The Hunger

Hola Everybody,
So check this out: I need a J-O-B bad, so I applied for a job as a stock clerk. I was turned down -- twice. LOL! Really?

But I’m still here, still looking for work, still trying to upgrade my online presence. You can support my writing by clicking HERE. Any amount helps. If you can’t donate, please consider sharing the link with your contacts. Thanks.

I’m on an introspection trip these days.

The Hunger

The thirst for knowledge is like a piece of ass you know you shouldn't chase; in the end, you chase it just the same.
 -- George Pelecanos

One day when I was very young, my aunt was called to a store. I was caught stealing books and rather than call the police, the owner wanted an adult to come pick me up. I couldn’t have been more than eleven-twelve years-old. I still remember the books. One was a used copy of The Complete Works of Aristotle. Yeah, while my friends were out there stealing hubcaps, I was stealing books. They thought I was weird.

My aunt was so embarrassed, she couldn’t bring herself to look the store manager in the eye. We walked home in silence. The next day, my aunt, who was a washerwoman, reached into her purse with fingers stripped raw by the harsh chemicals of her work and came out with some crumpled bills. She asked me the cost of the books I attempted to steal. When I tried to rationalize the issue, she suggested I be quiet and patiently asked again in a firm voice, “How much did those books cost?”

When I told her, she gave me the money and instructed me to go buy the books. I went back to the same store and paid for the books. The store manager didn’t know what to say, she seemed confused. Eventually, she would come to know me well.

When I returned with the books, my aunt, with tears in her eyes, told me that there was nothing worse than ignorance. She told me if I ever wanted a book, to just ask and she would try to get the money for me. I’ll be honest and say that I continued to steal books here and there. Not a large amount, but books I thought I needed to read. My goal was to read all the great books. 

In case you haven’t noticed, I am a lover of knowledge. Actually, that’s a pretty good definition of philosophy. And please! We all are naïve philosophers in some form or another. Respect for knowledge, truth, and beauty were values instilled in me during my formative years. 

I was either born with this hunger or it was embedded in me at an early age by my parents and reinforced by the other adults during my formative years. Whatever the case, if I were to turn my back on this gift (as if I could), it would be more than a waste, it would be the only true sin.

Books, as with my other teachers, have always taught me to look for the contradictions -- the paradoxes -- because it is there where the truth can be found. I had hard a hard time figuring that one out. How can one find truth, or even anything useful, in things that seemingly have no connection?

But we don’t have to look too closely to see that our existence is full of contradictions. For every negative, there is a positive: night follows day, there is sadness and happiness, rain and sunshine. If you look still closer, you will observe that the web of life itself is made up of the interconnections and relationships between opposing forces. Like the tai chi symbol of yin yang, we all contain the rhythms reverberating from the play of dark and light, male and female, “good” and “bad,” awareness and ignorance.

I think about this web of connections when looking at and attempting to work with my character defects. Growth is optional and for many people and a critical outlook, or even looking within, is something alien -- something to be avoided at all costs. Instead, we are conditioned to consume that we become our material possessions. Even those of us who profess to be introspective truth seekers (or “truth tellers”!) often fall short because we are too busy defending who we are. Too often we rail on about the defects of others while ignoring our own.

If you look deeper, there is an essential unhappiness, a bitterness, driving this attitude. We all know at least one overly critical insensitive who tramples over people’s feelings under the guise of “truth” or “self-expression.” This kind of shit often backfires. It’s a bitch: when you deny life, it has a funny fuckin’ way of sneaking in through the back door. The baggage you carry will manifest itself through whatever form you consciously or unconsciously choose to express it.

In any case, many of us live our lives shuffling back and forth between two identities that seem to conflict: the rational and the emotional. My rational self, for example, tells me I really shouldn’t act out on an impulse, while my emotional self urges me to say “fuck it.” we all experience these two conflicting identities, and, though many people deny this, it’s how our mind/ brain is wired.

The rational self says “I should,” and the emotional self says, “Even though I know I should, I can’t.” Today, I have a better grasp of this paradox, these conflicting urges within me, but I’m still working on it. It’s a process, not a race. It’s also about practice and not perfection. I have found that I’m a deeply flawed man. So flawed that, by necessity, I need to have a process in place that keeps me moving, at the very least, in a good orderly direction. My path is more of a zig-zag than a straight line, but that too is OK.

The point being is that I (we?) have to find a way to balance these two natures. Some of us take the rational approach which often has the effect of leading to a denial of the emotional self. I see this all the time: people will say things like, “It doesn’t bother me,” as if reason can be used to stifle feelings. However, shit always comes up, somehow. Ultimately, denial is not a good coping mechanism no matter how logically you want to dress it up. Others take the opposite tact, and indulge their emotions. This is just the flip side of the denial coin.

I am at a point in my life where I am comfortable with who I am and how I embody my expressed values. I am comfortable with expressing my anger and confronting actions or behaviors that I find offensive. Is it always nice? No. Life isn’t nice. It is wrought difficulties and it is often within the crucible of conflict and turmoil that true growth happens. Avoiding conflict is like sticking your head in the sand. Conflict is an unavoidable and oftentimes invaluable fact of life.

This makes for many challenges and contradictions, but for one to live relatively happy, we need to find a way toward integration because that is the direction of all life: all life seeks to integrate fully somehow, it does this as surely as there is gravity and the sun sets and rises. Understanding how this all works can help many achieve some integration, some measure of comfortability and acceptance amidst the chaos and mass of contradictions that we all possess within.

My name is Eddie and I’m in recovery from civilization…

Interdependent Origination

Hola mi Gente,
I had an awful, almost crippling headache today. I almost never get headaches. I don’t know how I held it together.

Everything is Everything

The fear of letting go prevents you from letting go of the fear of letting go.

This is the doctrine at the heart Buddhism. You see, my dear reader, it goes this way: you are a unstable collection of coincidences held together by a desperate and irrational clinging. There is no center -- no center at all. Everything depends on everything else, your body depends on the ecology, your thoughts depend on whatever conditioned debris floats in from the media, your emotions are mostly from the reptilian end of your DNA.

Your intellect, dear reader, is a chemical computer that can’t add up a zillionth as fast as a pocket calculator. Even your best side is a superficial piece of social conditioning that will fall apart as soon as your significant other leaves with the money in the bank account, the economy fails and you get the sack, or you get conscripted into some village idiot’s war, or they give you the news about your brain tumor. To name this combination of self-pity, vanity, and despair self is not only the height of conceit, it is also proof that we’re a deluded species.

We are in a trance from birth to death. Burst the balloon and what are you left with? Emptiness.

It’s not only us -- this radical principle applies to the whole sentient world. Dependent origination is not exactly everyone’s cup of tea, I admit. But it does have a compelling point: stop for a moment, still yourself, listen -- in other words, meditate just a little -- and you will find yourself on a planet you no longer recognize. Those needs and fears you thought were the very foundation of your existence turn out to be no more than bugs in your software.

My name is Eddie and I’m in recovery from civilization… 

Sunday Sermon [Karma]

Hola mi Gente,

Recently, I’ve been seriously thinking about doing overseas humanitarian work. It’s something I have always wanted to do and perhaps this moment of transition in my life is the right time. Hmm…

On another completely unrelated note, feminist icon, Gloria Steinem, recently made some disparaging comments regarding young women Bernie Sanders supporters. Those who know and have worked with me know that I identify as a feminist. I also realize that my feminist identification is colored by the reality that I am a Latino cis man in a sexist society. I also have problems with what some call “white feminism: a feminism that is blind (consciously or otherwise) to issues of race and ethnicity (see here).

Having heard Steinem speak on a number of occasions, the racial component of her feminist analysis seemed to me an “added on” or artificial component-- something wedged on after the fact. That she would be so condescending to young women as to say that they’re only for Sanders because that’s where the boys are, as she did on television this past Friday, perhaps demonstrates that a form of thinking that has ossified (I won’t even mention another scold, Madeline Albright, who said the death of 500,000 innocent Iraqi women and children was “worth it”). I most certainly will not be voting for Hillary because of her ties to Wall St. and her warmongering and I don’t think it takes away from my commitment to feminism any more than the fact that my decision not to vote for any of the two Latinos, Rubio and Cruz, lessens my commitment to equality for my people.

Fuck you, Gloria, maybe it’s time you took a seat -- make that two seats!

* * *

Karma

Contrary to popular misconception, karma has nothing to do with punishment and reward. It exists as part of our holographic universe’s binary or dualistic operating system only to teach us responsibility for our creations -- and all things we experience are our creations.

-- Sol Luckman

In the allegorical novella, The Mountain, a man climbing a mountain kills a diseased old rat thinking he’s done something beneficial. What he didn’t realize was that the old rat, because it was too old and toothless, fed exclusively on certain insects. Once the rat was gone, these insects, who borrowed into the soil, multiplied causing soil erosion which eventually led to landslides and the destruction of an ecology.

Take a spiritual concept developed in one culture and transplant it to another and it will often be mangled beyond recognition. Nowhere is this truer than in Eastern spiritual practices adopted by Westerners raised mostly in Old Testament, Christian/ Judeo ideology. And nowhere is this truer than the law of karma.

Karma (kamma in Pali), in its simplest form, means action. But karma is more than cause and effect. It’s not merely “reaping what you sow.” In fact, the historical Buddha called the workings of karma one of the “four unconjecturables.” We could drive ourselves crazy speculating on how it will play out, he said (Anguttara Nikaya 4.77).

Most questions and difficulties regarding karma and rebirth come from an understanding of karma in which people who suffer in this life probably caused some wrong in a previous life. Yet I cannot imagine that the millions of victims of slavery, for example, that occurred throughout history suffer because of karmic law. Or, for another example, the case of a little girl was brutalized by her stepfather. She suffered in ways most adults will never understand and died sitting in cat litter, punishment for daring to eat some yogurt. I have a huge problem justifying that as “karma.”

In the earliest Buddhist writings, including the Pali Canon, it is clear that while karma has a significant bearing on the course of one’s life, other factors also influence one’s situation (see, for instance, Samyutta Nikaya, 36.21); not least of these is the karma of other people, which we cannot control. However, some Buddhist traditions emphasize individual karma as the sole cause of one’s happiness/sorrow. The implication of this is troubling: that those who suffered in Rwanda, for example, were reaping the consequences of karma sown in previous lives. 

I view the popular understanding of karma in the West as flawed and not very convincing, nor even helpful. It is ridiculous to look at the suffering of others and speculate that their predicament must result from their karma from former lives, especially when we cannot know the connections between their present condition and their former conduct. The factors that create the circumstances of an individual’s life are many and complex. Viewing the misfortunes of others purely in terms of their previous karma may encourage us to think that they must deserve them, which is not a skillful attitude.

On the other hand, it may be helpful for us to reflect that when misfortune befalls us we may have contributed to the situation; not so that we indulge in self-loathing and blame (which are forms of attachments and thus lead to more suffering), but because it may encourage us to be more vigilant regarding our patterns of behavior. I can tell you without qualification that in terms of Buddhism, the appropriate response to the sufferings of others is compassion.

Finally, there is the seemingly widespread belief (or, more correctly, desire) that those who put us down or gloat over our misfortunes, or do things to us that hurt us, and are unjustified receive some form of karmic payback. I see the status updates on Facebook and other social media and this is usually framed as the desire to remove “negative people” from our lives, or people who we need to get rid of and who will suffer greatly because of karma. 

Frankly put, this is immaturity. To me this is a childish notion, grounded in unskillful reactions that do not come from other so-called “negative” people, but from our own hurt and insecurity. This has nothing to do with karma. Believe me, I understand that there are painful experiences and that maybe you would feel justified knowing that the perpetrators of this pain will suffer as a consequence. But is this at best a hypocritical wish? After all, which is worse: gloating over the misfortunes of others or enjoying the hoped for humiliation of the one who gloats? Wishing suffering on others is not a virtue. Perhaps rather than thinking of what punishment those who harm us will receive, you could instead consider how unsatisfying their life must be for them to act in such a petty way. In terms of “punishment” for their conduct, well, at the very least, they would seem to have lost the benefit of your friendship.

Wishing or desiring suffering for others, even those who have harmed us, is bad karma.

My name is Eddie and I’m in recovery from civilization…