“To live, we must die every instant. We must perish again and again in the storms that make life possible.” Thich Nhat Hahn

I think about The Buddha a lot, but not the way you likely think I do. Religiously, I am as much Jewish as I am Buddhist. I would confidently say I could care less about either one in that regard. Tribally, I am definitely a Jew. Intellectually and soulfully, I am Zen to the max and back again. I have had no use for religion for as long as I can remember, but I have nothing against it either. However, it has certainly been the source of endless friction and I’m being kind.

As a kid, I was given no choice and had to go to something called Hebrew School. It was always on Sunday morning. I magnetically gravitated to the back of the room, sitting amongst a precocious cabal of boys and girls, having to deal with learning the ritual necessary to climb the mountain of expectation, known as Bar Mitzvah for boys and Bat Mitzvah for girls.

I didn’t start looking inside until my entire world of expectation collapsed all around me, when I was in my early thirties. A kind of fragility began to make itself felt, pushing the bravado of ignorance off to the side, a discomfort for which I had no tools.

For reasons I don’t really understand, nor caring to excavate the cadaver of my mind at the time, I was drawn to the East. My distanced guess is it was some idea that those folks had a better understanding of how to embrace life with a sense of grace. They exuded a kind of bliss that was lacking in my life at the time. God Bless ignorance, my life long friend. 

I actually read some books about Zen, which for me was insane, as I was not a reader at all, not at all. You know, there are many people, who fret about their libraries, especially when they have to move. Today, I have as many books as I have ties. The count is yours, not mine, but the point is made. I guess I have always had a problem losing my mind, in a vacation from the present. I am thrilled my grandson is in love with reading and so was my mother.

When I started thinking about how I wanted to write this story, Me and The Buddha, I wanted to figure out how to shrink it down to the marrow of the mental attraction for me.  One of the things I have always found comical about all the contemporary Zen writing is the need to dig deep into its meaning. It is exhausting to follow, believe me. The true genius of this practice are the questions and not the answers. To me, it’s like trying to imprison lightening.

Initially, I don’t think The Buddha helped his cause by espousing a seemingly endless stream of revelations, with enough prayers and rules to choke the most spiritually hungry beings on the planet. Now, you do have to keep in mind, this was around 2,500 years ago in India and ritual ruled. 

If Zen was my religion, I would be burned on the cushion of blaspheme. Years ago, as a man feeling completely lost, without purpose or perspective, the words of The Buddha made a kind of sense, devoid of vocabulary, in the speechless quiet of the mind.

Trust me, if you haven’t read about it and you desire to be exposed to it, a headache will be your reward. If I was a salesman and we were in an elevator and I had only a few, short minutes to talk with you about Zen, here’s how I would get your attention:

I’ve really thought about it quite a bit. I would say two words to you, Impermanence and Interconnectedness and you’d either get off at the next floor, thinking I was ape shit, or you’d take a ride with me.

Honestly, I thought long and hard about this and i don’t know why it embraced me the way it did. It’s the incredibly transient nature of everything in our lives at every moment. Lurking in the back of every mind is the terror of mortality and if you think I’m full of shit, it is not my intention, I swear.  On top of that, we keep changing, each change impregnating the next. The Buddha called this a kind of suffering, because it can feel rudderless, like this life is your plight and not your privilege, with nothing to hold on to. Absolutely nothing stays the same!

For some reason, along the way, I had this delicate resonance with the idea of mortality and trying to hold on to some grace through its unfolding. I don’t know how that’s gonna pan out just yet. It is always easier to be a hero before battle. We’ll just have to wait and see on that one and I’m in no hurry either.

I believe there is a dance partner to this way of thinking I am trying to talk about. The Buddha spoke about a kind of interconnectedness that would make your mind explode, mine included. He spoke about a non-quantifiable degree of change that transcends the constraints of time. Everything that happens, effects everything else that happens, or has ever happened and it is endless. I hope, years from now, when the tablets of my writings are unearthed, etched in stone will be, “Shit Happens!”

I have been speaking with the Buddha for years now, but it’s not what you might think. Even though his likeness sits on my altar, I don’t worship or pray to him. I share my cushion with him.  His timeless journey is my journey and all of ours as well. We’re pals. Quite innocently, he found the limits of our mind, because he was relentless in his pursuit and his clarity is blindingly truthful. 

To me, talking about Zen could go on endlessly, because it is who we are, who we have always been and who will always be. I am sorry, but that’s the deal. For me and you, for this moment, this is heaven. 

The Buddha and I thank you for your time. He told me it was okay to say it. After all, he is my true friend.