Zen and the Sons of Anarchy

Something I really like doing is seeing/finding zen-ny things where you don't expect to see them. I could spin some flowery crap about how it helps me to see the good in everything and find inspiration from unexpected places, but really I like it because it makes me feel smart. I have issues.

Something else I really like doing is watching Sons of Anarchy on FX. I like Kurt Sutter, I like what he does, I loved The Shield (yeah, I know, Shawn Ryan was the show-runner for that, but I credit everything Sutter touches to Sutter). If you've never seen it, allow me to summarize:

Cliffnotes Version: It's a show about the Sons of Anarchy, a motorcycle club.

Better Version: It's a show about the members of a motorcycle club, and how they navigate the balance between the MC and their families, operating on the wrong side of the law for (sometimes) the right reasons, and all the trials, tribulations, and challenges included therein.

The show has a rather large cast, with each character possessing a varying amount of badassery. It can be extremely violent, and in it's 4 (we're in 5 now) seasons we've seen rape, countless murders, someone burned alive, a tattoo torched off a man's back, a child molester's dick cut off... You get the idea. Not somewhere you really think you're going to get anything zen out of.

Cue Chucky.

Chucky is a chronic masturbator (no, really, like right in front of you) that the Sons adopt, for lack of a better word. He's by no means in the MC, but he's sort of a pet. Or mascot, if you want to be less condescending about it.

Chucky is a character that Kurt Sutter surely meant to kill off. He was a minor character in one lesser story arc and, in what was almost certainly supposed to be his last scene, the Sons give him to some Chinese gangster. If I may blow some more smoke up Sutter's ass, he's a show-runner who really pays attention to his fans. He listens, and when he can he gives us what we want. In this case, we wanted Chucky.

Why am I going on about this, you may ask? Because Chucky is ultimate zen.

In addition to being traded to the Chinese and having his fingers cut off, he is spoken down to and ordered around almost constantly. What does he, a grown man, say in response to these taunts and commands?

"I accept that."

Chucky, to me, is zen incarnate. He has taken the shittiest of circumstances time and time again, and just accepted them. He doesn't have to like it (in most cases he doesn't like it), but he accepts it. His gratitude to the Sons for saving him (after they abandon him, but still) allows him to take everything going on, and just be. I can barely do that and I work in a fucking cubicle-farm. Not really a volatile environment.

Among the death and violence that hover over Charming like that cloud following around the stick figure in the anti-depressant commercial, we will always have Chucky. And I accept that.

Is This the Real Life? Is This Just Fantasy?

Something happened last night, and I'm really not quite sure what to make of it.

I have spent the past 9 months to a year in some sort of depression. It's been a big back and forth for me, sometimes I'll go a few weeks at a time feeling ok and like things are getting better, but other times I'll feel worse. It's ranged from non-existent to crippling. Last night was somewhere in the middle.

One of the things I'll start to feel first is claustrophobia in my house. Even if I've only been home from work for a half hour, I'll feel the cabin fever start to set in, and I'll become extremely anxious. The air feels thick and heavy, I start to sweat, and the only thought that runs through my brain like the Times Square Stock Ticker is, "You need to get out."

So last night I'm in the car. My boyfriend is driving, and I'm staring blankly out the window. I'm not even looking at anything. I'm just feeling that weight on me. I'm focused on it, I'm letting it run its course through me. With it come all the repetitive thoughts, the loudest of which was, "This is not my life."

Over and over again. "This is not my life. This is not my life."

Meaning, this is not what my life is supposed to be. This is not what I had envisioned for myself, or wanted. This isn't it.

Out of nowhere, though, another voice answered. "No, this is your life."

You'd think that would be more depressing, but it made me feel better. The thought overcame me, and I felt a calming sensation all over my body.

This is my life.

It's not the way I want it, no. But it's mine, so I need to do what I can to make it better and get to work accepting the rest. I can't change that this is my life. I can't change the things I did that got me here, but letting myself wallow in self-pity and despair is counter-productive.

This is the first time I can say with certainty that zen has helped me in a practical, concrete, immediate way. There have been other benefits of course, but this is the first time I can look to zen and credit it for bringing me that peace in a time of trial.

Maybe there really is something to all of this after all..

Porn and Basketball

In addition to my day job answering phones in a cubicle, I make money on the side by doing freelance editing and proofreading work. Last night I was editing a term paper for a woman about the evils of sex trafficking and prostitution. I was enjoying the paper immensely, as I don't meet too many people who think sex trafficking and prostitution are good things (unless they happen to be directly benefiting from it).

About halfway through the paper she lost me when she explained that the root of all evil is pornography. Her case, and she made as compelling of one as possible, was that porn gives us the appetite for more. Further, she asserted that without porn we would all be much more satisfied with the sex we were getting and wouldn't seek to purchase it. She explained that the regulations just aren't working, and it's time we abolish those materials once and for all to protect humanity.

She did make an interesting case, but I think that's a very slippery slope. I'm going to keep this from getting too political, but I think that (at least here in America) we get to make choices about what we view, and we are responsible for our own actions. It reminded me of a documentary I watched a while ago on Netflix that dealt with porn and sex addiction in general.

One side made the case that porn is evil, that it hooks you in like a drug and destroys your life. The other side made the case that enjoying something does not equate an addiction. If I start playing basketball all the time, no one is going to tell me I'm a B-Ball addict.

Why am I talking about this? Where does Zen come into all of it?

One of the things that drew me to Zen Buddhism was that it lets you make your own choices. It seems like the motivation behind your actions are ultimately more important than the action itself.

Keep in mind here, this isn't a free pass to do whatever you want as long as you can justify it. Far from it actually. If I'm keeping my practice, and engaging in mindfulness, there is no reason for me to ever intentionally kill another person. There just isn't a way to make that alright. But no one is standing over me telling me that I am evil if I even think about it, let alone do it. I have the autonomy to dissect my feelings and impulses without having to place judgment on them.

But there is also some major accountability. There isn't a list of rules I have to follow to be able to consider myself a good person, but there isn't any escape from my actions either. If I do something wrong, it's because I did it. I wasn't made, I wasn't forced, somewhere along the line I lost my way and wasn't being mindful.

And here's the link I'm trying to make... Mindfulness in porn. Porn is arousing; it's designed to be. But what kind of porn we're looking at can really tell us something. If you get off on misogynistic porn where women are being beaten and harmed... It's a red flag. I'm not telling you that you're evil or wrong, but maybe you should take a look at why that's what you enjoy. In some relationships, porn is a welcomed addition. In others, it constitutes infidelity. Everyone has their own set of standards as to what is and isn't ok, and that isn't something that can be standardized and enforced.

People don't want to be accountable for what they do. They want it to be someone else's fault. And it makes total sense, it does. Because if something I do isn't my fault, then I don't have to think about anything, or work on it or change it. I can coast by. But we all do things every day that we shouldn't, and until we start taking responsibility and working on ourselves internally, then we always will.

I Can't Get No Satisfaction

If I made a list for you of all the things I have ever loved to do, or felt passionate about, they would all have one thing in common. After a while, they have all become a fucking chore.

From every new instrument I've set out to learn, to every new person I've vowed to love, without fail.
Why is that? That verve, that drive, that I always feel in the beginning is never really sustainable. Is it that I just haven't found the right thing? Do I have commitment issues? Is it that all-too cliched fear of success?
The closest thing I can come up with for an explanation is that I love the possibilities, but dread any and all responsibility that may come with it. If I'm doing something because I want to then it's fun, but the second I put that pressure on myself that I have to do something, well, all bets are off.

Where all this has gotten me is the feeling that I've just been wasting my time. That I've been doing all these things, but have nothing to show for them. This gets depressing as shit.

Lucky for me, there are these four noble truths laying around to remind me that I am not special and unique like a snowflake, and that there is something I can do about it.

The four noble truths, expressed as song titles (by me):

1. Everybody Hurts (REM)
The first noble truth is all about the fact that, well, everyone hurts. From the CEO of a fortune 500 to the homeless guy you blew off when he asked you for change last weekend. No one gets off easy. We seem to have this tendency to think that people in the right circumstances are exempt from pain, but that's a load of crap. The next time your Aunt Dottie starts going on about how her life would be perfect if she just could win the lottery, feel free to slap her and tell her so. There's just no way around it. The bottom line of the human condition is this: Life is pain, anyone telling you different is selling something (credit to The Princess Bride for that one).

2.  I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For (U2)
The second one gets a little more into the why of it all. It all comes down to the discrepancy between the way we think our lives should be, and the way they really are. If I think the person in front of me on my commute to work should be driving a reasonable speed, yet they insist on going ten below the speed limit, it upsets me. On a much grander scale, if I'm caught up in comparing my life as it is to the way I thought it would be by this point, I am always going to walk away from that depressed. This gets referred to a lot as attachment. As in, I cannot be fulfilled and happy with my life because I am unwilling or unable to let go of my attachment to my ideals of where/who I should be.

3. Surrender (Cheap Trick)
The third truth is the most purely logical of the bunch. This one more or less says, if your attachments are causing you pain, letting go of those attachments will make your pain stop. This is the acceptance truth. There is a line in the Serenity Prayer (yeah, the one from those 12-step meetings) that is incredibly applicable here. Everyone knows the short version, but it continues, and in one place says something to the effect of taking the world, "as it is, not as I would have it." That's the whole idea. Girls with straight hair always wish it were curly, and the curly-haired girls always want it straight. But if you can learn to accept your imperfect life as it is, and learn to love it as your own, a great deal of your feelings of inadequacy and dissatisfaction will go away.

4. The Way (Fastball)
Oh, you mean all I have to do is break free from the years of conditioning and programming that have completely shaped the way I think of myself, my life, and the world around me? Why didn't you say so?? There is a major "easier said than done" factor here. Obviously, if it were that easy everyone would do it. The fourth noble truth offers the blueprint of exactly how to go about doing it: the noble eightfold path. The eightfold path consists of: Right Understanding, Right Thought, Right Speech, Right Action, Right Livelihood, Right Effort, Right Mindfulness, and Right Concentration. And before you ask, yes, I had to look them up because I can never remember them all. Each one of them is worth its own blog entry alone. The most condensed version I can give of this is that if you stay mindful of what you are doing, and act with pure motivation, you're on the right track.

Oh, and sit. Sit a whole lot. They love their sitting.

So there you have it folks. The bad news is that life sucks and there's no way around it; the good news is that it sucks for everyone else to, and whenever you get tired of feeling bad there's something you can do about it.

Allowances for Fireflies

I don't like bugs.

I know that's hardly a revelation worth breaking over a year of silence for, but like all things there's more to it than that.

One year ago, almost to the day, my apartment was infested with bed bugs. I don't mean infested in the sense that I found a couple of them and took care of it. I mean infested in the truest sense of the word. After a weekend away, I returned to my apartment and went to bed. Within minutes of laying down, I couldn't stop itching and broke out in what I thought were hives. Thinking I was having some kind of allergic reaction, I slept on the couch. My plan was just to wash my sheets in the hope that whatever I was reacting to would be gone. I pulled back the fitted sheet to see hundreds, if not more, of these tiny disgusting bugs crawling all over my mattress.

This was the first event of many that comprise the complete unraveling my life went through in the past twelve months. Most of the rest of it will be detailed as it becomes relevant, but my internet silence can be largely attributed to that unraveling, and the subsequent rebuilding process. I write this now from my current residence, the guest room of my parents' house.

But back to bugs.

Things are only what they mean to us. My apartment symbolized so many things for me. It was my home, my independence, my haven, my responsibility, my space, (my my my my my). I felt safe there, and I loved it there. After the bugs showed up, the apartment never changed. The walls, the floor, the furniture (with the exception of my bed, which was thrown out), it was all exactly the same. So what changed?

My mind did. In my mind, my apartment was no longer a special place to me. Even once the bugs were gone I was afraid to be there. I felt uncomfortable and uneasy there. My apartment's value to me took a drastic turn because I wasn't getting what I wanted from it anymore. There was no more point.

Maybe the months of insomnia and nightmares had something to do with it, but I've since taken a largely anti-bug stance. I've recently noticed, however, that there is one notable exception: fireflies.

Not only do I not hate them, I get excited when they start coming out. Fireflies mean it's Summer. Fireflies mean sitting on your porch late at night with a cigarette and a beer watching your backyard twinkle like Robert Pattinson in the sunlight. Fireflies mean Jersey bonfires and night swimming (REM style) and road trips and boardwalk food. It's easy to see the beauty in fireflies. You don't really have to look.

It's harder to see the beauty in things that don't glow in the dark.

Were it not for their fluorescent asses, fireflies would be just another annoying bug that comes out when it starts to get warm. We'd swat at them, and set traps out and try to get rid of them. We make special allowances for fireflies because that glow means something to us.

I'm sure if we tried hard enough, everything could mean something to us. If not personally, everything could still mean something because it means something to someone else. That's the point of shirking this whole "I" fallacy. It doesn't matter if something annoys me or gets in my way because it's just another clump of cells, just like me. We're not different, I'm not special. There isn't any more of a point to me being on this planet than the housefly you just smacked with your rolled up TV guide. Obviously we like to think there is, because what's the point if there's no point?

But that's it. The point is that there is none.

There's no spoon either, in case you were wondering.