“People who deny the existence of dragons are often eaten by dragons. From within.”Ursula K. Le Guin

I have been thinking about writing some basic stuff that I believe in and much of it comes from the Buddha. Being an honest kind of guy, I didn’t like the idea of copying a lot of what he had to say. Then, I called a time out for myself. 

After leaving the palace of his birth, he spent years roaming the country side. He invested the rest of his life trying to figure out what the hell was going on. I never had a palace to leave, but I have been doing the same kind of thing for years and years. No, I am not a Buddha, just some schmuck from Queens, NYC trying to figure out if there is some greater purpose other than just being Larry.

You know, when you deal with stories from the sixth century BCE, you got to go easy on their precise nature. This will not come as a surprise, but he didn’t speak English either. In fact, it took a couple of hundred years before he was even referred to as the Buddha. 

Before going one word further, I don’t doubt for a minute that he existed and something happened to him after sitting for 49 days under the Bodhi Tree, a fig tree. Personally, I don’t care about the accuracy of these stories, but I do believe something happened to him. Were liberties taken in recounting his stories, in some cases hundreds of years later, you bet your ass.

I believe in magic and I believe some people are destined to become larger than their own lives. I have no idea why people like the Buddha and Jesus have come along. Invariably, it is what they leave behind that endures for all time. It seems like there is a soul fermentation time until these people transcend the ordinary and take their seats in the hall of eternity. 

I think that hall is filled with all sorts of people, some you’d never guess belonged there in a million years. They were just decent people, doing the right thing at the right time. It takes special people and singular circumstances to become famous like those two guys and some other super stars. It involves a kind of magic, way out of my league.

More than ever, we are living in a time where nobody believes anybody. Everything is said with an ulterior motive and some times people are even after one of those seats, something you earn and cannot take. 

So, I decided to go back to square one, at least for me. I was at a really rough patch in my life, back in my early thirties. I was feeling completely lost, like being in a dark hole and unable to climb up toward the light, which I believed was there. I was not a reader and can’t honestly say I had ever even thought about having a belief system. It never really seemed important, until I started drowning under the weight of my spiritual void.

I spent the next ten years in therapy, with two different guys and their very different approaches, which I will spare us both from  recounting. It can clear away the clouds from your past, allowing you to see how you got to where you are and that’s if it works for you. Again, if it’s working, you get in touch with your feelings, putting judgment aside. At best, your vision is clear, but how do you know what to look for?

I have to confess to cheating here. I am writing about a time in my life nearly fifty years ago, which has certainly polluted my innocence and replaced it with a perspective I have earned. Looking back, I can say I was looking for a way to make sense of my life, to find my footing on an invisible path forward.

During that time, I did some reading about Zen and the Buddha. I even started sitting, but it felt more like an experiment than the practice it has become. I remember reading, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind by Shunryu Suzuki, which was pretty confusing for a novice mind. The thing I didn’t understand is that much of this stuff is not meant to be understood. They are purposely filled with riddles, rewiring your conventional thinking. 

All this was quietly percolating under my skin during my thirties, while I was in therapy. A couple of years after all this, I left NYC for Santa Fe, NM and that is when the path forward began becoming visible.

Where I began has gotten me to where I am. It has taken quite a bit of time to embody the meaning of the words. I am not sure how good a job I have done and I think the uncertainty keeps me going back inside for affirmation.

Life is suffering. How’s that for the words on the welcome mat to Zen? It only gets worse after that. You’re gonna die and your own impermanence resonates wherever you look. It is absolutely futile to cling to anything, because that kind of longing for attachment adds to your suffering. The transitory nature of your own life is amplified wherever you look. If we didn’t call an apple an apple, would it still be an apple? Everything you do, no matter how big or small, affects everything else, before and after you. Embracing all this with your heart and soul only results in one thing: compassion. Of course, if you don’t, all you got is confusion.

The above paragraph is like Zen Cliff Notes  and will likely leave you with nothing more than a buzz of platitudes. It is impossible to take in one dose. To me, it’s like breakfast cereal I have every morning. Each bowlful tastes different every day, because part of this whole deal is that change is constant. After a while, it becomes its own kind of normal and you understand it and look forward to it. It tastes better and better.

When the Buddha started his journey in what is now Nepal, I can’t imagine he knew what he was doing. I do believe he was blessed with a unique way of seeing, a mind continually trying to sort out life’s labyrinth. He had the uncanny ability to slow life down, so he could see its movements. 

Today, speed is the goal, its own kind of distraction. Without taking the time to look at life, how can you possibly understand the inescapable truth of how tenuous this existence of ours is? 

Trust me, I am no genius, but I can tell you time is a great teacher. There is a difference between understanding and believing. Years ago, when I began what I laughingly call my practice, I got what the Buddha was talking about. I tried hard to remember all the words, because it made me feel good about all this. 

Today, I really don’t give a shit about even trying to make sense of this way of looking at the world. I am much more concerned with how I act and whether my actions, in word and deed, reflect the Buddha’s revelations. There is a difference between following him and agreeing with him. I don’t understand how anyone could look at the world any differently. It all springs from the truth of our mortality. It flips the scale of importance on its ear.

I sit quietly on my cushion every morning, under the Bodhi Tree of my longevity and I am grateful for the privilege. All of this writing is my way of sharing.

I am grateful for your time, a precious gift. Thank you.

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