April 01, 2009
HERDING CATS
BEING AUTHENTIC IN AN ABSURD WORLD
Everything I am about to address has been discussed before and will probably continue to be. It is not that these topics are new. It is just my time or my turn to do so because for if I do not some may infer that my silence implies complicity. Point of fact I am directing this to those who visit this blog and have a capacity equal to its latitude. I apologize for its length. It has been gestating for over a year.
After sequestering myself from contact in any form with the Soka Gakkai, or NSA as it was known then in America, other than what effects I observed it had upon my ex wife and our child, I re-engaged myself after 20 years of solitary practice. I was completely unaware of any changes that had taken place. For example, I walked into the now defunct North Hollywood Community Center in 2000 and saw chairs to sit on and no delineation for men to sit on one side and women on the other. I saw for the first time pictures of the Sho Hondo being demolished. When I asked the lady behind the desk what had happen she was apoplectic in describing how the evil priesthood, as she collectively demonized them, had bulldozed that particular Great Secret Law. They were also keeping another, the Dai Gohonzon, all to themselves, and had excommunicated we lay practitioners who followed the organization, now referred to as the SGI, once aligned to the same priesthood. Okay, what’d else I miss as Rip Van Buddhist? And where can I get a handkerchief to wipe off this woman’s spittle?
“All dreamers and sleepwalkers must pay the price, and even the invisible victim is responsible for the fate of all. But I shirked that responsibility; I became too snarled in the incompatible notions that buzzed within my brain. I was a coward...
But what did I do to be so black and blue? Bear with me.”
Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man
And lest the reader jump to conclusions about where this is headed I will reiterate Ellison; bear with me.
My re-reading of Ellison’s novel was like listening to jazz and I find myself, and my Buddhist belief system, reflected in both. Critical examinations of Ellison’s existentialism have said that his identity as an African-American author and the rallying point it provided eclipsed his efforts of trying to define himself not just as a black man but as an everyman; “trying to find an authentic way of being in an absurd world.” Gordon Marino
One of my favorite comedians is Steven Wright. He is authentically absurd:
I BOUGHT A DOG THE OTHER DAY. I NAMED HIM ‘STAY’. IT’S FUN TO CALL HIM. “COME HERE, STAY! COME HERE, STAY!” IT DROVE HIM INSANE. NOW HE JUST IGNORES ME AND KEEPS TYPING.
March 05, 2009
Connections
Back in October I related a story (see My Friend) about bonding with a fellow Buddhist in his effort to win over his doubts about what he could accomplish. It was a six-month daily effort on both our parts chanting an hour each morning together and we both got so very many positive results out of it. Becoming a more positive person is one.
I think that one of the reasons relating a personal experience about the results of doing this practice is so difficult is because it’s so profoundly complicated. One of my all time favorite shows was called Connections by James Burke. The first episode starts with him standing on a field in England where the Battle of Hastings took place in 1066. He explains that the Normans won because they had one piece of weapon technology that the Saxons didn't: the stirrup. Then he proceeded to show how that battle and specifically the stirrup, which may have originally been brought to China by Buddhists from India and then found it's way back to what was to become Europe, eventually lead to the technology which enabled him to be holding an aluminum valise which contained a small nuclear weapon. This alternative view of how things change wove together events, which may appear happenstance but in reality are co-dependent.
Continue reading "Connections"