Buddhism for Tough Guys

Meditation is supposed to be brain exercise, not, as many suppose, a process of “blanking out.”

The emphasis Vipassana meditation puts on concentrating on the act of breathing is hard to understand and difficult to master. But I am thinking that a sensual analogy might help people come closer to the understanding people seek from meditation and yoga. Ultimately, the objective is what Buddhists call penetration. I know. It sounds raunchy.

Reminds me of a Gary Larson cartoon from decades ago, called “mating calls.” He divided his usual panel into nine squares, and in each square was the head of a different animal, making their mating calls. Ooh-ooh-ah-ah, that kind of thing. In the last square was a male human, with sunglasses on, wearing a kind of disco lounge lizard outfit. His mating call was “hey ba-BEE, hey ba-BEE.”

Maybe the guys who seem to get laid all the time do so because they have laser-like focus on their objective, which I guess you could call “penetration.”  I wouldn’t know. But I know that I have struggled with mindfulness all my life. Writing and target shooting are the only things I can do with true mindfulness. I’m good at shooting off my mouth. It’s been said that the only time my foot isn’t in my mouth is when I have my head up my ass.

Monks eat in silence. There is no arbitrary “thou shalt not shoot the bull during mealtime” kind of rule. It is so the monks can train their mindfulness on their meal, and enjoy eating to its fullest extent. Most of us westerners have eaten countless meals without actually tasting the food, because we’re “multitasking,” eating while chatting or reading or even just thinking of something else.

Try this. Invest in a bag of high-quality gummy bears (proper pronunciation for those of you who have never lived in Europe:  goomy bears). Find a nice, quiet setting devoid of distractions, and eat your gummy bears, one at a time. Appreciate their texture, but most important: taste them. Revel in the taste. Let the flavor of each gummy bear explode in your mouth. Split each one in half with your molars, and as you chew them up, enjoy the accelerating flavor. Swallow it. Pick a different color gummy bear and repeat the process. Try to be fully into the gummy bear experience. Let the moment flow over you. Enjoy the hell out of your gummy bears, except maybe for the green ones. Lemon. Cherry. Orange. Pineapple. Whatever the green ones are supposed to be. Mmmmm…

The best gummy bears are the ones they make in Turkey.

The University of Kentucky Wildcats won the 2012 NCAA men’s basketball championship last night in New Orleans. Afterward, UK coach John Calipari provided a beautiful example of Buddhist-think for those who stayed up to watch the post-game press conferences.

Asked over and over again what his emotions were after winning the national championship, he refused to show elation that he obviously didn’t feel. “I’m glad it’s over,” he said of winning the big one, “now I can get on with my life.” “I’m tired and I want to go back to my hotel.” “I get two days free, then on Friday I’m going recruiting.”

But the press persisted as if it was un-American or dastardly not to show some jubilation over the win. But Coach Cal never even cracked a smile, never gave them the satisfaction. He doesn’t care what the press thinks of him, because he knows that if he’s telling the truth, it shouldn’t matter how other people respond to what he says.

Buddhism considers emotion to be the enemy, and Buddhist practice teaches people how to exercise control over their emotions. Most people would think it a good thing to know how to control anger and grief. But the flip side is also true. Asked repeatedly about his role in the victory, Coach Cal always deflected the glory onto his team. Managers take note: when good things happen, the accolades belong to the team. When things go wrong, it’s all on Coach Cal. It’s how leaders develop loyalty among those they lead.

Nobody said that evidence of being sensitive involves being a cry-baby. People admire people who can take the hit and keep on going, the guys in the room who can keep their heads while others around them are losing theirs. It’s what we want of leadership. Just because someone is stoic and not demonstrative doesn’t mean they’re insensitive. I believe the opposite is generally the rule. Strength is about leading a life that’s not ruled by one’s own emotions. Just because some people seem to have no feelings doesn’t mean that they don’t care.

University of Kentucky fans tend to be a little overboard about their fanaticism, and I’ve found some of them to be terribly obnoxious. As a Kentuckian and UK alumnus, I can’t say that I was particularly overjoyed with the victory. But then again, I’m a University of Louisville fan.

The following is an edited and slightly paraphrased version of a lesson generally taught to Buddhist children at Sunday school:

 One day, when the future Buddha, Prince Siddhartha, was a little kid, he went with his father The King to participate in the Plowing Ceremony. His baby sitters wanted to see the singing, dancing and music of the ceremony, so they went closer to the ceremony and forgot about little Siddhartha, sitting on a rug, merrily playing with his toys and picking his toes.

Awhile later, they returned to look for Prince Siddhartha, but he took off. They found him sitting crosslegged under a rose-apple tree, watching what was going on. He watched the men sweating in the hot sun working with the heavy plows, he saw the water buffaloes straining their muscles to pull the plows, and he saw the birds eating insects. Being the spiritual savant that he was, little Prince Siddhartha not only saw, but he also deeply felt, the pain and misery of the men, the buffaloes and the bugs. Understanding their suffering and wishing he could take away their suffering, he felt great compassion. As he felt compassion for them, he closed his eyes and meditated.

As he meditated, he felt great happiness.

Paradoxical, isn’t it? Opening his heart to understand as best he could the suffering of men, and beasts, and bugs, he felt happiness as a result.

The lesson continues:

What does compassion really mean? Compassion does not mean only to feel sorry for someone, or to feel sad about someone’s pain or unhappiness. Compassion means that we really understand the suffering of another living being. Suffering, dissatisfaction, pain, sorrow, stress and unhappiness. We understand the suffering of another being because we have felt that way before; we have experienced suffering and we remember how it feels.

I’ve always wondered how people who live soft, coddled lives can feel empathy toward the less fortunate. But that just shows that I’m a bigot. I’m fond of saying that I would never trust a man who never experienced adversity any worse than a fraternity initiation. But that doesn’t reflect the capacity people have for the development of personal ethics based on what they’ve witnessed, like the pre-K Buddha did at the plowing ceremony. He never pulled a plow or ate a bug, but he understood to the best of his capabilities.

And back again to the lesson:

 More importantly, compassion means that we genuinely wish to take away the pain, stress and unhappiness of the other living being, and fill him or her with happiness and peace. So, what does compassion mean? It means to understand the suffering of another being and really wish to remove it from him or her.

 Why is compassion so important? Why is it one of the main teachings of the Buddha? If we understand how others feel, and we care about how they feel, then we are more kind to them, and we may look for opportunities to help them. When we are kind and helpful, they can become happier. When others around us are happier, then we have a peaceful, friendly, happy environment.

I once saw a Burmese refugee dance for joy because someone gave her a pair of new socks for her baby.

Now remember, this lesson was written for children.

It is good to feel compassion for everyone, but can we always help everyone? It is not always appropriate to help everyone. Little Prince Siddhartha did not go and help the sweating men or the straining buffaloes, and he did not go and protect the insects from the birds. Why not? He might have gotten hurt if he went near the buffaloes, and he would be interfering with the ceremony. He would be starving the birds, preventing them from getting food, if he protected the insects. So, if we see an opportunity to help, we should first determine whether it is safe for us to help, whether our parents would approve, and whether our help would be appreciated. If we are not sure whether someone would want our help, we should first offer to help.

Reminds me of the old Boy Scout joke. Three Scouts ran up to their Scoutmaster and told him they’d done a good deed by helping an old woman cross the street?

“It took all three of you to help her?” the Scoutmaster asked.

“Yeah,” said one of the boys, “she didn’t wanna go!”

My wife likes this saying:

I am only one but I am one. I can’t do everything but I can do something. And I will not let what I can’t do interfere with what I can do.

If all you can do is write a check, then write a check. You can derive happiness from writing a check if you stop to contemplate what your donation has accomplished. A couple of cases of drinking water for a town wiped out by a tornado, soothing the throats of the helpers chain-sawing downed trees and piling rubble so that it can be removed. The old guy, sitting on the front steps of a home that doesn’t exist anymore. Not sure how he feels, it was only stuff, but he doesn’t even know where his next meal is coming from. And his thirst isn’t making the thinking any easier. Somebody hands him a 16 ounce bottle of chilled spring water. Pops it open, and takes a long, slow drink.

It tastes wonderful, feels wonderful, and with a sigh of relief, his head begins to clear. Nothing better than cold, clean water when you’re really thirsty. He is grateful, even happy that someone thought to bring him the bottle of water. At that moment, that bottle of water is the old man’s world, brightness in the bleak and chaotic aftermath of his community’s disaster.

It’s how compassion works. The better or closer you can realize just what your ten dollars have accomplished, the happier you can feel about it, because you know that even in all the devastation, you’ve taken away someone’s suffering. You’ve made someone happy.

I was on my way home from seeing clients in Knoxville late last night, and as I turned west onto I-64 from I-75, the sky cleared up. And there, right in front of my face, about twenty degrees above the horizon, which is to say the interstate, I could see the brilliant confluence of Venus and Jupiter that has amazed star-gazers for the last month. It was in my direct field of vision for 80 miles. It was a splendid sight.

One of my Knoxville clients told me she was tempted to fire me as her life coach because I brought up a sore subject with her, one she didn’t care to discuss. I did it on purpose, of course, as I have been challenging her negative feelings since we began working together. It reminded me of the Buddhist concept of “Right Speech,” which is a part of the Noble Eightfold Path.

Right Speech pretty much admonishes us to avoid speaking harshly, using profanity, gossiping, raising your voice, and talking too much – to be kind and circumspect about what comes out of your mouth. If you can’t say it nicely, don’t say it at all.

There is much talk about how Buddhists live simple lives. That doesn’t mean we don’t use air conditioning and trim our lawns with scissors. But adhering to the principles of Right Speech is certainly one of the ways that following “The Path” does simplify life, because if you’re truthful, then you shouldn’t have to worry about how people respond to what you say. That’s their problem, not yours.

Simple!

One way the Buddhist monks simplify their existence is by being celibate. That’s the way they see it – life is much simpler without girlfriends and sex and wives and lust, and if you cross the line and go in for “inappropriate sexual relations,” i.e. cheating on your wife and having affairs, then life gets really complicated, and people are inevitably hurt.  Sure, Buddhists think about sex, but in the Buddhist world,  sex is a low-priority part of life.

I know married couples in Sri Lanka who stopped having sex after their children were born. I asked one of the husbands why, and he said that by ridding their relationship of sex, they reach a higher plateau in their relationship. “That’s when you really learn to love your wife,” he said.

Frequently, Westerners divorce because they grow tired of their sex life. That’s tragic for children – losing their families because of nookie. Some people don’t see much past their sex life when they marry to begin with, and their second marriages tend to be disasters. There is a higher rate of divorce among second marriages than among people in their first or third marriages. Fifty percent of all American marriages end in divorce, but that also means that half of all marriages endure for the rest of their lives.

Still, certainly not all of those enduring marriages are happy ones. And I have strongly advised women who are stuck in abusive marriages to get rid of the son of a bitch any way they can. Divorce certainly has its place. But divorcing because your wife isn’t hot enough for you anymore is indicative of a shallow personality – we call them guys who think with their dicks. Dick-thinkers will never find satisfaction in their lives because they are ruled by their own desires. Think Second Noble Truth here. The path to simplicity and happiness is to gain dominion over your desires. The way to ecstasy is to rid yourself of desire.

The Buddha had sex. He abandoned a beautiful wife and a newborn son to seek enlightenment. And in the opulence and decadence of his father’s palace, who knew what else went on or who he dallied with in his youth. The night he left was full of emotion for Siddhartha Gautama. He looked down on his sleeping wife and child and anguished over his decision to leave them.

But there was another feeling he had at that time too – disgust. It is said that on that last night in the palace, he had to cross a room where a banquet had been held, and the room was littered with the sleeping bodies of a bevy of “dancing girls,” snoring with their mouths open and drooling on their pillows. I like to think they were in various stages of undress too, but then again I’m a dirty old man.

But Siddhartha eventually figured out how to dispense with emotions, and lived a blissful life as a result.

I did a guided meditation with another Knoxville friend yesterday. She has been very diligent over the last several weeks to practice her twice-daily ten-minute counting meditation, so it was time to push the envelope a little. We did a simple breath awareness exercise that went on for about a half hour. At the end I told her to listen to the sounds around her, do a few slow head rolls, open her eyes slowly, and take a long deep breath.

“Dude,” she said. “I’m stoned!”

I told her it was the endorphins.

I found an interesting document entombed in a big, fat book by Everlasting Flames Publishing about Buddhist teachings.

And, with only mild, inconsequential editing, I’ve posted it on its own page on my blog site. It consists of thirteen points upon which all Buddhists agree (though I can’t speak for the SGI cult). They may go around and around on such topics as vegetarianism and whether or not someone who is not a monk can achieve Nirvana, but any total believer of the Buddhist faith considers these thirteen points as the true gospel.

 Fundamental Buddhistic Beliefs is the name of the document. “Drafted as a common platform upon which all Buddhists can agree.”

The first belief is so beautiful: Buddhists are taught to show the same tolerance, forbearance, and brotherly love to all men, without distinction; and an unswerving kindness toward members of the animal kingdom.

That’s it. That, plus developing the mind, is Buddhism. Do the right thing. Purify your mind.

I’ve always maintained that Buddhistic knowledge and practice can even help God believers grow in their own frame of spirituality. But there are a few points of contention in this document that seem almost anti-theist and agnostic. For example, the second fundamental belief states that the universe functions according to law, not to the caprice of any God. Dude! Harsh!

Personally, I don’t give a crap. Sounds OK to me. And if any creationists want to tell me otherwise, I’ll certainly listen to them. There is faith in Buddhism just as there is faith in Christianity. There is beauty in the words of people who speak from their true beliefs and convictions, even people to whom I am diametrically and ideologically opposite.

Many of my dearest friends are conservative Republicans. They’re lots more fun to party with than fatuous, know-it-all liberals, even though I am one myself. Conservatives respect my opinions. Liberals don’t respect anything. So if you’re going to sell it, then sell it. Tell me about how Jesus died for my sins. I’ll listen. After all, Jesus was taught by Buddhist monks.

There is a surprising amount of shared ground between fundamentalist Christians and fundamental Buddhists. They agree on the abortion issue, and their moral ethics are nearly identical with regard to sex, drugs and alcohol – even homosexuality. Both good Christians and hard-core Asian Buddhists know the secret of life – where happiness comes from. (If you don’t know, read my book.) Ultimately, what difference does it make between the take that God Gives Strength and that Strength Comes From Within?

The thirteen points is followed by another point that doesn’t have a number. It’s about skepticism: Buddhism discourages superstition. The Buddha taught that it is the duty of a parent to have his child educated in science and literature. He also taught that no one should believe what is spoken by any sage, written in any book, or affirmed by tradition, unless in accord with reason. And that includes his own stuff.

For so many people, belief in God is perfectly rational. As I’ve written before, if God has touched your life in some way, then that’s reason enough to believe that he exists. Just don’t expect me to capitalize the “h”.

No one EVER says that you have to subscribe to everything on the list in order to be a Buddhist or benefit from Buddhist wisdom and Buddhist practice. They believe in karma and rebirth – aren’t those taken on blind faith?

There was once a woman who became a Buddhist Bhikkuni (a nun) who was trying to meditate so hard that she could have the ability to see out of her ears. “But you have perfectly good eyes,” her Master pointed out.

Spiritual pickers and choosers miss the boat entirely. A “personal” spirituality that takes a piece of this from Christianity and a piece of that from Native American Spirituality and nonviolence from the Buddhists – people who think like that tend to pick what they like and reject sometimes the very pieces they need the most. Like a Buddhist who drinks wine or a Christian who is “OK” with the notion that Jesus was not, exactly, God

When I chose to follow the Middle Path, I knew very well that, even though traditional Buddhism is short on the metaphysical, there still would be aspects of the belief system I would find hard to swallow. One was rebirth, which I’ve come to grips with, even though I’d really rather believe that it isn’t true. Samsara, the ceaseless cycle of birth-death-rebirth, isn’t about fun, it’s about suffering. Over and over again, until you can rid yourself completely from the thing that causes suffering.

The other was, and is, karma.

Hard to get ahold of, the notion of karma. Karma, in its simplest and most plausible form, is an action-reaction thing. Kiss your wife, and you get a purr and a hug. Tickle a baby, and she giggles and wiggles. Yell at your dog for running away, he runs farther away. Get good grades in school and you get into college. Get too drunk and obnoxious and say the wrong thing, and somebody might kick your ass.

The extreme belief in karma links our life’s positive and negative actions to our “afterlife.” Be a good Christian and you go to heaven. Be a good Buddhist and come back as something or someone of a higher order, a better person, or even a demi-god (they’re very childish, I’ve been told). Live the life of a thieving, murdering thug, and you go to hell. Or in Sri Lanka, come back as a water buffalo.

One end of the spectrum is observable, and the other crosses the line of metaphysics. It’s the middle ground where it gets complicated.

You can, or can’t, think of karma as some kind of force, that it is people’s karma that leads to “cosmic alignment” or more-than-a-serendipitous coincidence.  But just as there is empirical evidence indicating that rebirth is real, things have happened in my life, particularly in my Buddhist life, that seem strongly to suggest that this force exists. In 2002, when I went to Sri Lanka, my original destination was Pakistan, and in 2003, when I went to Sri Lanka again, my original destination had been China. But between the Taliban, SARS, and opportunity, I ended up submerged in the Buddhist world for six months, landing in the laps of three of the most eminent theologians in the country. It was like I was meant to be a Buddhist.

So go figure.

So if that notion of “force” contains truth, then doesn’t it make it that much more plausible that karma affects your afterlife? And so under those circumstances, the universe is somehow “keeping score” of your deeds and misdeeds so that heaven or a better next life are available to good people. But who or what is keeping score? For the Christians and the Muslims, it is obvious that it’s God. But for spiritual pedestrians like myself who, metaphysically-speaking, doesn’t want to “go there,” it’s just something else I don’t understand and no one can prove one way or another.

One day when I was living at the Sri Bodhiraja Temple, the chief priest summoned me to his office, which was in a small clay hut – the coolest place on campus.

Bhante Sobhita was expecting a visitor in a few days. It was a white woman from New Zealand who became a Bhikkuni – a Buddhist nun. She was coming to ask him a specific question: how do Buddhists deal with the issue of free will? He wasn’t familiar with the term, especially in its religious context, so he wanted to ask me about it.

I told him that to understand free will, he needs to know its opposite – predestination. I told him that some Christians believe that everyone’s fate is predetermined by God, and that people can do nothing to change it. Free will, I told him, is the idea that each man has the power to determine his own fate.

The monk’s usual scowl deepened, and he considered what I told him. Finally, he said, “but both are untrue. Everything is connected to everything else.” In other words, it’s causality that determines “fate.”

It’s what I like best about Buddhism – its simple.

Low self-esteem? That’s your problem, not mine, and is indicative of arrested emotional development. From a Buddhist perspective, the goal isn’t high self-esteem, it’s no self-esteem.

In the real world, people don’t get trophies just for participating. If you can’t be satisfied with your own inner reward for getting the job done, or doing the right thing, you’re missing out on a lot that life has to offer.

Pretty harsh words. Buddhism can fix low self-esteem – you can’t love unless you love yourself first – but it is hardly into self-aggrandizement.  People who do the most damage in society tend to have inflated self-esteem – just look at the crackpots running for President of the United States.

I have competent and creative children, who are now both in their thirties. One is the faculty technical director in the theater department at a major university. The girl is a successful sculptor, who mostly works in steel. They’re the coolest kids! I NEVER punished them or yelled at them or hit them when they were children, and I was also pretty spare on the praise. What I did was take them in the woods, a lot, for backpacking and cross-country skiing and canoeing and cycling and fishing adventures. My standard form of praise was an understated “hey, you did good.”

Tough Kids

OK, sometimes I was a little more effusive than that, like when the boy snagged a hard-hit line drive down the third base line and threw the biggest, fastest kid in the league out at first by two steps.

And then there was a time when the girl was in college. Through much of her high school years she was plagued by the school’s alpha mean girl, who for some reason particularly disliked my daughter. This was one nasty, psychotic little hipster who once was suspended from school for taking a crap in a grand piano.

One evening the girl went to a college mixer, and ran into her old nemesis. My daughter’s response was to run up to her and give her a huge hug, and told her how nice it was to see her again. “Best revenge ever,” was how she described it.

My kids don’t have esteem issues, and they never did. They are humble achievers who know how to see a project through to completion. They’re happy and perfectly sane, capable, handy, helpful, and reproductive – a brand new granddaughter is the best Christmas gift a jaded old fart like me could ever hope for. Opie’s almost two, and Guppy is nine days old today. Can’t wait until they’re old enough to go canoeing.

They will have been swimming for years before then, and I’ll dump them into the Blue River like I did their parents when they were pre-schoolers, and when they manage to make their way to the shore under their own steam, I’ll be there waiting for them.

“Hey, you did good,” I will tell them.

If you read the blog entry before this one, you may have guessed that I sucked my Thanksgiving dinner through a straw. It’s almost true. I did have to cut everything up in little pieces and stick them in my mouth sideways with a baby spoon.

My wife informed me that she thought I’ve been doing well with my injury, in fact I seem to be in a better mood now than before the accident. Of course I am! You know how cool it is to tell people that I broke my jaw? It’s way cool. And then I smile so they can see my broken teeth. I call it my Australian grin.

I’m so grateful! I’m grateful for the morphine shot and the CAT scan of my head in the emergency room. I’m grateful that it rained the next day and washed away all the blood I left congealing on the sidewalk. I’m really grateful for my young and aggressive new dentist. He knows his stuff, that’s for sure. I didn’t lose a single tooth. He’s already done root canals on the busted ones and built them up enough so that when I smile I don’t look like a total idiot, just a regular idiot. And right before Christmas he’ll take the wire off that’s splinted my mandible together, and cap the broken teeth.

I recently re-read an old book called “You Can Feel Good Again” by Dr. Richard Carlson, mainly to see how close his “common sense therapy for releasing depression and changing your life” parallels Dharma wisdom. Many of the great self-help books seem Dharma-based, or actually are, like “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.” I found, in retrospect, Dr. Carlson’s book is Dharma.

The reason why I bring this up is because of what Dr. Carlson says about gratitude, which is the highest of all Buddhist virtues: “Gratitude,” he writes, “is the antidote for depression.”

Tech. Sgt. Dorothy DeBolz, 1945

It’s the “glass half-full” thing. The only word that springs to mind as my face mends is gratitude. I was grateful that my mother died last year. She was 85 and a war hero who lived a delighted life full of laughter. But she suffered at the end (as most of us will), and we were grateful that her suffering was over. My sister and I never shed a tear. I did her eulogy. We were all happy for her. She was one hell of a broad.

Mastering your mind is about mastering your emotions. From a Buddhist perspective, even good emotions are bad for you, because they can reinforce craving and desire. That doesn’t mean that you can’t passionately love your wife or wear a “cheese-head” hat to the football stadium. It’s about putting positive emotions in proper perspective, and dismissing negative emotions. Who are you really hurting when you indulge in road rage? Only yourself, of course. So, like, why do it?

It’s wisdom that dispels bad emotions, and it’s through meditation that you develop the muscle to be able to blow off anger, hatred and grief. Wisdom is a good thing, and so is meditation, but when you put the two together, then you’ve really got something.

I love that old song “Make Someone Happy.” The secret of life is in that song.

Your Faithful Blogger is on heavy analgesics and is not presently capable to share the secret of life or do anything that requires a lot of brainwork. Unlike some drugs I’ve know, opiates do nothing to encourage the creative process. They’re mind-numbing, like television. They make you stupid.

The reason I am popping percodans is that I fell flat on my face the other day – perfectly sober, mind you – and broke my face. It’s pretty ugly – thank God I don’t have to look at it all the time, and uncomfortable. I broke my jaw and shattered some teeth and lacerated the inside of my mouth and bit clean through my lower lip. My upper mouth is held together with wire that will be in place about six weeks, and then my teeth will have to be reconstructed. I was in the emergency room for six hours. I can talk, but I have a pronounced lisp that I won’t be able to get rid of until the first of the year.

The pain hasn’t been bad at all, though, and I’ve managed to maintain my good humor throughout the experience – not hard to do under the influence of happy pills. I can only eat through the side of my mouth with a baby spoon, and drink through a straw. But I don’t see this as a big deal. Stuff happens. I don’t see the point of being grumpy just because my face is broken. I have an excuse to indulge in milk shakes and smoothies.

I don’t have to pretend to be a tough guy, because I am a tough guy. Busted face? Ha! I scoff at disfiguring injuries! And I’m going to end up with a Harrison Ford-type scar, which should go well with the bullet hole scar I have in the center of my forehead, which is a souvenir of a car wreck. I also have a great-looking eye-area scar that every boxer has, indicating a split beneath my right eyebrow. It’s from my grandmother accidentally hitting me in the head with a frying pan when I was about seven.

I used to know a gunnery sergeant in the Marine Corps who had a beautifully hideous scar down the side of his face, which we all assumed was the result of a war wound. Now, this scar on that particular face was a perfect match. It accentuated his natural scowl. It commanded respect. The scar made him look ferocious.

So one day I asked him how he acquired the scar. He told me that he lost control of his tricycle when he was three going down a concrete ramp, and crashed into a dumpster.

I just don’t see the point of being broody just because my mouth is mangled. Why should I lie around pissing and moaning about my own clumsiness? I’ve got more important things to do. I have a new business start-up that I am furiously working on right now.

Regarding my casual attitude toward my mishap, my wife said I was being “very Buddhist” about it. But if I’d been a little more “Buddhist” that evening last week, I might have walked with a little more mindfulness, and avoided busting my chops to begin with.

On the other hand, at least until my bruises fade and the swelling goes down and my head reassumes its former shape (more of a parallelogram than a rectangle right now), I can be a role model!

Buddhism does not preach that God is a delusion. There is no ‘there is no God” dictate in the Buddhist scriptures. (FYI – the “Buddhist Bible” is called the “Dhammapada,” and because Buddhism’s message is so simple, it tends to be repetitive.) In fact, as Buddhism spread into Asia from northern India and present-day Nepal, the “missionaries” never suggested to anyone to abandon their cosmology or kick out any gods they already believed in.

But they did preach skepticism. This is what the Buddha himself said about belief:

You should go beyond opinion and belief. You can rightly reject anything which when accepted, practiced and perfected leads to more aversion, more craving and more delusion. They are not beneficial and are to be avoided.

This should be your criteria on what is and what is not the truth; on what should be and what should not be the spiritual practice.

Kind of boils it down to its essence, doesn’t it?

The “good” Buddhists and the “real” Christians and the “righteous” Muslims the “saintly” Jews are one and the same – followers of their respective faiths’ expectations to be generous, kind, compassionate, thoughtful, non-violent, meditative and content in their lives. It is written for all to see. And when Judaism and Buddhism collided to create Christianity, the message couldn’t become any clearer.

There are too many examples in the world of people using their religious beliefs to commit the wrongs that hurt society. Buddhists have burned Hindu libraries. Terrorists rationalize their murderous deeds by evoking the name of Allah. The “Gospel of Prosperity” has mixed Jesus up with money. Duh!

Oh, and let’s not leave out the Jews! The world images itself after television: feminine beauty is all about being bony; manliness is measured by how many guys can be mowed down using the least number of bullets; and buy, buy, buy and buy some more. Television manufactures craving and desire. I find television to be pretty creepy, myself, and I NEVER watch it. Except, of course, for Two and a Half Men, Mike and Molly, The Big Bang Theory, The NBC Nightly News, 60 Minutes, NCAA football, the NFL, NCAA basketball, The Military History Channel, The Discovery Channel, and at any given time, any of about 20 different movie channels. And the Olympics. Television is evil!

But, why dwell on the negatives?
But, anyway, back to God.

Buddhists believe that the only real wisdom is what people learn from their own life experiences. That means that if God has touched your life in some way, that is proof enough of his presence.