. Whether an action or other phenomenon can be consider “right” or “wrong” is not determined by a third-party entity, but rather by the results created by that phenomenon. The phenomenon is “right” when it results in the alleviating one’s own suffering, the suffering of others, or one’s one suffering and the suffering of others. The phenomenon is wrong when it results in increased suffering for self, increased suffering for others, or increased suffering for both self and others. And yes, the Buddha also spoke of morally neutral actions, actions that neither alleviate nor cause suffering for self or others.

Results are not always just immediate. We can engage in actions that bring us the immediate result of diminishing our own suffering. But actions set in motion many things, and there may be later results that lead to us suffering more. So while an action may look “right” in the short term, that same action may later be revealed to be quite wrong.

It’s not that difficult to grasp. The Buddha taught his son Rahula this when the boy was just 7 years old. But again and again, discussions about morality veer way off into the very highest limbs and the remotest leaves of the tallest simsapa trees.

Now granted, it is important for us to understand why a wrong action is a wrong action. It’s important to understand why it’s wrong so that we can stop committing that action. But not understanding why something is wrong should never hinder us from stopping that action. And even if I never fully understand why something is wrong, if I’m convinced it is by other reasons, then I am doing something very skillful by ceasing that action. I will get good results regardless of whether I understand why a former action was wrong. And for many people, that’s good enough.

While Buddhism is pretty simple, it is also quite subtle. While a wrong action will often bring immediate or near term bad results, the Buddha taught a theory of karma that diverged significantly from the dominate theory in India at the time. Despite the fact we may commit a wrong act in the present, we have the opportunity to diminish its continual negative influence over time through engaging in Right Action. While the Buddha, for example, told soldiers that by developing proper mental attitudes during battle would reduce the karmic impact of their actions – killing people – he was quite clear that the soldiers would never escape those karmic consequences. With the simile of the salt crystal, the Buddha explains if we’re lucky enough and have enough time, we can correct and change future outcomes for previous bad acts. He says this also to Angulimala when he tells the former robber and murderer to quit his whining: by suffering now Angulimala can avoid the torment of eons in a hell realm.

This is why I have lately said that there is no moral right to do anything, but there are consequences for everything. We may feel that we “deserve” to react to someone or something in a particular way, and we may opt to follow on our impulse or belief. As Clint Eastwood classically said in “The Unforgiven,” “Deserves got nothing to do with it.”

But no matter how we rationalize our action later, no matter how vehemently we seek to justify our action, our action creates consequences, both short and long term. We could, for example, feel great at the moment, but later feel remorse and guilt for years. Do what you will, but you shall reap what you sow. You are where you are because you went there.

What matters more?

I’ve been visiting Boston and on Monday, I was hanging out in a Starbuck’s on Central Square drinking coffee and reading “Buddhist Warfare,” about which I will soon be blogging. I found a spot by the window and settled in to read and jot down notes. A few seats over was a young woman reading the Bible and jotting down notes as well.

She eventually initiated a conversation with me, asking whether I was “studying” Buddhism. She was interested in Buddhism and wanted to know more. I said that I was studying the book I had because I needed to know what was in it so that I could be fair in criticizing it.

“But, yes I am Buddhist,” I told her.

She appeared somewhat surprised and asked me how long I had been Buddhist and when I answered, she then asked what had brought me to Buddhism.

“Pain,” I replied. “Seeking a way to end suffering.”

She nodded and said, “I see.” She agreed there was a great deal of suffering in the world. I realized my response came off as a bit vague and esoteric, so I went on to say that “suffering” in the Buddhist sense covered a lot of territory, and included things like when we’re happy, it doesn’t last, or that we try to avoid feeling unhappy, we try to avoid people we don’t want to be around, etc. That, in short, life was a ride of sorts filled with ups and downs and in general was unsatisfactory. “We desire things and even when we get them, we want more, we’re never satisfied.”

That seemed to make a bit more sense to her, and she answered with how her faith – she identified as being Seventh Day Adventist (I think I threw her off as well when I said that I knew what a Seventh Day Adventist was because I had dated a man in the past that was one) – helped bring her hope, that the Bible stories filled her with awe and wonder. That was her remedy, it seemed, for suffering. So I asked her, “What if you avoid doing things that cause suffering or pain in others? Would your own suffering be lessened?”

A puzzled expression immediately occupied her face. “I’m not sure what you mean by that?” Well, I guess I’m not as clever as the Buddha, I thought. So I explained that the Buddha taught that we create most of our own suffering through our actions, often by adding to someone else’s suffering. So if we avoid doing things that bring suffering or pain to others, would that not in turn reduce our own pain and suffering? “If I go outside and call someone and awful name, that person might hit me, right? There are consequences to our actions.”

“Oh yes, there are consequences,” she said. “In fact, sinning brings us death.”

I knew where she was going with this, so I played dumb. “How does sin cause death?

She started flipping through her Bible and I could see she was in Romans (do I dare tell her I think Paul was a misogynistic kook?). She asked if she could read something to me, but I said why does she need to do that? I was very familiar with the Bible, having read several versions, everything from the King James to the NIV. “I’ve also read the Book of Mormon. Although I’m impressed that you’ve read some of the Koran because I am very ignorant of Islam.”

I could tell she was disappointed that I didn’t want her to recite the Bible to me. I said that I knew the passage she was looking up, that it was about “the wages of sin is death.”

“But what if I said to you that birth is the cause of death?” Again, that puzzled look. “Surely you can agree if one is never born, they will not die. So being born causes death. After all, there are people who do not sin, and yet they still die.”

“Hmm, there are people who do not sin but still die,” she murmured. “That’s interesting. Can you name some?”

“Sure, how about Jesus? And what about Mary? They were without sin, weren’t they?”

I’m surprised she didn’t bring up the notion of Original Sin. Instead, she asked whether I believed that Jesus had really lived. Of course, I said, I believed that he lived and he was an important teacher. That, in fact, there are parallels in what Jesus taught to what the Buddha taught. But I also believed that much of what Jesus said was manipulated by others for political reasons. “They needed someone like him, because they wanted to get the Romans out of Palestine.”

I also told her I had a great deal of respect for the Gospels, although the rest of the Bible I considered fantasy. Oh, but the Old Testament was filled with examples of prophesies coming true, she said. An old trick, I replied. Anyone can write a history hundreds of years after an event and make up connections and quotes to show that someone “saw it coming.”

I thought she would counter me with the belief that the Bible was written by God and therefore could not contain factual errors. Instead, that frown of confusion returned. She did in a round-about way ask whether I believed in God.

“It’s not important,” I said. “If I live a moral life and behave well toward others, I will ease my own suffering and the suffering of others, I will increase my happiness right now. And when I am about to die, I won’t fear death over things I might have done in the past, so my dying will be with ease. And if there is an afterlife, I can be assured of a pleasant afterlife because I behaved correctly right now. But believing in the afterlife won’t make it happen on its own. What matters is how I act right now, because that sets up what will happen to me next. So if there is an afterlife, I’m OK. And if there isn’t one, I’m still OK. I don’t need to believe in a heaven. I don’t need to believe in a God. What matters is what I do right now.”

Again, that pondering frown. I was prepared for a reply about facing the wrath of God if I was wrong about whether there was a god. Surely, I would say, her god was a bit more emotionally stable than a spoiled 4-year-old. Instead, she returned her focus to her mini laptop to look something up. The conversation was over. Just like that.

Later I began to wonder why she closed up. Had I created doubt within her about her own beliefs? No, I don’t think that was the case. My conclusion is more cynical. I believe she viewed me as a waste of time. Her interest from the start was more likely to evangelize, to convert me to her way of thinking. When she saw she would fail, she merely stopped engaging me. There was a time when she asked me what type of Buddhism did I follow; I told her the Thai Forest Tradition, or Theravada. She asked me to spell that and she did a Google search. Lord knows whatever she might find in her search results, but at least I can count on the Access To Insight website showing up in the top.

When I left Starbuck’s, I told her that I enjoyed our discussion and hoped the rest of her day went well. Our discussion was pleasant; whether I was skillful I’m not certain. But I always think that it’s a good thing when I don’t piss someone off and they don’t piss me off.

Silence = Death

Martin Niemöller was a German protestant pastor with balls. Niemöller is probably best remembered for the following quotation:

“First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out – because I was not a Socialist. Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out – because I was not a Trade Unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out – Because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me – and there was no one left to speak for me.”

Over time, the quote was embellished to include Jehovah’s Witness, Catholics, Communists, and homosexuals. Niemöller was late finding his balls, because during the rise of Nazism in Germany, he remained silent and eventually spent 7 years in a concentration camp. But his quote is instructive nonetheless to show how ignorance and persecution gains strength and influence when good people remain silent.

Eighteenth century Irish writer and historian Edmund Burke famously made two very prescient observations: First, “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” And second, “Among a people generally corrupt, liberty cannot long exist.”

Both Nathan at Dangerous Harvests and Kyle at The Reformed Buddhist have brought to light a bill under development in Arizona that seeks to ban the use of “foreign law” within the state under the penalty of impeachment. Among the usual suspects in the litany of “foreign law” is Sharia law. As if that wasn’t stupid enough, the bill also seeks to ban “karma.”

That’s right – they want to ban “karma” and anyone citing “karma” or allowing it to be introduced as a legal strategy could be impeached.

Who are these people? Do they really think that karma is a statute written on paper somewhere and that it has legal precedence in certain “foreign” courts? Karma is no more a statute than the “law” of gravity. The sheer ignorance of it all would be laughable if it wasn’t so fucking scary!

Then Arun at Angry Asian Buddhist, as well as John Pappas with an article at Elephant Journal, reveal how residents in Johnson County Kansas are seeking to block a Buddhist group from moving its temple because they fear animal sacrifices will go on there. I’m not kidding – animal sacrifices!

Again, the sheer ignorance of these people would be hilarious if it weren’t for the fact that they scare the shit out of me. That they believe or even think they can get away with lying that Buddhism includes animal sacrifices among its rituals is so astounding that I wonder if the end of the world really is coming soon. Because the tide is evident when you consider that the governor of Wisconsin is trying his damndest to gut the unions in that state and set back more than 100 years of labor law and advances that began in Wisconsin to the benefit of workers everywhere in the country.

I’m all ears. Someone guide me on what to do. Who do I need to send a letter to? Who do I email?

Silence = Death.

Gradients of kamma

The other night at dinner a friend of mine was asking me about kamma, which led to me explaining that kamma was often misrepresented even by those who call him or herself Buddhist. People tend to think of kamma as the result of an action. For example, “Don’t do that, it will bring you bad karma.”

I tend to use the Pali term kamma rather than the Sanskrit term karma because my Buddhist education is grounded in the Thai Forest Tradition. Either term will work, however.

Anyway, I told my friend that kamma isn’t created by the action, but rather the intention behind the action. One creates kamma via his or her intentions. He then asked me about light and dark kamma, and that’s when I had to admit ignorance. I had an idea of how to explain bright and dark kamma, but I didn’t want to misstate something. So I told my friend I would study the matter first.

The best expression of what bright and dark kamma is can be found in the Anguttara Nikaya. The particular passage can be found in Thanissaro Bhikkhu’s Beyond Coping in the section on Heedfulness. And while not dealing specifically with the concepts of bright and dark kamma, the story of Angulimala also provides some excellent insights into the workings of kamma.

In the Anguttara Nikaya, the Buddha lays out four types of kamma: “There is kamma that is dark with dark result; kamma that is bright with bright result; kamma that is dark & bright with dark & bright result; and kamma that is neither dark nor bright with neither dark nor bright result, leading to the ending of kamma.”

As the Buddha explains each of these four types of kamma, it’s important to note the language used. “And what is kamma that is dark with dark result? There is the case where a certain person fabricates an injurious bodily fabrication...” The Buddha uses the phrase, “a certain person fabricates…” The concept of fabrications is pretty important in Buddhism; trouble is most people have the wrong idea of what it means.

Many people think that when something is a “fabrication,” it means that object or construct is not real, that it doesn’t exist at all. In my view, that’s not at all what the Buddha means when he talks about fabrications. On one level, fabrications are not real in and of themselves, but the object or event to which we attach the fabrication is real. In the Buddhist sense, a fabrication is merely a mental construct created by our mind to give some object or event a characteristic that we wrongly view as permanent. Think of it like the line Juliet speaks when thinking of Romeo's family name: “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”

A rose is a rose no matter what we call it. As a collection of matter, a rose simply is. The name “rose” is the mental fabrication we create to ascribe to a plant that has certain physical characteristics. Go to a different country where a different language is spoken and the mental construct has a different pronunciation, but the rose is still a rose.

When the Buddha describes kamma, it is associated with the mental fabrication associated with the intent to commit an act of either speech, body, or mind. So in the case of dark kamma, that fabrication begins with wrong intent, with an intent to cause harm. The consequences that manifest after an intention of dark kamma are the results of kamma, the fruits of kamma, not the kamma itself. Bright kamma, hence, begins with a fabrication that causes no harm. Hence, the fruits of bright kamma are pleasant.

We often get confused when we seem to get mixed results from our actions because we think we have a good intention. This is what the Buddha refers to as kamma that is both bright and dark. As Thanissaro Bhikkhu explains here, we may think we have good intentions, but if we really examine our intentions, they are often unclear and confused; hence the outcomes of our actions bring us confusing or mixed results. This happens a lot in interpersonal relationships, particularly among we moes.

Remember the film “The Broken Hearts Club” and how Dennis befriended the cute newby Kevin (oh god, Kevin was such a darling!)? Dennis clearly had the hots for Kevin, but he wanted to appear more virtuous than the callous Cole, so Dennis concocts this idea that Kevin needs a true friend when Dennis’ real intention is to get Kevin in bed. All of Dennis’ friends see this for how it really is, but Dennis chooses to believe in his false intention. While the outcome is not completely messed up, the results definitely are mixed.

Most of our lives are filled with this combination of bright and dark kamma because for most of us, we really don’t understand our real intentions, either intentionally or because we just never really took a close look at our actions and the motivations behind them.

This is why we meditate. To stop the chatter in our minds so that we can see the truth behind all our thoughts, words and deeds.

Angulimala ran into this problem even after the Buddha accepted him into the sangha. At first, Angulimala couldn’t get anyone to offer him food during his alms rounds because he remained feared and despised for all of his past murderous actions. Even after the Buddha set up an act of truth to show others Angulimala’s new noble birth and he became accepted by more villagers, there remained a group who refused to believe that Angulimala was nothing more than a murderous monster. Whenever he went for alms, these holdouts threw rocks and sticks at him. One time he comes to the Buddha, his head bleeding, to show the Buddha what had happened. The Buddha tells Angulimala to buck up and endure this because he is lucky to be suffering this torment now as the continuing fruits of his past actions rather than to suffer those consequences by spending eons in a hell realm.

The final type of kamma is what the Buddha describes as being neither dark nor bright. This is when we abandon all kamma and we are free of any other intention other than to liberate ourselves from the cycle of birth and death. I haven’t a clue as to what that must be like. My days are still mixed with brightness and darkness, a muddle of intentions that I am barely able to discern.

Why couldn’t I help you Lance?

I would not normally write about and identify any of the children I used to work with, but in Lance’s case I’m going to make an exception, because, you see, Lance is dead.

The details are hazy as it happened many years ago, but as I recall, Lance took a pistol and shot himself in the head. I think he was 15 at the time. The specifics are immaterial, and when one doesn’t know all the facts, the facts become mixed with rumor until truth can no longer be separated from fiction.

All that matters for now is Lance is dead. And while it remains speculation, I have a pretty good idea as to why.

Lance was a handsome, energetic, athletic and mischievous boy from Texas. His smile was infectious. He honestly tried to please others, but like many boys his age diagnosed with ADD, his mouth and actions often got ahead of his brain, leading him to say and do things he quickly regretted.

He was a student at the private boarding school where I worked as a cabin counselor. The school, up in the mountains of Northern New Mexico, was for teens diagnosed with learning disabilities. It was a beautiful natural setting that offered tremendous opportunities for outdoor activities in the surrounding national forest. I took students on many hikes and backpack trips into the mountains there and not just for recreation. I’ve always believed that the wilderness is an effective teacher of many things; it will humble the most arrogant teen and in the flash of a moment, will show you death for what it really is.

I liked Lance. I remember on a hike one day up the steep slope of a ridge by the school, we encountered a rock outcropping that was about 12 feet high. You could walk around it, but it was an excellent opportunity to do a little free climbing without any serious risk. I was amazed at Lance’s agility as he easily climbed up the rock face, finding the right handholds and swinging his body up to another tiny ledge where he paused briefly horizontal to the ground before using his wiry strength to pull himself to the top of the outcropping.

It really was a beautiful and awe-inspiring site.

Later in the year there was hushed talk about an incident between Lance and another boy in his cabin. Lance’s normally bright demeanor was subdued and gloomy. The once loquacious boy had become taciturn and morose. I was just 24 years old at the time, struggling with my own sexuality. Intuitively, I sensed a similar struggle within Lance. So I took a risk.

Lance’s cabin counselor agreed to let Lance come over to my cabin after lights out to chat. Talk about an uncomfortable meeting. I let Lance know I knew what occurred between him and the other boy. I also let him know I wasn’t going to tell him that there was something wrong with him. Rather, I wanted to find out what he thought about the situation. How was he going to deal with it? What happened, I said, didn’t mean he was gay. But the incident wasn’t going to go away.

There was one other time I approached another boy, also from another cabin and at the request of his counselor. (Was it that obvious to others? “Send the kid to Rich, he knows how to deal with that kind of thing.”) In that situation, I made an obvious mistake. The boy’s reaction to my inquiries, despite how oblique they were, clearly let me know I was making a mistake.

With Lance, however, I believed I was right. He gave me the non-denial denial, never clearly denying what others were saying had happened, nor clearly denying that he had sexual feelings for other boys. But he remained closed up. Never had I seen someone suppress their tears so effectively. He wanted to tell me something, but he couldn’t bring himself to say it. I told him that anytime he needed to talk about anything, I would be there.

That was late in the school year. Lance brightened up a bit and finished the year on a good note. He opted to return to public school the following fall, so he did not come back to our school.

About six weeks into the next school year, I was doing something in the office when someone grabbed me and said, “Hey, Lance is on the phone, he just called and asked if you were there.” At the time, I thought it was odd for Lance to call like that. But I shrugged it off. I took the phone and asked Lance how things were going at his new school. Not so well, he said. He was calling from home, he had just been suspended. His parents weren’t home yet. He was worried how they might react.

I think I asked Lance what had happened at school to get him suspended, but I can’t remember whether he again evaded my question or gave me an answer. I remember telling him he would get through this. And I remember telling him thanks for calling and asking for me. I told him I liked him, he was a good kid.

A week later I heard the news. Lance had shot himself dead. He did it on the same day that he called the school. He must have shot himself shortly after the phone call.

Long pause because I’m crying right now.

I don’t blame myself for what happened to Lance. But goddamnit, what a fucked up situation that was. It was the 1980s when everything said about gays had AIDS connected to it. I was in my 20s, confused about my own sexuality trying to talk to a 14-year-old who was just as confused. I was deathly afraid of anyone finding out. My position at the school would be ruined. Even though I had never done anything in the least inappropriate with any of the boys at that school – and while I worked there I had personal knowledge of at least three other counselors who had sex with students, two involving male counselors with female students and the third a male counselor with a male student (and there are a couple other instances that while I didn’t have personal knowledge, I have strong evidence, a lot can happen in five years) – I knew that if someone were even suspicious of me being gay my life would be ruined. Or at least, that’s how I thought.

Lance must have been thinking the same way.

So much suffering, and what the fuck for?

Much of this came to me during my morning meditation today. Normally when I finish meditating, I always recite the Loving Kindness chant. But today, I just couldn’t get through it. Not only couldn’t I remember the verses in the right order, I was weeping as I tried to say them. And when I went through the Five Remembrances, I was struck by the last line.

“I am the owner of my Kamma, made of my Kamma, born of my Kamma, related to my Kamma, abide supported in my Kamma. Whatever Kamma I create, wholesome or unwholesome, light or dark, skillful or unskillful, to that I fall heir.”

It’s the part “… related to my Kamma, abide supported in my Kamma …” I asked my original teacher long ago what that meant. He said that being related to your Kamma literally means my relatives are manifestations of my Kamma, and the last part had to do with all my personal relationships. My friends, the jobs I had and the co-workers I have, that also is my Kamma. And as we continue to create more Kamma with our present actions, we constantly create for ourselves situations and relationships that allow us opportunity to undo past Kamma.

When you look at Kamma this way, you see how we are all in our own personal version of Bill Murray’s “Groundhog Day.” This endless cycle of rebirth plays on and on until we get it right, until we stop making Kamma and find release.

There are a lot of us in this world who behave like oxen, dragging a wagon full of woes behind us. And instead of unhitching ourselves from these carts, we spend our time throwing more shit onto someone else’s wagon. We protect our own wagons, having become fond of our woes, rather than abandoning them. I do the same thing. I want to stop. I want to help others stop.

I don’t know how to finish this post, so I’m just going to stop.

Teach your children well

A former colleague recently asked me to come up with an outline of how to teach the Four Noble Truths to children ages 4 to 14. It was going to be part of a presentation at his Unitarian Universalist congregation. I did a quick search for some online material, but was surprised at how scant the resources were when it came to teaching kids about Buddhism.

A monk once told me that in many Thai families, for example, the first thing parents teach their children is how to hold their hands when bowing. Then the parents move on to teaching the correct way to do the three bows before a Buddha image. Do they teach these prostrations and gestures because they are part of the rites and rituals of Buddhism?

Not really. While that does play a part, doing the bows and holding your hands correctly takes concentration. It requires that you pay attention to what you are doing. And rather than teach a very young child something as esoteric as cause and effect, Thai parents teach their children how to concentrate so they can do something correctly. Concentration is, after all, one of the three legs of Buddhism: Concentration, morality, wisdom.

I know there are others who despite their own Buddhist practice refuse to “indoctrinate” their children. Frankly, I find this attitude a bit self-serving. For most of us Buddhist converts, we came to Buddhism because we rejected our (most likely) Christian upbringing. The reason goes, I suppose, is that our children can “find” their own way just as we had. But this, to me, is a very flawed way of thinking.

For example, let’s consider all the people who accepted their Christian upbringing and continue practicing a Christian faith. Likely they did so because as children, their parents made sure they attended church, probably attended religion classes also because to truly know one’s faith, one ought to study its texts. And these children participated in many Christian rituals, no doubt – everything from saying grace at the dinner table to participating in activities at the church where the family attended.

The children accepted this and continued to hold on to their “religion” into adulthood.

We converts were undoubtedly raised this way as well, but along the way we began to question the doctrines and the practices. Supplied with unsatisfactory answers, we sought something else. For many of us, it was Buddhism. Now, ask yourself this: would you have found Buddhism if initially you hadn’t felt satisfied with your Christian upbringing? If you hadn’t been exposed to Christian practices within your family, would you have likely searched for something else? Maybe, maybe not.

The point I’m trying to make is that your childhood exposure to one religion prompted you to search for something else. However, let us not forget that a much larger group of people raised in similar circumstances found comfort and peace in the same religious practice as their parents and never developed a need to search elsewhere.

Yet, for some Buddhist converts, there is this odd desire to deny their children this same opportunity. Why not teach your child about Buddhism? Why not “indoctrinate” them? Teach and let go. If they accept your guidance, then they will be happy. And if they are unsatisfied, they will search for something else, just as you had. And maybe they will join an evangelical Christian church and be happy. Isn’t that what we want for our children, for them to be happy?

Some of you refuse to “force” your children to learn Buddhism and develop a practice because you don’t want to be like your parents who “forced” you to practice Christianity. But teaching your children Dhamma doesn’t need to be a “forced” activity.

The Buddha used the very common image of a mirror to teach his son Rahula when the boy was just 8 how important reflecting on our actions is to our welfare. Paying attention to what we do is critical to our Buddhist practice. And there are many ways to teach that to our children without “forcing” a doctrine on them. If you teach your children the cause and effect relationship between their actions and the outcomes those actions create, then you’re teaching them Buddhism.

One of the Five Recollections is: I am the owner of my kamma, born of my kamma, made of my kamma, related to my kamma, abide supported in my kamma…” Being related to your kamma is literally just that: your children are representations of the fruits of your kamma. They’re your children for a reason. Contemplate that during your next meditation session and see what bubbles up in your mind.

Anyway, below is what I came up with after finding this site. It’s very basic, but it’s a start. Feedback is welcomed.

Four Noble Truths for children

1. We aren’t happy all the time; there are times when we are sad, angry, frightened, or lonely.
2. We feel sad, angry, frightened or lonely mostly because we can’t get what we want, or we’re told to do something we don’t want to.
3. It’s our fault that we feel this way, and we can stop it when we learn how to want the right things.
4. The Buddha gave us Eight things to remember to help us learn how to want the right things and accept that life doesn’t always go the way we want it to.

The Buddha’s Noble Eightfold Path essentially tells us there are right ways to do things and wrong ways. Doing the right thing is much more than being moral. Doing the right thing brings us a happiness that causes us to feel at ease, unworried and unafraid of what may happen next. It’s a happiness that doesn’t go away. The Buddha compared this type of happiness to a person’s shadow: it’s always following you but you can’t tell it’s there unless you look at it.

Doing things the wrong way is what brings us those feelings we don’t like. If we say mean things, we’re going to make someone else angry, and what do most people do to someone who has made them angry? They get even, they do something to harm the other person. So it starts with us. We create our unhappiness, and this can cause us to feel hopeless, like we’re stuck dragging a heavy weight all the time. The Buddha described how our wrong actions create burdens by using a simile of an ox dragging a cart. The cart is heavy and burdensome. It’s as if with each wrong action we take, we are tossing another heavy rock into a wagon we are tugging along behind us. If we’d just stop putting heavy rocks in the wagon, it would be easier to pull.