When will it end?

Bob Dylan had a million great lines within the lyrics to his songs and unfortunately, one of those lines is all too perfect for the moment.

“And how many deaths will it take till we know that too many people have died?”

That comes from “Blowing in the Wind,” and it came to mind when I learned yesterday that, again, another gay teen took his life.

Kenneth Weishuhn was a 14-year-old from northwest Iowa who dreamed of being married one day to another boy.

It seems that about two weeks ago, Kenneth, who was very well-liked at his school, decided to come out to his friends. They must not have been very good friends because after telling them he was gay, Kenneth became their target of ridicule and hurt.

Kenneth lasted one week and then he killed himself.

Once the news spread, complete strangers have been flocking to Kenneth’s Pinterest page to leave heart-felt words.

The list is getting too damn long. And that’s just the list of those who make the news. The It Gets Better Project is a great response to help these teens wrestling with hatred and despair – there’s even a new one produced by gay Mormon students who attend BYU – but I can’t help but notice the irony that at least two videos in the project were made by teens who later killed themselves. That has to be a huge weight on these teens. And I thought I was carrying an unbearable burden when I was a teen. Or maybe I just found a way to carry it.

Buddhism tells us we are the owner of our feelings, but that’s really difficult to understand and accept when the bad feeling you have is connected directly to others who relentlessly and gleefully taunt you, then hunt you down to taunt you some more. What can make it easier is having others around you that can support you, even protect you. And yet, Kenneth thought he had friends like that. That’s why he came out to them.

I’m kind of rambling right now.

How many deaths does it take? I bet at least one more.

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.

Gaining momentum

This really doesn’t have a lot to do with Buddhism, but it has everything to do with compassion. This is a long video, but it is worth watching all the way through. And when you’re done, share it.

ItGetsBetter

To all the homophobes, the bullies, and those who hide behind a religious dogma that they really don't understand - to you I say you are irrelevant.

“How did you do that?”

Kyle at The Reformed Buddhist has a very lucid and compassionate post that shares some of his thoughts and observations about the recent attention being paid to bullying and youth suicide. He has bravely shared bits from his own past, speaking about his experiences as being an adult victim of child abuse. It takes guts to do that in the public and anonymous domain of the Internet. And he’s done that without turning his narrative into a self-pitying plea for sympathy.

It’s been a crazy week or so. My own heart aches over the needless loss of life because too many young people see no other alternative but to end their life. There was Tyler Clementi, the Rutgers freshman who jumped from the George Washington Bridge because an encounter he had with another man in his dorm room was surreptitiously broadcast live on the Internet by his roommate and another; Asher Brown, a 13-year-old who shot himself in the head, driven to despair by constant torment over being both Buddhist and gay; Seth Walsh, also 13, another young boy who recently came out as gay and who also endured constant teasing until he went to his backyard where he hanged himself; Raymond Chase, an openly gay sophomore at Johnson and Wales University who hanged himself in his dorm room, although the precise reason why remains unclear; Billy Lucas, an Indiana 15-year-old who hanged himself after classmates said he had been bullied for years over being gay.

There are many others that remain anonymous because their torment wasn’t newsworthy. Because, you see, this is nothing new for gays. This has been going on since the Middle Ages when gay men and lesbians were burned at the stake, the fires stoked with sticks that were identified with the term “faggot,” a word to this day that is used to demean and injure gay men in particular.

It is also not new for us homosexuals that suicide among gay teens is more common than among any other group. Gay teens are more than twice as likely to report being bullied than straight teens. This is already well-known among us. Being a teenager is hard enough as it is, but for many gays life is a nightmare that can at times appear to have no end in sight.

As Buddhists, we recognize that life is filled with suffering. Clearly, the five boys I identified above were suffering. And unsurprisingly, most of us react not just with sorrow, but with anger – anger toward the ignorant bullies that drove these boys, and others, to such desperate ends. But anger is delusion and leads us to forget that the bullies suffer too.

Yes, bullies are in pain too. They experience fear and delusion like all of us. And for the bully, aggression toward others is a simplistic palliative to ease that pain: “I don’t want to be alone in my hurt, so let me share it with you.”

In the Danda Sutta, “The Stick” (Ud 2.3), the Buddha encounters a group of boys who are beating a snake with a stick. Upon seeing this, the Buddha uttered the following gatha:

Whoever takes a stick
to beings desiring ease,
when he himself is looking for ease,
will meet with no ease after death.


Whoever doesn't take a stick
to beings desiring ease,
when he himself is looking for ease,
will meet with ease after death.

Bullying is a part of a cycle that is carried on from one to another. It may be from parent to child, but it can simply be from one child to another unrelated child. When we are targeted by this bullying, or see it occur with others, anger is a common response. But anger is delusion; a mind consumed with anger is a mind possessed with madness. If we take but a moment and let the initial anger pass, better solutions come to mind.

In the Kumaraka Sutta, “The Boys” (Ud 5.4), the Buddha questions a group of boys who are fishing. He asks the boys if they fear pain. “Yes, lord, we fear pain. We dislike pain,” they answer. To this, the Buddha replies with:

If you fear pain,
if you dislike pain,
don't do an evil deed
in open or secret.
If you're doing or will do
an evil deed,
you won't escape pain:
           it will catch you
           even as you run away.

If we are to have compassion for the bullied, we must have compassion for the bully as well. Admittedly, this is no easy task. But moments do arrive.

When I was in eighth grade, I endured bullying like many others. Being tripped in the hallway, called names, threatened – it was so common that I just shut it out. I also became very gregarious, making friendships with all types of people so that I was in good with the nerds, the jocks, the dopers, the straight-A students, and even the delinquents. This was my method of self-preservation – be friends with everyone. That’s another story.

Anyway, there was a girl a year older than me who was one of my true friends. She was a girl-friend, not a girlfriend. She and I were in the hallway after school by her locker when Billy Babcock walked up to us. Billy Babcock was a well-known bully at the school. He harassed and intimidated other kids constantly, his knuckle-headed minions giggling at his atrocious acts, giving him the praise he desired and which kept them safe from Billy turning against them. The girl and I were both nervous, but Billy was alone, so he had no audience.

“You two guys are friends, aren’t you?” Billy asked us. We both sheepishly said yes.

“How did you do that?” I looked at Vicki, confusion covering my face, as she looked back at me with the same expression.

“Do what?” Vicki asked.

“How did you become friends like that? I see the two of you together a lot. I know you’re not boy-girl-friend, but you are friends.”

Vicki and I sighed with relief, then she answered because, frankly, I was struck dumb. I didn’t know what to say. Here was an opportunity to share healing with someone who hurt, and I failed to meet the moment. She merely said that we enjoy doing things together that are fun and make us feel happy without bothering anyone else.

Billy stood silently there for a moment, mulling over her words. He then nodded, said thanks, and walked away. Billy never bothered either one of us again.

I am human, and like others, I initially responded with anger when I heard and read about the recent news. And I mean really angry. But my anger is no longer like a line drawn on stone, a line that can take years to be erased. It is somewhere between being a line drawn in sand and a line being drawn in water. We all suffer, even the bullies. Every day, I am given a chance to help lessen that suffering. And every day, I strive to be aware of these opportunities.

It’s not easy. But it is essential.

Addendum. I thought this Violent Femmes video was appropriate. Besides, it's a kick ass song.

ViolentFemmes