Yes, it’s all about me.
Ron Hooft
Copyright Ron Hooft 2011
Published at Smashwords
Introduction to the life of Slarty
I am inspired to write this book by a friend who believes it may be useful to people. This is Slarty’s biography, (That’s not his real name) but I will only be recounting the parts of his life that pertain to his quest for enlightenment up to the age of 25, and the start of his life with his wife and children. It is not that his quest ended there. But after that period he had enough information and experience to start building a framework of existence.
Those first twenty five years gave him enough material to think on for the rest of his days, and that’s what he has done. I am not naming names as the people involved in the story are mostly all still alive and Slarty does not wish to invade their privacy. I will not be telling about Slarty’s adolescent sex life, in deference to and out of respect for his wife, though in his imagination that could fill a book by itself, which he tells me he has all but forgotten most of.
But I will be telling you about the 1960s and 70s and the drug culture and hippy culture that made some of us, like Slarty, into a modern day shaman.
I want to add that though there is a lot of discussion about drugs neither I nor Slarty advocates abusing drugs for recreation. What he did was dangerous and could have ended badly for him. For some it did. He lost many friends back then to drugs. But in the life of the shaman drugs are a tool to be used to gain insight and open doors. As Slarty said to me once, they only allow you to look inside. You can’t go in.
So drugs are not an end in and of themselves. They are just tools for those select few who have the will not to fall to them, and the wisdom to know when to stop. They are medicine to be used only when needed, and some drugs should be avoided at all costs. But more on this at the end of the story.
I am going to tell this story in Slarty’s own words as he dictated them to me. So let’s begin.
Yes. It’s all about me.
I was born in Antwerp Belgium in 1955. I don’t remember much about my birth expect for having the feeling of: “Oh no. Not this again.” When I say I remember that feeling, what I mean is that somewhere along the line in my life that became a memory. Did I dream it? Did I actually experience it? Probably not. I think I started seeing it appear masquerading as a memory when I was well in to my teens. But I’m getting way ahead of myself.
The next memory I have is of telling my mother that she was the best mother in the world, because my previous mother had fed me nothing but spiders and flies. I can corroborate this story because my mother has been telling it to me ever since I can remember. I was around two years old.
The picture I have in my head which is associated with that memory is of looking down from the ceiling into a room completely made of pine. The walls and floors were pine, and so was the kitchen table and chairs. I think that image started appearing around the same time my first memory started to appear.
I had a charmed life as a small child. I always felt safe and warm and loved. I had no idea what the dynamics of my parents relationship was till much later. They didn’t drink and if they did take a drink at special occasions they did not get drunk. They didn’t do any drugs and never had violent arguments. If they had an argument at all it was more of a disagreement. My mother soon smoothed things over. She could smooth anything over. I soon started using that trait in her to my advantage.
I do have many snippets of early memories like being in my mother’s arms and being given a banana only to have it taken from me. Not sure what that was about and neither is my mother. But we tracked the incident down to a conversation my mother had with her sister in law. It was just after finding out she was leaving my uncle because she had discovered she was bisexual and wanted a female lover. Why she wouldn’t let me have the banana is still a mystery.
My point being, of course, my early childhood was quite mundane.
My mother was all love. I could do no wrong in her eyes and she always protected me. She truly was and still is the best mother in the world. I hope many other people can say exactly the same about theirs. I know many can’t.
My father on the other hand was just: the guy who lived with us, until I was around 5 years old. I knew I called him papa but what that really meant didn’t dawn on me till then. He was friendly with me at times and made attempts to connect with me in his own way but his other side always made me wary of him and a bit afraid. He yelled at me often. He spanked me now and then but it was a mock spanking. I felt no pain from it, and it was usually after I had done something like throwing a brush at the TV after having been warned several times not to. He scared the hell out of me but I still pushed the limits when I felt up to it.
But I never really got hit by him in my early years. In fact there was only once in my life that he hit me and that I really knew it. He asked me why I didn’t have home work. He made a remark about the quality of education the school was giving me. I said the one thing that he didn’t want to hear. “How would you know? You only had a grade 6 education.” I deserved that slap in the face and I knew it. I wasn’t even sorry he did it.
What I did not know as a small child was that my mother had decided that I was hers. My father had rights, of course, but he was forbidden to discipline me beyond a certain point. If he threatened me she stepped in and he backed off. I didn’t get the strap in school because my mother had given me instructions to advise the teacher or vice principal to contact her before laying a finger on me. I only had to use that get out of jail free card twice. It worked flawlessly both times.
We weren’t rich by any means. My grandfather on my mother’s side had owned a small castle and most of the land belonging to a small city in Belgium before the war. Unfortunately he lost some of it during the war and the rest in the aftermath. That’s a book all on its own so I won’t necessarily go farther into it here. My grandfather was a bit of an idol when I was growing up because he was a well educated man and of high intelligence even without a lot of formal scholastic education. His family had been patrons of the church for generations and he was a religious man.
My grandmother on the other hand came from a family of socialists and atheists. She converted to Catholicism when she married my grandfather. She was a stoic woman in her youth, in the real sense of the word. I didn’t know her very well as she didn’t take a great interest in her grandchildren. She had done her bit and it was very nice they were there. She loved us all. But from a distance. From the time she was 70 years old she started to pray all day long. Her mouth was always moving in silent prayer. But when my mother asked her if she now believed so completely in god, knowing that though they were all brought up stanch Catholics that her mother had never professed a great belief, my grandmother’s reply was: “No. I don’t know.”
My grandfather on my father’s side died when my father was 12. He died of TB in a gutter with his dog. A place they both spent many nights together, my grandfather too drunk either to get home or too drunk to want to go home. He had learned his lesson after he was greeted at the door by a frying pan on the back of the head.
After his father died my father’s mother sent him to an orphanage because he was too unruly and she couldn’t handle him. He was mistreated there, beaten and underfed. He felt abandoned. I only met my grandmother once when my father paid to have her fly to Canada. She laughed when she told us that for years after he left the orphanage he would hide a potato under his pillow.
She finally did get him out of the orphanage when he was 15 and promptly took him around to different trades so he could start an apprenticeship. He wanted to be a welder but none of the master welders in town were taking on new boys. So he became a plumber. That’s just the way it was done in those days. He gave his pay to his mother every week and was given a small allowance.
I didn’t like my grandmother much. She was a rough person much like my father; quick to change moods and easy to cross. She is the one who put me off soup. When she came to visit, my mother got ill for the first time. I wouldn’t find out why till much later. But my grandmother made soup that was supposed to last a week. It was in a very large pot that was always on the stove and reheated every night for supper. It was easier than cooking different meals every night I suppose. My father made a good living so there was no financial reason for it. It had a full inch and a half of fat on the top, which would disappear when it was heated. I did not eat soup after that experience until I was in my later teens. It is still never the first thing on my mind when I think of food, but at least the thought of it doesn’t make me sick anymore.
My grandmother ran a cafe and tavern in Belgium with my father’s sister till the day she died. I never saw her again after that first visit.
When I was 18 months old my parents immigrated to Canada. My father had wanted to go to South Africa but changed his mind when he heard there was a call in Europe for plumbers to come to Canada. They struggled for the first few years they were here. But even when they were eating nothing but bread and jam, I was always well fed.
After my father learned English and got through the union idiosyncrasies of the day, he started doing well for himself. The strangest idiosyncrasy of all being that you can’t get a job unless you are in the union, and you can’t get in the union unless you have a job.
We were middle class so to speak. We always lived in a home my parents bought; and we always lived in nice neighbourhoods. So what was my problem? Well I didn’t have one until I was around 6 years old.
Like I said, my mother was raised Catholic so she thought I should be raised Catholic as well. My father stayed in the car while we went in the church. The masses were all in Latin so I didn’t understand anything. There were a few times a priest spoke in English but I didn’t pay much attention at first. My mother had already told me we were all god’s children and that Jesus was protecting me. If I had nightmares she told me to pray to god, Jesus, and Mary to not allow me to have bad dreams anymore. When I tried it they didn’t come back and I got a good night sleep. It just became a ritual and as long as I kept doing it the bad dreams stayed away.
I loved sleeping and I loved dreaming. I lived in a different world. That would come back to haunt me a little.
My mother recounts her life as a young girl in Belgium as being the most ideal of upbringings. You knew what was expected of you, it wasn’t difficult to do, and you were always safe. Everyone was of the same religion so there was uniformity to life. It had a direction. No one questioned anything. The world was as it should be. My grandfather was the one to look to. If he wasn’t scared there was nothing to be afraid of. This helped her a great deal during the war when at times for a week on end both sides were shelling each other right over their heads. She recounts that for two nights American artillery was right outside the basement window, firing round after round all night long. Yet she slept and never for one moment thought that one return shell could have killed them all.
My grandfather would have the bishops over once a week for dinner and drinks. They were good friends. He held going away parties for new missionaries, donating money for their cause of course. The church was their lives, and in my grandfather’s family always had been as far back as anyone can remember. So it was little wonder my mother wanted me to be brought up under the same ideal conditions. For a while it worked. I looked forward to the bells of Rome bring me Easter eggs. I would find out the bunnies were the ones who did that in Canada as soon as I had friends who could inform me of it. By age 6 Santa was suspect. I’d heard rumours.
I played priest many times at five years old. I was sure I was destined for the priesthood. But by 6 something had changed in me. For some reason I started thinking I wasn’t old enough yet to be a priest. It didn’t feel right anymore and I stopped. I think it was because there was a painting of Jesus on my bedroom wall. His eyes followed me everywhere and watched my every move. I kind of thought he did that anyway, but seeing it constantly was a bit disconcerting.
The first time I consciously remember watching TV was the first launch of a manned space craft. I watched John Glen blast off into space in a rocket and I was hooked. Space! What a concept. It was the first time I had ever heard of it. Would they find heaven? I always suspected that TV was two way. I would make sure not to pick my nose or scratch myself when it was on. I also thought that since there was one god, there was one religion. I also thought that all commercials were public service announcements for new inventions and radically new high tech soap. Oh yes, I was also under the distinct impression that there was one world so there was one government, and adults knew everything. If one adult didn’t know, another one did.
I was set up for a fall.
I don’t know what happened exactly but I suspect that since it was the early 1960s that the church was changing from Latin to local language. I heard the priest ranting about hell and damnation, and I was bit shocked. My mother had informed me that god was all love. You could ask him for things and if he thought you deserved it, or that it would be a good thing for you, he would provide it. He would forgive anything if you asked him with an honest heart. So where did hell come in to play? Where did suffering eternal damnation come in? It made no sense.
So my mother smoothed it over. She told me hell was a place only the very worst people went. It was for people who were not sorry for what they did. I accepted that for the time being. But something about it bothered me.
At six I was in grade one. There was no kindergarten so it was my first year of school. I was not impressed. For some reason I developed an affinity for the number 3 and the number 7. Numbers began to take on colours. 3 is orange and 7 is red.
I met a lot of new kids and started hearing new ideas. We walked to school in groups. It was about half a mile away. At the time we lived out in the country in a small village. To me it seemed old. The general store still had worn unpainted boards for a floor. Everything smelled old everywhere I went. When you went out my back door there was a field as far as my eyes could see. On the right, a forest that as far as I was concerned had no end. And to the left were houses, not too close together, all along the road in to town. Town consisted of a general store, a post office, a public school, a gas station, a Protestant church, and the doctor’s office. We had to drive to the city to go to a Catholic church.
On the way to school one day one of the boys informed me he was Protestant. I wasn’t sure what that meant, but from what he told me it was different from what I believed. He told me we are not all god’s children. There was only one son of god. And if you don’t believe in Jesus you are going to hell. I believed so I wasn’t worried, but it didn’t make sense. It wasn’t just or fair. Another little girl in our party told me he was right. I had to accept Jesus as my saviour or I would go to hell. I wasn’t liking this at all. I was baptized so I was one of god’s children. Had my mother lied? Didn’t she know? Or were my friends making it all up.
My mother had wanted me to have an ideal Catholic upbringing like she had. But there was never any hope for that. My father tolerated her taking me to church though he didn’t believe in god or any kind of philosophy of life. This was a different country. There was no uniformity; and “the times they were a chaingin.” She never had a chance.
She explained to me that Catholicism wasn’t the only religion, and different religions believed different things. In my mind none of that made sense. There was one god, one truth, so how in the world could people have different beliefs? My mother tried hard to smooth it over but I wasn’t having any of it. I had to get it straight. The more questions I asked the harder it got for her to answer. I was beginning to see she didn’t know everything. That in itself was a major blow. But the worst shock came when she informed me that no one knew for sure which religion was right. We were sure we were right but they were sure they were right. Of course everyone can’t be right and god hadn’t made a personal appearance since the Old Testament.
No one knew?
It was at that point that I made a vow to myself and to my mother that would set the course for the rest of my life. I asked her if I could stop going to the Catholic Church and she reluctantly said yes. Then I vowed that before I died I would find out what was going on.
After the fall
After my great revelation and vow, the first thing I did was arrange to go to the Protestant church with my friend. He informed me that he didn’t go to church, he went to Sunday school. I didn’t like the sound of that much. Going to church on Sunday was one thing but going to school on Sunday? He assured me it wasn’t the same thing at all and that I would enjoy myself. So off I went to start asking questions. I still wasn’t completely convinced my mother was right that no one else in the world knew the answers. Maybe she had been mistaken.
At Sunday school we got story books to read with biblical stories in them, of course. It suddenly struck me that all these stories happened in a culture I was not familiar with. I’d never seen a palm tree or tents in the dessert, or mud huts. They were all dressed like the Virgin Mary. So much to learn. I asked questions but got few answers. I knew the young woman who was teaching us was thinking I was just a kid. My questions didn’t seem important to her or interesting. She said if I wanted to learn I had to stop asking so many questions and just study and accept what was taught. It would all make sense one day. I didn’t like her attitude and stopped going to Sunday school after three weeks.
Back then I didn’t know what an atheist was so I didn’t consider my father one. He never professed any belief in god but he never said he didn’t believe there was a god. Over the years I learned that he wasn’t interested. It was as simple as that. He didn’t think there was a god, but he didn’t seem interested in knowing what was really going on. That baffled me. How could anyone just not be interested in what the truth is?
My father was a restless man in his youth. He was never happy where he was and always wanted to move to somewhere better. When we moved to Canada our ship landed in Halifax. Strange as it seemed to me later on, one of my aunts on my mother’s side convinced my uncle to move to Canada too. My mother liked the idea of having her sister with her in a strange country. As it turned out they arrived first and moved to Quebec because both of them already spoke French. So for the first little while my parents and I lived with my aunt and uncle and their 6 kids. My aunt was ten years older than my mother and had a good head start on her. I was my parent’s only child.
My father on the other hand did not speak French though my mother was fluent. In Belgium like in Canada the country has two official languages. Half the country if Flemish including of course the famous Flanders fields, and the other half is French. My father had elected to learn English instead of French as a second language after his experience with the merchant marines had taken him to England. He’d had a girlfriend there before he met my mother and a reason to learn the language. There was always animosity between the French and Flemish in Belgium. The lower class that lived in Antwerp often refused to learn French while the upper middle class in Brussels were almost all bilingual Flemish/French. It was a wonder my mother and father met let alone that they married. They had nothing at all in common.
Because he could only speak some broken English he couldn’t get a job in Quebec. So he moved us to Ontario, and some one hundred fifty miles from my aunt. My mother ended up alone anyway. Something she was not used to coming from a large family. But at least she was in a city. That wouldn’t last long. My father made a friend in the Plumbing business who was opening his own shop. My father could get over the union hurdle by working for a non-union employer. When the union came to conscript at the new shop he would be in and eligible to make a lot more money. But it meant moving us all to the country. My mother was devastated. Though no one would ever have known it, she hated it there. My father bought the house we lived in and a large chunk of land from the man who owned it directly. He paid 5 thousand dollars and promised that when he wanted to sell it he would sell it back to the old man. When we bought it, it was a shack.
He was the strangest old man I had ever seen. He drank tea from his saucer instead of his cup. He wiped his mouth with his sleeve. He blew his nose with only the aid of his finger. He owned half the town we lived in, and apparently had once owned all or most of the land it was on. He came by on his rounds once a month to collect the mortgage. My mother thought he was the most disgusting man she ever met. But he was very nice.
I, On the other hand, was making friends and having a great time playing in the field and at the edge of the woods. After my first encounter with a snake I was terrified of them. My mother had to rescue me as it had me in a trance. I simply couldn’t move from fear. It must have been as shocked as I was. I now think it probably couldn’t move either. But when I was 5 it looked like it was just waiting for me to move so it could justify biting me. All I could do was stand there and scream. As if that wouldn’t have been justification enough for it to bite me.
My father had never been a hunter, but in this neck of the woods it was a common practice so he went out a few times to shoot rabbit for dinner. It was the first time I ever saw my father regret anything he had done. After that he decided he would stop hunting and take up taxidermy as a hobby. But my father had no hobbies that were not intended to make money. The men from around the village eventually brought him animals to stuff and mount. We always had animal hides drying in the shed.
I found out there were different types of Protestants so I tried out all their churches looking for clues. Their parents seemed to like the idea for a while, but not for too long. I’d find people who seemed knowledgeable to talk to about god and religion. But most of them gave me the same attitude. Asking the kinds of questions I was asking wasn’t welcomed. I was going to have to change my tactics. I figured out that since no one had the answer I would have to start sorting it out myself and developing my own religion. But to do that I would have to pretend to want to convert and learn to ask questions they were more inclined to answer.
This wasn’t an instant revelation of course. It developed over time. But by 8 years of age I had already seen the need to use a simple strategy: Use everything, fall to nothing. I was starting from scratch. Where do you start when you start from nothing? Research. But where do you start your research?
I wasn’t much of a reader but I forced myself to learn. My worst subject in school was spelling, but reading comprehension was never a problem. For some reason I insisted on spelling everything phonetically. It turns out that’s the way Flemish is written, but while we spoke nothing but Flemish at home I was never taught to read or write it. Yet because it is so phonetic I don’t find it all that difficult to read. Writing is another matter. English is of course not a phonetic language at all. But teachers making me write the words I had gotten wrong on the spelling test, one hundred times each at lunch, didn’t do the trick.
I hated school and was pleased that I could get out after grade ten. My parents had not had an education much past the 6th grade and they had done well for themselves. At 8 years old I decided that at 16 I would quit school. Another promise I kept. But this one I learned to regret and think better of. School seemed useless to me because it wasn’t telling me what I wanted to know. I was on a quest and I didn’t see the point of learning all these unrelated things. What was the point in math beyond the ability to count change? Why did you have to take the subject for years on end? Why indeed.
I learned not to wear my quest on my sleeve though. People looked at me funny when I brought up the subject of religion out of the blue. I learned to pick my people and pick my moments. I was learning a lot about different Christian religions and they all seemed to have something missing. I couldn’t resolve the paradox of a loving god that would create hell and not give anyone a second chance. I lived on second chances. My mother gave me one almost every day.
I was around 8 years old, almost 9, by the time my father had completely renovated the old shack we lived in. The roof was straightened, the foundation strengthened. It had new doors and windows. My father had built an inside bathroom with hot and cold running water. He even put aluminum siding on it.
My mother had just had a miscarriage. It would have been a sister. She was in poor health and poor spirits. She had a break down and a stroke. Doctors couldn’t figure out exactly why. So my father sold the house back to the old man for 6 thousand dollars and moved us back to the city. There he bought a cottage for 5 thousand dollars and started his renovation project all over again. This place was a dump too, but it was in a perfect place. Right next door was a boat club. I was about to spend the rest of my early years on and in the water all summer long. Life was good.
I learned a little song at school from one of the kids. I thought it was naughty, and so I was attracted to it. I found myself saying it over and over.
Jesus Christ almighty. A mouse ran up my nighty. Bit my tit and made me shit. Jesus Christ all mighty.
I was in my bed singing this to myself when a shadow crossed the threshold of my room. I suddenly had the feeling I had crossed the line. Jesus had left me. I was on my own.
Jesus was gone and there were no second chances. I was burning my bridges. The shadow could have been anything outside. It happened all the time. But to me this was different. I had purposely blasphemed to the point where I thought any self respecting god would have to put his foot down. I called his bluff. I threw him out.
It was a bittersweet day. I had done it on purpose because I had already come to understand that he was a preconceived notion. I had to start from scratch and he and all my previous notions about god had to go if I was going find truth. I felt very sad but at the same brave. I knew that if he was real he understood. If he didn’t then he wasn’t what I thought he was. If he wasn’t real then it didn’t matter. If he was real I’d find him. If he wasn’t, then I wouldn’t. I was free of his watching eyes and on my own at last. I was on the edge of panic, terror, and ecstatic bliss at the same time. What had I done?
My imagination was fertile and my new surroundings were made for it. We were the second house from the boat club and the end of the street. Our street turned to the right and went straight on down to the water filtration plant. It was a paved road that was used maybe twice a day. The rest of the time it was ours. It slopped downward too so it made a good road for racing go carts. We made our own using wheels from old baby strollers. On the right of the road was a forest that went around the swamp. It was a bird sanctuary and had large trails all the way through it. The amount of turtles and frogs in the summer was amazing.
The forest was enchanted. It gave me the feeling I was in a fantasy novel. I spent hours in there with friends and all alone. It was a magical time. On the left of the road was a hill that went the length of the road to the filtration plant gates. They were open and we used to take our bikes in there to take advantage of the circular driveway at the end and the many paved paths through the gardens.
But over that small mountain on the left of the road was Eden. There was only one way up as the walls were too steep and covered in bush. At the top was a small path running the length of the hill. In the middle was an old fireplace with the chimney still intact. The house appeared to have at some point in history burned down. We never knew when or how. We didn’t care. It was a mystery.
When you went over the hill you were greeted with another steep incline but it was a lot more manageable. At the bottom of the hill was a fast stream. The boat club had built a long wall on the other side thirty feet from the base of the hill. Why I never knew. But it meant that there was this narrow corridor of water between the hill and the rapids. In this corridor were islands with gigantic trees on them. In fact, the trees created the islands. All of them had massive trunks that branched out and then spread almost flat in several directions before bending and shooting straight up. It was like each tree made a bowl or platform we could sit on.
As luck would have it it was a couple years after they had stopped sending logs down the rapids to the mill. We found several really nice ones along the edge of the base of the hill. We used two ten foot logs as a raft. We nailed boards to them creating a platform. They were perfect. We used poles to propel us along and push ourselves away from the edges or to navigate the trees. In later years we used the corridor as a runway to the rapids themselves.
My best friend at the time told me about Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Fin. Yeah, we felt like we were living an adventure. We got up early each morning and came back just before dark most days, usually skipping lunch all together. And of course we talked philosophy.
His parents were United Church of Canada. They are similar and maybe the same as the United Universalist churches in America. It was there I first saw a Buddhist ceremony. I was intrigued. A few years later I would be there again to witness the burial of another good friend’s father. It was a mix of Christian and Buddhist.
For some reason I had felt that all things were connected. That had become one of my suspicions and part of my tentative personal world view. A short while after I started talking to a Buddhist I learned that they thought so too. Perhaps I had been looking in the wrong place for truth? Buddha also told us never to take what he said on faith. That had been another of my independent findings. I took these verifications as vindication. I wanted to know all I could find out about Buddhism. But as always I was determined not to fall to it.
The Buddhists had no problems with whatever questions I asked. But of course they had no answers for hell or god, because they didn’t believe any of that. Now I was really in a new world. I started reading books on Buddhism and talking to the two Buddhists I met at the United Church. There were not enough of them around to have their own teaching facility in the city I lived. I was too young to go traveling to Toronto by myself. So I had to make due.
At 11 years old I finally hit on Zen and a book called: The Mumonkan. It is a book with 48 koans written by a Zen master and teacher called Mumon in the 10th century. The Koans themselves are much older. What is interesting about his book are his commentaries. When I opened the book this is the first thing I read, and it was as if everything I had speculated about to this point was confirmed.
“A monk asked Joshu, "Has the dog the Buddha nature?"
Joshu replied, "Mu"
Mumon's Comment:
For the pursuit of Zen, you must pass through the barriers set up by the Zen masters. To attain his mysterious awareness one must completely uproot all the normal workings of one's mind. If you do not pass through the barriers, nor uproot the normal workings of your mind, whatever you do and whatever you think is a tangle of ghost. Now what are the barriers? This one word "Mu" is the sole barrier. This is why it is called the Gateless Gate of Zen. The one who passes through this barrier shall meet with Joshu face to face and also see with the same eyes, hear with the same ears and walk together in the long train of the patriarchs. Wouldn't that be pleasant?
Would you like to pass through this barrier? Then concentrate your whole body, with its 360 bones and joints, and 84,000 hair follicles, into this question of what "Mu" is; day and night, without ceasing, hold it before you. It is neither nothingness, nor its relative "not" of "is" and "is not." It must be like gulping a hot iron ball that you can neither swallow nor spit out.
Then, all the useless knowledge you have diligently learned till now is thrown away. As a fruit ripening in season, your internality and externality spontaneously become one. As with a mute man who had had a dream, you know it for sure and yet cannot say it. Indeed your ego-shell suddenly is crushed, you can shake heaven and earth. Just as with getting a hold of a great sword of a general, when you meet Buddha you will kill Buddha. A master of Zen? You will kill him, too. As you stand on the brink of life and death, you are absolutely free. You can enter any world as if it were your own playground. How do you concentrate on this Mu? Pour every ounce of your entire energy into it and do not give up, then a torch of truth will illuminate the entire universe.
Has a dog the Buddha nature?
This is a matter of life and death.
If you wonder whether a dog has it or not,
You certainly lose your body and life! “
I knew I wasn’t wasting my time now. I was on the right track. It was going to be brutal.
My mother was pregnant. I was about to have a brother. My mother let me name him. I was no longer the only child.
My brother was born with serious health issues. It was not known at first if he would make it. His doctor went beyond the call of duty to help him but he had done all he could do. The next 24 hours would determine whether he lived or died.
My mother prayed and wept. She says she saw a vision of Jesus telling her it was all going to be fine. She felt at peace. My brother made it through the night and survived. But he wasn’t out of the woods yet.
The word MU in Zen represents an answer to a question that cannot be answered as a yes or a no. Usually this is the case when there is something wrong with the question itself. The classic example of this is: “Have you stopped beating your wife yet?” The question assumes you have beaten your wife in the past. A yes answer on your part if you never beat your wife would be wrong as it would imply you did. A no answer would be wrong because it would imply you still are beating your wife. The answer is: not yes, and not no. MU.
Zen sets up a paradox which must be resolved but theoretically cannot be resolved with conscious thought. To resolve one is to gain enlightenment and resolve them all. Alexander the Great heard tell of a puzzle called the Gordian knot. Legend says that he who can undo the Gordian knot will rule the world. Wise men and mathematicians from all over the known world at that time tried and failed. When Alexander discovered where it was he went to that place and demanded to see it. When it was presented to him he took up his sword and cut it in half. His enemies scattered before him.
I had a dream. The voice in the dream said: “The truth is neither black nor white. It is shades of gray. In conflict, take up you your sword and cut through the center of the duality to the truth. “ I woke up reborn, with a new weapon at my command: There is no duality.
It was the 1960s and times were changing. I discovered music for the first time. I listened to the Beatles and the Monkeys while my brother cried in his crib. He had bad colic and was allergic to everything. My mother rocked him and held him and took him to the doctor every week but he still suffered. She held out as long as she could but when he started getting better and we knew he was though the worst she broke down again. I was sure I was going to lose her.
My father was angry as usual. Somehow he blamed her for her illness. He blamed her for the way his life had gone. He blamed her for the fact that he was not happy. He wished he could go to sleep and never wake up. He always wished that, but he always woke up. So he buried himself in his work.
My father was a genius when it came to building. He had no formal training but taught himself to do everything from foundation to roof. If he didn’t have the right tool he made one. Everything he did was inspected and found to be to or above code. He was a craftsman in the truest sense. He made our furniture. He built a sail boat.
He was also an artist. He would do shows with his paintings and sell them. He could draw anything he saw. His water droplets looked so real they looked wet. He lived on praise and adoration. He did anything to get it. He reminded me of god. If you praised him you could get anything you wanted. If you didn’t you felt his wrath.
My brother was a good look at what was to come for me eventually. When I was home I bathed him and changed him and fed him while my mother was sick. For his first years I became his second mom. My father could build anything but he couldn’t change diapers. Even the thought made him physically ill.
When I was at school my father would take him to one of the neighbours until I picked him up. My mother had to stay in bed alone all day. A doctor said she had multiple sclerosis. She was given ergot for her migraine headaches. For those who do not know, ergot is a natural and often fatal source of LSD in its raw form as a mould on rye. Though in the form given it did not produce the same effects as LSD, it did have mental and physical side effects.
Throughout history it has been known to wipe out entire villages after driving the inhabitants mad.
I used to love to read a French comic made in Belgium and translated to English called Tin Tin. There was one story called “The Crab with the Golden Claw.” It was about the opium trade. I asked my mother what opium is and she told me it was a drug that makes you dream. I couldn’t shake that idea. I knew it was illegal and addictive from the comic. But a drug that makes you dream?
Have you ever seen a commercial that tells us: “No child ever grows up wanting to be a heroin addict.”? Well I did. At 11 years old I decided I had to try opium. I loved to dream and explore fantasy and the mystical. As luck would have it it was the 1960s. Drugs started coming out of nowhere. Soon everyone would be altering their minds.
A year later it was 1967. I was 12 so still too young to really live “the summer of love” but you could feel that the world had made a genetic twist and nothing was going to ever be the same again. The magic was about to begin. The band played Whiter Shade of Pale and I knew at once I had to become a musician. My friend and I walked home from a dance. We were met by two older boys looking for a fight. Something was said about the way I looked at a girl and then a fist hit my face. Any other time I would have been moved to anger and my blood would have boiled. In fights with older boys my vision turned red and I wanted nothing more than to kill.