Crossing Nebraska

This may be a challenging post for many folks. So, let me just say right up front the words that I really want to leave you with – before anyone has the chance to get angry or offended: Let’s forgive ourselves. Let’s forgive each other. Let’s strive to do better. Okay, with that out of the way, let me begin again. One of the more interesting questions to be posed of any of the candidates this campaign season is whether or not they would kill the baby Adolf Hitler if they were somehow given the opportunity to go back in time and locate the infant evil incarnate. Certainly it’s an interesting question to pose for the array of answers it might elicit. Most interesting, though, is how the question itself reveals how many of us think about the nature of evil. Evil is “out there.” It’s a dark force that the hapless might stumble upon. It takes up residence in someone such that they then become evil. It’s a conscious entity of some sort – like Satan, for instance – that active...

How many mass shootings have occurred since the one in the Aurora, Colorado movie theater that first inspired this post some five and a half years ago? How many lives have been violently snuffed out? How many families have been destroyed? How many people have been forever scarred by the trauma that they were lucky enough to have survived, but not so lucky as to have avoided altogether? Some brave individuals are counting, and trying to do what they can to persuade hearts and minds to embrace meaningful change. Many others seem to have just grown weary of the reality of massacre after massacre, and the repetitive and ineffectual discussion that ensues. I'm updating this post in the aftermath of the Parkland, Florida school shooting. Perhaps I want to ascertain which group I still belong to, the one trying to affect change, or the one that has grown numb. Has the worldview that I articulated below changed at all? Do I have anything to add? God, The Buddha, and The Joker I’m ...

Sticks and stones may break my bones but words can never hurt me! What child growing up in America has not invoked this mantra at least once or twice when faced with the taunts and teasing and name-calling that seem to be an almost “inevitable” part of childhood life? + From an early age we recognize the wisdom of these words, and even though we might not always succeed at bringing to life their truth we at least come to realize our potential for being “big enough” that no verbal insult need ever darken our mood. But what does it mean, anyway, to be big enough that no such words can ever harm us? Perhaps it means we’re big enough to know that, when considered along with our multitude of other qualities, the so-called bad quality of wearing thick glasses or having freckles all over our face is but a trifle. Or perhaps it means we’re bigger still and have come to realize that wearing thick glasses or having a freckly face is merely what is – neither good nor bad – despite what ...

When we’re young and healthy and happy, and flush with the enjoyment of our vigor and our physical and mental prowess, it might be hard to recognize the merits of spiritual practice. Such is the purview of the old and weak, the timid and the sick, and those who for some strange reason choose to focus on the negative aspects of life when the golden ring of youthful pleasure is theirs for the grasping; or so we might think, anyway. The Samiddhi Sutta touches on this issue, among others. It tells of how one of the Buddha’s followers, the youthful Samiddhi, was bathing in a hot spring one morning before going out to beg for his daily meal. A beautiful deva appeared and hovered in the air before him. They bantered for a time in verse, and then she descended and spoke: You are young, bhikkhu, to have left the world, black-haired, with the bloom of youth. In your youthful prime you do not enjoy the pleasures of the senses. Get your fill, bhikkhu, of human pleasures. Don't reject the ...