So you're an atheist, yawn

This morning I got an e-mail, a new post from a blog I subscribe to.  In it the author claims there is absolutely no historical evidence for the story of the Buddha. He and some of the commenters get all worked up and use insulting language regarding those who believe this "puerile" legend is true.  Boring, yet aggravating.  Full of Monday energy, I wrote a short comment, as follows---

I just don’t get it, why some of you are so riled up about this. It’s a myth, an extended metaphor. It’s one step more symbolic than language itself.

A similar heated discussion exists in the perennial modern anti-Christian-theology movement called atheism. Why? So you don’t believe what someone else believes. Fine. We get it. Why so angry?

A rhetorical question, I guess.  I am sure people get fixated on this kind of thing for reasons deeply rooted in their own childhood and their neurosis, using that term as Chogyam Trungpa did to describe the general kind of messy human brain we have if we don't make a real point of engaging with reality (as the Buddha said, nudge).  As an English major trudging through degrees I met a great deal of elaborate thinking along the way, and many who subscribed to atheism, which seemed to be seen as The Thinking Man's Religion.  I observed that they were often anti-authoritarian, sometimes anarchists, disliked the idea of codes of ethics, loved transgression, and lived in these elaborate dreams of argument - and believed it mattered.

There is no good reason for me to engage in something like this.  I just think it's not nice to make a big point of trying to bring down other people's beliefs.  And, of course, name-calling is a low tactic, a rhetorical trick categorized as a logical fallacy.  There.

But at least they have a sense of humor (see image above).  And here, courtesy of an evil website, is an atheist joke:
Catholics are against abortions.
Catholics are against homosexuals.
But, I can't think of anyone who has fewer abortions than homosexuals! -- George Carlin

The War Against Christmas

Here was my bad attitude this morning, just waiting for me to somnolently turn to Facebook with my coffee. There it was again - a post by a self-proclaimed Christian urging others of like belief to eschew the term Happy Holidays and righteously say "Merry Christmas."  And boycott Target or someone.  And share the post, of course.

I don't mind if people want to indicate connection by a shared vocabulary.  But I am not sure sometimes that everyone understands: America is not a Christian nation.  This is true despite the fact that since our founding there have always been the religious that are not content with being religious, as Jesus suggested, praying in secret, but have to pray openly. Now it's on the Facebook highway.  Their crusade is long-standing enough that Wikipedia notes ---

some Christian and non-Christians have claimed that an affront to Christmas (dubbed a "war on Christmas" by some) is ongoing. 

I know, if it bothers me I could be more selective in my "friending." Too late now, and also, you never know, do you?  And yes, I know I can "hide" people who get to being annoying.  And I do.  Then at some point I think of them and bring them back out of hiding.  In this case, that will probably be after the holidays.

Don't think I don't have problems with the secularization of Christmas.  I love the centering on the miracle of birth amidst poverty, the idea of the divine in our midst.  I end up in tears singing "Silent Night" in the candlelight service.  I was fit to be tied one year when the reins got loose at my church, and the Christmas Eve service featured "Jingle Bells" and the Christmas choir concert featured "How the Grinch Stole Christmas."  I don't go to church for this, and I don't think the children particularly benefit from it - they can see this on TV and at the mall.

But I do accept that Christmas has been secularized for quite a number of years now.  I grew up with it, with the ads for a fat Santa having a Coke at the fireside.  When I was five, I thought Christmas was about getting presents.  This is life in any society that has abundance and freedom of retail.  But read Wikipedia - the very date of Christmas is thought to have origins in pagan winter festivals. Look at it that way, you could say that the Christians degraded the pagan impulse. Yet I don't see my pagan friends agitating to boycott everyone who sells artificial Christmas trees and yule logs.

And if you really think those of us who wish our Buddhist, Muslim, Unitarian, Jewish, etc. friends "Happy Holidays" are involved in a war against Christmas, I invite you to look at history and the wars against religions.  Take the current Chinese oppression of the Falun Gong - go ahead, read about it.  And think about what freedom of religion really means, and let the rest of us have it.  Then put some cookies out for Santa.  Or a Coke, for all I care.

There's more reality out there than you bargained for

I made a trivial mistake a while back of subscribing to a cooking magazine meant for another generation, for women who have fresh rosemary and currant jelly in their pantry, and who don't mind cooking and eating baby animals. (I just can't.)  Like every other magazine these days, it has an article about how meditation will help you continue to live an insanely ambitious, stressful life. Sigh.

So I turned to the Sunday paper and read there an advice column. The girl - okay, young woman - wanted to know if she should keep trying with her sincerely repentant boyfriend, The Cheater.  If she would ever learn to trust him.  The answer agreed with my understanding of reality: If you stick with him, understand that he will always have that trait. Ask yourself whether it's worth it anyway.

 The article mentioned that if you sit still and shut up and stop planning to make currant-glazed lamb chops with pistachio couscous for dinner, you will gain insight into your own mental patterns, and that will help you be less enslaved to them.  This is true, and it seems to be much emphasized in American Zen, as part of the search for happiness the Boomers ushered in.  Which has led me recently to study a book titled Ending the Search for Happiness by Zen psychiatrist Barry Magid.  What a relief!

Less talked about is that you will also begin to see the reality outside your mind. To see other people as they are, not through your filters and illusions.  That's awareness. The wisdom part is accepting that not only is the other person what he or she is, but that change, if it comes at all, will come slowly.  The very charm Confused Girl loves about the guy, that's something a lot of other girls respond to, too. I am not being facetious when I say that the only times I've seen important personality change in other people has been when they had a stroke, or a similarly dire stroke of reality.

I did adopt a new habit in one fell swoop, or swooping fall in early September, in which I broke my right arm, as I have complained about here, but not enough.  I began doing walking meditation every time I walk.  I don't mean just when I go for a walk or walk the track; I mean when I walk down the hall at home.  No dark hallways for me.  An example of how occasionally Life teaches you to watch your step.

Another unattractive day

Okay, I just try to be authentic.

Just interrupted by 2 people at the door.  Did not know them.  What did he want?  He kept saying meaningless things like did I know so and so down the street.  Finally something comes thru about inspecting foundations.  No, I said.  What?  No, and closed the door.  I'm sorry if I made his day worse.  I try to protect the world from me when I'm like this.  At times my anger comes up at old things, like the shrink who kept me on lithium even as it destroyed my kidneys, and I want to write a really angry letter.  When I feel better, I don't care, it's not what I want to be doing with a good hour.  The anger is not "real."  This is a chemical mess, or chaos in my neurochemistry.  Point is, you just get through this.

Saw pdoc today, this deep depression is news to both of us.  He does not want to put me on a new medication, obviously, I take 20 different things.  One is Seroquel at night, cools the mind, I can usually get to sleep.  We're going to try doubling the low dose.  The downside of this drug is that it has taken away most of my creativity.  But creativity is worthless if you're depressed, like sequined red shoes gathering dust on the closet floor.  It's a mood stabilizer too, he says.Call him in two weeks.  Gave me his direct line phone no.  I refrained from telling him my sports doc gave me his cell no.  There, a bit of humor.

Tomorrow, another dr.  Seem to have a new bladder infection.  That itself causes depression.  Stopped to fill scrip, killed my left shoulder, the other one, the one with a torn rotator cuff, lifting a half gallon of milk, which weighs 4 lbs.  Both sides hurt, I'm sure it's good news that I have oxycontin for it.  I am so depressed it does not make me happy.

A very depressing birthday visit from one of those people in my life.  It doesn't matter what I say, how light-hearted, any small talk, she can always incisively suggest what I should have done, The Answer.  I realize this is a virtually psychotic adaptation to life, people who honestly think there's always an answer,  things can be fixed.  As if I couldn't think of going to the hairdresser to get my hair washed, since it is so painful for me to do with the rotator cuff injury in the arm I can use.  As if I don't have a reason (a very painful neck) for not going to the hairdresser.  So let it go, she's like that.  But this is depression - it does not have perspective.  It can be obsessive.  It is your worst Monday morning.

Read something from a big wisdom blog on aging and snorted.  It is absolutely inevitable on these that people write in comments bragging about how f- happy they are.  And they're not old inside! And they love life.  And you can tell they think they deserve this, they think they earned it.

Okay, good news.  Tashi has recovered enough from our absence to come and ask for a cuddle twice, that's when she climbs up on my shoulder and lays across my heart, purring.  She likes it when I breathe on her head.  Above, an awfully good picture of her.

Oh, the phone.  I am not answering.

One example of my bad attitude

A very bad stupid day yesterday, which maybe meant I hit bottom and turned the corner from the depression.  This morning coming in here w my coffee I noticed some faint negative thoughts, I mean the pissy thoughts about people whose crap makes my life even harder, but I noticed the thoughts, so there was a witness looking at my poor overloaded mind.  I wrote a poem this morning.  I meditated for the first time since we got back, briefly, knowing I had to do these things before the pain got bad and I took the first oxycontin, because on opiates you just don't care.

(I guess that's partly how they ruin lives. That, and the fact that they're illegal unless prescribed; and I suppose it is illegal to prescribe them just because someone likes the way they make you float and appreciate beauty.  It is a stupid law that has resulted in our prisons being crammed with mostly black young men who did nothing violent, just sold drugs.)

This has all involved how hard I worked these last years to stay alive, how vigilant I was, had to be.  Then what, you're walking toward the bathroom to fill your water pitcher because you have to drink 3 liters of water a day, you trip over nothing and down you go, flat, and a broken arm that is going to make every minute of your life a hassle for six weeks.  One second of inattention.

It was a second during which I was thinking how unresponsive and useless dokusan had been that morning, how I wasn't going to do another one, how I just had one *&%$# day to get through, then we could go home, thinking I probably would never come back on this retreat.  Yes, I had things on my mind.  But I don't care what you do, you can not guarantee you won't fall.  Could have struck my temple on the doorframe and been a functional vegetable the rest of my life.

It hurt, and it shocked me the way a fall can, and let loose all the misery and anxiety of these last years trying not to die.  And now what?  Almost a year after transplant and it's been a lousy, difficult year, not worth living.  I will never have another transplant, or go on dialysis again.  Done with extraordinary measures.

In all this depression there was something I decided about letting go my anxious vigilance.  I don't mind dying, people - in fact, at this point I'd welcome it.  God, gets me out of here.  I will do what I know I have to do to (maybe) keep living, take the damn drugs 7 times a day, get labs done, drink the *&%$# water.  But I'm done dragging myself through things that supposedly will protect me.  I enjoy food.  I will eat what I like.  I find exercise boring, so today while Tom did his I walked around McConnell with my camera.  Watching every *&%$# step, believe it.  Enjoyed it.  Well, there you are.  An update. Where I'm calling from.
~~~~~~~~~~
p.s. It's been 12 weeks now, and the arm is still a problem, not even ready for PT to get range of motion back (Wun hopes).