“The ache for home lives in all of us, the safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned.” Maya Angelou

You know, I’ve been thinking. Oh, wait, I guess every story would automatically begin with that, but this time, I decided to use it. I am not sure how long ago I began writing about coping. You know, getting so caught up in the dance, you forget some really basic shit about why you’re here.

Most everything eventually becomes commercialized, because even the most well intentioned people need to feed themselves. Innocently, a word gets coined and all of a sudden, it becomes a way of life. As pretty much a life-long Zen practitioner, I witness what happens even with this practice and the sacred nature of the Buddha’s lessons. I don’t know how many books have been written in this country alone, in an effort to give words to an idea that is beyond words. 

It is amazing how one word can become a movement, with books, workshops, etc. I think some of these words are absolutely terrific. They are like a gourmet meal, you have to eat for yourself, really enjoy and think about what internal adjectives you’d use to describe it. The vocabulary would be uniquely your own and only you could really understand its significance for you. 

I got one word that has really been bothering the shit out of me and it is mindfulness. First of all, I think it is an incredible word and when I think about it, it has a meaning unique to my life experience. All of a sudden, there are manuals and books and workshops and experts. Now, don’t get me wrong, I love teachers and think they are underpaid and under appreciated. I wouldn’t be writing without having had them. It is the industrialization of ideas that frosts my cookies, sometimes, but not always. Gutenberg and Steve Jobs come to mind.

I will assume the majority of you, the thousands and thousands, who read my stories, have not heard of a word called koan. In some of the Buddhist practices, these are riddles, guaranteed to drive you nuts. You sit with your teacher, an inherent part of most Zen practices, because they are how you learn, how you are challenged to learn more, kind of like crossing guards on the road to enlightenment. 

These are riddles, like the sound a tree makes in the forest if there is no one to hear it fall. Fuck if I know. Before going any further, I am not the right person to make fun of what anyone deems to be important in their life. In a way, that is the point I am going to try and make, as we move along this wordosaurus of my making.

Sometimes, I think it would be really cool to sit with the Buddha and shoot the shit about life. I’d have zero reverence and I’ll bet it wouldn’t piss him off if I came at him in that way. Like Jesus, who came thousands of years after him, he proclaimed God lives within each of us and we all share that strange kind of perfection. So much of what the Big Buddha talked about was purposely meant to be confusing, forcing each of us to look for truth within and not without.

One of the awful things that happens to so many of us is we think we are better than others. Man, that is a serious crock of shit. Every one of us, regardless of geography, regardless of century or wealth, are all the same.

God lives within each of us and boy, have we fucked that up! We suffer the suffering of everyone, also the shared joy that seems to be far too fleeting these days. Finally, this is what I want to talk about. I am a shameless storyteller and getting to the story is what we do. It just takes a while.

Whenever I stop writing and take a break, whether a day or more, I usually scribble some notes, like road signs, indicating where I want to go when I come back. This time, I wrote, “GOING HOME” and nothing else. Since writing those words, I have changed my mind about the destination. Where I wanted to go no longer matters, so forget it and whatever it conjures, or doesn’t.

My life pretty much turned to shit in my early thirties, somewhere around ’77. I was getting divorced, out of the house, seeing my sons on weekends. In the beginning of the unraveling, I made a serious effort to get custody, pretty much ridiculous for a guy back then. As I wrote in my memoir to my grandson, I am committed to honesty in my writing and every now and then, a person’s privacy takes precedence. It’s another way of saying the circumstances are far less important than the other person and lying is a non-starter, as a way to take its place.

I spent the better part of a decade getting shrunken, which was  revelatory on so many levels, I wouldn’t even know where to begin. While it is all about feelings, it changes how you think about most everything. Feelings lie deep, deep within us all. The mind can access them and change how you think about your feelings. 

The deal with feelings is they are the primary colors of your whole life. If we were each a rainbow, no two would look a like. I don’t feel you can change those colors, but you can change how they combine, creating new shades. The passage of time, coupled with experience, puts a new palette in your hands, every time you look at it.

My connection to the Buddha took a lot of time. Ultimately I had the combination of shades that painted an internal landscape, allowing me to see the image of his words, as a perfect overlay on that deeply personal view, percolating within.

There was always this undercurrent of unhappiness, dogging me for years. I know it goes way back, long before my meltdown in my thirties. It was his idea that life is filled with suffering, much of it real, like disease and old age and the undeniable truth of our mortality. Our innocent denial causes us to cling to moments of happiness and joy, then be shattered by their brevity. Figuring out the dance of impermanence is the trophy, within the grasp of us all. 

Now, I can get back to the earlier version of Going Home, but this personal detour of mine, changes the architecture of the Home I want to talk with you about.

Recently, I have written about trying to cope with what is going on all around us. I am far less absorbed with the news. What happens minute to minute has lost my neurotic over-attention. Getting upset and sometimes angry with the sheer stupidity rampant in our country, along with so many places in the world that redefine hell on a daily basis, is a load I really don’t think I have the time left to carry anymore. 

Going home is the idea of finding places and things that nurture those parts of ourselves that dance on the rainbow palette of our feelings. Those special places within that our heart blankets itself with. The coat of many colors that fits each one of us perfectly. I am not talking about resignation from the moment, rather re-investing in the sanctity of life, yours and mine. 

It is truly why we are here. Welcome home.

LISTEN TO THE STORY HERE:

https://www.buzzsprout.com/1292459/episodes/15482865-going-home