Anonymous hero makes the world go round

Mr. Bageant,

I have just finished your book Deer Hunting with Jesus and I have to thank you for writing it. I am a teacher of students that have been failed in one form or another by our systems (I don't believe a 16-year-old can fail). And the root of all that I teach is Love and Compassion. I know that sounds like some mumbo jumbo, but being of Tibetan descent I think I have that license.

Children seek meaning, as we all do, but in them it is raw and unadulterated by the "hologram" -- or the hologram only has a slight hold on them. With kindness and gentleness they let down their guard and the gangbangers, criminals, druggies, etc., and become what they are, young people in need of something to believe in, something to work toward, and an adult that sees them as something other than a meal ticket, a burden, or something to screw.

It is this that I get from your book, this sad observation from an observer that is not quite at home anywhere. This is what happens when we become "educated" we see the Hologram and either dive in to squeeze the suckers, stand off in disdain, or try to do something, anything.

Through your book I was able to understand the few of the rural youth that we have (the suburbs have stretched so far it has gotten into what was the backwoods just five years ago). I always try to teach from where students are and then help them along the way toward a wider view, a more informed one, and one that allows them to see purpose in their lives (and secretly my subversive Buddhist pedagogy tries to inculcate them in the ideals of Compassion and Love. The Bible has many suggestions on how to live but only one rule and that is "to love and to do all that that entails".

I am trying out here, Mr. Bageant, with stiff upper lip, puffed out chest, and howling at the wind, just trying anything to be worthy of this precious existence. I always say it is the anonymous hero that makes the world go round because without them the world would have long ago been ground to dust by the barbarous hordes. You, in your book, are one of those heroes come to light. Thank you for your work.

Fallen Guru

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Dear Fallen Guru,

I certainly am not worthy of such kind words or praise. Especially from one whose "Buddhist pedagogy tries to inculcate the ideals of Compassion and Love" and strives to "love and to do all that that entails." I believe that with all my heart, but being the product of Western society, have to strive much harder than you probably do toward that end.

May I be permitted to digress from our topic of children that I may share a rambling and disjointed story of my attempt at awakening to those principles so well embodied in Buddhism?

Like many Americans in my generation, my first pronation toward Buddhist thought came rather unnaturally through LSD. I found myself tumbling, tumbling, tumbling inward. On the back of my eyelids spun the great wheel of existence, turning both ways simultaneously generating an unearthly mournful chant that seemed to be composed of every human voice on earth. Rising and rising in some unknown universal tongue singing, "Wheel of life, wheel of death, Bangladesh, Bangladesh. Wheel of life, wheel of death, Bangladesh, Bangaladesh." Millions of starving faces, young men, girls, old men, babies, crones, materialized in uncountable swarms, each face transfigured by some unnamable mutual understanding that I could not share. Then they atomized, leaving the room filled with the scent of wood smoke, shit and citrus blossoms (an odor I would instantly recognize decades later in poverty stricken Central American villages.) No words can describe an LSD entire trip, but let me say that at the end of my first one, I sat down and cried. For happiness. My deepest hope and suspicion, the one to which I dared not cling, had been confirmed. Life could indeed be this significant, this piercing and meaningful.

That experience showed me the face of mortality. Eternity. Eternity without Joe Bageant in it. We may dance, make love and argue passionately, eat, shit and extrude children here on this biology smeared speck of cosmic dust. But the universe yawns disinterestedly.

Nevertheless, once you've seen the face of eternity, you are left with the question of what to do about it. How to respond. "How will I live my life, in light of what I have seen?" I'm still wrestling with that question, but then that's what I had wanted, wasn't it? That Great Question which would lead to the Great Answer? LSD doesn't give many answers, but used with directed and sincere effort -- to the degree that is even possible -- it usually makes one ask the Great Questions. In my opinion the most important question any human being can ask: "What is the question to which my life is the answer?" Since there are no answers, only deeper questions, the answer for me was another question: What are you going to do to eliminate human suffering? What are you going to do, now that you have seen those faces in the Great Wheel that turns both ways simultaneously? What will be your direct action?

Grave as such propositions appear to be, to my mind at least, one must be both serious AND silly about exploring the nature of consciousness to get results. Do it in the spirit of enlightened philosophical levity. Even after all these years, that spirit still gets me through the day -- enables me to face the increasing sorrows that come with age. One of the nasty little truths about life is that it gets harder with age, not easier, and that there is no prize at the bottom of the box of Crackerjacks.

But the good news, as I see it, is that through love we are capable of becoming stronger and more deeply resonant with the world in a way that swamps life's miseries into insignificance. Denial ceases to be the first reaction to uncomfortable truths. There are billion dollar industries in this country based upon this sort of denial and our refusal to acknowledge mortal entropy. Even death is supposed to be more or less negotiable through fitness, medical science, and we are lied to that we are as young as well feel and act. There is no inherent virtue in being either young or old. We are young when we are young and old when we are old, and any attending virtue comes with whether we come to realization. Whatever the case, it is damned near impossible for any literate person to launch off on a teleological trajectory without being pulled into the gravitational force of Buddhism.

Our American brand of Calvinism makes us equate the path of rightness with prohibition, especially of pleasure. Despite the message of Jesus about freedom (through love), the Christian church as an institution has always been about controlling the freedom of its followers. Buddhism seems more about liberating them. Liberation from the desires that create unhappiness and pain in mankind. I am vastly oversimplifying here, I know, (which is sure to put American trust fund babies in ashrams around the country and elderly Theravadan gurus into a snit) but do I have the essence correct? As one with far more exposure than I, please do tell me.

I'm sure you know of that lineage of Buddhism which translates as "crazy wisdom." To me it is the antithesis of what westerners usually think of in conjunction with religion, and if I understand it correctly, it's purposefully full of irreverence, goofiness, shifting perspectives and absurdity. Crazy wisdom has been described as the unifying metaphysical force field of "poets, philosophers, artists and gurus and other crazy fools gushing with wisdom." In one variant, the great Japanese poet monk Ikkyu found antidote to Zen formality in whorehouses and bars, i.e., "Her mouth played with my cock the way a cloud plays with the sky." For whatever reasons, the "People of the Book," Judaism, Christianity and Islam, opted out of the wine and blowjobs, which may partly explain the general crankiness and vindictiveness that inspires them to enthusiastically kill just about any other people who disagree with them, not to mention each other.

By no means adept, I am sure thousands of folks sitting zazen in Boulder and San Francisco would be livid at my sloppy explanation and less than deeply dedicated application. "Using crazy wisdom as an excuse to escape the discipline of Buddhism," is the usual charge. And, Lawdy Miss Claudy, the American system instills a psycho-sexual love of discipline in all of us. No sex in the park bushes, no marijuana for Americans, but rather debt slavery and airport cavity searches -- by direct orders from the Christian police court Yaweh, and now, the Department of Homeland Security. But just how much discipline is the right amount. A thirsty man needs but one drink of water from the well to continue his journey, not the whole well. Trying to swallow the flowing well halts the journey. At any rate, as the years go by, what I take or mistake to be crazy wisdom continuously opens inner doors, even given assumedly poor discipline and small intermittent doses.

All these years later I am beginning to understand the effect living for a decade in a genuinely free American era and place had on my personal evolution. Thanks to Buddhism and an ongoing attempt to understanding human consciousness, everything has changed over time. Yet nothing has changed, except my attitude toward everything. And yes, LSD had plenty to do with it. When it comes to rewiring one's own neuro-circuitry toward ecstatic understanding and perception and playful wisdom, and compassion, LSD in the right hands can certainly jump start the awakening. Assuming you care to strive for that. Paradoxically, that awakening is to a dream. You come to see that the "It is the dream that is dreaming the dreamer." And that the dream is of a single unifying universal force: "Love and all that love entails."

In abiding friendship,

Joe