The First Noble Truth, dukkha, is the fact of suffering: that which gives rise to the feeling of “get me the hell out of here.” The Second Noble Truth, samudaya, is the fact of the “get me the hell out of here” response. That the second follows the first is the essence of the human condition. It’s so true, so universally, unmitigatedly true, that it earned the title of “noble”.

Inspired by David Brazier’s rejection of the idea that the second, third and fourth noble truths constitute a “cure”, I was very determined to write about dukkha simply unto itself, not as a lead-in to the good part where we deal with it and feel better. But I’ve sat here every day for 2 months trying to do it, and everything I write has to get cut and saved for the later FNT posts — the ones about how we can free ourselves not from suffering but from suffering about our suffering. In fact, looking at my definitions above, I see I actually defined suffering as a kind of corollary to wanting suffering to end.

I can’t even give dukkha its own sentence, let alone its own post. Apparently, that’s how deeply and completely I want to get the hell out of its way.

This has been tormenting me for months. Neglecting my blog makes me feel irresponsible and weak. And I thought I was on such a roll with the FNTs! I’ve been drafting samudaya, nirodha and marga nonstop—I even have the artwork ready! But dukkha, just the raw naked fact of it all by itself . . . my mind slides right off of it.

This blog has been the “therapy” side of my practice—the place where I can whine about how hard it all is and how bad I am at it, and poke fun at the boss. But now I have this eerie feeling of being in one of those koan stories where Buddha enlightens someone by creating an experience for them, rather than explaining. Like Kisagotami, a woman who came to beg him to bring her dead child back to life. He told her to collect a mustard seed from a household that had not endured grief. After years of asking door to door, she realized there was no such household, and her wish to escape her own suffering changed into compassion for all who suffer; thus she grasped the nobility of the truth of dukkha. I also like the one about the samurai warrior who asks one of the Buddha’s disciples to describe heaven and hell. The disciple says, “Why should I explain it to you, you ignorant clod?” The enraged samurai prepares to smite his critic, who quietly says, “That is hell.” The samurai stops, not quite comprehending, separated from his sense of certainty. The disciple says, “That is heaven.”

Well, this has been my own personal mustard seed. It’s not that I really equated finishing a blog post with escaping suffering. But I feel like the boss I’ve been joshing just showed me why he’s the boss.

If these posts are where I process my process of waking up, then maybe my failure here is a more eloquent statement than any thousand-word blob of analysis and snarky jokes would have been. I can’t blog dukkha into submission. No matter how I try to take it apart, it’s bigger than me. However I try to grasp it, it reminds me that I’m not here for that; I’m here to be in its grasp. Nobly so.

Thank you for the unexpected bonus, boss — I mean it.

I thought this one might be a little too cartoon-cute-sy, until I noticed the needle through the eyeball. Now I believe.

. . . yep.

But oy, the FNTs — they’re an awfully big job!

David Brazier gives a provocative and appealing exegesis of the Setting in Motion of the Wheel of the Dharma talk, which is where our friend Gautama describes his enlightenment experience and lays out the fundamental truths that constitute all human experience. I like to reread the book, The Feeling Buddha, after studying other sets of concepts such as the Precepts, the Paramitas, etc., to re-ground my understanding.

The book’s cover blurb describes Brazier’s project to present “a picture of the Buddha as a very human figure whose success lay not in his perfection, but in his method of positively utilizing the energy generated by personal suffering.”

The Buddha’s focus on the ordinary reality that everyone — everyone — experiences, and the easily recognizable habits and behaviors that we develop in response, are reflected in Brazier’s accessible, sensible and compelling discussion.

Drat and blast, this is turning into a book review — much easier than tackling the FNTs by myself. What happened to all that viriya?

Well, I’ll take help where I can get it. One aspect of Brazier’s presentation that really struck me was his focus on the word “noble.” The FNTs are often abbreviated as “life is suffering,” which of course is only the first of four; the rest are often interpreted as a formula for escaping #1, as if suffering were a disease that could be remedied. That’s an easy conclusion to reach when you look at the text:

1. Life is suffering (dukkha)
2. Suffering is caused by craving/attachment (samudaya)
3. Suffering ceases when craving/attachment are let go (nirodha)
   
4. Cessation of suffering comes from following the Eightfold Path (marga)

But Brazier rejects the construction that X is bad, X is caused by Y, Y can be eliminated, the cure for Y is Z. This would imply that X (dukkha) is something we should reject. But the Buddha didn’t talk about the Four What-a-Drag Truths. He called them noble.

That’s pretty intense. If something is noble, it probably shouldn’t be avoided, rejected, or otherwise dissed. But that’s what we all do all of the time, often in desperate, destructive, or just silly ways. We construct our lives and personas to protect ourselves against even the tiniest twinge. Brazier comments:

“The Buddha is saying that to be a human being who necessarily suffers is a dignified thing to be. What he is overthrowing is the idea that the spiritual quest consists of a flight from suffering. On the contrary, it is the flight which is undignified and shameful.”

Brazier believes that the Buddha’s wording targets something much deeper than our desire to avoid suffering itself; it goes straight to the real source of panic and flight, which is shame. Affliction, though it happens to everyone, makes us feel like we’ve been demoted somehow, like we’ve failed. So we try to deny and conceal our vulnerability by escaping into all the things the Precepts advise against: indulgence, intoxication, distraction, dishonesty, anything to maintain the illusion that we’re not actually subject to life’s indignities. But it’s not suffering that is undignified; it’s the ways we try to cheat so we don’t feel it and it doesn’t show.

This, by the way, includes swinging to the other end of the escape continuum: overzealous spiritual questing for transcendence. That might mean running away to a monastery, or just overdosing on Yoga Journal and two-day molasses-and-cayenne cleanses. (Full disclosure: I’ve read Charlotte Joko Beck’s book Nothing Special at least ten times, and there’s nothing Brazier or the Buddha or my boyfriend — or any other big B’s — can say to make me stop.)

But that’s really what I’m aiming to be “versus”: undignified, tiresome and tiring flight. For my next Four Noble Posts, I’m going along with Brazier in thinking the Buddha knew us awfully well and, for all his talk about egolessness, knew exactly how our egos work and how to calm us down. Dukkha happens all the time to everyone everywhere, and to live in peaceful, sane accordance with it — rather than chickening out and seeking relief that can’t last — is cool.

So noble up, comrades. We can handle this.

Ah, much better. I like the ABCD layout — makes the whole FNT thing feel a bit more manageable. Like I said, I’ll take help where I can get it.

According to David Snyder, author of The Complete Book of Buddha’s Lists — Explained, “the absolute value of fulfilled expectations is greater than or equal to the sum total of all expectations.” So there.

Brouhaha is always an intriguing glimpse of how aversion to pain/grasping for pleasure plays out en masse. The differences between the Michael-inspired and Farrah-inspired brouhahas have been pretty illuminating. Facebookers are expressing sadness over both celebs (MJ and FF, in digi-speak), but there are subtle variations in the essence of the sorrow which bear reflecting upon.

MJ’s mourners have been reliving important moments of their youth, sharing their nostalgia, and digging up as many freaky-great videos as can be found; it’s as much a celebration as a bereavement. Maybe we no longer have much in common with the people we shared those formative experiences with — but here we all are, together, mesmerized by the weirdness and wonder of that face, that voice, those crazy moves. Happy travels, MJ, wherever you land in the next round of the Great Round.

The Farrah-inspired brouhaha, in contrast, seems more tongue-in-cheek, perhaps even a smidge dismissive. We remember a lot about her, but the stuff we’re remembering doesn’t inspire the same affection. Dan Savage’s memorial post on Slog simply reads: “Dead.” Ouch. A pinup girl in a red swimsuit, a hairdo, the not-the-smart-one Angel — campy fun to revisit, but that’s all. Her later life made us uncomfortable (what was up with that Letterman appearance? Yikes!) and we did not approve of The Burning Bed or Extremities, even though we support rape/domestic-violence awareness programs and decry TV’s habit of glamorizing violence against women. We frowned and smirked when she stepped outside the blonde-bombshell box, even though we despised the box in the first place. Like our MJ, FF was a weirdo — but not the kind we could really love. Farrah, we didn’t do so well by you, but perhaps you’ve taught us something. Thank you.

Still, overall, the brouhaha has been fun. It’s been a community experience, and a cross-community one, and perhaps even a community-building one: Facebookers who otherwise don’t interact much are getting in there, mashing up the sad, the sweet, and the snarky, and it’s all good — different atoms in one big chatty molecule.

Not so with the ongoing FB vs. Twitter skirmishes, which always bewilder me. A lot of folks have a lot of contempt for those who choose to tweet, and they love to agree with each other about it. The discourse feels unpleasantly hipsterish to me, a kind of tribal elitism within the safe megaclique of Facebook (of which I am part). Not that the negging is limited to any particular walled garden; here’s a little blurb from The Onion, which of course is satirical, but you get the idea:

“Twitter was intended to be a way for vacant, self-absorbed egotists to share their most banal and idiotic thoughts with anyone pathetic enough to read them,” said a visibly confused Dorsey, claiming that Twitter is at its most powerful when it makes an already attention-starved populace even more needy for constant affirmation.

Yes, it’s hip to hate Twitter, all right — even (or especially) among Facebookers. Which is odd, because besides FB being more media-rich, what’s the difference, really? In fact, one could say that FB lacks some of Twitter’s potential uses and amplifies its tendency toward the banal. What’s worse: writing a short tweet about one’s thoughts or activities of the moment, or vacantly clicking “Send hugs to [friend]” or “I like this” or “Join This Cause” and then clicking it again for something else and again for something else? And don’t both technologies feed exactly the same “look at me, look at me” craving? I personally don’t think either is as dumb or as deadening as they’re made out to be, but if we really need vote one off the island, well, which of the two would the Tehran demonstrators pick?

Consider the current brouhaha over Penguin’s upcoming publication, Twitterature. The FB despair meter suggests that the end of literacy and of literature is nigh. And as I read the laments, I can partly empathize: I, too, cringe at the idea of Dante or Dickens or Nabokov reduced to 20 tweets — it’s even worse than Cliff’s Notes!

But is it? Maybe it’s more like oulipo. Maybe it’s a great writing exercise; we should all try it and see if we can capture theme, plot, character, pacing, style, etc., in one page. I’d be thrilled if my writing students took that on. To be blunt, these appeals to preserving the canon’s cultural value strike me as cop-outs, a way to grab at some easy validation of an essentially reactionary attitude: remember the outpouring of disdain for the novel-via-Twitter? No new forms allowed — they might lead to dancing!

How odd that something so innocuous should offend us so — to the degree that we can’t bear to think about its merits, its social utility, its creative potential. According to the Buddha, agitation arises from our aversion to suffering, which is usually taken to mean the big stuff like pain, disease, death. But the first discourse on dukkha gives more attention to the everyday ego abrasions that send us scrambling for refuge in distraction, aggression, and yes, even run-of-the-mill snobbery:

“Dukkha is being associated with what you do not like, being separated from what you do like, and not being able to get what you want.” (Translation from The Feeling Buddha by David Brazier.)

Aha! Is that what’s going on here? Being associated with something we do not like? Are we irked because all of that stuff people say about MySpacers and MMOLRPGers not having lives and being unable to connect with actual human beings might apply to us as well? Are we maybe a little embarrassed about how obsessively we cultivate digital versions of ourselves, how we love to be on display and get those cute thumbs-ups? Certainly we’re different from, say, those losers over at SecondLife, obsessing over their avatars’ wardrobes and face tattoos, right? Maybe not. Facebook could easily be described as a 24-hour personal PR agency that we use for all kinds of reasons we’d rather not ponder.

Not that those reasons are really so bad, though. Self-promotion is a normal, evolutionarily useful urge. Shouldn’t be a big deal, but we seem to shift into a panicky sort of denial when we’re caught in the deliberate construction of identity. But so what? We like to dabble in fads, in vanity, in idle amusements — why bite each other’s heads off about it?

Indeed, there are times when FB’s genteel manner of poking “gentle” fun devolves into a much nastier kind of groupthink. Some folks assume that no one reading will be hurt by their offhand remarks, dismissiveness, ridicule, moral condemnation, etc. This is thoughtless, like a roomful of people making fun of Mormons or TV watchers or people who still think Tom Cruise is hot: chances are that someone in that room is “guilty,” or knows and cares about someone who is. It surprises me when FBers let their manners slip this way. After all, how many FBers do you suppose use both, or even make their FB posts via Twitter? For me, it’s probably half of the friends I keep up with — and they post at least half of the stuff I’m glad to find out about.

FBers really aren’t as shallow or junior-high-ish as their (our) quips sometimes suggest; they (we) might indulge in occasional fantasies of taste-arbitration, but generally stop short of censorship. We all have our snob moments, our puritanical streak. Sometimes it just feels good to indulge in some down-home, to-hell-with-manners eye-rolling. (I’m doing it right now while I think about the abovementioned humans who rent every episode of The Office/Buffy/Weeds and still pride themselves that they “never watch TV”. Hello?)

So yes, quite a week. Lots of aversion, lots of craving and attachment, much stoking of dukkha. And, as the big B often pointed out, many missed opportunities to observe what is, instead of imprisoning ourselves in our rigid interpretive matrices. This seems like a good jumping-off point for a close look at those Four Noble Truths. It’s a daunting task. I’ll tackle it next time — after I update my status and check my notifications. And maybe I’ll tweet it, just for a taste of life as it is on the wrong side of the tracks.

The burdensome nature of aversion, craving and attachment. Dude, take off the backpack! And take mine while you’re at it, please…

These are for sale and might prevent people from mistaking you for a loser.

Ditto.

Can “snob” be reclaimed, like “queer” or “geek”?

If Marilyn Manson doesn’t empower your inner snob, wearing this might. I know it’s making me feel pretty badass, and I haven’t even received mine in the mail yet.

I had an uplifting experience — at church.

It never should have happened. I don’t do church. Or God, or Jesus, or any of that. I get very grouchy about things like separation of church and state (or the lack thereof) and Mormons drinking Coke and rich greedy plutocrats pretending to be upright Christians. The closest thing to a higher power I’m able to stomach is Flying Spaghetti Monster (may we all be touched by His noodly appendage).

But today I went, with a friend of mine who is visiting from D.C., to the Church of St. John Coltrane, which is of the African Orthodox tradition. It seemed like a fun, sort of touristy San Francisco thing to do. It was my idea to go, and I was curious, but I really had to brace myself for the God-talk and expected to be uncomfortable.

I also wasn’t especially looking forward to the music. I don’t get jazz; in fact, I just saw the Chet Baker documentary “Let’s Get Lost” and was kind of bored. The most interesting thing about it to me was the mysterious, unnamed brunette cheesecake whose presence was never explained yet whose breasts seemed to dominate about half the scenes. People tell me I have no soul because I dislike jazz music and poetry, and I think it’s probably true.

We got there a little late, and the music was already in full swing. Some kind of crazy jazz jam was happening, and there was this little girl playing bongos along with the coolly mindblowing jazz drummer dude, and this unbelievable upright-bass-player lady, and robed priests wailing on various horns, and people in the congregation played along on tamborines and maracas. One woman had brought tap shoes and a portable plywood dance platform and, man, she went to town. There was iconography of black Jesus on a throne, black Madonna and child, and Saint John Will I Am Coltrane with a sax full of flames. I looked around and thought, “Just think of them all as wonderful, strange space aliens, and go with it.”

(I also mentally replaced all references to Jesus with Joe Strummer, but that’s another topic.)

Much to my surprise, I didn’t even have to work that hard. Within five minutes, I was hooked. I mean I got it. I got the music and I got what they were all doing there. I wished I had a tamborine, and if my friend hadn’t been with me I think I would have been on my feet along with the regulars.

The jam ended and the choir sang and then various individuals gave tremendously individual, varied, inspired, amazing performances of some religion-applicable jazz standards (“Body and Soul” was one I recognzied) and spirituals. Then the archbishop gave a kind of musical sermon, which erupted in more jamming and some pretty wild dancing, until he calmed everybody down and set about the business of preaching. He had a reassuringly good-humored and compassionate and down-to-earth style, with plenty of laughter at his own foibles, and lots of common sense sprinkled throughout his exegesis of the Old Testament story of Jonah, the prophet who objected to God’s forgiveness of the city of Nineveh. (Jonah wanted the city wiped out for its transgressions, mainly to vindicate himself, and spent a month in the desert waiting for it to happen. No go. Get over yourself, Jonah. You too, Dubya.)

I was a religion major in college and always liked biblical stories as literature and as examples of human storytelling. As grouchy as I am about religion, I think there’s a lot of wisdom collected in the Bible, just as there is in the Sutras and the Tao Te Ching and The Joy of Cooking and tarot cards. So it wasn’t too hard to listen to the sermon and kind of forget about the outward form or code (God this and Scripture that), and just listen to the logic and the lesson.

The best part was when the preacher started in on Barack Obama (“I like you, my boy, but what you’re doing IS NOT SUFFICIENT.”) I definitely liked hearing him tell “Sister Clinton” that her idea of housecleaning doesn’t even begin to touch the filth behind the fridge. Social justice was a strong theme in the sermon, and this guy has got admirably high standards. He also has a knack for simultaneously talking about big, political, global issues and personal, behavioral and ethical stuff, relentlessly pointing out the connection between them — as inconvenient as it is to remember that a lot of the time. It feels good to revel in righteous indignation aimed at The Oppressor, but it won’t do to forget about checking ourselves as well.

As for what everyone was doing there: probably more than I really want to think about, but what struck me was the sense of getting together to do hard work in a joyous way. The preacher was asking people to think hard about some difficult things, and they (we) were doing it in public (or among witnesses, anyway), and that was pretty intense.

It made me realize that even though I teach about media democracy and using new media for community building, I myself don’t have much sense of community — and I didn’t really know how much I felt that lack until today. I’m not going to run out and join a church to fill the void; I’m going to sit with that feeling and see what it really consists of, and pay attention to ways I could participate more in the communities I already belong to (the university I teach at, my department, my band, my neighborhood). Not bad for a bad Buddhist, eh?

And I probably will get a tamborine and go back to church next Sunday — and sit close to the drummer. He was freaking amazing.

(So what does Celine Dion have to do with this, besides being the anti-Joe-Strummer in my personal theology? Well, when I came home today my boyfriend had sent me a link to this video. I watched it and realized I could no longer think of her as a complete robot zombie idiot. I had to ask him if it’s alarming that I discovered I like church and Celine Dion in the same day. I don’t know; should I be worried?)

An equally iconic and eloquent image. I’m not joking about Joe. There’s a reason The Clash were called the only band that matters.

One card from my favorite deck, Morgan’s Tarot. This one means “The appearance of this card may indicate something scary is happening, but there is probably no need to take it too seriously.” Fear is the mind-killer. (Was it Yoda or the Kyle McLaughlin character in Dune who said that?)

A Tibetan FSM sighting?

While Marx made some bizarre predictions (seriously, a revolution that actually accomplishes an egalitarian society and is the culmination of human history — forever?), he also gave us a way to talk about tricky stuff like false consciousness.

(Just to get it out of the way: Marx’s critique was hot even if his conclusions were wack. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it. Also, some Marxist lingo comes from his fan club, not himself; I use what I like.)

Back to bad Buddhism: false consciousness is a lot like maya, the “veil of illusion” that keeps us thinking our ego-bound perceptions of reality are real. The difference is that maya just exists — it’s how the world was when we all got here — whereas false consciousness is something engineered for the purposes of exploitation and social control.

Also, with maya, knowing about it can help you not get too caught up in it. But with false consciousness, there’s no vaccine — not for me, anyway. I’ve been stung. Infected. A plague is upon my house.

I am in love — or at least kind of mentally getting it on — with a bourgeois hero.

Two, in fact, though each is so necessary to the package that they function as a single unit. Individually they are David and Victoria “Posh Spice” Beckham. Together they are dVb.

I am so fascinated by them (it?) that I have caught myself saying things like “retextualizing low culture as high culture” and “appropriation of the absurd as an assertion of the individual”. She designed her own wall sconces, you know! When the art world refused to let her in, she turned her own home into a gallery and her life into a runway show. As for the sanctified arbiters of taste, she went DIY on their asses. Didn’t she! Didn’t she!

However, now that she’s getting thumb-uppage right and left, she is just another bourgeois hero. The myth or subtext of dVb is this: The way to attain ultimate happiness is to divest oneself of ordinary personhood through the transformative magic of Lots and Lots of Money. Creativity, chutzpah and canny dress sense don’t count for beans without it. The money is the mojo.

And Posh is its high priestess. Her sacred name is Hyperrealia. She is annihilated on the altar of the culture industry (a conveyor belt of beauties for sale, interchangeable anonymous models daily upgraded and improved) and resurrected as the Ur-Mother of them all. Through money she becomes Herself.

Whoa. What just happened? Where am I? What time is it?

Maybe I’ll calm down if I get this off my chest: it’s an excerpt from Elle magazine’s recent dVb love-orgy:

[Victoria] disembarked picture-perfect from the plane at LAX on July 13, her famously unsmiling self groomed to the nines, nary a blond hair out of place, wearing an Azzedine Alaia black dress, mile-high heels, and humongous black sunglasses, with an Hermes Birkin bag on one arm and her grinning soccer star husband on the other. . .

Next stop? Beverly hills. Imposing wrought iron gates open in slow motion to a long, narrow drive lined by towering hedges. Parked in front of the $22 million dollar manse is a black Bentley Continental GTC with monogrammed VB headrests and a Lincoln Navigator bearing David’s soccer number, 23, on the seats and front grille. Ten security guards resembling Chippendales dancers walk the grounds. In England, ex-Special Forces agents patrol the couple’s 24-acre estate, whith its 1930s Georgian-style house — a former government-owned children’s home. Dubbed “Beckingham Palace,” the residence is Grade II listed (yes, even property there is defined by class), which deems it “a particularly significant building of more than local interest.” There they re-created the ancient Irish church in which they were wed in 1999 — on matching thrones, with Victoria wearing a crown. “I enjoy sending it up,” she says.

This is just gross and creepy, right? I cannot allow myself to dig dVb, clearly. I mean, what response can any decent Marxist soul have other than horror, repulsion, lament for the sorry state of our culture? You can take one look at them and know it’s over: for us, for America. We’re done. Decadence is the final and fatal stage of empire. Our heroes will get dumber even as they get richer, and so will we. And when we stop getting richer and start getting poorer (because of all the dumb things we did to get richer) we’ll cling just as needfully to the pretty pictures.

Ack, sorry. There I go again.

I don’t want to end this post on such a doomsday note, so to cleanse the blog aura I will invoke Keri Smith as an antidote to the bourgeous hero. Keri is one of those creative and sensitive souls who have a knack for sharing their talent without getting all superior about it. I met her at a conference once. She’s lovely. It’s worth taking a little tour of her site; I especially liked her create-a-thing-a-day month and the ad-free blog project.

And I promise to read two sutras for every trashy article I read about you-know-who.

P.S. Do I get extra credit for managing to include a Mork and Mindy reference in this post? Not sure what I’m talking about? Then SOMEBODY didn’t follow all the links!

Would I be happy? Would I? Would you?

Whoa — hot robot alien Stepford wives!

This project offended lots of people who put ads on their blogs and who believe bloggers should be able to make some revenue off of their work. I agree with that in principle, but I also appreciate some ad-free space now and then. How ’bout you?

You’d think that someone who finds it difficult to sit still and focus for 20 minutes of zen meditation would do a bit better at yoga. Yoga is like meditation with treats: every new pose is like a bright, shiny object that provides a few moments of entertainment for the restless mind — a brief respite from the impatience and boredom of being stuck motionless on a cushion, alone with one’s own tediously repetetive thoughts. Hooray, warrior pose! Downward-facing dog — yippee!

Except . . .

I hate yoga. Or rather, I hate yoga instruction. I freak out when I hear things like “draw the energy inward from the heart center” or “let the movement come from your intention, not from your muscles.” I can’t bear that kind of metaphorical, mystifying baby-talk. It’s one thing to say, “Lift the crown of your head as if there were a string connecting it to the ceiling.” That is a simile; the “as if” makes it perfectly OK. But “send the breath out through the fingers and toes”? No. I have no lungs or trachea in my limbs. I have muscles I can wiggle and stretch, or — if that’s too darn Western and literal — I can visualize wiggling and stretching. (Disclosure: I also hate modern dance and poetry, so I’m probably some kind of spiritual cripple, but I’m sticking by my guns here: energy comes from ATP and glucose, not the suggestion of light radiating out from a serpent coiled in my belly.)

So. I am apparently a bad Buddhist and an even worse yogini. Still, I guess I’m just good enough at both to recognize that my resistance is itself a lesson, if I pay attention to it. Why do I become so enraged by the efforts of instructors who have worked hard to master a skill and who are trying their best to teach well? I felt a similar intolerance throughout my years as a graduate student in a creative writing program. Every time I heard someone say “write into that” or “write around that” or talk about any kind of “mapping” or “exploding” of “moments,” I would practically choke on my own disgust and self-loathing — was I really idiot enough to sit through this shit, semester after semester? Did I keep coming back because I was willing to be open to learning something, or was I just a revolting coward who couldn’t cut the academic umbilical cord? I found myself growing brittle, bitter and resentful of every minute I spent in that program — when really I should have just enjoyed the privilege of being a person whose “job” was to write and think about writing pretty much all the time. Poor, poor me! No wonder I was so pissed off!

My resentment in class arose from my anxiety that time was being spent and wasted: that I was running out of time. My impatience in yoga arises from my anxiety that the teacher is talking nonsense, which is wasting my exercise time, of which I only have so much: again, I am running out of time. If I sit with this awareness, I realize that I live in a state of constant panic: because I am, as we all are, running out of time.

I flatten this panic in order to get through the day without being a raging, screaming, sobbing wreck. I distract myself with obsessions that tend toward the perfectionistic and rabidly critical, like my students’ bewilderment regarding the concept of end punctuation (what the fuck is so fucking hard about end-fucking-punctuation? Jesus! Period, question mark, exclamation point, ellipsis, long dash! It’s not fucking calculus, for Christ’s sake! Are these college students or third-graders?) or my Mormon sister’s hypocritical failure to train her kids to send thank-you notes (so family is really important, huh? Aren’t I family? Just because I’m not a Christian, my birthday checks don’t merit a simple acknowledgment? Nice values there. How about another Coke?). I futz around endlessly with my calendar, meticulously planning when I’ll write and when I’ll grade and when I’ll read blogs and when I’ll get groceries and when I’ll clean the house and when I’ll practice drumming and when I’ll go to Pilates (not yoga) and when I’ll generally get my shit together — and then I don’t do any of it because the constant, underlying, crushing sense of time running out just makes me go fetal.

Meanwhile, time really is running out.

It really is.

That’s right: DECIDING THE FATE OF THE WORLD! And you thought it was merely about getting a yoga-butt. Ha.

OMG, this is too beautiful.

Well, I don’t need high or large, but I do need warm and comfy, which I’m guessing would count as “part of the problem” as far as this precept goes.

The problem being that sleep is goooooood. I like to sleep. A lot, if I get the chance. And that’s not really compatible with the Buddhist ethic of not wasting time: every moment of the day can and should be used for practice, but time spent in sleep can’t be spent in awareness. So the less time spent sleeping, the better.

Blech. Of all the Eight Precepts, this is my least favorite. Just thinking about it makes me want to take a nap in protest.

Yes, protest. Come on; if I’m going to put right effort in all day long, and refrain from practically everything my ego wants (not to mention my id, my libido, my primate brain, my metabolism, and my inner shoe fetishist), are you seriously telling me that someone wants to make sure I sleep in a way I don’t enjoy, so that I’ll want to do it less?

Actually, now that I’ve calmed down a bit (maybe I went and took a nap! Maybe I did!) I can see the logic and benefit of this precept for those looking to deepen their practice. It makes perfect sense, like just about everything the Buddha recommended. (That smartypants.)

BUT. There is a version of this precept floating around in our culture, and does not have the same legitimizing foundation in wisdom or the goal of human happiness. I’m talking about the Busy Rule. This rule says that you have to be busy all the time; you have to be so busy doing stuff you have to do that you don’t have time to do the stuff you want to do; you have to be so busy that you’re acutely aware of how your busy-ness exhausts and frustrates you; you have to be so busy that there is no possibility of unscheduled, unresearched, unmultitasked leisure or social activity. And the only acceptable reason for turning down any invitation or request for your time is that you’re just way too crazy busy.

Well, screw that. I can’t live as a crazy-busy person for more than a week without completely falling apart. I know my limit of busy, and I protect myself from being pushed too far past it — even when it means turning down invitations or requests for my time not because I’m actually too busy, but because I don’t want to be.

I have a friend who is the busiest person on earth. Not only does she have a full-time job and a long commute to get there, but she also sings in a band that practices twice a week, writes poetry and goes to a workshop, takes a painting class, hosts Girls’ Poker Night, acts as sole caregiver for an elderly woman (cleans her house, takes her to medical appointments, has dinner with her, handles her legal and financial stuff), does pro bono PR work for a local music school, maintains a full and exciting love life, spends time with her parents and siblings and nieces every weekend — and still says YES when I invite her over. She is living proof of the idiom: “If you want something done, ask a busy person.” She is a miracle; I truly admire her.

And I am very clear that her life would kill me dead.

I think the cultural stigma against “not busy enough” has some basis in logic. There’s obviously an advantage to being busy (in the same way there’s an advantage to being manic and a disadvantage to being depressed) in that you simply get more done.

Which would be great. I admit my mental tally of Good Stuff I’ve Done would be higher if I spent less time at rest or in idle contemplation of trashy magazines. But I don’t think I should have to feel secretive or ashamed about having free time, or have to give up sleeping in sometimes. That bit about the bed on the ground struck me at first (in contemporary cultural context) as punishing and shaming rather than practical, as the Buddha no doubt intended it.

So I do see the value of the practice. I think I will try a little harder to use my time wisely, and watch the napping. Chalk another one up for the Buddha; so far he’s eight for eight.

A slightly less successful nap: no blanket, a bit chilly. Even Orson seems a little worried, like he wants someone to fetch me a down comforter. He is a good and faithful friend.

Now doesn’t that look like it feels good? How can anything that looks like this be bad for you?

Another version of this precept reads: “to refrain from dancing, singing, music, going to see entertainments, wearing garlands, smartening with perfumes and beautifying with cosmetics.”

This is one of the “optional three” precepts for lay Buddhists. In the Buddha’s time, his bikkhus (students) focused on recitation and teaching of the Dhamma on Uposatha (new moon and full moon) days. Today some lay Buddhists also observe Uposatha as days for temporary renunciation:

…the Buddha speaks of a noble disciple reflecting: By undertaking the Uposatha with its eight precepts for a day and a night I renounce the way of common men and live as the arahants do for all their lives, compassionate, pure and wise. So the Right Precepts are really a test of how far one can discipline oneself. That means really, to what extent do wholesome states of mind consonant with Dhamma-practice predominate in one’s character over unwholesome desires built on greed, aversion and delusion? The practice of the Eight Precepts gives one a chance to find out about this. And this is an investigation which one can make four times a month if one wishes.

Actually, I like the idea of that a lot. Maybe because I know I’m a bad enough Buddhist that I couldn’t hack full-time abstinence. But I’m certain that a trial-sized dose on a regular basis would teach me something.

What, though?

I really don’t mean that flippantly. I’m curious about the intended goal of this precept, and what specific effects it is expected to have on a person. On one level, it’s obvious (but here’s an explanation anyway):

…the lay Buddhist refrains from enjoying songs, dances, music and shows during this period of observance so that he will not be distracted by sensual pleasures that may give rise to unwholesome thoughts. At the same time, by refraining from the use of ornaments, perfumes and cosmetics, he becomes more aware that physical beauty is impermanent and that one should not be vain.

For me, this highlights the difference between what I know (i.e., I know that fun and good times are fleeting, and that beauty is also impermanent) and what I practice (going out to dance and hear music, applying all manner of creams and pastes and goo to my face all the time).

My question is: Does my behavior indicate that I don’t really understand the reality? Or that I don’t fully believe it? Or that I care less about the reality than I do about the temporary enjoyment I get out of the behavior?

And the next question is: Will the practice of refraining from entertainment and vanity actually increase my understanding, cement my belief, or reduce my pleasure (and hence my attachment)?

Or will I just get really dull? And wrinkly?

Well, obviously I’m going to get wrinkly anyway; all I can do is slow down the process somewhat. And I’m OK with that. I love my peptide serum. Peptides are my friend.

But I’m intrigued about what might happen if I commit to observing the Uposatha days. Since they’re determined by the lunar calendar, I won’t have any control over when they happen; what if one falls on a day when my boyfriend’s band is playing? Or my own band — does practice count? What if it falls on a long work day and I can’t wear any lotion or makeup and I look really haggard and scary and my students figure out I’m not their age?

I suppose that’s where practice comes in. You don’t know until you do it. You can think you know, you can guess what it would be like, but it isn’t going to really sink in until you walk all the way through the experience. So really it would be best for me if Uposatha days did happen at inconvenient, challenging times — otherwise I won’t really get it.

Oh, crap, I can’t believe I just said that. I think I just cursed myself; now all the Uposatha days will fall when I have plans! I should probably just kiss my Ted Leo and the Pharmacists tickets goodbye. Maybe this was a BAD IDEA.

Definitely not giving up my peptides, either. Stupid Uposatha.

Oops. What I meant was: “Do not lose yourself in dispersion and in your surroundings. Practice mindful breathing to come back to what is happening in the present moment. Be in touch with what is wondrous, refreshing, and healing both inside and around you. Plant seeds of joy, peace, and understanding in yourself in order to facilitate the work of transformation in the depths of your consciousness.”

Seriously, that’s what I meant.

But if I give up entertainments and smartening perfumes and pretty shoes (OK, the precept doesn’t ban shoes, but I have a feeling they count) will I end up looking like Reverend Moore?

Thank Buddha for peptides! And you, I see you smirking. Just wait until your eyelids start turning into crepe paper.

What do you think? I have to get these, right?

In observing the sixth precept, for example, the lay Buddhist eats one or two simple meals between dawn and noon and avoids taking food beyond that. This cuts down the time spent on meals and allows him more time to spend on mediation.

Furthermore, according to Access to Insight,

The sixth precept also follows the practice of bhikkhus and aims at cutting down the sloth which is experienced after a day’s work and a substantial evening meal, while it ensures that the body is light and fit for meditative practice. In the precept, the words “outside the time” mean after twelve noon until dawn the following day. During this time no food is eaten. However, some flexibility will be needed here with people going out to work. For them it would mean no food after their midday lunch until breakfast the next day. If one is troubled by tiredness after work on a day when these precepts are undertaken then tea or coffee are allowable as refreshing drinks. If hunger is the trouble then cocoa (or even plain chocolate) should cure it. None of these refreshments should contain milk, which is considered a food, though sugar, honey and butter are allowed (to bhikkhus, and therefore to lay people keeping the Eight Precepts), presumably because one can take only a little of these things. Fruit juices which have been strained (without fruit pulp) are other possible drinks.

Did I read that right? Chocolate is the recommended solution if you’re too tired to meditate after work? Gautama, my friend, I think you might be on to something here!

(Is it OK to use the big B’s first name? I don’t want to accidentally be an even worse Buddhist than I already am. Bad Buddhist doesn’t wish to be Blasphemous Buddhist as well.)

I wonder why Thich Nhat Hanh didn’t include the “untimely meal” thing in his Mindfulness Trainings. He stopped after the first Five Precepts. However, he does have a lot to say about mindful eating:

Some of us, while looking at a piece of carrot, can see the whole cosmos in it, can see the sunshine in it, can see the earth in it. It has come from the whole cosmos for our nourishment. You may like to smile to it before you put it in your mouth. When you chew it, you are aware that you are chewing a piece of carrot. Don’t put anything else into your mouth, like your projects, your worries, your fear, just put the carrot in. And when you chew, chew only the carrot, not your projects or your ideas. You are capable of living in the present moment, in the here and the now. It is simple, but you need some training to just enjoy the piece of carrot. This is a miracle. I often teach “orange meditation” to my students. We spend time sitting together, each enjoying an orange. Placing the orange on the palm of our hand, we look at it while breathing in and out, so that the orange becomes a reality. If we are not here, totally present, the orange isn’t here either. There are some people who eat an orange but don’t really eat it. They eat their sorrow, fear, anger, past, and future. They are not really present, with body and mind united.

That brings another level of focus to the precept. I definitely grok the part about eating emotions. In fact, I find that just about every night, sometimes after dinner and sometimes during, I start fantasizing about devoting the rest of the p.m. to purely passive entertainment, with a focus on edible treats. The more “forbidden” the better. And I don’t always resist temptation. Of course, every time is the last time, and I start a new Good Buddhist regime the next day. I find a way to get all the stuff done that I didn’t do because I was zoning out. Or else I don’t. And so it goes.

I spend a lot of time feeling guilty and weak because of this. But the point isn’t really whether or not I indulge, or even whether I get things done. It’s really about the emotional experience I’m having every evening, which prompts me to seek comfort and escape. It’s a combination of current anxieties and old, old pain that has lost its mystery over the years but retains its power to send me scrambling for the frozen Snickers. (BTW, has anyone tried the Ben & Jerry’s chocolate almond nougat flavor? I overheard someone in the grocery store saying it was like a pint of frozen Snickers, so I spent half an hour in the store commanding myself not to buy it, then bought two pints, and got it home and didn’t like it. Whew! That was a seriously close call.)

In any case, I think the question of timeliness makes the most sense to me in these terms: Is it time to be present and mindful of what I’m eating, or is it time to be present and mindful of what I’m feeling? If the latter, then, well, the Snickers just has to go.

Dammit.

Here’s a detail from a 12th-century Japanese illustration of gaki, greedy souls condemned to eternal craving for a specific substance or object. Pretty wretched lot. Image from The Meditation Project.

Mmmmmmm, Snickers. A delicious public-domain image found on Wikimedia Commons, bless ‘em!

I don’t doubt that Thich Nhat Hanh is wiser than I can ever possibly hope to be, and I know that if I took his advice I’d be a healthier, happier and better person. But there are times when I just think, What planet are you from, dude?

I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be flip. The problem I have with this particular formulation of the Fifth Precept is that it asks us to avoid taking part in anything that is “unwholesome.” I understand the general point and benefit of this. It’s all too easy to get sucked in to habits, whether of consumption or of thought and speech, that reinforce aspects of our nature (selfishness, egomania, lack of empathy, laziness) while our better virtues atrophy from disuse. So yes, I want to make an effort not to lose myself or my time to things that ultimately harm to me and the world I live in.

However, at the same time, I think it’s important to also retain a sense of balance and of curiosity — intellectual, aesthetic, artistic, moral, or just plain human curiosity — about “the dark side.”

Drugs and alcohol, plus those TV shows, magazines, books, films and conversations mentioned by Thich Nhat Hanh (and let’s add music, of course), which are centered around and/or which draw us in close to things like pain, hatred, self-destructiveness, violence, paranoia, nihilism, apathy — they take us to those places because those places are real, they are part of being human, they are compelling and necessary to understand. Most of us probably don’t want to live there all the time, but some people choose to (or don’t choose, but end up there anyway) and what they report back (whether it’s in the form of a brilliant poem, or a suicide note, or of a crappy commercial lowest-common-denominator TV show) is part of humanity’s eternal art-gallery exhibition, the neverending, constantly curated retrospective that shows us the full range of what we are.

I don’t think refusing to ingest this stuff — refusing to take a close look at the evidence, to really feel its weight and heft and texture for ourselves, up close — really helps us at all. In fact, I think that kind of purism is more likely to keep us ignorant and lacking in empathy. Plus it just seems pretty snobby. We can try to deny the dark side, but it is wily and strong and will tell us things we wish we never knew.

I practiced in a sangha for a while about ten years ago, and I remember a conversation about music coming up, in which someone referred to heavy metal music (Guns’N'Roses, specifically) in a way that made it clear that everyone there felt it was both unwholesome and without value. I felt compelled to argue: if Axl Rose and his comrades live in a darker place than we do, and if he writes songs and plays in a band that sounds angry and nihilistic and takes a lot of drugs along with all those other tormented people seeking an ecstatic experience, then we should thank him for going there. We should thank him for reporting back.

And quite possibly we should try to spend a little time there ourselves, just so we know.

This seems like the kind of thing that arises directly from attempts to squelch human fascination with the dark side.

BAD BUDDHIST VS. THE FOURTH PRECEPT