October 17, 2003

• Now and Zen

  
  

  I have been interested in religion for as long as I can remember.  Since “as long as I can rmember” is, say, 20 minutes anymore, perhaps I should clarify that statement.

  
  

  In junior high school English, we were given an assignment to write a speech and give it in front of the class.  The subject: our religious beliefs.  I daresay that such a task would draw howls of protest, not to say lawsuits, from some litiguous latrine-lawyer parents today, but in that older and more innocent day,no one protested.

  
  

  It was the honors class, so the speeches mostly ran to Episcopal and Presbyterian and Jewish, all bland white-bread stuff, even the from the Jewish kids.  Then I got up and announced that I was an atheist.  That got their attention…

  
  

  I don’t recall exactly what I said–it was some 40 years ago, and I refuse to confabulate.  But I remember vividly part of the following Q&A session.

  
  

  Alayne Livingston, a gorgeous leggy blonde cheerleader/Student Councl member, asked “But what happens to you after you die?”

  
  

  I looked her straight in the eye.

  
  

  “You ROT,” I replied.

  
  

  That was around the time, within a year os so, of the time I was sent to church camp.  Camp Michaux.  Intersting place. It had been a POW camp during the Big One.  Artwork by German prisoners adorned the walls of the common room, which would probably fetch big bucks on e-bay today.  I was the kid who wore a fedora, by the way. But I digress.

  
  

  The counselors ernestly tried to pound religion–the relatively inoffensive Prsbyterian kind–into our pointy little heads. One poor schmuck, in what he probably thought was an inspired bit of theological reaosning, argued as follows:

  
  

  “Jesus said he was the son of God, right?  That means one of two things–either he was really the son of God, or he was insane.  And since we all know that he could not have been insane, he MUST really be the son of God.”

  
  

  Some of the kids actually bought that shit.  But what really sunk it for me was communion the next day.  The cup came around, I noticed all the greasy lip marks aound the rim, and passed.  “Yuck,” I thought then.

  
  

  So I thought then, and so I say now.  Yuck to greasy lip marks, Yuck to organized religion in general and Christianity in particular, Yuck to all priests–not just the pedophiles–and Yuck to any and all limiting beliefs.

  
  

  Which brings me to Buddhism.  Sure, I know that superstitious morons are not all Christians and Muslims and Jews–there are some Buddhists who believe that, when he was born, Buddha took seven steps and spoke seven words.  Farted seven times, for all I know. And take Nisherun Shoshu Buddhism–please.  I did that, never made the little altar, but chanted my ass off, mostly to get into the pants of a woman some ten years my senior who drove a really neat car.  And who was, in retrospect, seriously disturbed. 

  
  

   But in general, Buddhism seems to me to be one of the more highly evolved religions, especially the Zen branch.  I read  a lot about it, beat my brains out over koans, laughed at the antics of these cranky old Zen masters who whapped novices over the head.  Pretty much all I really got was “The only Zen you find at the top of a mountain is the Zen you bring along with you.”  I have no idea who said that, but it sounds really cool.  You know, more enlightened than thou and all that.

  
  

  And that brings me to what inspired this little blog in the first place, an article in the paper yesterday about the American poet Jane Hirshfield.  She is kind of a Zen maven, having spent three years in a monestary practicing the religion full-time.  Presumably, she got good enough that she doesn’t have to practice any more.

  
  

  Anyway, a friend of hers moaned that he had gotten a commission to write a book on the subject, but had to keep it to 40,000 words.

  
  

  She replied that you only need seven–”Everything changes.  Everything is connected.  Pay attention.”

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