Represent

Over the past ten years I've read a lot about Buddhism. I've studied it and met lots of people who practice it. I've noticed something about those people, and it's something that's always confused me. A high percentage of them don't identify themselves as Buddhists.

Many people drawn to Buddhism fancy themselves nonconformists. They've rejected their birth religion and gone in search of something better. They've spurned the embrace of a capitalist society in favor of spirituality. They're not going to believe something just because someone told them it was true (unless that person is Asian). They're open-minded free-thinkers, goddammit, and they refuse to label themselves, to limit themselves to one idea or philosophy. So when they discover Buddhism, and think it has all the answers they're looking for (plus it's so damn Asian), they don't like to be called Buddhists. They may practice its tenets and follow the Buddha's teachings, but they don't want to be pigeonholed.

This is, of course, ridiculous. It's part of the specious notion that by labelling something, you impose all the limits of that label. If someone is a Republican, or a hippie, or a punk, or a Catholic, then that defines them. Not only does it define them, but it implies that they'll never be anything outside of that, never be anything MORE than that word. Once you accept what society and others want to call you, then you're doomed to live in that little niche forever.

What an incredibly short-sighted view, and one that does more harm than the problem it thinks it's solving. People are always going to think of other people in certain ways. It doesn't matter what you call yourself or don't call yourself, those around you will always identify, label, limit and shelve you in their minds. It's damn near unconscious. And, for the most part, it doesn't fucking matter. None of that changes what you are, or what you can become.

I spent a few months at a Buddhist meditation center in Vermont some years ago. It was packed with people practicing one very specific path of Tibetan Buddhism. They meditated every day, they said weird little prayers before they ate, they had secret rituals for the higher ranking members, there were specific rooms dedicated to specific deity practices: in short, they behaved exactly like Tibetan Buddhists the world over. Why, then, were so many of them reluctant to claim they were Buddhists?

I remember one girl in particular. She used Buddhist Sanskrit words in casual conversation. She was very concerned with her suffering and how to end it (which is the ONLY thing that the Buddha taught). She'd been to lots of Buddhist meditation retreats. Yet she adamantly refused to call herself a Buddhist. "I'm a meditator," she'd reply when pressed. Yet there are many different types of meditation, and she was most certainly a Buddhist meditator.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with looking at something that walks, swims and quacks like a duck and saying, "Dude, check out that duck." Your words have not doomed it to duckness. Your ideas have not limited it to ONLY duckness. You have not destroyed it's potential, nor have you really defined it as a creature.

From the perspective of ultimate reality, labels do reinforce dualistic thinking. They perpetuate the subject/object, me/you types of thought that Buddhism seeks to disabuse. But we're not talking about ultimate reality here, we're talking about relative reality. We're talking about our day to day lives that make use of dualism for highly practical reasons. Without it, how the fuck would we know which car was ours when we headed off to work? How could WE pick OUR wife up from HER parent's house without those divisions?

These daily labels are helpful. Without them, we'd have no idea if we were taking Advil or rat poison. And, Buddhist or not, you'll find surprisingly little efficacy in saying "It's all one, man. Everything is interconnected and inseparable," after you swallow arsenic.

So, to all my fellow Buddhists out there: shut the fuck up and get over it. Being Buddhist means many things, and one of those things is that the only limits you have are set by yourself. Stop being so attached to what you're called and start paying attention to what you are.

Wake up.

Trapdoor

Zen means the bottom is going to drop out of everything. Instead of walking sure-footedly across the floor of our lives, confident in our ability to navigate pitfalls, Zen shows us that we learn only when the floor is gone.

We base our lives on reference points that we believe are indelible. This is MY house and MY wife. MY job is a piece of shit. I hate Democrats. Abortion is a SIN. I'll never understand YOU. I quit drinking. I ALWAYS order the pad thai.

We build our lives around these likes and dislikes, around the ever-emerging facets of our personalities. Despite the fact that we're never done, we always feel finished. We feel like we know who we are and we stop investigating. We try to cruise through our days with a mental blueprint that dictates how we should react to pretty much anything that we encounter.

Occasionally, though, we stumble into something that strips us bare. We have no idea how to respond; nothing has prepared us for this situation. All of our carefully cultivated notions of who we think we are and what we believe we're about are gone in a flash. Our mind empties, and, all too often, fills up with fear.

This is a trapdoor. We're walking with our head up and our eyes fixed ahead. We're striding as if we know exactly where we're going. Suddenly, the floor beneath us gapes open and we're falling with no reference points, no expectations, no hopes or dreams or illusions. We don't have a plan for this, so we allow fear to take us over.

It doesn't have to be like this. We are afraid because our preconceived ideas have proven they can't handle everything. Because they are PREconceived, they can't cope with moment to moment living. We need to walk without all of our judgements and opinions and reservations firmly in mind. We have to respond to life as it happens, not before it happens. Trapdoors are a chance to understand the world and yourself, not a cause for terror. They shake you out of your misbegotten certainties and remind you that life doesn't shape itself for you.

All of our daily reference points are bullshit. This journey we're on isn't from Tallahassee to Topeka. Road maps and directions won't help. Wrong turns aren't wrong and the right of way isn't right.

The next time you fall through a trapdoor, notice what's happening. Watch how your mind reacts. I think you'll find that it panics at first. That's a bit disconcerting, but stay with it. Much sooner than you think it'll calm down and you'll be able to actually experience things instead of just reacting.

As I said at the beginning of this post, Zen is about the bottom dropping out of everything. Not just paying attention when we stumble into a trapdoor, but actively working to remove the floor altogether. Without ground to stand on, without any reference points, without anything familiar to stain our minds with illusions, we can see the world for what it is. We can participate in our lives fully, and not worry about what our blueprints dictate.

Wake up.

Re-Ignition

This blog is all about change. As I've mentioned before, change is the one and only constant in our world. All things must reflect this.

The mighty Chair Leg of Truth has reflected this badly. It began as a place for me to talk about Zen. After awhile, my capricious interests became more intrigued with politcs. As time went by, I became more captivated by religion. In between all of these shifts were great periods of inactivity. I was not writing here because I was conflicted. For some reason I felt I should be concentrating in one major area, with minor deviations. The fact that I wanted to write about George W. Bush one day, my Zen teacher the next, and Islamic fascism on the third created a needless quandary that resulted in fewer posts.

This is not a political blog. It's not a religious blog. It's not a sexual blog, or an art blog, or a hateful blog or a compassionate blog. It's not a Zen blog. It is no one of these individual things, yet, as a whole, it is all of these and more.

I've come to accept this. I've made peace with it. I'm no longer attatched to the notion that this place will always conform to what I think it should be. I'm not in control and that's perfectly fine. I'm done struggling. This blog will be what it will be.

Zen is a Japanese translation of the Chinese word Ch'an, which is a translation of the Sanskrit word Dhyana, which roughly means "meditation." Meditation is not something Buddhists do on a cushion in a shrine room. It's not something that is cultivated for a half an hour and then left behind as the day progresses. It is not a stop-gap method to happiness. It is our mind's natural state. The act of "meditating" reveals that our minds, left alone, rest in a meditative awareness. When we realize this awareness is with us daily, we can relax and notice things without labelling them as "good" or "bad."

I will be back here much more frequently. Rather than avoiding this site because I don't feel I have something pointed, intellectual, and well-researched to say, I'll use this blog to reflect my daily awareness. Hopefully there are still a few of you out there interested in reading it.

All that being said, you know what I'm aware of right now? What I'm painfully, hyper-aware of right this second? What an unspeakable fucking douchebag O.J. Simpson is.

I'm back. Wake up and resist.