“Come on up for the rising”. The Boss
Yesterday, I mentioned to a friend that I was going home to write. He asked me what I was going to write about and I found it difficult to put even a few sentences together to explain. Yes, I know, this is not a great way to begin a story, but it is the truth. The reason is simple. I had decided to write about a challenging subject, human nature.
Now, before you find fault with me, please blame The Boss. A couple of mornings ago, I was peddling hard on the road to nowhere on my stationary bike. I know I have mentioned several times before this that my relatively recent acquisition of the earbud has been revelatory in terms of my musical listening experience. Well, there I am, getting into my make believe ride and my head fills with the beginning of Bruce’s, The Rising. I decided, somehow I was going to write my next story, because it moved me back to that Nine Eleven day.
I am a New Yorker, having spent the first forty-two years of my life in The City. I root for the Yankees and I am still waiting for the NY Knicks to play basketball. I worked in the advertising business and hurried along Madison Ave, wrapped in a Burberry raincoat, attache case in hand. The more relaxed and at ease I am, the more that world famous accent kidnaps my self-expression. I love my City.
I was living in a little, patchwork adobe house, in a place called La Pueblo, NM, identified by a small green and white street sign off Hwy. 84/285, on the road to Espanola. On that Tuesday, my friend, Michael called me and told me to turn on my television. Like most everyone old enough to turn on a TV that day, I watched in utter disbelief on what unfolded and kept on unfolding for hours and hours and hours, after those split second moments.
So, there I am, listening to The Boss and thinking about all those incredible people, who rushed in to help, completely oblivious to the danger. Juxtaposed with today, here we are, surrounded by such incredibly selfish and apathetic behavior, regarding the suffering of others and I wondered if we are the same people, or what’s happened?
Somewhere in my early thirties, everything stopped making sense to me. Until then, I was not one to question, but I was certain I was not happy. I began around a ten year, deeply personal relationship with therapy. I spent seven years with one guy, who was big on transference and thrived on becoming the parent with a bulls eye on his ass. The last few years were spent with another, who was big on being smaller and nurturing my soul, fading into the shadows in the process, try to return me to myself.
Not coincidentally, I was drawn to Zen and it was one of those planned accidents, orchestrated by forces far beyond my control. It asked so many of the questions I had, delicately avoiding the answers, because they come from a place deep within, spoken in a language with no words. Trust me, I am no student and the endless books and treatises on everything the Buddha said or meant to say, is overwhelming. I just liked him and what he had to say. I was never interested in memorizing the thousands of prayers or following the endless rituals.
He sat under the Bodhi Tree, legs crossed, palms resting one on the other and that is all he did. I know he thought about what makes us run into the white hot, Twin Towers, sucking the life out of us, in order to save others. Then, he looked at how we are mistreating each other today and he sat silently, understanding our nature with thrilling clarity. In the words of a subsequent practitioner and devotee, “A tenth of an inch’s difference,/ And heaven and earth are set apart.”
I have sat with this dilemma for the week, wondering how to make sense of it. I thought about the idea of an infinitely large circle and a very small dot precisely in the middle. it has to do with how we begin and who we are. I have one last quote and forgive me for it. My lifelong friend, the Buddha, said “All wrong doing arises because of mind. If mind is transformed can wrong doing remain.” It’s that damn dot! Who we are emanates from that microscopic seed.
Assuming we have choice and I am goddamn certain we do, what kind of person do we want to be? Long ago, back in my thirties, I swear to God, I started thinking about that stuff. It happened, because the rest of my life began feeling strangely quantifiable. I was attracted to the Big Guy. He asked the hard questions. I am still looking, because it is a never ending process. The deeper you dig into the hole of the elusive self, the brighter the light.
Have faith…………………
Thank you for taking the time, this time. My podcast, Mind and the Motorcycle, is up and running. This week, I am talking about my lifelong love affair with music and next week is a too, real political nightmare. Imagine Mel Brooks’ mind, trying to wrap around where we are and how we got here, told in the style of Princess Bride?
t