Punk's not Dead, It's just Getting Older

Aging and rock n' roll don't go well together. When I listen to the music I love, especially old punk songs that nobody around me cares about anymore, I feel hopelessly doomed to a world where I keep getting older and the punk kids stay the same age.

Tonight Ted Leo, a DC punk hero, is playing an all ages benefit show and I'm dying to go. I don't hang out with many people that care anymore. My heart breaks to every drum beat. It wakes me up to every sprouting grey hair.

When I was about 20 years old I got free tickets to a Ramones show. I showed up with this girl and we laughed

How I became a Buddhist Evangelist and then Gave up

Before I became a Buddhist, I had a good life: beautiful girlfriend, lots of friends, money to burn, interesting career... but even rockstars, who are supposed to have it all, often feel a profound sense of emptiness. I was no rockstar, but something was missing.

Years before, I backpacked around Asia. I visited monasteries in the high Himalayas. These places felt like they were trapped in time. Bells and drums punctuated mysterious chants. Massive horns blasted the spirit of awakened heart into the heavens and into my guts. The clash of cymbals a midst the thick smoke of burning juniper grabbed my attention and shook me by the collar. I could have been Marco Polo in a scene of unprecedented cross-cultural encounter (if it wasn't for those Euro hikers in neon jackets, sitting behind the red-robed monks).

How to Dissolve Resentment

It's easy to get fixated on resentment in life. We resent not being loved; we resent snarky remarks; we resent our talents going unnoticed; we resent prejudice; we resent not being perfect. But resentment is the ground for us to work from, when we realize that resentment is a cowardly and ineffective attempt to avoid pain.

To be clear, I'm not talking about anger or saying we shouldn't be angry sometimes. When we see people being oppressed, anger seems the appropriate response. What I'm talking about is petty resentment, which often leads us to talk a lot of smack in the face of something we interpret as a personal affront.

It takes courage to work with our resentment, and it takes a mind that is aware of the object of resentment, our fear and the impulse to escape from it. At the bottom of resentment is pain and we need the courage to run straight into that pain. The way in is the way out.

Thoughts are Contagious

You're thoughts are contagious, especially when you vocalize them. Positive thoughts, or negative thoughts, whether it's in the places we live, work, study, practice or gather, when you give voice to your thoughts, they can spread like fire.

A few complaints can create a palor of unsettled discontent in your environment. They can taint the way your friends and family see the world.

The Aikido dojo where I practice has a rule. Students of this Zen influenced martial art shouldn't vocalize their emotional baggage in the dojo. If someone in the locker room starts complaining about his boss, the next guy is likely to join in with a similar story. Next thing you know, 3 people will be complaining about their workplace and a cloud of dissatisfaction settles in. This leaves us in a poisonous place that isn't conducive to practice and study.

Practicing Happiness

One thing I have heard a few times on Krista Tippet's show on NPR called On Being is that happiness is a practice. This idea inspires me and me gives me hope that we can all be happy. It also highlights the fact that our society is confused about how we achieve happiness. We are silly to think we can find happiness without practicing it, as if you could get in shape without exercising.

His Holiness the Dalai Lama says that all beings want to be happy and that this is good. However, there is some confusion in our society about whether the pursuit of happiness is indeed a noble thing. Some of the confusion stems from the notion that seeking happiness for yourself is selfish. Once we get past this hang-up, we often encounter even greater confusion about how to seek happiness. 

In this blog post I want to throw out a few ideas about what practicing happiness might look like.

Meditator Gets Hoodwinked by Religion

I recently tried to set up an introduction to meditation during lunch hour at my work. I found myself contemplating how religion and meditation are related because I had to assure people that this was not a religious thing. Of course, there doesn't have to be anything religious about meditation, but people tend to worry that they are about to get hoodwinked.

At the end of the day, all forms of meditation have origins in the world's wisdom traditions or religions. If you haven't signed up for membership in one of the world's religions, don't worry! You don't have to join a religion to get something out of meditation, but allow me to expound on the relationship I see between meditation and religion.

When you F%@# up

I f@#$ed something up at work, which is embarassing and frustrating. I pointed it out to my boss on Friday and thought about it all weekend. This morning my boss called me into her office to talk about it. She didn't have to say much to kick it off. As soon as I realized what she wanted to talk about I got really chatty, squirrely and over-apologetic. The truth is that I wanted out.

Experiencing Ordinary Perfection

Every now and then I realize there is perfection all around me. This sometimes comes up during or at the end of a meditation sitting, but when it is most profound is when I'm just driving in the car or talking to my wife, or having a beer with a friend. This comes up more and more as my meditation practice gets stronger. 

I didn't often realize these moments of perfection before I started meditating, although once in a while I think I did. Before I started a serious meditation practice, these moments usually arose when I was in nature and when the light was unusually beautiful. I can recall a few sunsets at the beach that were sufficiently mind-blowing for me to experience this gap. These experiences almost always came with a sense of majesty, beauty and tender-heartedness.

The Instinct to Be Decent to One Another

I have a few pet peeves. One of those is when people cut in line. I have lived in countries where old ladies will elbow you out of the way to get to the front of a line. 

Another peeve comes up when I see someone get on the metro who obviously needs a seat. Maybe the person is on crutches, but the seats are all taken by young and able people absorbed in their iPhones, so the person that needs a seat is forced to stand until someone speaks up.

Despite the way it sounds so far, this isn't meant to be a moralistic rant. I have been absorbed in thought and failed to open a door for a guy with his arms full of boxes, so I'm not always better. But when we touch into our basic humanity, we are better.

"Nobody really gets me"

I was sitting around with a friend eating a sandwich and conversation led to the shunyata. It went a little something like this:

"I had this realization that nobody knows the real me. One guy thinks I'm this uptight corporate guy, another person thinks I'm too cool for school, another person thinks I'm a nerd. My mom thinks I like certain things, my dad thinks I'm whatever...

Guest Post: that lumpy feeling

I know something is moving inside me when I get this funny lump in my throat. It feels similar to what you'd feel if something strikes you with a bit of sadness, but not in a depressing way, and not enough to make you cry. The unusual thing signaling that a shift is taking place is that it lasts: sometimes for hours; sometimes for days. At Shambhala I've heard people refer to it as being able to "taste your heart". It's a raw feeling.