Bid adieu to your ennui

It has been months since I posted something, and even before that last post, my contributions to this blog have been sporadic. And to some extent, uninspired. There was something creeping into my life. It's called ennui.

I knew it was there, but last night as I walked through Boys Town feeling morose and unwanted (I was totally channeling Linda Ronstadt), I overheard a couple gay boys at least half my age chatting behind me: "We're celebrating our six-year anniversary," said one.

Bitch.

Then I read a message from someone I've been texting with and whom I was planning to meet in a couple weeks: "I hope you aren't expecting anything more than conversation when we meet."

Double bitch.

And this all leads me to recall a conversation I had earlier in the evening. I was dining at a vegan restaurant in Old Town with a colleague from work. She and I had a wonderful time: the food was excellent, I brought a fabulous wine to share, and our conversation was bright and happy and thrilling. Being the social media fanatics she and I are, we both checked in on FourSquare and we got a special - free desert.

When dinner was over and we examined the desert menu, I suggested the blueberry cheesecake because I thought the blueberries would go well with the remaining wine. My mind was totally in the realm of cheesecake and all that word means to me. So when the cheesecake was delivered to our table, its appearance immediately struck me as odd. And when I tasted it, the texture was not at all what I expected.

I was disappointed. I said as much, noting that it was good, but it was not what I expected at all. My friend gently reminded me that we were dining in a vegan restaurant, so traditional cheesecake would not be served. I said to her, "You know, it's funny how it is most often our expectations about something that create our disappointment, not the thing itself. This cheesecake is really quite fine, but because I had expected something creamy and smooth and decidedly not vegan, I was unhappy."

Yes, our expectations. Not the thing itself. This is so basic Four Noble Truths kind of stuff that I feel like I should cancel my subscription to the Dhamma and quickly find a bed of nails to lie on. It's just as my friend Curt recently said: "We've got to get you out of this rut you're in, Richard."

And that word "rut" was so apropos. I had been in both a mental and sexual rut, honing in on deliciously young men whom I was successfully converting into a series of trysts. It was making me feel adequate because look at me! I'm a 54-year-old man and see this cute 20-something with me? But the trouble has been most 20-somethings aren't ready to settle down into anything long-term; they want to play just as much as I do. And the ones that say they do want something long term, well, have you ever tried having a conversation with someone who is less than half your age? I often can't even find any musical interests that we share in common.

So there it is - ennui staring me in the face. And it's because I've been spending a lot of time on the outside of me. I've been kicking my ass in a good way at the gym, losing weight and toning up. I've started attending a yoga class that has really helped my flexibility and my overall sense of health. And while I have been chanting and meditating, it's not as regular as I feel it should be. And frankly, I haven't read any Dhamma since ...

My friend Curt is right. I need to find a way out of this rut of endlessly pursuing younger men with whom I have nothing in common other than an overactive libido. Because that day will come when I no longer got it going on. Maybe it's because of my stroke earlier in the year. You'd never know just by looking at me that I had one. But there may be a thought nugget inside my mind that is telling me to live it up as much as I can because I may not be so lucky with the next one. It's as though I'm Jack Nicholson in "Five Easy Pieces" when he attempts to reconcile his relationship with his father who's been incapacitated by a devastating stroke.

So there it is. There it is, really, for all of us. Because in some manner, we are all creating our own disappointment with everything, our own dissatisfaction, and we're doing it via our expectations.

Ching chong, it means I love you

My life has recently been filed with violence and the rationalizations for it – er, well in a rhetorical sense. I have been bemused by many of my fellow Buddhist friends who believe that one can act aggressively if one does so out of compassion. At least they recognize there will be consequences for such action and there are actions to take to mitigate the karma created.

But I’ve also been reading an anthology of articles that examine how Buddhism carries and Buddhists practice a violent doctrine. It completely befuddles me that there are some who believe in “compassionate retaliation.” Intervening to stop violence or aggression is one thing, but engaging an aggressor on equal terms is simply more violence. That’s my view. If you truly have compassion, you would be unable to respond with aggression, no matter what the outcome.

I began to wonder if my point of view was just a bunch of Pollyannish hokum until I heard an interview with Jimmy Wong on NPR, and then saw a video of him being interviewed on MSNBC. The MSNBC video is below.

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This bright young man realized that his initial response to the “Asians in the Library” video was infused with anger. So he waited to craft his clever song, which has become a viral hit just as much as the offending video that started it all.

I guess my point is retaliation doesn’t change anything. All it does is make us feel better for the moment. So maybe a bullied person finally gets fed up and retaliates. The bully stops bullying that person. But did punching out the bully change the bully? Will the bully stop bullying others? Not likely. All the aggressive response did was make the bullied person feel better. And a person who in the past would not act violently suddenly has. An unskillful condition that did not exist now exists. Remember the Four Right Efforts?

For me, it recalls the opening scene from the Daniel Craig version of “Casino Royale.” You know, when the bad guy tells Bond that killing a person gets easier the second time, and Bond replies, “Yes, considerably.”

Here is the original “Asians in the Library” video that created the stir.

AsiansInTheLibrary

And here is Jimmy Wong’s reply.

JimmyWong

Thank you Jimmy for a wonderful video and a wonderful song. And gawd, is he ever cute!

What is love?

Love is a tricky – and sticky – emotion that does everything from creating bliss to confusion and even anger. And when we lose love, the sorrow can be overwhelming. It is one of the sources of dukkha that the Buddha talked about: we fear separation from the beloved.

From the Sammaditthi Sutta:

“And what is stress? Birth is stressful, aging is stressful, death is stressful; sorrow, lamentation, pain, distress, & despair are stressful; not getting what one wants is stressful. In short, the five clinging-aggregates are stressful. This is called stress.”

And from the Maha-parinibbana Sutta:

“Yet, Ananda, have I not taught from the very beginning that with all that is dear and beloved there must be change, separation, and severance?”

The entire Piyajatika Sutta is about this, describing how it is the people we love and care about that are the primary source of our sorrow because any change in them, their loss, or even just the thought of losing them, causes distress.

I have been reading the Lotus Sutra, which has a really quite amazing chapter in it regarding love called “Belief and Understanding,” also known as the “Parable of the Destitute Son.”

The Cliff Notes version of this chapter is a wealthy man loses his son while his son is still a very young man. The son abandons the family to wander about, eventually running out of luck to wind up living destitute. The father gave up searching for him and settled in a town where the father became enormously successful in business – so successful that even the heads of government paid homage to him. Fifty years after his son disappears, the son returns, although he cannot remember who his father is or what he looks like. He sees this rich man and thinks he’d better leave or someone might think he’s trying to steal something. The son attempts to sneak away, but his father sees him and recognizes him. He sends out servants to stop his son, but the son becomes so frightened, thinking that he’s being accused of stealing, that he passes out from fear.

The father realizes that his son has lived for so long away from home, and has lived such a hard life, that the son would never believe that he was heir to this rich man. So when the son wakens, the father tells him he is free to go. This overwhelms the son with joy, that he isn’t going to be imprisoned and falsely accused. The father then sets out to slowly express his love, first by showing the son compassion, offering him a menial job of sweeping dung, providing him with very basic housing. Over time, the son comes to trust and respect his father, but refuses to come live within the household, staying instead in his tiny hut. But after 20 years, the son’s responsibilities have been elevated to the point that he is then tasked with taking an accounting of his father’s wealth without any supervision. The son honors the task and takes an honest accounting, not stealing anything. Then just before the father dies, he reveals to everyone that this ragged man is in fact his son and shall inherit all his wealth. At this time, the son is ready to recognize his true father and accept the love that he’s offered him all along.

This is a really powerful parable for me because it shows so well how someone with such deep love for another can have the resolve and the patience to express it, to do so without pressure, without clinging, by leaving the object of that love – the man’s son in this case – completely free. It is very difficult to love someone in this manner, but it is the only true way to love someone.

I would like to thank my friend Jimmy Huang for the image posted with this blog. He has an amazing eye for photography and he has graciously granted me permission to use his photos from time to time.