Why I'm Not NOT a Buddhist

In the '20's Bertrand Russell wrote an essay or gave a lecture that later became an essay called Why I'm Not a Christian.  I read the essay in my 20's to much effect.  To be sure, I had been trolling the literature for arguments against religion.  I was studying philosophy.  I was learning logic.  I had lost my faith.  And I was eager to stage mini, one-person rebellions against just about any authority source; to hear what Nietzsche called the hollow sounds of all the idols.  Of course I found Russell compelling.

Following his logic, I wasn't a Christian either.  And I was grateful to have some help sorting out why.   Most convincing was his point that a system which threatened EVERLASTING damnation, torment and anguish (hello, hell) as punishment for just one lifetime of wickedness was seriously athwart any normal idea of fair, not to mention kind or loving.  And what of a life lived well, i.e. un-wickedly, but simply un-believing or un-accepting of the "truth" of said system?  Forever damnation just the same.  Murder costs you eternity.  So does jaywalking.  The whole thing just didn't/doesn't add up.  The system is built on fear and that, too, seems anything but kind and loving—Things we might reasonably expect from a moral code, whatever it happens to be.  In fact, it seems the opposite, predatory and vicious even.  To Russell's point I added my own objection:  I just don't BELIEVE Christianity.  Most of the Christians I knew were frauds if not outright criminals.  The crusades, the inquisition, abortion clinic bombings. What the hell. Christianity seemed coercive and destructive in practice and untenable in theory.   Belief, I think is as much an emotion as it is a decision.  I mean, look, the story of the risen Christ, redemption, everlasting life.  It's a blockbuster.  I love it.  Love it.  It makes me cry.  It's so damn moving, I WANT to believe it.  I just don't.  Virgin birth, life after death, someone doing me the solid of saving my worthless soul, hell, just the idea of a soul. . .so cool, so so cool.  So not believable.  To my mind.  God so loved the world he gave his son?  Please.  I'm a father. I think a god should save his son.  Good father's save their sons.  Yes, yes, I understand: faith.  But it doesn't bridge the gap for me.  I have faith man walked on the moon, though it could all be a hoax.  I have faith in dinosaurs, though I never petted one.  I have faith in other galaxies, though I've never been to one.  Some repositories of my belief, my faith, (I realize I just conflated them, kinda my point) I have evidence for. Others, the evidence is pretty damn slim if existent at all.  Belief is a confluence in the mind and absent ANY of the constituent streams (hunch, intuition, experience, conscience) belief is missing, faith is missing too.  For me anyway.   So what does one do lacking belief?  How is that generated?  Can it be constructed?  Is that the same?  Just SAY that I believe it?  SAY I have faith?  This is otherwise known as a lie.  A fear generated lie.  "The leader is good, the leader is great."  Just ACT as if I had faith?  This is an elaborate lie or a fiction.  My life would actually be a LOT easier if I did believe.  I would if I could.  But I can't so....so what?  Hell for me?  That's what Christianity says.  Come on.  Can that be right?  I have been far from perfect in my life.  Angry? Guilty of that for sure.  Jesus got angry.  Stupid, certainly.  Too many times to count.  Wrong?  Talk to my wife, there is a preponderance of evidence.  But bad?  Evil?  Deliberately injurious to others? Uh, no.  Not really.  I'm a little embarrassed at how good I try to be.  But I don't believe, which, as I say, is more like a reflex to me.  I believe in the ice ages.  I do not believe in the Loch Ness Monster.  Too bad, so sad, into the lake of fire with thee.  There's something wrong with this.  Right?  Can I get an amen?

While I'm at it.  Eve was SO set up.  Why wasn't the serpent banished from the garden before he had time to whisper to Eve?  What's Eden doing with a SNAKE??  Why did he go to Eve?  Why didn't god want us to be like him?  Why couldn't we know good and evil like he did? God so loved the world he gave his son, but could not deign to share his divinity with his creations?  This is perfect love?  Omnipotence? Pull one string and this thing unravels pretty quickly.  Actually, it DOESN'T unravel, It really tells a much different story. Tru dat, boo.  Again, I love the story.  Plangent chords on my heartstrings, but BELIEVE?  I believe it the way I believe in Sasquatch.  I believe in the story qua story, and its meta implications, what it says about the storyteller, but not the object per se. I hope you see, maybe even share, my dilemma.  Well, I don't hope you share it, but you might share it.

Still, only a fool would deny human spirituality. And I try not to be a fool.  Sometimes successfully.  Add to this equation: children in my charge, a life threatening illness, the power of guilt cultured and incubated very early on.  About the guilt: I was raised in a particularly virulent strain of Christianity (faith healing, speaking in tongues.  Yep.  True fact.  No snake handling.  We did not handle snakes.)  About the children: I don't want to raise my kids as Christians, but neither do I wish to pass on my hatred suspicion of religion.  One would be as bad as the other.  I want to equip them with the power and autonomy to make personal and idiosyncratic decisions.  About the threatened life:  Put it to you this way-- some people could call you and say they're coming to visit and you'd do nothing but anticipate their arrival.  Other people—let's call them more "important" or  more formal—call to announce a visit and you might tidy up a bit.  Pick up your socks, maybe empty the sink.  You might do so happily, you might resent it, you might not bother yourself too much thinking about such things, but you'll do it nonetheless.  When the reaper calls--and let's agree that not everyone gets a warning call AND that might be good and that might be bad---man, you will scurry around your house polishing everything that could possibly shine, you will scrub your toilets, pump your septic, throw away the marital aids, clean the attic and the basement and dust under the beds.  You might even re-arrange your furniture and act like it's been that way all along while rubbing out carpet palimpsests.

I did the scurrying thing.  I panicked.  In panic, you don't think too well.  It's hard to get things done.  It's impossible to tell where you live let alone clean your mo-fo house.  When the nurses asked me my religious preferences, my churlish and cynical and panicked answer was "Buddhist."

This is how, in my scurrying, house cleaning, severely depressed, pole-axed state, I came to have days and days and days worth of long meandering talks with a Zen monk, Terry.  They say everyone gets the horse that suits him.  The man himself could be several blog posts.  Just not this blog post.  Know that he was decent, kind and I came to believe, wise.  He was well-read, articulate, compassionate, funny and not really like what I then imagined a monk would-should-could be.  Certainly not a Zen Buddhist monk.  He wasn't even bald.

I told Terry my dilemma.  I said, I'm afraid I might go to hell, but I don't believe what I'm supposed to to stay out.  He said, "You want to know what to do?"  "YES!" I said.  He said, "We all do."  And he chuckled.  And I chuckled.  And then we were laughing like hell.  Laughing with tears down our cheeks.  Laughing and crying.  At the same time.  Not a happy sad.  Not a sad happy if there is such a thing.  We were laughing in our bellies and weeping in our throats.  Then he said, "You're haunted by ghosts of your past, but your past is past.  It's nowhere, It's nothing, It doesn't exist except in your fear.  Start with breathing.  Just breathe.  Think about your breath."  I played along.  Not reluctantly, but not enthusiastically either.  I just did what he said.  It would have been impolite not to.  In this way Terry taught me to meditate.  I learned to meditate.  I said, "I'm afraid."  Terry said, "You're allowed to be.  But you don't have to be.  Quiet your mind."

I worked on quieting my mind.  It was hard.  My mind was very loud with dying noises and not making much sense.  Prior to learning that with Terry, I had done a fair amount of reading on Eastern thought.  I knew I wasn't a Christian but knowing what you aren't isn't the same as knowing what you are.  I wanted to get things right.  I believed in logic, in the rational mind, in humans, in being good.  I came to think the whole point was to keep thinking about it.  I am curious, I like to read.  I learned a good bit of Buddhist thought but I wouldn't have called myself a Buddhist any more than I would have called myself a woman.  Meditation it turns out, is a pretty useful practice, rather like knowing how to be hungry.  It's a skill you can carry with you everywhere, use it when you need it.  I needed it a lot.  I got over my fear.  That's not exactly accurate.  I got good at not being dragged along in a current of fear.  I got good at observing my fear and going about my days, however numbered.  I was still cleaning house, still making ready for the reaper's visit, but I was actually getting somewhere.  I wasn't panicked.  I came to real BELIEF about what was important, about who I was, about what was true.  See, sorry, not even that is true.  I didn't come to BELIEVE.  I became less unsure, I learned enough, had a big enough hunch to make my bets.  Part of me still wanted Christian salvation.  I mean who doesn't if it's out there?  But I couldn't sign the papers, I couldn't claim what wasn't true.  I had this very real passage through the anguish of an accused witch.  She could save herself by copping to the witchcraft charge, but then she'd be a liar and unable to live with herself.  I didn't want to die.  I didn't want to go to hell.  I still couldn't believe.  I took it as proof that I didn't believe.  Meditation vanquished the ghosts.  It quieted my mind.  Helped me know what I believed.

So, but here's the thing:  I learned how to meditate but I don't really meditate.  Not anymore.  I don't fast anymore either.  There's too much living to do.  And the guilty Christian part of me felt guilty about THAT.  It's endless, right?  It's okay though.  I've had breakthrough.  I don't feel guilty about it anymore.  I feel pretty good about it, actually.  Liberated.  Free.  At peace with things.  Sorta how I can't really call myself a writer, but I write all the time—I can't really call myself a Buddhist, but I practice.  Turns out I practice a lot.  Terry taught me breathing meditation.  In.  Out.  In.  Out.  Thoughts will pop up.  It's your mind, It's supposed to think.  Let them go, leaves adrift on the current downstream.  Meditation teaches you mindfulness, being present, really present, inhabiting, occupying this moment right here.  It teaches you that even in death we are safe.  It occurred to me while hunting this fall that exercise, high intensity interval exercise, is also a really effective way to focus on the most important thing: your breathing.  I'm just tickled by this idea.  Exercise is breathing meditation.  There's nothing else but your breath.  God please another breath.  Now I know why I'm so drawn to it.  It's my practice. It quiets my mind, makes it okay to die and reminds me I'm alive.  If you see Buddha breathing hard, he might have just done Fran.

And THEN after a really good meditation session on the C2 rower this egg broke on my head:  Hunting is about as mindful as I can get.  The wind and light and leaves.  The sounds, the smells.  Studying the world in front of my face.  Watching.  Watching.  I was trying to understand why hunting for me. Not was it right or wrong, I was past that.  Just Why?  I knew I liked it and it was more than like, it was something I felt I had to do.  But I wanted to understand why.  For a long time I've wanted to know.  And the draw to do it and understand it has been much more powerful since transplant.  I'm starting to get it.  It's the now-ness.  The mindfulness, being present.  The colors of autumn.  The moment in every dawn that is like dusk, of every sunset that is like sunrise.  The cheekiness of chipmunks.  The caution of foxes. Susurrations of the jack pine.  Oaks creak and cottonwoods sway.  Leaves can skitter or lie mute as stone.  Hickories give away their seed stock.  The haughtiness of wild turkeys.  The intelligence of crows.  How nixy the Jay.  The torrid rutting buck and the smell of earth making itself beneath your very feet.

Suck in your portion of oxygen.  Study nature.  Meditate and be mindful.

Kids are great.  Wife is a gold star.  This month is 18 for me, post transplant.  Boston says I'm in good shape.  My 2K time quarrels with that assessment.  Learning charcuterie in Elizabethtown.  Hunted all of the PA archery season. Training with JW again, with humility and gratitude.  Deadlifting and squatting and breathing hard if not fire.