Belief

A Belief in Anything is a Belief in Nothing.
The world is not your enemy; you are.
~ Cheryl Abram

"As a Christian, I knew that non-Christians needed to be converted for their own good. Out of love, duty and anticipated reward, I must endure whatever comes my way to lead them to the truth...because I believed the truth. One day, I will no longer have to believe because I will know it for sure. On that day when I am judged as worthy, good and faithful I will know. On that day I will know that I was right. On that day, others will see that I was right. Until that day arrives I must believe that I'm right. Belief  will have to do until that day. I see not that that day will never arrive because it's here now. What I see now is that we have absolutely no idea what we're saying when we claim to believe something. Are you aware that when you claim to believe something you are actually admitting that you're uncertain? Just think about that for a moment. Saying, "I believe in God" is the same as saying "I'm uncertain of whether or not God exists". Saying, "I don't believe in God" is also the same as saying, "I'm uncertain if God exists or not". You only believe when you're uncertain. In addition, you can only believe in a concept. A concept is a general notion or idea, an abstraction, impression, perception, thought or view. A concept is not reality...it's the idea of reality! This means when you say you believe or don't believe in something, you are actually saying you are uncertain of the idea of God, or unicorns, or UFOs or Santa Claus.

Why do we believe? Why don't we know? And why would we work all our lives to convince "non-believers" to join us in our uncertainty of concepts? Belief is the reason we fight, war, argue, and defend. Belief needs defense because it's unstable. Belief is a movement between concepts...a vacillation from one uncertainty to another. Belief has to get angry and fight because it shifts and changes. Belief is not Truth. Truth needs no defense. Truth does not shift and change. Truth cannot be believed because it is not a concept. Truth and Knowing are one in the same. When you know, you are set free from the need and temptation to believe. Temptation is not to indulge in money, sex and drugs...temptation is to indulge in belief.

Belief is a roadblock, a shield, a veil that attempts to "protect" us from Knowing...from Truth. But this "protection" comes with horrific consequences because belief has to be defended. And it has to be defended because it's subject to attack. Anytime you feel your beliefs are being attacked you must defend what you believe. When this happens (because it will) just know that you are not defending Truth, you are defending your uncertainty...your opinion...your judgment...your perspective, concept and your point of view. You are not defending what is true for Truth needs no defense. Why would it when it cannot change nor can it be attacked or conceptualized.

Did Jesus believe in an idea of God or did he know Him? What do you think? You don't need to prove what is true. You don't need to defend what is true. You don't need to wait for what is true. You don't need to hope for, die for, sacrifice for or suffer for what is true. Why would we need to do all that for something that cannot change and is here now? The only temptation we all have is the temptation to believe. We don't have to fall for that temptation. Don't get me wrong, we can believe until the cows come home and there's absolutely nothing wrong with belief.  All I'm saying is, it's unnecessary. We can see that Knowing is what we are and belief is not necessary. Please don't believe anything I've written here. It isn't true. Find out for yourself. Use your own experience...not what you remember from a book, a lecture, a blog or a sermon. Use your own experience; your own faculties to see the truth about beliefs. Simply notice your beliefs.

I still consider myself a child of God within the Body of Christ but I see everyone and everything as that as well. Truth...Knowing is not divided. It is Whole. Belief is divided and a house divided cannot stand. The Body of Christ does not need to be converted from knowing to belief...from Truth to uncertainty. Belief will crumble and fall for that is the nature of belief. Without belief, what remains? Find out."

Is Love The Answer?

“... Love conquers all.” “Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.” “Love is the answer.” “All you need is love.” And the list goes on and on…

Before I go further, let me clarify this idea of love. Judgment is the senses—my sense of sight, hearing, taste, touch, smell, thoughts, and all the other sensations that my experience is made of… Love only comes into play when I believe that anything can occur outside of my senses...

“Hold the gun firmly in your hand. Align the sights of the target. Place the center of the first pad of your trigger finger on the trigger. Gently squeeze the trigger, smoothly, without moving anything else. Every shot should be a surprise.”

These are the muffled instructions I hear as my daughter Naomi and I prepare to shoot our targets at the indoor shooting range. The instructor is there with us to ensure our safety and to help us properly execute his instructions. I shoot well, but Naomi does much better than I do. On this range, as I look down the line at various targets, there’s clearly a difference in our skill level.

In life, there is no distinction. We all aim perfectly. In life, none of us ever misses the object on which we set our sights. This is love. Love is the perpetual process of creating a target, aiming, and then squeezing the trigger. Cupid’s bow is a deadly weapon that we all wield. We create the target with judgment, we aim using emotion, and we squeeze the trigger when our targets don’t deliver on their promises.

The promise of a judgment is to remain final. Any deviation from that promise plunges us into unknown territory. Unknowing causes fear, confusion, and violence. When I have loved, defined, understood, and known a man, but I now encounter a man that does not conform to what “man” has promised to be, I respond in a fearful way. The widespread discrimination and violence against the LGBTQI (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer or Questioning, and Intersex) community is “love” in action.

So when we say “Love is the answer,” what are we really saying?
My father had a nickname for me and my two sisters. My oldest sisters were Dot (Darlene) and Mot (Marlene). My nickname was Bill. Bill was my dad’s best friend, who’d died before I was born. My father was the only one who ever called me Bill. I loved my nickname. I loved being Bill. When my father died, “Bill” died, too. The pain involved in the demise of all that I’d made was indescribable. Not only did I lose my fun, talented, and strong father, but I also lost his love of Bill. In Latin, the word parent means “bringing forth.” As a small child, I was the parent of the idea of “father,” and my “child” loved our entire world. Bill was a part of that world—a world made of love.

When judgments fail, we feel the pain. When the promise to continue is not fulfilled, it hurts. When the love we parent, and see as outside of ourselves, dies—when our targets force us to question our unquestionable certainty—we bleed and die emotionally, psychologically, mentally, and sometimes physically.

Our senses feel very stable, strong, and immovable. Who questions the sense of touch or smell? What displaces the sense of sight? Shouldn’t that same strength follow the ideas born of these senses—ideas like kind, mother, beautiful, friend, black, and white? When we seek more love, we seek to make more judgments and create more targets, mistakenly believing that we are adding to our strength, building what’s been torn down, and finding what is not yet here but is desperately needed. What we fail to realize is, when we create our targets, we simultaneously become the bullseye. When we love, we sign our own death certificate. When I love you, and believe those words to be true, I separate myself from myself, then expect that division to make me whole.

To be clear, there is nothing right or wrong with the process of love. This process is not better or worse than any other process. Problems tend to arise when we look to love as the solution to problems. Judgment cannot solve the problem of judgment. Social problems like terrorism, racism, and violence; environmental problems like climate change and deforestation; and personal problems like broken relationships and substance abuse all seem to be keeping us from living up to our full potential. Not many would argue with that. However, love is not the answer, and love won’t conquer or drive out a damned thing.

Love is never the solution. Why? Because love is never about problems outside of ourselves. Love never even touches problems outside of us. There’s no way to inject love into racism, terrorism, or animal cruelty. How would you do that? Where would you inject it? What tool would you use? How often does it need to happen? Who controls how much or how little love is injected into these problems? Love is only ever about the subject; it’s about me. We think we can use love to bring what’s separate together. We think love will unite that which has been put asunder. Love does nothing but deceive the subject (me) into believing that it can be dismembered—and that it is, therefore, in need of repair.

The instant we declare to our wives, husbands, children, parents, gods, and pets that we love them, we have hidden ourselves in benevolent, innocent, sheep’s clothing and have become a voracious wolf looking to gain something from the object of our affection. Love is never truly unconditional. What we consider unconditional depends on there being an object or something to love unconditionally. The question “Do you love me?” really means, “To what extent can I trust you to keep me safe? To what extent can I depend on you, my love, to safeguard my judgments? How long will you keep me whole?”

Trust in our targets to always remain the same, preserve our existence, and forever keep us safe and whole is an exercise in futility. My ideas of family, body, and money cannot fulfill those promises. We won’t see this until we examine what we’re doing when we say “I love you.” There actually is no lack of love in this world. We are saturated with love already. The world is love. Brexit is love. The war in Sudan is love, just as times of peace and unity are also love. It is absence of love—of judgment and expectation—that we want but are terrified of. It’s whatever love isn’t that we also seek, but we fear loss of the love we’ve made. Where self-preservation is not present, we call those individuals “zombies.” Where trust in an object is not present, we call those people “psychotic.” Where the ability to judge is not present, we call that “instinct.” Where love is not present, we call those acts “evil.” But all of those are still judgments. We have no idea what love is, so we’ve manufactured something to be afraid of.

I remember standing in my kitchen one morning, preparing to fry an egg for my breakfast. I placed a small pan onto the hot burner on the stove, added a pat of butter to the pan, and waited for the butter to melt. I then poured in the one egg I’d already cracked and quickly whisked with a fork. The burner was on low, so I stood there and watched the egg slowly begin to cook. As I watched, the egg began to glow a little. Damn, I put a lot of butter in this pan. Then it began to sparkle and come “alive” somehow.

By “alive” I mean, the egg was its own autonomous, individual self with no dependence on anything. That egg was everything that ever was. I placed the fork in the pan and moved the egg around, and I could see that as I moved it, the egg was being born right then and there. The egg was being created right there in the pan! This was not the same egg I’d whisked a few minutes ago, then poured into a pan of hot butter. This was a new egg, and in every moment it was new, again and again and again. I began to giggle, because what I was seeing was the funniest, most fascinating and unbelievable thing I’d ever seen. This sparkling, brand-new, pristine egg was actually being created right in front of my eyes…from absolutely nothing at all, and for no reason at all. My giggling became almost uncontrollable. The joy, amazement, and laughter I felt at such unexpected entertainment was indescribable. I was too amazed by what was present to have time to label what I saw. It could have been an egg, but I really didn’t care and it really didn’t matter. There was no desire to get anything from what I was experiencing. I did not want or expect anything from this living, organic process in my pan.

There was just wonder and attention while it was there; and when it was gone, I didn’t lose anything because I’d never gained anything. Its presence and absence had no impact on me.

I don’t know what love is, but giving myself permission to allow more context into my limited perspective and judgment of myself as a black woman with four children has helped clear the fog of language, tradition, culture, and fear that has defined love for me. While I hug my children, cry when a loved one dies, and express my deep love and affection for my spouse, god, pets, and parents, I also see that I have no idea what love is. This means that nothing is outside of my senses. A label does not distance me from what I see, hear, feel, think, smell, or taste. There is nothing to repair, because nothing is broken. I don’t need to deceive myself any longer.

Literary theorist Kenneth Burke said, “A way of seeing is also a way of not seeing.” My sight, while it reveals the colors of this world, also blinds me to what I cannot see. Sight is blinding, and so is love. If I love and know you, you are a means to an end, and it doesn’t matter if that love is seen as altruistic and good or selfish and evil. In both cases, it is my own judgment, safety, and life that are most important.

I cannot address my racist and misogynistic behavior against those I see as separate and different from me until I look at why I have the need to see them as distant and different. Why do I need to know and love them? I cannot be authentic with you until I see the innocent, sheeplike mask I’ve donned, then take responsibility for my wolflike, predatory behavior. Only then can I get out of my own way and live.

The phrase “a wolf in sheep’s clothing” simply suggests that this “love” we claim to know may not be what we believe it is. It’s a call to investigate, question, and doubt our idea of what love is—not to create a “better” answer, but to remain at the question and just allow our differences to naturally interact, respond, and evolve. “Love is the answer” becomes questionable when we don’t know what love is. Maybe we can create a new line of greeting cards that ask questions like “Is love the answer?” “Is love what I feel?” and “Forget love, let’s fall into the unknown?” Willingness and courage to doubt the absolute truth of our world is a narrative whose time has come.

When the “solution” for the world is gone, the “problem” of the world is not too far behind.”

~ Cheryl Abram is a mother of four, a writer and a public speaker. She lives in Northern Virginia and when not working at her full time job, she blogs and hosts meetings on applying the NONDUAL and DIUNITAL perspectives to your everyday life.

Nonduality is not a religion, philosophy, way of thinking or something that needs to be practiced or believed. Nonduality is simply looking without a goal, purpose or reason. Diunitality is simply the ability hold two opposites at once, lessening the resistance and opposition that "forces" us to make either/or decisions. We all demonstrate our dissatisfaction with what is.

The author of Firing God and Tales From Eternity: Armageddon, Orgasms, Kittens and Gravity…Fun and Entertaining Pointers to Truth

Knew You Were Coming

“I was raised in the slums,” San Oizumi tells me as we sit in the cozy central room of his large, rambling mud-walled farmhouse. “There in the tenements was a world that I could never have dreamed of before we had to move there … so many people living right on top of each other: sick and broken people, the mentally handicapped, prostitutes. As a fourth-grade boy,” he admits, “it was kind of exciting. I even heard about a neighbor woman who killed her husband, crazy with jealousy. It was quite an education for an elementary school student.” He smiles slightly and raises one eyebrow. “But,” he says, now serious again, “because I grew up as a poor person, surrounded by poor people, I learned a lot about the distortions and sickness that lie at the foundations of our society. I don’t have any illusions about what it’s really all about.”

Such statements are typical of the broad-shouldered potter with the unhurried voice. Although he offers his insights with seeming indifference, when Oizumi looks at me, he’s all serious attention. It’s not a glare but it’s more than a gaze, and it always has a strong element of concern to it. Although Oizumi can at times come off as gruff and brusque—his statements contain none of the polite circumlocutions I am used to hearing when speaking Japanese—I never feel that I am speaking about something trifling with him. This has the effect of making me really consider my words and try to speak from a deeper, more serious place in myself.

I had come to meet him originally because I had heard of his old-style wood-burning pottery kiln of mud and clay, an inclined kiln of traditional Korean design that takes three days to fire, and of his organizing against a high-level nuclear waste dump planned for his rural district. After meeting at tonight’s gathering of citizens’ groups opposed to the dump, we’ve come back to his house. Sitting around the huge wood-slab table he has made, with pieces of his luminous pottery all around us, we drink tea and talk into the night.

Oizumi tells me of his upbringing and of his father’s anarchism and general nonconformism. In Japan in the 1930s and early 1940s the militarists were in control of almost every part of society, and I find it hard to imagine that it would have been possible to be either anarchist or nonconformist. “Dad was a poet and woodblock carver,” Oizumi says in his thick working-class accent. “But you can’t make much money writing poems,” he laughs, “so we were very poor. When I was a very young child, before we moved to the slums, we had a house in a small village. The other villagers were very suspicious of my father because he had a record by Beethoven, and they could see by the letters on the album that it was clearly foreign, so they thought he was collaborating with the enemy Americans.” This suspicion was corroborated for them because Oizumi’s father could speak and understand a lot of English, German, and French, and because he refused to go into the army.

“He didn’t want to have anything to do with people in the business of killing,” says Oizumi in his matter-of-fact way, “and as a result, the village elders shunned him and the other members of our family. But when Japan lost the war and the U.S. occupation forces arrived in the village, there was no one else but my dad to translate. The same village elders who had ostracized him came begging at his door to ask for his help. But he didn’t want to help the Americans either: in his eyes, they were murderers just the same.”

A few years later Oizumi’s father lost his house in a swindle, and the family was forced to move to a tenement building in Sendai, an industrial city in cold northern Japan. The old man died from tuberculosis when Oizumi was only in sixth grade. Like his father, Oizumi, it seems, is willing to make decisions entirely on principle, and he too is perfectly willing to suffer the consequences of his actions.

“Growing up in poverty,” he tells me now in his calm, slow voice, taking a sip of tea, “I learned that even if I have very little money, that’s not the end of my life. I know I can still have an interesting life without it. I don’t want to be someone who is completely reliant on money, someone who is used by money. That’s why I neither borrow nor lend.” The hard-edged world of the slums he grew up in seems such a contrast with the antiqued beauty of this two-hundred-year-old house with its massive hand-hewn timber rafters, mustard-colored walls, and beautiful tansu cabinets, where he lives with his wife and three children today.

I ask him about how he came to be in possession of such a home. “Well, about twenty-five years ago the house I had been living in was slated to be surrounded on three sides by a golf course, and, as you know, to maintain only one kind of grass on large areas, they have to use an incredible amount of herbicides. Also, I hate golf. I was hit in the head with a golf ball when I was a boy. So of course I had to move.

“I got on my motorbike one afternoon and just started driving around looking for a new place. Then I saw an old building far off the road that looked beautiful, and I walked on down to it. Inside there was a very, very old man, and he said to me, ‘Ah, you have come. I have been waiting for you.’ “I was quite confused because I had no intention of coming there. In fact, it was just a whim to even go out that particular day.

‘I knew you were coming,’ said the old man. ‘You have come because you are to live in this house.’ That old man was a real Japanese shaman.”

~ Andy Couturier, The Abundance of Less: Lessons in Simple Living from Rural Japan

Infectous Love

"Ram Dass’s father, George Alpert, was a lawyer who had been president of the New York, New Haven, and Hartford Railroad. He and his fiancée, Phyllis, were often at the house when I came up to visit Ram Dass in Franklin. They were extraordinarily hospitable, and I felt like extended family. Clearly Ram Dass’s new manifestation had left them at a loss after his career at Harvard, but they loved who he had become, and they didn’t really care why. George continued to call him Richard and seemed bemused by the assortment of mostly young people who kept turning up. It was all a bit of a mystery, but the love had infected them too.

Although he was mostly a hermit that year, in 1967 Ram Dass also gave a talk at the Bucks County Seminar House in Pennsylvania. In Franklin, along with his daily sadhana, or spiritual practice, he worked on a manuscript about his experience in India. In the winter of 1967–68 he gave an extended series of talks at a sculpture studio on the East Side of Manhattan. The same people showed up night after night, often with friends. Others were beginning to be affected by the extraordinary energy and presence that accompanied his talks.

Ram Dass spoke with self-deprecating humor, using his own missteps as counterpoint to the intensely serious journey he was illuminating. His self-revealing honesty in facing his personal demons and his delight in the absurdity of a Harvard psychologist encountering Eastern mysticism became hallmarks of his presentations. He linked his psychedelic drug experiences, which many of us had experienced by then, to the dissolution of the ego in Eastern philosophy. And he used his encounter with the guru as a model for attaining the higher consciousness he now saw as the goal, enlightenment.

Soon after graduation from college in 1969 I was drafted and called in for a physical. Bearded and hirsute, I stood in my underwear with a string of prayer beads repeating a Hindu mantra during the entire day of prodding and poking. The psychologist was the last station along the line, and by the time I arrived at his station I had been praying with such intensity I could hardly see. The psychologist, who looked as though he was unhappily doing his alternative service himself, disqualified me. I was put in a 1-Y and later a 4-F classification, which meant unfit for service. That left me free to join the young people, students, hippies, flower children, and others who had heard Ram Dass in person or by word of mouth and were arriving at the driveway in Franklin. My younger brother and sister went to the rock festival at Woodstock while I meditated at yogi camp with Ram Dass.

Outdoor weekend darshans, spiritual gatherings with Ram Dass, evolved under a tree in the yard, with George’s gracious permission, into summer camp. We were a ragtag group of twenty to thirty on an “Inward Bound”adventure. Tent platforms and a darshan house went up in the woods above the farm, and Sufi dances and yoga classes were held on George’s beloved three-hole golf course. Group meditations and yoga were part of the daily schedule, as Ram Dass sought to transfer his experience in India to this motley cadre of would-be yogis. We made up with enthusiasm and love for what we lacked in disciplined renunciation. By summer’s end the weekend crowd under the trees numbered in the hundreds. Some of the campers were like ships passing in the night, some have perished, and others are still in touch, now grandparents...

As we arrived K.K. said, “Maharaj-ji, they are here now.”Maharaj-ji said, “Feed them,”and sent a bunch of bananas. It was a good sign. We were asked to take prasad, food. We sat down to piles of spicy potatoes and puris, deep-fried bread, on leaf plates. I ate three mounds of potatoes and seventeen puris. After eating, K.K. brought us to where Maharaj-ji was sitting on a wooden tukhat, or bed, in his “office.”There was no hesitation, no unfamiliarity. Maharaj-ji told K.K., “They are good persons.”K.K., who was glad the newcomers were being treated so well, replied without missing a beat, “I never bring bad people to you.”Everyone laughed, and he proceeded to interpret for us. Maharaj-ji said we came from good families, and he played a bit with our clothing. Later we went back to Nainital to stay at a family hotel owned by K.K.’s cousins and were permitted to come back to the ashram every few days.

Meeting Maharaj-ji was a total flashback to that first night at Wesleyan. The feeling inside was the same, the same figure-ground reversal; I became a speck floating in the ocean of existence instead of the focal point of my own egocentric universe. Maharaj-ji’s overflowing love and affection made me feel completely safe. I was soaking it up like a sponge. Though I was meeting him for the first time, I felt as if I had known him and he had known me forever. I had come home, to a real home in the heart, to a family that transcended blood relationship."

- Be Love Now

A Moment

A moment with
the Beloved
and the river
changes its course.

Chasing Us

“We all think we are chasing the guru, but really, you see, he is chasing us.”
- Dada

Flowers bloom, Bees come

When the flower blooms, the bees come uninvited.
- RAMAKRISHNA

Were You At The Lake?

"My wife had met Maharajji and had come to get me in America and bring me back to meet him. When we first went to see Maharajji I was put off by what I saw. All these crazy Westerners wearing white clothes and hanging around this fat old man in a blanket! More than anything else I hated seeing Westerners touch his feet.

On my first day there he totally ignored me. But after the second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh day, during which he also ignored me, I began to grow very upset. I felt no love for him; in fact, I felt nothing. I decided that my wife had been captured by some crazy cult. By the end of the week I was ready to leave.

We were staying at the hotel up in Nainital, and on the eighth day I told  my wife that I wasn't feeling well. I spent the day walking around the lake thinking that if my wife was so involved in something that was clearly not for me, it must mean that our marriage was at an end. I looked at the flowers, the mountains, and the reflections in the lake, but nothing could dispel my depression. And then I did something that I had really never done in my adult life. I prayed.

I asked God, "What am I doing here? Who is this man? These people are all crazy. I don't belong here."

Just then I remembered the phrase, "Had ye but faith ye would not need miracles."

"Okay, God, I don't have any faith. Send me a miracle."

I kept looking for a rainbow but nothing happened, so I decided to leave the next day. The next morning we took a taxi down to Kainchi to the temple, to say good-bye. Although I didn't like Maharajji, I thought I'd just be very honest and have it out with him. We got to Kainchi before anyone else was there and we sat in front of his tucket(wooden bed) on the porch. Maharajji had not yet come out from inside the room. There was some fruit on the tucket and one of the apples had fallen on the ground, so I bent over to pick it up. Just then Maharajji came out of his room and stepped on my hand, pinning me to the ground. So there I was on my knees touching his foot, in that position I detested. How ludicrous!

He looked down at me and asked, "Where were you yesterday?" Then he asked, "Were you at the lake?"(he said "lake" in English)

When he said the word "lake" to me I began to get this strange feeling at the base of my spine, and my whole body tingled. It felt very strange.

He asked me, "What were you doing at the lake?"

I began to feel very tight. Then he asked, "Were you horseback riding?" "No."

"Were you boating?" "No."

"Did you go swimming?" "No."

Then he leaned over and spoke quietly, "Were you talking to God? Did you ask for something?"

When he did that I fell apart and started to cry like a baby. He pulled me over and started pulling my beard and repeating, "Did you ask for something?"

That really felt like my initiation. By then others had arrived and they were around me, caressing me, and I realized then that almost everyone there had gone through some experience like that. A trivial question, such as, "Were you at the lake yesterday?" which had no meaning to anyone else, shattered my perception of reality. It was clear to me that Maharajji saw right through all the illusions; he knew everything. By the way, the next thing he said to me was, "Will you write a book?"

That was my welcome. After that I just wanted to rub his feet."

-- excerpt from 'Miracle of Love' by Ram Dass

God in Everything

It's better to see God in everything
than to try to
figure it out.
- Neem Karoli Baba

Doctor America

Larry Brilliant met Ram Dass, Love Serve Remember (pictured below) in a Himalayan ashram in the 1970's. Larry was a young doctor from Detroit on a trip of spiritual seeking. They shared a guru, known as Maharaji, who predicted that Larry would become a United Nations doctor working for the smallpox program (a program that was not even in existence yet), and become a key player in eradicating the disease that had already claimed over half a billion lives. That prediction would come true, and Larry went on to lead an extraordinary life of faith, love, and service to the world.

"... Zafar took the boy from my arms, sat down with the mother, and offered condolences in her dialect. When he uttered the Hindi expression, “Your son is no more,” her screams pierced the quiet. She had already known that he was dead; mothers always do. Yet when our jeep arrived, she hoped God would show mercy on her child, as mothers always do. I looked at the hundreds gathered on the lawn of the train station, where in better times Indian travelers would have congregated with their families, their possessions wrapped in bright fabrics, perhaps eating lunch out of a metal tiffin, or teasing children excited about their first ride on a train.

As I made my way through the crowd to the platform, beggars reached for small coins—the usual toll for passing. I put a fifty-paisa coin in an elderly man’s hand, checking for smallpox vaccination marks or telltale scabs or scars of an old infection; his companions were unvaccinated. At the front of the station, where there should have been a line of passengers waiting to purchase tickets, a dozen or so bodies had been carefully stacked like cords of wood, neatly wrapped in shrouds made of their own dhotis or saris. The unclaimed corpses awaited family members to come and perform the final rituals; failing that, they awaited the shudras, or untouchables, to gather and cremate them.

Looking up toward the ticket office I watched a living skeleton of a man buy a ticket. As he turned away, clutching his ticket, I saw the pustules, smallpox lesions, on the fingers of the hand holding the ticket. Oh shit. He will carry this disease with him on his way home, infecting passengers for hundreds of miles. The vision of a hand covered with active smallpox grasping a train ticket did something to me that seeing piles of dead bodies had not. This city must be quarantined. No one must be allowed to leave Tatanagar without a vaccination. I felt in over my head as I watched Zafar talk with the wailing mother.

I was just a young kid from Detroit, still in my twenties, on my first real job out of medical school. My wife and I had come to India two years earlier as hippies and spiritual seekers with Wavy Gravy on the Hog Farm commune buses with forty of our communal friends. Like many young people of our generation we drove along the Silk Route, now the Hippie Trail, from London through Turkey and Afghanistan over the Khyber Pass to Pakistan and then to Nepal.

After trekking in the Himalayas, my wife and I lived for a year in the ashram of our guru Neem Karoli Baba. We called him Maharaji. Nestled in the Himalayan foothills, in the spot on the map where India, Nepal, Tibet, and China come together, Maharaji’s ashram was part of the Kumaon Hills, a land filled with thousand-year-old temples and ashrams, yogis and babas, saints and mystics—genuine fakirs, as well as a few fakers. The Kainchi ashram gets its name from the Hindi word for “scissors,” a clever physical description of the meandering Kainchi River and spiritually apt: the river cuts off the everyday world from a decidedly mystical realm.

Even casual visitors who had no spiritual connection to Kainchi remarked that it felt otherworldly and as rock solid as the stone outcroppings of the Himalayan foothills from which it seemed to emerge. But beyond the complex of temple buildings there was something special in the air, a sparkling effervescence that tingled up your spine when you came around the bend to see the panorama of the temple dedicated to Hanuman, the monkey god, or when you walked across the brightly colored bridge that separated the heavily trafficked road from the peace and quiet of the monastery.

I could have stayed forever with Maharaji, my wife, and our new friends—the “Das brothers” as we called those who had followed Ram Dass on this Himalayan pilgrimage: Ravi Das (now Judge Michael Jeffery), Kabir Das, Balaram Das, Dwarkanath Das, Krishna Das, and Jugganath Das (Dan Goleman) and Gita, Sita, Mira, and Sunanda—all Westerners with new Indian names, many of whom had arrived before me on their spiritual search. From our base in the ashram, Maharaji sent us on pilgrimages throughout India to meet holy men and women, to learn yoga and meditation.

But one day, Maharaji pulled me aside and, giggling, told me, “You have other things to do, Doctor America.” That was what he called me then. I wanted a spiritual name like one of the Das brothers, but he called me Doctor America. “You will go to villages giving vaccinations.” I thought he was telling me I was a failure as a meditator and seeker. And I had almost forgotten I was ever a doctor. Maharaji insisted. “With the help of dedicated health workers,” he said, “God will eradicate a terrible disease, smallpox. And Doctor America will become a United Nations doctor.”

When I became a UN doctor I was twenty years younger than most of my colleagues. The huge number of dead and dying, the vast amount of suffering in Tatanagar from an epidemic raging out of control, was overwhelming. I was adrift and far away from the help of colleagues in Delhi. There were no mobile phones, no faxes, and telegraph service was poor. It could take hours or days to arrange one call to headquarters.

And in that instant when I passed that nearly weightless dead child to Zafar, I felt the full weight of failure. My body shook. I wasn’t the best person to be at Tatanagar, and I certainly should not have been the only UN doctor here in this Dante’s Inferno, but I was here and now was the only moment that mattered. I felt on my own with nothing but faith to guide me.

Faith in what? God? Faith that what Maharaji had told me would come true? Faith in the science of epidemiology? Arriving in Tatanagar and seeing the piles of dead bodies—men, women, and children, the latest victims of Variola major, the newest offerings to Shitala Ma—made me realize how much I had underestimated the enormity of the work that my inscrutable guru had sent me out to do."

~ Larry Brilliant, Sometimes Brilliant: The Impossible Adventure of a Spiritual Seeker and Visionary Physician Who Helped Conquer the Worst Disease in History

Talk About Weather

"Standing in line at the coffee shop, all we talk about is the weather.

Cold enough for you? We sure could use some rain.

But what else should we talk about? What could be more important than the clouds, or simpler, or more beautiful than the wind or the rain? In fact, nothing is more important than walking to the window and looking at the sky and remembering we have bodies. That we live and we die.

This is why we talk about the weather: because there's nothing we can do about it. Because the light, it comes and it goes. Because the clouds are now streaming in, and they're moving above us, tearing over the rooftops and the trees.

To talk about the weather is to be in solidarity with everyone else who talks about the weather. We are all bleary, after all, and empty and dull, waiting for our morning lattes, and who knows what waits for us, down the long corridors and in the lonely rooms? What indifferent voices? What flickering screens?

Moses wanted to see God face to face, but God said, No, no one can see me and live. But here's what I will do. I will put you in this cleft in the rock, and I will put my hand over the cleft, and I will run past you shouting my name – I AM! I AM! – and at the last moment, when I take my hand away, you will see what you will see.

This is why we talk about the weather: out of humility. Because the wind and the rain are all that we can bear."

~ Chris Anderson, Light When It Comes:Trusting Joy, Facing Darkness, and Seeing God in Everything

Polish Endlessly

“This Dharma, the subtle Dharma that has been transmitted by all Buddha-Tathagatas, is abundantly inherent in each individual; yet without practice it will not be manifested, and without enlightenment it will not be perceived. …Since it is the practice of enlightenment, that practice has no beginning and since it is enlightenment within the practice, that realization has no end.”

~ Eihei Dogen, from “Bendowa” in Shobogenzo

People practice for many reasons. For some, it is a means to establish better physical and emotional health; for others, it leads into deeper realization of their own non-Buddhist religion or philosophy, and for yet others, Zen practice is the direct, living experience of what Shakyamuni Buddha realized over 2,500 years ago. People who come to Zen practice are looking for more than mere words or concepts. Words and concepts by themselves are inadequate to help us most fully with the greatest possible awareness, and to enable us to grow spiritually.

In one sense, Zen practice is like regular exercise: if done regularly, it builds strength, gracefulness, and self-confidence, and helps us more effectively respond to the situations we all face every day. And Zen practice is also like a laboratory: Through practice we can continuously test our understanding to see if it is adequate or not. If we never test our beliefs through actual practice, we cannot find out whether they are true or false. When Shakyamuni Buddha first realized his true nature—and, in so doing, realized the true nature of all beings—he said that from the beginning, all beings are intrinsically perfect, sharing the virtues and wisdom of the awakened Buddha. But, he said, we remain unaware of this simply because our understanding is topsy-turvy. The Buddha spent the remainder of his life after his awakening enlarging upon this statement, and teaching how each of us can realize this truth for ourselves through practice.

But before we have realized it for ourselves, this truth is like an uncut diamond. We could not really say that it is worthless, nor could we say it is something other than a diamond. But until it is skillfully cut and meticulously polished, its sparkling diamond-nature might not be visible. The beautiful color and clarity that make it so highly prized would remain only in the realm of potential. Of course, we might sincerely believe it to be a diamond. We might even tell others, “This is a diamond and is therefore worth a great deal.” Yet it would seem peculiar to say, “I don’t need to cut and polish this diamond; I know that it is a diamond, and that’s good enough for me.” Rather, we must cut that diamond and polish its many facets carefully so that its lovely nature can be shared and enjoyed by all who see it. And so it is with our practice. We don’t wish to make diamonds out of mud—we wish to properly appreciate what we already have, what is inherent in us.

So Zen practice must be done physically—not just through belief. Our whole practice rests upon a physical base, just as our lives begin physically. First we learn to bring our bodies into harmony—we learn how to physically sit in the proper fashion. Then, sitting properly, our breathing settles into a harmonious cycle on its own—we stop panting and gasping and start to breathe easily, smoothly, and naturally. And as body and breath begin to settle down and no longer create disturbances for us, we find that the mind too is given the opportunity to settle into its own smooth and natural functioning. The racket and babble of our noisy minds give way to the clarity and naturalness of our true selves. In this way we come to know who we really are, and we come to understand the true nature of our life and death.

Finally, once we begin to establish this direct physical harmony between body, breath, and mind, we have a chance to extend the benefits of our practice to one another. We can learn to live together in a way that leads to the realization of everyone’s true nature not only on an individual level but also as a community, as a Sangha. This kind of group practice, such as takes place at a Zen center, can be of real benefit to our world—a world in which harmony is scarcer even than diamonds, and in which the realization of Truth is often regarded as an impossible dream.

In fact, we can say that the Three Treasures of Buddhism—Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha—are altogether nothing more or less than practice. The Buddha is the one who realizes. The Dharma is what is realized. And the Sangha is the harmony of realization and practice, both communal and individual, in accord with the Buddha Way. Hence, all relationships teach us even as we appreciate and polish each other, endlessly.”

~ Hakuyu Taizan Maezumi, On Zen Practice: Body, Breath, and Mind

“The Japanese community often suffered under painful racial prejudice and wanted to gather together for comfort in familiar rituals,” says Chozen Roshi. “They wanted keep to their culture and language alive for their children.” This meant, for Maezumi, performing funerals and marriages, not formal Zen practice. He dug in nevertheless, enduring long hours at the Soto Mission, completing his own koan studies, performing memorials and services while moonlighting as a translator, writing fortune cookies, working as a gardener and never forgetting his vow to serve the dharma.

By the late 1960s, American students in Los Angeles started sniffing around Little Tokyo for a teacher. People like Bernie Glassman (then an aeronautical engineer at McDonnell-Douglas) and Charlotte Joko Beck had already tasted what Zen practice had to offer, but were seeking direct, ongoing contact with a master. Maezumi Sensei, though still busy serving the Japanese community, answered the call. He began holding gatherings in a room at the temple. His orientation towards zazen, sitting practice, set him apart from the bishops who ministered to the Japanese congregation.

Maezumi Roshi’s style was warm, dynamic and direct. He lettered a sign on the zendo reading, “If you want to clarify the Great Matter of life and death you are welcome. Otherwise, better get out!” Buddhanature was “so obvious—” he would say, “right before your eyes.”  “He could see through the camouflage of personality and talk straight to the seeker beneath,” says Chozen Roshi. “He had a really great vow to spread the dharma and help people realize the nature of life,” says Wendy Egyoku Nakao Sensi, a third generation dharma heir who received transmission from Bernie Glassman. “Roshi was so clear about it that it didn’t really matter when the obstacles came.”

"The Great Way is not difficult for those who have no preferences. When love and hate are both absent everything becomes clear and undisguised. Make the smallest distinction, however, and heaven and earth are set infinitely apart. If you wish to see the truth then hold no opinions for or against anything. To set up what you like against what you dislike is the disease of the mind. When the deep meaning of things is not understood the mind’s essential peace is disturbed to no avail."

"It is so clear! Everything is stated right here in the first stanza, if we can only just realize it fully. The question is, can we take it? Can we see where we are holding preferences and how these preferences are forms of attachment?  We know that attachment or clinging to self is the cause of suffering and confusion.

Buddha’s First Noble Truth—termed noble because it is beyond any question of true or false—is that duhkha, suffering or dissatisfaction, is the nature of existence. The Second Noble Truth declares that the cause of this suffering is attachment. Out of delusion and confusion arises self-clinging, our need to maintain the illusion of a separate self, or ego, which manifests in our forming preferences, in our picking and choosing. We hold on to all kinds of attachments: likes and dislikes, love and hate, passion and aggression. What we generally call love, for instance, is quite often based upon attachment.

We have certain ideas and pictures in our minds that go along with each of our relationships. When we say my husband, my wife, my parents, my child, a sense of possessiveness or ownership arises and, along with it, a set of expectations about how the other should be, as well as feelings of jealousy and fear of loss when we think the relationship is threatened. Thus, because of the concept of the relationship in our minds, we become attached, wanting to control and dominate the other. In this way we treat wives, husbands, parents, and children as less than human, reducing them to mere objects. We are expressing our attachment, not true unconditional love. Then we wonder why our relationships are not working, why we are dissatisfied and others are not happy with us.

Most of us want our children to outdo all the other children, to get the best grades in school and to do the best in athletics. Treating them thus, as extensions of our ego, is another expression of attachment. I used to get very frustrated with my father because his ego became so involved in my competitive swimming. He never got to compete himself because he had to start working at the age of ten. Even though he had always wanted to be involved in sports, he never had the chance; so I became an extension of him, a means to satisfy his unfulfilled desire. Although I used to love swimming, I began to hate it because my father was always on my back, pushing me further, never giving me a day of rest. I would wake up at six o’clock every morning so I could work out from seven to eight before school. Then we would start again at two in the afternoon and go until six or seven at night. After dinner he would take me to the pool again from eight-thirty to ten-thirty.

For twelve years I never took one day off! If there was a holiday and the pool where I trained was closed, we sometimes drove as far as fifty miles to a pool that was open. By now, of course, I have learned to appreciate what tremendous discipline that was. I know it helped my sitting meditation practice later on, but there was a heavy price of resentment. When we try to live through our children, wanting them to be the greatest, we are clinging, using them to gratify our egos."

~ Dennis Genpo Merzel, The Eye Never Sleeps

Born With

Love is what we were born with.
Fear is what we learned here
~ Marianne Williamson

Truth Is Eternal

Truth is eternal,
knowledge is changeable.
It is disastrous
to confuse them
~ Madeleine L’Engle

Said Nothing

When Bodhidharma was asked what he was he said nothing.

Natural Ease

“I was meditating in our loft on the Bowery that had a big storefront window. The sun was floating in. We had been taught to meditate by concentrating on keeping a still flame in our heart. I was deep in concentration when suddenly the perspective changed. I saw that the flame was actually an open portal. I looked through this open portal, and inside I saw Ramakrishna sitting in meditation. His body was golden, the color of the flame. Everything around him was golden too. I stepped in through this door and when I looked down, I saw my body was also golden. Everything was this golden flame color. I went to Ramakrishna and sat down near him. As I looked around, all I could see was a little black flame in the brightness, which was the way back into the realm of ignorance.

I stayed there as long as I could. It began to fade out, but the bliss that I experienced stayed with me for hours and hours. I wandered around the mid-’60s East Village in a state of inebriation. I tried to order a sandwich at the deli, but I couldn’t even speak so I had to leave. Nothing like this has ever recurred, but at the time I didn’t realize how special it was. It was not imagination in any ordinary sense. Since then, I’ve realized that insight, preparation, and balance are all important in spiritual life. Meditation on Ramakrishna and studying his life has been profoundly purifying, gradually changing our lives.

I went back to graduate school at Swami’s request, though I had left the New School, thinking that I was rejecting academic life. Swami regarded study as a suitable austerity for the contemporary environment—more meaningful, in my case, than walking barefoot through India. One day I shaved my beard, just because I didn’t want to create any feeling of separation from other people. We moved out of the Bowery. Sheila and I found a quiet place up on the Hudson. We had three babies and I watched them being born. We made a special meditation room in our house.

Life became more and more mellow. We spent almost every summer at a retreat with Swami on the St. Lawrence River. Worldly friends wandered away and spiritual friends appeared. Academic life became enriching for me. The insight was deepening. A natural ease was arising. There was a simplifying of speech and thought.”

~ Lex Hixon, Conversations in the Spirit: A Chronicle of the Seventies Spiritual Revolution
“Lex Hixon affected many lives in different ways. In the course of his own studies, he became an accomplished adept in (among other traditions) Zen, Vedanta, Sufism, and Russian Orthodoxy. His house in the Riverdale section of the Bronx often functioned as a haven for people who represented religion at the crossroads. A robed Tibetan high lama would be coming in one door as a disgruntled runaway from a Zen community would be entering through another, and Lex’s magnanimity extended equally to each.

Of all the roles that Lex played, none surpasses in significance the post he held at WBAI, the public radio station in New York City where, from 1971 to 1984, he conducted a weekly radio show called “In the Spirit.” He interviewed rabbis, sheiks, priests, ministers and representatives from an impressive range of religious traditions… Using the medium of radio technology to transmit the dharma, Lex Hixon introduced virtually thousands of listeners to their spiritual guides.”

Exposed a Limit

"Black smoke was pumping heavily from the house when we arrived. The chief looked unhappy; the first arriving crews hadn’t pinpointed the fire yet, and the situation was devolving. My crew was trained for search and rescue, and that was all we were supposed to do, but today the chief growled, “Grab a hose and find the goddamn thing.” My partner for the shift was Victor. He was a baker in his off time and I liked him immensely, but he had a maddening tendency to do everything slowly and very carefully. So I had to wait behind for him, and, much to my dismay, Frank got to the nozzle first. Frank was a third-generation firefighter; he was aggressive, eager, and strong. Still, I wanted to be on the nozzle, the one who faced the fire head-on. Too late. Frank and his partner were charging into the garage, pushing open a side door. I followed, with Victor trailing.

As one of the few females in the San Francisco Fire Department, I had a lot to prove; the men viewed girls as sissies, I thought, and I had been put on God’s dear green earth to show everyone otherwise. To that end, I jostled to grab the Jaws of Life before anyone else, gleefully attended the most gruesome amputations, grinned about the biggest, baddest fires. I once jumped across an alley, from one building to another, five stories up, in full fire gear. I did it because another firefighter had done it, and I figured that if he did, I had better too. No one else would do it. They waited for a ladder to be brought up and thrown across, like smart people.

I was young and arrogant and flippant. God, I was a pain in the ass. And, of course, my comeuppance was nigh. The situation now in the house’s hallway was pretty typical—pitch black from smoke, and hot. Very hot. We were all crawling, dragging hose, bumping into walls and each other. Then—it was this simple—the world exploded. Later it would seem fitting that my turning point arrived the way a revelation should: with a great flash of light. The next second we were in the garage, untangling from each other. I sat up, dazed. Someone said, “Flashover!”

Flashovers are no joke. In technical terms, according to Wikipedia, flashovers happen “when the majority of surfaces in a space are heated to the autoignition temperature of the flammable gases, also known as Flash Point. Flashover normally occurs at 500 degrees Celsius (930 degrees Fahrenheit) or 1,100 degrees Fahrenheit for ordinary combustibles, and an incident heat flux at floor level of 1.8 Btu/ foot.” Put it in plain English: The air somewhere near us had exploded into flame.

Now there were curses from Andy, and Frank was grabbing each of us by the shoulders and shouting, “Are you okay?! Are you okay?!” We were, it seemed. All this took only a few seconds, then Frank said, “Where’s Victor?” Victor? He wasn’t in the garage. Which meant he was still inside. I processed this in what seemed like slow motion. Everything took on a surreal drawn-out quality. Frank, turning back the way we had so unceremoniously come, Andy’s curse words like a long, slow yawn in my ears. Victor was my partner, therefore my responsibility. But suddenly I was frozen, stuck to the floor in some strange, paralyzed state I had never felt before.

And here was the thought, loud in my head and spoken in no uncertain terms: I’m not going back in there. It was only a second. But I heard the voice clearly. I squashed it, just as quickly. Then, as if fighting against a greater force in me, I clumsily followed Frank. We found Victor quickly; he was unhurt, thankfully, and had taken cover in an adjoining room. Later at the station, we joked about the explosion, our burned ears, the expression on the chief’s face as we came somersaulting out of the doorway into the garage.

But that day, for me, was more than just another adventure. It had exposed something that I had not reached before—a limit. The explosion had shaken something loose—a dark and fearful side I had to face. I had been young and arrogant and flippant. Now I was just young.”

~ Caroline Paul (born 1963 in New York City) is an American writer of fiction and non-fiction. She was raised in Connecticut (her father was an investment banker, her mother a social worker), and educated in journalism and documentary film at Stanford University.

She worked as a journalist at Berkeley public radio station KPFA before (in 1988) joining the San Francisco Fire Department, as one of the first women hired by the department. She worked most of her career on Rescue 2, where she and her crew were responsible for search and rescue in fires. Rescue 2 members were also trained and sent on scuba dive searches, rope and rappelling rescues, surf rescues, confined space rescues, all hazardous material calls, and the most severe train and car wrecks.

Gift Of Fire

“My parents were and still are devout Catholics. Not only was attending Sunday Mass mandatory for my brothers and me, so were early-morning prayers—and I mean early! I’m sure it was actually a bit later than my memory is telling me now, but it seemed that prayers always happened at the crack of dawn. Dad would barge into our bedrooms and drag his four bleary-eyed sons downstairs to say the rosary together. Most of the time I was still asleep as I began the first “Hail Mary,” and I honestly wasn’t aware of a word I’d uttered until I heard that all too welcome “Amen” escape my lips. Then, you see, I was able to return to bed until it was time to get ready for school.

Even though I would question Catholicism in my teenage years, I never lost faith that all of our lives, and the very universe itself, are guided by a force greater than ourselves—one that we cannot, perhaps, ever fully comprehend. Whether we call it God, the Divine, or simply Energy, it is a power that will enlarge our souls and enrich us if we have the courage to go through life with open minds and compliant hearts. It took me years to discover this immense truth, one I am still unraveling as I continue my living journey. However, I don’t want to get too far ahead in my story…

When I was six months old, my family moved from Metairie to the nearby town of Gretna. Our new house was big and had an amazing backyard, with plenty of space for a swing set, as well as room to play catch or tag. It also had a big peanut-shaped swimming pool where we could retreat to escape the soupy-hot, sticky air of southeastern Louisiana summers. I celebrated my first two birthdays in that sprawling, neatly mowed backyard with my entire family and some of the neighborhood kids my own age.

Although I was too young to remember much about those parties or anything else from that time, my older brothers and parents have told me all about those early years. And since my dad was a home-movie fanatic, I’ve repeatedly watched countless hours of video chronicling our family life from 1980 onward. On those earliest tapes, I can see my first and second birthday parties: the young, laughing guests; the giant cake; and me, tearing through piles of wrapping paper as gifts are placed in front of me. There’s my mother smiling adoringly at me, and my father waving happily as he holds me in his arms. There are my two older brothers carrying me around the house, playing air guitar with me, and teaching me to walk and talk as though keeping me company was the greatest game ever invented. It’s strange to look at myself as I was during the first couple years of my life.

Watching those flickering images is like glimpsing an alternate reality, one residing forever in a distant universe that I only occasionally retreat to in dreams. Nonetheless, in those videos I was a rambunctious, cute, sandy-haired kid with a mischievous smile; smooth, unblemished skin; and twinkling blue eyes that didn’t have a care in the world. It was a lovely, idyllic time.

Other than it being Saint Patrick’s Day, there was nothing about the morning of March 17, 1982, that stood out or gave my family any reason to suspect that all of our lives were about to change forever. Of course, there never are any solid indicators that something profoundly good or overwhelmingly horrific is about to occur. Life just happens to us, deals us cards of fate, and it’s our job to either endure the hand dealt or fold altogether. In my case, the life I was barely becoming aware of exploded, literally, in front of my young eyes. I’m told that it was a particularly beautiful morning in southeastern Louisiana, sunny and mild without a hint of humidity.

That Wednesday began like any other in our house: My parents rose early and had their morning prayers and breakfast done by 7:30 A.M. I was still in diapers, so naturally I stayed at home all day with my mom. My older brothers Johnny (who was nine at the time) and Scott (who was five) quickly dressed and shot out the door to catch the school bus. When Dad headed to work a few minutes later, Mom carried me outside with her so we could kiss him good-bye. As my father pulled out of the driveway, my mother noticed that the grass in our yard was getting long. As a surprise for Dad, she decided to do something she’d never done before—mow the lawn herself. A short while later, she put me down in a fenced-in area of our patio that kept me away from our swimming pool, the most obvious threat of danger to a little boy just beginning to wander and investigate. I was an active, curious child; my mother has always told me that she loved that about me.

Mom set me down just a few feet away from where she was working in order to keep a close eye. She then went into the garage and filled the lawn mower with gasoline from a gas can my dad kept stored in the corner. She hauled the mower outside, started it up, and began the task at hand. I was probably out of my mother’s line of vision for less than ten seconds when she turned to push the lawn mower in the opposite direction, but that’s all it took for me, a natural-born escape artist, to wander through the side door of the garage, probably in search of my favorite toy, a little plastic Flintstones wagon.

I’m not sure how it happened, either when I stepped into the garage or was pulling down one of my toys from a shelf, but somehow I knocked over the gas can my mom had used. Before I knew it, gasoline was pouring from the can and flooding across the concrete floor. An invisible cloud of fumes rose from the floor and within seconds had reached the pilot light of the water heater, which was standing in the far corner. A moment later, the garage exploded into a roaring inferno, and I was standing in the center of it. With the air around me blazing at nearly 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit, my skin instantly blistered and baked away, much of it to the bone. It was a flash fire that lasted only an instant … but would stay with me for the rest of my life.

I don’t remember the explosion, the fire, or the screaming afterward. But the piercing cry of her burning child sliced through the droning engine of the old lawn mower and directly into my mother’s heart. She instantly bolted toward the garage and saw my limp, smoldering body sprawled across the now-blackened cement floor. I was dying and she knew it; her screams of terror penetrated the otherwise sedate neighborhood, prompting several neighbors to call for help. She was still screaming when it arrived.

Firefighters, sirens blaring, raced to us only minutes after the blast and immediately went to work, cutting the charred and melted clothes from my body. They lifted me into their arms and carried me out of the garage to the backyard, laid me down on the grass near the swimming pool, and tried to cool my boiling body and bring down my core temperature by pouring gallons of pool water over me. Ironically, the most “dangerous” part of our yard—the pool I had been fenced off from—became a major factor in my survival…”

~ Dan Caro, The Gift of Fire: How I Made Adversity Work for Me
Dan Caro was born and raised in Southern Louisiana and grew up surrounded by the sounds of the New Orleans jazz scene. He vowed at a young age that, despite the childhood fire that robbed him of his hands, he would become a professional drummer. Dan studied music and music therapy at several universities including Loyola. His pursuit and achievement of his dream inspired thousands of people and launched his second career as a motivational speaker. He lives outside of New Orleans with his dog, Dixie.

Freedom Writers

“Dear Diary,
Tomorrow morning, my journey as an English teacher officially begins. Since first impressions are so important, I wonder what my students will think about me. Will they think I’m out of touch or too preppy? Or worse yet, that I’m too young to be taken seriously? Maybe I’ll have them write a journal entry describing what their expectations are of me and the class.

Even though I spent last year as a student teacher at Wilson High School, I’m still learning my way around the city. Long Beach is so different than the gated community I grew up in. Thanks to MTV dubbing Long Beach as the “gangsta-rap capital” with its depiction of guns and graffiti, my friends have a warped perception of the city, or L B C as the rappers refer to it. They think I should wear a bulletproof vest rather than pearls. Where I live in Newport Beach is a utopia compared to some of neighborhoods seen in a Snoop Doggy Dogg video. Still, TV tends to blow things out of proportion.

The school is actually located in a safe neighborhood, just a few miles from the ocean. Its location and reputation make it desirable. So much so that a lot of the students that live in what they call the “’hood” take two or three buses just to get to school every day. Students come in from every corner of the city: Rich kids from the shore sit next to poor kids from the projects…there’s every race, religion, and culture within the confines of the quad. But since the Rodney King riots, racial tension has spilled over into the school. Due to busing and an outbreak in gang activity, Wilson’s traditional white, upper-class demographics have changed radically. African Americans, Latinos, and Asians now make up the majority of the student body.

As a student teacher last year, I was pretty naïve. I wanted to see past color and culture, but I was immediately confronted by it when the first bell rang and a student named Sharaud sauntered in bouncing a basketball. He was a junior, a disciplinary transfer from Wilson’s crosstown rival, and his reputation preceded him. Word was that he had threatened his previous English teacher with a gun (which I later found out was only a plastic water gun, but it had all the makings of a dramatic showdown). In those first few minutes, he made it brutally clear that he hated Wilson, he hated English, and he hated me. His sole purpose was to make his “preppy” student teacher cry. Little did he know that within a month, he’d be the one crying...

The smell of marijuana greets me at the door, followed closely by a disheveled woman. She asks what I want, and I tell her that I have come for the girls. She calls to them: “The lady is here.” The girls dart to the door, excited and expectant, each asking what the plans are for the evening and what they will eat.

In this neighborhood grown men run around playing with toy guns only weeks after a neighborhood teen was shot to death on his front porch. In this neighborhood eight- and nine-year old girls discuss rape in the way other girls might discuss the latest episode of Hannah Montana. I know of an alcoholic grandmother who has custody of her thirteen-year-old granddaughter. Here, drugs are rampant. The apartment complex grounds are littered with “Little Hugs” bottles and cigarette butts.

How does hope emerge from such a place? It comes with a field trip to a local college. It comes from meeting a woman who is vice-mayor. It comes from witnessing a performance of the Alvin Ailey Dance Company. It comes when the girls do community service, perform for elderly residents at a nursing home, or march proudly in a college homecoming parade.

I am often asked why I meet with the girls one day a week after working full-time with middle school students. I was a little girl once, I reply. There were women who gave my life meaning and who inspired me: my grandmother and mother, who believed in the power of books and reading though neither had a formal education; the teachers in my segregated public schools who valued me as a learner and believed, even in those tough times, that “education is the great equalizer”; the Sunday school teachers and ladies of the community who reinforced behaviors taught at home and at school.

The wonder that these girls express at things that I take for granted constantly amazes me. I am reminded of the Dr. Seuss book Oh, the Places You’ll Go! and am convinced that these girls will go places that they never imagined for themselves. I am thrilled to encourage and inspire them to go to the “places they will go.” ~ Erin Gruwell, The Freedom Writers Diary

“Following the L.A. Riots, the mood in our city was unsettling, and on our first day of high school, we had only three things in common: we hated school, we hated our teacher, and we hated each other.

Many of the students who entered Erin Gruwell’s freshman English class weren’t thinking about how to make it to graduation, but how they could make it to sixteen years old. Racial and gang tension had peaked and a record 126 murders had occurred in Long Beach that year. With the external stresses of a divided city, the students of Room 203 were not concerned with the education system that had already failed them on multiple occasions. Gruwell’s students had been written off as unteachable and below average.

Regardless of what her peers tried to tell her, Gruwell sought to engage her jaded students. She chose, instead, to listen to what they had to say and saw beyond the stigma of their low test scores. She brought in literature written by teenagers who looked and talked like them, who faced struggles just like theirs. The students soon realized that if they could relate to the complete strangers in their books, they could certainly relate to one another.

They started to form a diverse family, accepting of all, that they named the “Freedom Writers” after the 1960s Civil Rights activists, the Freedom Riders. In this newly formed safe space, the Freedom Writers began writing anonymous journal entries about the adversity they faced. They felt free to write about gang violence, abuse, drugs, love, and everything else real teenagers dealt with on a daily basis. The rawness and honesty of their journals was published in a book called, “The Freedom Writers Diary,” which became an instant “New York Times” Best Seller.

All 150 Freedom Writers graduated in 1998. Many have gone on to pursue higher education and lucrative careers. The Freedom Writers Foundation was created shortly after to help other educators mirror Erin and the Freedom Writers’ accomplishments and ensure a quality education for all students.

In order to replicate the success they had in classrooms and communities across the world, Erin Gruwell and the original Freedom Writers founded the Freedom Writers Foundation. The mission of the Freedom Writers Foundation is to be an advocate for all students and teachers by providing tools that facilitate student-centered learning, improve overall academic performance, and increase teacher retention.”

“My diary partially inspired the Freedom Writers and maybe some other people to start writing their own diaries, and do something about the situations they found themselves in. I have heard people say that it is not what happens to us that matters, but how we deal with it—and the Freedom Writers are a perfect example. They could have chosen to fight racism with racism, hate with hate, pain with pain. But they did not. If we all do what the Freedom Writers have done, and choose to deal with inhumane situations in a humane way, we can turn the world around and create positive lessons for ourselves and for others.

Unfortunately, I have realized that we cannot completely erase all the evil from the world, but we can change the way we deal with it, we can rise above it and stay strong and true to ourselves. And most important, we can inspire others—this is what makes us human beings, this is what can make us immortal…” ~ Erin Gruwell, Dublin, July 1999

~ Toastmasters International has named Erin Gruwell its 2017 Golden Gavel recipient for her commitment to improving education by offering training and curriculum to teachers, and scholarships and outreach for at-risk youth. Gruwell exemplifies the Toastmasters values through her integrity, her respect for the individual, her ¬service to others and her focus on motivating individuals to become their best selves. Gruwell will be honored with this prestigious recognition in August at the 86th Annual Toastmasters International Convention in Vancouver, British Columbia.

As a high school English teacher, Gruwell encouraged her dis¬engaged students to write about their life challenges in diaries. She eventually captured her former students’ collective journey in the best-selling book, The Freedom Writers Diary: How a Teacher and 150 Teens Used Writing to Change Themselves and the World Around Them, which also became a critically acclaimed movie starring Hilary Swank as Gruwell. She then founded the Freedom Writers Foundation, which offers programs to improve the education of all students. She created the Freedom Writers Methodology, a progressive teaching philosophy and curricula and uses it to teach educators around the world how to implement her innovative lesson plans in their own classrooms.

After the release of the book and movie, Gruwell began receiving requests for the Freedom Writers (her former students) to speak around the world. Although the students had bared their souls in the diaries, the prospect of standing before audiences and telling their very personal stories was daunting. Gruwell knew a colleague in Toastmasters and arranged for the students to attend an eight-week Speechcraft session at the Freedom Writers Foundation in Long Beach, California. “The Toastmasters leaders made it their mission to model what great speaking is for us, to help ease the Freedom Writers’ anxiety about presenting and to encourage us all to take risks as speakers,” Gruwell says.

“Toastmasters became a game-changer for us.” The group soon chartered its own club, Freedom Writers Toastmasters, in September 2014. Brimming with confidence and polished speaking skills, the Freedom Writers now travel the globe presenting to audiences of vulnerable and voiceless youth, with a message of hope that they, too, can overcome enormous odds to transcend their circumstances.

A new documentary titled Freedom Writers: Stories from an Undeclared War is set to be released next spring through the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) in the United States.... To learn more about Gruwell and the Freedom Writers, read the cover article in the May Toastmaster magazine."

Ass

"I'm going to write a book someday and the title will be 'I'm an Ass, You're an Ass'. That's the most liberating, wonderful thing in the world, when you openly admit you're an ass. It's wonderful. When people tell me, "You're wrong" I say, "What can you expect of an ass?"
-- Anthony de Mello, "Awareness Without Evaluating Everything", p. 40

Not Your Guru

“I gave him his first big speech, by the way,” says Tony Robbins. “He came [to a Robbins event] and thought that he was going to speak to 100 people: We had 10,000 people, and he just about fell over. Then he got addicted to large crowds...

Donald is a complex character,” Robbins says. “Some people are driven by certainty. They get freaked out if you change anything. Some people live for variety. They just want surprise. Some people live to love, some people live to grow, some live for contribution, and some people live to be significant. Donald’s entire life is built around significance. He’s learned that the way to be significant is to dominate. Most of his conflicts come because he has to have the last word. It’s served him in some areas, and it clearly doesn’t in others.”

Robbins smiles and says, “He’s not going to get coached by me. Donald doesn’t take coaching from anybody.”

~ "Robbins has met with, consulted, or advised international leaders including Nelson Mandela, Mikhail Gorbachev, Margaret Thatcher, Francois Mitterrand, Princess Diana, and Mother Teresa. He has consulted members of two royal families, members of the U.S. Congress, the U.S. Army, the U.S. Marines and three U.S. Presidents, including Bill Clinton. Robbins has had the unique opportunity to identify patterns and model the underlying strategies generating consistent results for some of the most successful individuals in the world.

In 2006, he was invited to speak at the prestigious Technology, Entertainment and Design (TED) Conference, attended by the world’s most influential thinkers and leaders, including the founders of Google and Vice President Al Gore. Toastmasters International recognized Robbins as one of the world’s greatest speakers, awarding him the Golden Gavel Award, its most prestigious honor. One of the most sought-after speakers in the world, more than three million people from over 80 countries have attended Anthony Robbins’ live seminars or speaking engagements." ~ tonyrobbins.com

"In “Tony Robbins: I Am Not Your Guru,” an immersive look at his 2014 seminar in Boca Raton, Fla., so much is lobbed that this almost fawning documentary plays at times like a horror movie. There is something almost vampiric about this public siphoning of hurt, from the self-loathing of a suicidal young man to the devastating anguish of a woman who survived a childhood of sex slavery. Is she on the road to being healed, we wonder, or has she just exchanged one possible cult for another?

“I’m gonna show you what to do to reshape yourself,” Mr. Robbins tells the young man, and more than 2,000 pairs of ears prick up. This is what they have come from all over the world, and paid almost $5,000, to learn; and like a carefully honed combination of Elmer Gantry, Dr. Phil and David Copperfield (when Mr. Robbins yanks back the curtain, it’s your deepest psychological wound that’s revealed), their host will not disappoint.

Unfortunately, the same can’t be said for the film’s director, Joe Berlinger, who attended the seminar in 2012 and, according to the publicity notes, wanted to share that “life-changing” experience. To do so, he allowed Mr. Robbins to supply the film’s initial financing and gave him the option of canceling at any point before the end of the seminar. (Any footage already shot could be used by Mr. Robbins for coaching.) And though Mr. Berlinger had final cut, it’s hard to find a single moment here that would be out of place in a promotional video.

For a director whose previous work — like the magnificent “Paradise Lost” trilogy (1996, 2000 and 2011) — has been more focused on social injustices than on mental swamps, this uncritical hands-off stance is quite a departure. It’s also a missed opportunity to analyze his subject’s charismatic technique, a galvanic blend of psychoanalysis, EST, primal therapy, meditation and calisthenics that confers a peacocking dominance on the speaker and summons a near-religious devotion from his audience." ~ nytimes.com

Stop

Stop the words now.
Open the window in the center of your chest, and let the spirits fly in and out
~ Rumi

Impossible

"Saint Augustine (354–430 AD), the towering intellectual of the early centuries of Christianity, was once trying to figure out the mystery of the Trinity while he walked along a beach. He came across a boy who was running to the sea and then back again with a bucket of water. Each time he got back to the beach with his bucketful of water, the boy poured it into a small hole in the sand.

"What are you doing?" Augustine asked. "I'm trying to put the ocean into this hole," replied the boy. "But that's impossible," retorted Augustine. "Just as impossible as trying to fit the infinity of God into your little mind," replied the boy before vanishing from his sight."

Nothing Special

"Eckhart Tolle tells the story of a beggar who has been sitting in the same spot for more than thirty years. One day a stranger passes by. The stranger has no money to give, but he asks the beggar about the box upon which he is sitting. The beggar says it is nothing special, just an old box. The stranger tells him to look inside it. The beggar feels this is pointless; he has been sitting on this box forever, and he is convinced it holds nothing, and certainly no surprises. But the stranger persists. Finally, the beggar opens the box and is amazed to discover that it is full of gold."

(The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment, Novato, CA: New World Library, 2004, 11).

Open Always

"Tony de Mello used to tell the story of a spiritual seeker who had arrived at a deep and loving union with God. His disciples were intensely curious about what the experience was like, but the master was most reluctant to say anything about the matter. One day his own son tried to pry the secret from him, and in a rare moment of candor, the father shared his feelings.

"I felt like a fool," he said. "Why?" asked the son. "Because," the father replied, "it was like going to enormous trouble to enter a house by climbing a ladder and breaking the window, only to realize afterwards that the front door had been open the whole time"
(One Minute Wisdom, 177).

-- Anthony de Mello, (1931–1987), was an Indian Jesuit priest and one of the great spiritual masters of our time. Although de Mello was known primarily within the Catholic community for his writings and conferences, his influence transcended religious boundaries; by the end of his life, de Mello's unique spirituality was enabling people from almost every faith to approach God more easily.

My Mother

All beings were my mother
~ Atisha
“Hello, dear mother. Thank you for your kindness."

All Others

Enlightenment can be measured by how compassionately and wisely you interact with all others not just those who support you ~ Adya

Web Of Relationship

“Christopher Guest’s role in The Princess Bride was the reason I was excited to see the movie when it was first released in the fall of 1987. I was nine years old. All I knew was that this man I had known all my life played a bad guy (a hilarious idea in itself) and that the movie was a kind of fairy tale, but not just any fairy tale. Even upon first viewing it, I knew the film was a parody. It felt like a sarcastic Xerox of the fairy-tale genre, as if a smart older kid were making fun of some cheesy story I’d already seen a thousand times.

I remember enjoying the movie that first time; it displaced my troubled mind into humor and fantasy during a particularly rough stretch of childhood, a yearlong span that included my parents’ difficult divorce, my grandparents’ double suicide, and, like a candle torched at both ends, the premature death of my parents’ Buddhist teacher, the man who exerted a central gravitational pull in the galaxy of their lives (and later mine), the brilliant and enigmatic Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche.

On top of all that trauma, there was the day-to-day chaos of fourth grade. My best friend had skipped forward a grade without me after third grade, leaving me to fend for myself. Fending for myself was a difficult task, because I had two surgeries that year to help with a mild case of cerebral palsy on my right side. Surgery left me outcast, in a cast, for a significant portion of the school year. My best friend skipping ahead and my gimp status together made me, objectively speaking, the second least popular kid in my class.

Sadly, this popularity ranking happened at a hippy New York City school founded in the 1960s on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’ s vision of an inclusive multicultural society. This wonderful school preached nothing but diversity and acceptance daily— a sign that even the best utopias hold popularity contests. Fortunately for me, I still had one friend at school that year. Unfortunately for both of us, his social spasms, angry demeanor, and prepubescent unibrow made him, also objectively speaking, the number one least popular kid in our class.

Our friendship was mostly circumstantial and far from ideal. But still, he was my friend, my only real friend that year— that is, until, like the worst Buddhist kid in the world, I told him we couldn’t hang out anymore, that he was dragging me down. His gruff demeanor crumbled as he started to cry. It was an awful move on my part, a classic case of the weak abandoning the weaker. Thirty years later, my choice still haunts me occasionally during sessions of compassion meditation…

I have worked with thousands of people on the practice of meditation, and it turns out, after all, that nobody comes to meditation looking to find their breath. Nobody is looking for a mantra. Nobody is looking for a teacher, or an altar, or a shrine, or even a community to practice with— although all these things often prove helpful to what we are seeking. What folks always come looking for is a way to be more present, less stressed, and more effective in life. Occasionally a student wants to leave her whole life behind and immerse herself in a long, solitary retreat. But what is a retreat, anyway? A retreat just means you crave some time and space away from your claustrophobic human relationships.

So, it really is this simple: we get on the spiritual path because either we want tools for our relationships or we want to escape those relationships for a while. We want to escape relationships only because we think we lack the tools to deal with other people sanely. Regardless, relationships, and our struggles with them, are the crux of any spiritual path. In one word, life is about interdependence.

Life is a web of relationships, a cohort of people rubbing up against, and rubbing off on, one another. We each fumble through life for a brief series of moments, anchored only by our connection with our own minds, and our connection with other beings. Sometimes the web of human relationships around us feels grounding and supportive. Sometimes it feels like a sticky trap, a spiderweb.”

~ Ethan Nichtern, The Dharma of The Princess Bride: What the Coolest Fairy Tale of Our Time Can Teach Us About Buddhism and Relationships

Photos ~ Ethan Nichtern with Duncan Trussell
~ packing tape web art installation at Viennese stock exchange.

Except Family

“It’s possible that you could become enlightened everywhere except around your family.”
~ Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche

Perfect

Buddhist temples in Japan are renowned for their gardens. Many years ago, there was one temple that was said to have the most beautiful garden of all. Travelers would come from all over the country just to admire its exquisite arrangement, so rich in simplicity. An old monk once came to visit. He arrived very early, just after dawn. He wanted to discover why this garden was considered the most inspiring, so he concealed himself behind a large bush with a good view of the rest of the garden.

He saw a young gardening monk emerge from the temple carrying two wicker baskets. For the next three hours, he watched the young monk carefully pick up every leaf and twig that had fallen from the spreading plum tree in the center of the garden. As he picked up each leaf and twig, the young monk would turn it over in his soft hand, examine it, ponder over it; and if it was to his liking he would delicately place it in one of the baskets. If it wasn’t to be of use to him, he would drop it in the second basket, the rubbish basket. Having collected and thought over every leaf and twig, having emptied the rubbish basket on the pile at the rear of the temple, he paused to take tea and compose his mind for the next crucial stage.

The young monk spent another three hours, mindfully, carefully, skillfully, placing each leaf and twig just in the right place in the garden. If he wasn’t satisfied with the position of a twig, he would turn it slightly or move it forwards a little until, with a light smile of satisfaction, he would move on to the next leaf, choosing just the right shape and color for its place in the garden. His attention to detail was unparalleled. His mastery over the arrangement of color and shape was superb. His understanding of natural beauty was sublime. When he was finished, the garden looked immaculate.

Then the old monk stepped out from behind his bush. Wearing a broken-toothed smile, he congratulated the young gardening monk, “Well done! Well done indeed, Venerable! I’ve been observing you all morning. Your diligence is worthy of the highest of praise. And your garden… Well! Your garden is almost perfect.” The young monk’s face went white. His body stiffened as if he had been stung by a scorpion. His smile of self-satisfaction slipped from his face and tumbled into the great chasm of the void. In Japan, you can never be sure of old grinning monks!

“What d…do…you mean?” he stuttered through his fear. “What do y…you mean, almost perfect?” and he prostrated himself at the old monk’s feet. “Oh master! Oh teacher! Please release your compassion on me. You have surely been sent by the Buddha to show me how to make my garden really perfect. Teach me, Oh Wise One! Show me the way!” “Do you really want me to show you?” asked the old monk, his ancient face creasing with mischief. “Oh yes. Please do. Oh please master!”

So the old monk strode into the center of the garden. He put his old but still strong arms around the leafy plum tree. Then with the laugh of a saint, he shook the hell out of that poor tree! Leaves, twigs, and bark fell everywhere, and still the old monk shook that tree. When no more leaves would fall, he stopped. The young monk was horrified. The garden was ruined. The whole morning’s work was wasted. He wanted to kill the old monk. But the old monk merely looked around him admiring his work. Then with a smile that melts anger, he said gently to the young monk, “Now your garden is really perfect.”

~ Ajahn Brahm, Who Ordered This Truckload of Dung?: Inspiring Stories for Welcoming Life's Difficulties

Inter-faith Comedy

Q: Why an interfaith comedy tour, and why use humor when dealing with a topic that can be considered serious, such as faith?

Amer: Humor is a universal language. Remember [this] the next time you have a really serious conversation, and [observe] how it actually starts. I almost guarantee you that 90-plus percent of the time, it’s going to start with humor. And why wouldn’t you want to sit together and laugh together? Don’t forget [the old proverb] that “most truth is said in jest.”

Alper: There’s the story in the Talmud that I sometimes share. Elijah the prophet and a friend walked into a marketplace, and Elijah pointed across the area. He says, “See those two men over there? Well, they’ll have a share in the world to come.” The friend asked, “Why is that?” Elijah replied, “It’s because they’re comedians. When people are sad, they cheer them, and when people are angry with each other, they bring peace between them.” That’s kind of what we try to do. I did a show a couple of nights ago with [Muslim comedian] Azhar Usman at the University of Michigan, and you looked out and saw a sea of faces of Muslim and Christian students not only laughing together but hanging out together before and after the show. These are little steps to bring understanding of each other’s humanity.

Amer: I always tell Bob the mere fact that we’re working together already does that. That’s why the name -- “Laugh in Peace” tour -- is so brilliant. It has kind of neutralized all that as well. It kind of disarms the audience right away.

Q: Why bring these two faiths -- Judaism and Islam -- together?
Alper: The Jewish/Christian thing has been done often and successfully. There’s a lot of it.

Amer: Yeah. Get over yourselves already. I’m just kidding. Let the record show I was joking when I said that statement.

Alper: This is where it’s needed. These are two communities that really have so much in common but don’t know each other and fear each other a lot. I sometimes use a joke -- it’s not such a great joke, but I wish I could use it more -- where I talk about how the Muslim immigrant experience in America is parallel to the Jewish immigrant experience in America in many ways.
One-hundred and fifty years ago, Jews came to America with nothing. They’d put a pack on their back and go from town to village to city peddling, and if they were successful, they’d get a horse and wagon. If they continued to be successful, they’d settle in the towns and the villages and the cities and open a store. And now Muslims are coming to America and they’re all going to the towns and the villages and the cities … as radiologists.
Amer: That’s funny. I never heard you do that. You should pick another word than radiologist maybe. Pick a funnier word maybe.

Alper: But I thought about that. I was in Laramie, Wyo., and I said to a Muslim student at a university, “How did your family get here?” He said, “Well, my father is a radiologist.”
Amer: That’s funny. That’s funny.
Alper: That’s how it came to be.
Amer: For me, [humor] can neutralize all the stuff that does exist out there, and I think there are a lot of negative perceptions that [obscure] how Jews and Muslims are alike. There’s just so much similarity; it’s just off the charts. There should be no reason why we don’t speak or talk more often. There are people all over the world that have good relationships. Muslims and Jews live fine.
[Comedian] Azhar Usman has a joke, “Muslims and Jews have been living in New York for so many years that I’m sure you could find a halal hot dog on a kosher bun.” It’s totally spot-on.
This is a great remedy for those places that do have that tension. My greatest hope is for us to both do a show in Jerusalem. That would be amazing.
Alper: Yeah. That would.

Q: Is there any risk in using humor to bring attention to a serious issue?
Amer: There’s risk-reward in all of stand-up.
Alper: We don’t try and be funny about group relations or politics. We don’t do that. We just do our own thing. The medium is the message. People see us up there and they know that we hang out together. That’s enough. I think that’s what comes through. And we want [our audiences] to know that we don’t just meet, talk, pick up our checks and say, “All right, we’re going back to our separate hotels.”
Amer: Yeah, it’s not, “See you later.” No.

Alper: Last night, we were at a synagogue, and it was a predominantly Jewish audience. I don’t know how often Jews have an opportunity to understand the tensions in an Arab/Muslim family, like over a child’s choice of a career such as Mo presents in an hysterical comedy bit. There are similar tensions in Jewish families.
Amer: Yeah. Absolutely.
Alper: And it’s identical. Mo comes from a family of all professionals, and his mother was skeptical about him being a comedian. That happened with my family, too.
Amer: In my family, there is someone with a Ph.D., a pilot, a Microsoft-certified engineer, a telecommunications engineer. And I say, “I want to be a comedian.” That made people laugh.
Alper: And it’s really so humanizing, because it’s the same thing, you know.

Q: What role does humor have in faith?
Alper: It’s humanizing, and it has a very, very positive effect spiritually. In fact, I’m writing a book now called “Thanks, I Needed That,” subtitled “The Spirituality of Laughter,” because humor has a hugely important role in helping cope with sadness, illness, diversity, grief, all the difficult parts of life. It has a very effective way of helping people cope with challenges like raising teenagers. It’s laughter that helps them through it.
Amer: Absolutely. Historically, in Islam, the Prophet Mohammed -- peace be upon him -- used to commission jesters and poets to entertain the people. That for me is a prime example of how humor was used to lift spirits historically in Islam.
Laughter comes from the heart, just as weeping and crying do. It all comes from the same place. Sometimes you laugh too much and you start crying, and sometimes you cry so much [that] at the end you start laughing. So they’re all connected, and this is all an emotion that we all experience. That in itself is very, very spiritual.

Q: What are the keys to being funny, especially for leaders?
Amer: Stop talking! No. I don’t know. I mean, you either have it or you don’t. George Burns said, “I wasn’t funny. I learned how to be funny.” He’ll say that, but what I think he did is learned to be himself. I think that’s what he meant when he said “I learned to be funny.” That’s the biggest thing for comedians: be yourself on stage.
Imagine a brick wall, and you’re removing a layer of brick constantly throughout your career [until] eventually you are yourself on stage, and therefore people from all different backgrounds will be attracted to you, because it’s the universal language of truth. People can see that. You can tell when somebody is full of it.

Alper: One thing is, don’t be afraid to be funny. Prefacing that, spiritual leaders have to understand the value and the effectiveness of humor and appreciate it, because if they’re sneering at the use of humor or condescending to the use of humor, they’re not going to be very good at it themselves.
But if they value it and if they understand how enormously effective it can be in reaching people, that’s the first step. Then what goes after that is learning how to use humor, and that’s difficult.

Q: What are your suggestions for how to use humor?
Alper: One quick suggestion is keep it short.
Amer: Amen.
Alper: Sometimes people do long, long stories and just go on and on and on, and it’s terrible. No payoff is worth listening to something for three minutes.
There’s a technique that some people might use already, but maybe they don’t realize it, and others might want to adapt it. It’s called target painting. It means instead of drawing a target first and then shooting to try and hit the target, shoot first and then draw the target around the arrow, and you’ve got a bull’s-eye.
So if I come up with a really good joke or story that I want to use, I’ll make that the centerpiece, and I’ll figure what can I say around it. What lesson can I draw out of the story or joke? How can I use this very effective story and make it into a sermon or lesson?
I almost always use humor in sermons at some point. Recently, I took a spiritual journey to visit Auschwitz, and I wrote the sermon that I’ll be delivering on Yom Kippur this fall. Believe it or not, the sermon begins with some very mild humor. The congregation doesn’t know where I’m going with the sermon. What they do know is they’re relaxing into it. They’re having a smile or two. You have to set people up and prepare them to ingest the serious message of your sermon. If you start right away hitting them over the head, they won’t respond.
There was a teacher in the Talmud called Rabbah who always began his lessons with a joke. After students were relaxed, he then imparted the more profound wisdom of the lesson.
Amer: I think it’s also observing what the needs are. You must recognize the needs of the particular people whom you’re speaking to and articulate a message that goes directly to their hearts instead of something that’s non-relatable. It’s really, really important as well to be OK with silence.
My mentor taught me that you must be OK with silence, but most comedians are terrified of silence. That’s why you see some comedians rush, rush, rush, rush, rush. They just pound through the material without really connecting and without being themselves. They’re just churning it out.
You’ve got to have no fear. Take a risk, like Bob said. It’s OK. But to me, I think either you have it or you don’t; and if you don’t have it right now, you just don’t know how to tap into it, because we all have some type of humor inside. Well, some people I’ve met, I’m not really sure about.
Alper: And we don’t want the competition anyway, so never mind.
Amer: Yeah. Don’t do it.”

~ Rabbi Robert "Bob" Alper is an author, stand-up comedian, and practicing clergy member. As an ordained rabbi, Alper served congregations for fourteen years and holds a doctorate from Princeton Theological Seminary.
~ Mohammed "Mo" Amer is an American stand-up comedian and writer of Palestinian descent from Kuwait. He is best known as one third of comedy trio Allah Made Me Funny.