Hillary’s UN address on gay rights was just lubricant (he might as well have used sand) before Obama signed the NDAA (National Defense Authorization Act, which allows for indefinite detention of a citizen).

The City of West Hollywood has approved a ban on the sale of fur products (c.f. article from City of West Hollywood web site).

This ban is a microcosm of the heart and soul of West Hollywood. We are the most superficial, egocentric, pleasure-driven bunch of queens there can be—and our leaders are but an example of us.

First of all, rather than ban the sale (supply), why not ban the other end (demand), that is, the wearing of fur? Well, if we truly were that hotbed of humanity we want to portray to the world, we wouldn’t even need to consider a ban in the first place. We would all naturally care about the soft furry rodents who would have to give their lives for us to look good, and we would never even consider dawning a product from such a source. Yes, we would not be that egocentric group of girls so concerned with our outsides in the first place. That not being the case—and yet so direly wanting to feel good about ourselves—our city council took the easy way out: Ban the sales. That earns us some PETA award. Yay. We get to pat each other on the back for being such great people. All the while, the fur-clad debris (oh, that’s not us, that’s someone else visiting) that wanders up and down Santa Monica Boulevard just walks over to the Beverly Center to get their fur fix.

Secondly, what about leather? We could argue that the animals in this case are not raised exclusively for their hides. How the hell does that make any difference? Again, is West Hollywood really trying to prove it’s some hotbed of humanity, that we are not a group of superficial, ego-maniacs only concerned with our outsides? Too late for that dear… I guess our councilmen have never taken a stroll down Santa Monica Boulevard, past the night clubs, trashy clothing stores, and adult book stores. Yes, West Hollywood certainly is a hotbed of spirituality, and this fur ban exemplifies it. It exemplifies it by showing what we truly value: What’s on the outside. We care about fur because we see soft furry animals, but we give no thought whatsoever to the old, weathered cow in the field, do we? Nope. Only if you’re young, soft, and cuddly do you have value in this community; the old and the leathered deserve no consideration. Or is there some other message our council is trying to say in this ordinance? If so, it eludes me.

I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.

Evelyn Beatrice Hall

ESPN severed its relationship with Hank Williams Jr. after comments he made on Fox News where he compared Obama to Hitler[1].

We hear many of our “beloved” politicians frequently recite the above quote from Evelyn Beatrice Hall, defending everything from Louis Farrakhan’s anti-Semitic remarks to public funding of Andres Serrano’s “art” depicting a crucifix in a cup of urine, but, as another saying goes, “Where are they now?”

My humble impression is that it seems the left simply uses the First Amendment as a convenient justification, as needed, to achieve its political ends. Aside from that, they are of the opinion that conservatives are enemies of the state and have no rights. Consider Al Sharpton’s attempt to have the FCC “regulate” Rush Limbaugh’s rhetoric[2].

This political correctness reminds me so much of the Soviet Union, specifically, the KGB’s total abandon in its single-minded pursuit of its sole function: Keep one political party (the Communist Party of the Soviet Union) in power.

If you are of the left persuasion, you can commit hit-and-run accidents[3] to more serious “incidents”[4], and all if forgiven. However, if you utter something conservative, you are now persona non grata. Ask Michael Moriarty why he was dismissed from Law and Order[5].

The treatment of Hank Williams Jr., and the earlier treatment of Juan Williams by NPR, do remind me very much of KGB tactics: One word from the KGB, and in a country where all jobs are government jobs and all property is government property, a person is out of work, homeless and penniless—persona non grata. Our liberal friends seem to want nothing less from those who “offend” them. The Anti-Defamation League praised ESPN’s action. There were calls for Williams to apologize. This is tantamount to saying that one deserves no employment, no opportunity, no rights whatsoever unless one adheres to party cant. And make no mistake, this doesn’t just happen to the “big names.” You say the wrong thing at work, and the Anti-Defamation League could be praising your FORMER employer.

It seems our left-leaning friends intentionally walk about ready and waiting to be offended—and let’s be clear here: That is all that has happened: People have been offended, THAT IS ALL! No one has suffered any material loss (other than the people the left has declared persona non grata). Rather than speech laws, maybe we just need a refresher course about the sticks and stones adage.

Wikipedia states, “In everyday speech, ‘narcissism’ often means inflated self-importance, egotism, vanity, conceit, or simple selfishness.”

For the record, in Greek mythology, Narcissus was a young man who, upon seeing his reflection in a pool of water, fell in love with it.  He was so attached to the image that he could not pull himself away from it and eventually languished to death.  The myth holds the gods changed his remains into the Narcissus flower.

One of the things I love to say about someone so wrapped up with themself is, “Are they aware of any reality outside of their reflection in the water?”  Another version for someone driving, “Are you aware of any reality outside of your reflection in the mirror?”

These analogies are all fine, but we have a term for this: “egotism.” Branding someone a “narcissist” or calling a person egocentric is great for leveling blame or assigning a derogatory label, but what of relief?  For me (pardon my narcissism at turning the topic towards myself), but for me, relief comes from a different lesson.

When I think of a narcissist, I think of someone (myself included), latching on to a fixed image of oneself as though it is somehow concretely solid and objective—and—the need, that is, the absolute craving, to maintain and hold themselves in that image at any cost. It’s as though it is an absolute ideal or imperative by which the person is defined. The person is somehow incomplete if they fall short of it. And the craving to maintain that ideal—or the aversion to the feeling of “brokenness” when short of the ideal—can drive a person to pursue it at all costs, even to the exclusion of external reality, and all the consequences that holds. This is a cause of great great suffering, both for oneself and those around the person.

Granted, Narcissus exhibits great self-love in this observation.  He loves himself so much that he promotes his image to an ideal, an ideal he cannot pull himself away from, an ideal worthy to be maintained at any cost.  However, the great myth of Narcissus is that this is all there is to his myth: the lesson of egocentricity.  There is great relief if one looks for the causes behind his attachment, that is, what is driving him to such a point of egocentricity.

What was Narcissus in love with? Of course, we know it was himself, but what happens when Narcissus begins to age or when he gets ill? It’s no longer the original image he was in love with. What then? Suffering beyond compare. Imagine someone tearing Narcissus away from his pond, he would be straining and tearing in A G O N Y to get back to his reflection. This is the great hallmark of narcissism: That horrible, horrible feeling of brokenness when we begin to change from that image we were so in love with in that previous moment of time. I feel broken, as though something is wrong with me, and in very deed there is: I am no longer in that image I am so in love with. To prevent this condition, Narcissus must maintain himself in his original image, that ideal state.

What is this thing called “self”, “I”, “me” that Narcissus must maintain? Specifically, what is its nature?  I postulate that it is something dynamic, actually fluid.  One of the things I love to state is, “You never shake the hand of the same man twice.”  For me, the fundamental core of narcissism is this: Narcissus was seeking to shake the hand of the same man twice. Let me explain this fluidity with an example.  One day, I was in the grocery store, and some lady moved my cart out of the way to get to some groceries.  For all intents and purposes, that cunt shoved me out of the way!  Somehow, the cart became me, or a part of me (or I became the cart, or a part of the cart).  So where did I end and external reality begin?  With my skin? With my clothes? To the extent my arms can reach?  At that moment in time, “I” extended to a shopping cart!  Tomorrow, “I” could extend to a car or my underwear!

Here’s another example, one day while at a shopping mall, I got some guacamole on my shirt.  In case you never noticed, guacamole on a shirt looks like a child or a pet had an accident on it.  My shirt was dirty with a capital D, but more importantly for our discussion here, I felt as though “I” was dirty, as though there was something terribly wrong with me that needed to be remedied immediately. I was what some child or pet had the accident on, not the shirt.

Narcissus’ answer to this is to close out all of external reality in the relentless pursuit to restore myself back to my ideal state.  Using the example of the shirt, you can easily see where it would lead: Abandon my friends for a trip back home to change my shirt.

What’s happening here?  How can I get relief from this?  What is the alternative response to Narcissus?

I could simply stay put with my friends, and “act as if” nothing was wrong.  The problem with this is obvious.  Again, imagine the agony Narcissus would experience if someone were to pull him away from pond; the same for me: I would be pulled away and yet Yearning to get back to my reflection, my ideal state…I would be miserable for the remainder of the outing, consumed about my shirt.

The problem is I latched on to a permanent, static, fixed idea of myself that must be maintained at all costs (in the above case, needing to be adorned with a clean shirt).  This is what Narcissus did: He latched on to this “image” he couldn’t let go of; he promoted it to Godhood, to something real, the dissolution of which would spell DEATH. For our discussion, we could prefix the word image with the word self, in other words, latching on to this self-image that must be maintained at all costs—to the exclusion of all external reality, even unto death.

The simple alternative is to not latch on to any image as though it is some static, absolute, Truth.  This sounds so simple, but is it possible?  Yes, all we need to do is see our part in the matter—and I don’t mean an assignment of blame.  No.  I mean our part in the construction and promotion of the image to ideal.  Our part is so very simple, and yet when understood, so very very profound: It is a human construct. We constructed the ideal ourselves; we are what promoted the image to the ideal; no one else did. The image is not in and of itself an ideal. It has no inherent existence of its own; it is a “reflection.” Our Buddhist friends call this Sunyata, which means emptiness: It’s empty of inherent existence; it does not stand on its own. “Someone” (can we say, ME) aided in its birth. No one, no thing, no reality imposed it upon us.  There is no victimhood here.

We simply need to see self as it really is. It is not some concrete entity with the weight of reality.  No. It’s a dream, a fiction we conjured up in our heads.  Consider how reality is portrayed in Renaissance and Reformation art: Reality is portrayed as solid, with weight. However, rather than seeing self with that concrete weight, it’s more like the dream-like reality portrayed in Impressionist art. In doing so, we realize that suffering has arisen from trying to latch on to something that is fundamentally “unlatchable”.  The Buddhists call this Anatta, no-self. It’s like trying to grab hold of water or smoke—if you were serious about trying to grab hold of water or smoke, it would be a terrible source of frustration.  The Buddhists call this Dukkha, specifically Viparinama-dukkha, the suffering of change.

This opens up such a great avenue of relief: I no longer must maintain some aspect of myself that I have become so attached and identified with; I can just let it go, as water passing through my hands.  I become free, no longer bound to old “graven” images, idols I created.

Thus:

• The hallmark of Narcissism is the injured sense of “I.” I feel wrong, broken, and this feeling of brokenness can propel one to extremes to rectify whatever is “wrong” or to mask the sense of brokenness.
• What has actually went wrong: I’ve latched on to some ideal I must maintain myself in, not seeing myself as the fluid “I” it is.

Therefore, as “I” change from whatever ideal I’ve latched on to (i.e. fell in love with), I feel something is “wrong” with me.

Furthermore, considering the fluidity of the sense of “I,” that is, that it changes from moment to moment, there is no way to avoid this horrible suffering—if I have latched on to some fixed image I must maintain myself in. Viewed in this light, the concept of “healthy” narcissism is an ox-moron.

There are far worse things awaiting man than death.

Count Dracula

What about the fear I have of abandoning my reflection in the pond? I’ve become so attached, so enraptured, so enthralled, so in love with it, that letting go of it would feel like dying, like very DEATH itself. It seems so concrete and real, and so does the death of letting go of it.

A while back, I had to address a group.  I hate public speaking, but this was somehow worse.  I texted a friend a countdown to the address, D-Day minus 2, D-Day minus 1, H-Hour minus 3, H-Hour minus 2, etc., etc.  At the end of it all, I texted my friend that I had survived.  Now we all know what this means, “I survived.” But what does it really mean?  I was in no physical danger, so why was my survival of any news?  The “I” in “I survived” is that image of myself I needed to maintain.  Maybe I was afraid of bolting from the room in a state of panic, or maybe I was afraid of throwing up all over myself, I don’t really know (I could spend decades in psychoanalysis trying to figure that one out). But I had latched on to something, some image I had to maintain at all costs, a fight or flight response if you will.  What would have happened if I did bolt from the room in a panic?  That image of myself as poised, composed, and controlled would have in very deed died.  For all intents and purposes, at that very moment in time, “I” would be dead (perhaps I could resurrect it somewhere down the road, but at that moment, that “I” would be dead).  Thus, my fight or flight response would have been a response to a threat of death, and as such, considered reasonable by most.

Again, relief comes from the realization that “self” is illusory, dream-like, ethereal, ghost-like, not “real,” a human construct, a product of my mind that I constructed; no one imposed it upon me; I imposed it upon myself. And like so many purgatories, it’s all self-made.  I can let that image pass through my hands, let it die its death, and it might be painful (as death can be), but “I” am not dead. As Jesus said to the Pharisee Nicodemus, “Ye must be born again.” John 3:7. However, the “rebirth” I’m describing is a moment to moment “rebirth.” As the Apostle Paul told the Corinthian church, “I die daily.” I Corinthians 15:29. This “I” is dynamic, existential, for this moment of existence only, with absolutely no causal connection to past or future.

But be extremely careful not to confuse this “I” that I speak of as a concept of a “true” self.  No.  You would be back to the trap of Narcissus.  There is no true self.   Our existentialists friends get caught in a similar trap with the concept of “authentic existence,” establishing some subtle ideal towards which one must conform, albeit, the ideal being there are no ideals to conform to.  Our nihilist friends have equally missed the mark, as they establish an ideal of destruction and a need to pull down ideals; they are in bondage to an image they must maintain at all costs, to the point of utter destruction.

Keep “peeling away the layers of the onion,” each layer being the latching on to some image as your True self.  There are a million different forms these layers can take: Needing to be dressed perfectly, needing one’s hair groomed perfectly, needing to be the right weight, needing to be cool all the time, right all the time, have the biggest car, most money.  And the layers become more and more subtle as you peel.  Consider the need to always appear “nice” or to be “the good boy or girl” all the time (if one can’t be angry or “bad,” what hell!).

Many times this craving manifests itself as a profound feeling of emptiness, as though something is missing, or just terribly wrong with the person.  I often hear people refer to this as a “God-sized hole” or “a hole only God could fill.” I usually hear people speak about various ways they have tried to “fill” this void, from eating, to sex, to spending money, ad infinitum. This frequently manifests in me through trying to find the perfect movie or TV show to watch; I feel that I have to find the perfect movie, and then “I” will be fine. This “void” is narcissism, but without a defined image to maintain or grasp on to.  This void is the manifestation of Narcissus ripped away from his pod and desperately trying to return. Nonetheless, it’s craving at its finest, and it’s a craving based upon the drive that one is somehow incomplete without the undefined “whatever”. And the attempts at relief are just materialism: The belief that if one can just fill up this “hole” with “something,” even God, they will be complete; just keep adding and adding to build up the self until it’s complete.  The only problem is the craving is insatiable; it’s a hunger not even God can satisfy. The answer: Look for our part in the construction of the “hole.”  It’s a human construct.  There is no hole. To paraphrase Abe Lincoln: Most folks are as whole or as empty as they make up their minds to be.

Along these lines, the craving can also manifest as a dire need to do, to do anything. Unless that “something” is done, I am incomplete, broken. The above void now changes from a feeling of implosion to explosion, a pressure to “do.” This is something I am intimately familiar with. When I begin to write out a to-do list or a shopping list, I’ll feel that horrible pressure; I just need to do, as though I am incomplete until these things are completed. The real problem is regardless of how much we “do,” the void is still there.

Another insidious way this manifests is by “spiritual materialism”: A belief that one is not complete until one has amassed enough “spirituality,” anything from needing to be God conscious all the time, to needing to be in a perpetual meditative state, to needing to practice acts of love, ad infinitum. Again, it goes back to the dire need to maintain some image of oneself, albeit, in this case, as something spiritual. Couple this with the need to “do” (needing to do yoga twice a day, chant once in the morning, etc.), and we can easily see why Westerners so often confuse Buddhist meditation with a vacuity of thought: They just need a break!

Some of the experiences on the meditation cushion can indeed be very seductive. I’ve heard them described as God consciousness, being one with the universe, being there in the moment with Magic Johnson as he makes that winning shot. Freud described it as an oceanic experience. In the 60’s they were called peak experiences. Now they are generally referred to as the lowering of the ego boundaries. The bottom line: Regardless of the number of peak experiences you achieve, you will never be fixed. A while back I had the opportunity to attend a Marry Ann Williamson lecture, and this is why I left after about five minutes: It was just another venue devoted to the peak experience. Stuffing oneself with spiritual experiences is no different than stuffing oneself with pleasurable food, hoping it will fix you; the underlying craving is still there, unabated. It is a fundamental tenet of Buddhism that the pleasurable states of mind are just as neurotic as the unpleasurable ones. Unfortunately, the pleasure principle of infanthood persists well into adult life as an organizational model. You ever notice the quartz crystals people attach spirituality to? They are so pretty, so visually pleasurable. No one ever attaches spirituality to something ugly, well except in The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.

Another way this craving manifests is in the form of an intense desire for non-being. It’s as though I feel wrong for existing. For myself, this can manifest as me not wanting to leave any trace of my existence on the external world, or just wanting not to be seen. It’s narcissism, albeit, the image to which one is so attached is an ideal of nonexistence, to be nothing (whereas the other forms of narcissism manifest as being “something,” this one manifests as being “nothing”).

Self-hatred and self-abasement can be a manifestation of Narcissus grasping at his “true” self. It’s as though something is horribly wrong if I respect or esteem myself. It can show as a false humility, appearing to put others first, when in actuality, I wish to put myself last. This shows up in me all over the place: I can never accept something for me when I can put someone else first. Just as an experiment, I’ve been trying to put myself first when it is in deed my turn, from when someone hands me a sample at a store counter and I could let someone else have the sample to taking a seat I’m entitled to when I could let someone else take the seat. When I’ve done this, something is WRONG! I feel that sense of something is not right with “me.” This is not humility, empathy, altruism, or anything positive; it is a perversion of those qualities, in an attempt to maintain myself in an image I’ve latched on to.

In spite of the multitude of forms Narcissism takes, the solution is the same: If I see I must always be adorned with a clean shirt, look for my part in the belief, look at how the reality of the belief crumbles when I see my part in its construction, and then look for what would happen to “me” if I did walk around with a guacamole-adorned shirt. And when—and be assured, we all must eventually walk around with our own version of the guacamole shirt—so, when I do finally walk around wearing that shirt, and have walked through the fear, the utter humiliation, contemplate the other side of that fear: Contemplate how I did in very deed die, and how my dying was not my death. As Francis of Assisi so eloquently states, “…and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.”

The most profound lesson I have learned from being in and out of psychotherapy for over 20 years is that there is no emotion the human psyche creates that it is not capable of bearing. As Freud states, “…for in the last resort no one can be slain in absentia or in effigy.” Consider the source of emotions: They do not originate from outside us. No. They too are a human construct. Our problems arise out of the way we react to our emotions, not the emotions themselves. The psychiatrist Mark Epstein relates the story of a young girl who witnessed her younger brother decapitated in a water skiing accident[1]. The girl developed hysterical blindness as a result. Her sight was only restored after she could, as Epstein puts it, “recover the memory.” It wasn’t the emotions themselves that caused the blindness; it was her reaction to them. The emotions in and of themselves are not some “bogey man” out there to get you; they have no inherent existence. They are a product of “me.”

As alluded to earlier, many Westerners have the misconception about Buddhist meditation that it is a vacuity of thought, that the trip to the meditation cushion is a time to “chill.” Buddhist meditation is not intended as a vehicle to retreat into the mind as a means of escape, though it can be abused as such. Buddhist meditation is similar to going to the gym. Instead of building up physical muscles or improving ones endurance, as in a trip to the gym, Buddhist meditation seeks to build certain qualities of mind, specifically mindfulness and concentration. The purpose of these qualities: To be present, to see reality as it is, including seeing the pain as it is—and in this, there is profound relief.

I remember once being in emotional agony on a bus in my 20′s. I doubled over into my pain and focused on it with blind intensity. As I sat there in this wretched state, I was amazed when the pain turned to redness, then blackness (a kind of blanking out), then light, as if a vagina in my soul opened, and there was radiant light. The pain did not vanish, but my attention was held by the light. I felt amazed, uplifted, stunned into awareness of wider existence. Of course I did not want the light to go away, and was a bit fearful that it would, but above all was reverence, respect: it could last as long as it liked, and come and go as it pleased.[2]

Michael Eigen
“Stones in a Stream”

This is a fundamental dynamic of twelve-step groups: People share about the most horrible, humiliating debauchery, from wetting oneself in public to prostituting oneself for drugs, the pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization is endless. The comedian Craig Ferguson has a famous quote regarding his alcoholism:

I haven’t had a drink in thirteen years. But, occasionally, I’m tempted to have one beer. The problem is that if I have that one beer, I wake up in Tijuana four days later with a tattoo and a sore ass.

The power in sharing this is a fundamental key in twelve-step groups, and it is a fundamental key to walking away from Narcissus’ pond.  It takes the power out of the humiliation by showing that “I” survived the other side of the humiliation.  They share about those things people would just “die” over if someone else knew, and yet they do survive, in spite of dying. As stated in the Ars moriendi, “Learn to die and you shall live, for there shall be none who learn to truly live who have not learned to die.” Of course, the Ars moriendi flowed out of a Christian worldview, but the premise is the same: There is relief in seeing the other side of death. Further, this type of sharing within twelve-step groups shows to others in the group that it’s truly possible, empowering and emboldening the others to share, so it truly is a group dynamic.  This is how the founders of Alcoholics Anonymous reached out to other alcoholics when others failed: They simply shared their experience.

I am no expert on addition and recovery, but I believe part of what the book Alcoholics Anonymous refers to as the “phenomenon of craving” arises out of this narcissism. Of course, there is definitely the physical addiction to a drug, alcohol.  However, I have seen and observed firsthand how those in recovery, after the initial withdrawal from alcohol passes, are left simply with themselves, and how they handle this: I frequently witness a frantic spinning of the wheels, “I must do this…I must do that…I need to do this…I need to do that.” The underpinning belief seems to be that without those “I must do’s” done, the person is broken. I believe this to be Narcissus trying to find his way back to the pond now that his longing is no longer anesthetized.

Freud was an astute observer of the narcissism present in the infant.  The infant has no concept of “other”.  The only universe the infant knows is “I”.

In early life, said Freud, the state of rest is first disturbed by the demands of internal needs for food, comfort, warmth, and so on. Whatever was needed was originally provided (by the mother) as if by magic, giving the child a feeling of omnipotence and complete control. This feeling that every need could be immediately satisfied, every sense pleasure immediately obtained, or every unpleasurable sensation immediately avoided is the foundation of both narcissistic craving and the thirst for sense pleasures. It is the first organizing principle of the human psyche, the pleasure principle…

Mark Esptein[3]

Thus, we have an omnipotent being, as Freud puts it, His Majesty the Baby, and the unitary concept of the infantile world, that is, there is only “I”.  Hence, there can be no other concept in such a universe: If I don’t get what I want, there is something horribly wrong with me.

Witness the attunement of the infant at the breast.  The infant will FIGHT to retain this; otherwise, something is terribly wrong.  Ask any mother who has nursed, or watch a kitten nursing.  This is Narcissus fighting at all costs to remain at the pond, lost in his gaze, in a perfect state of union with himself (remember in the infantile world, all is “I”).

Eventually, the infant will progress from the pleasure principle to the reality principle, and realizes there is an external world, and thus, the person, now no longer an infant, is left with, as Freud states, only a “shrunken residue” of that all-inclusive universe the original infant was.  Unfortunately, this persists into adult life, with the need to restore what has went wrong, rather than accepting the overthrow of His Majesty the Baby. Further, it persists as a model for handling all of reality.

Consider the concept of patience. We spoke earlier of how the lost state of perfection must be restored immediately. In the infant world, there is no concept of time. There is no concept of, “This must be fixed now.” No. It is just, “This must be FIXED!” Hence, the utter lack of patience when dealing with narcissistic craving that persists into adult life. When I see adults behaving like this, I oh so want to say, “You must have been a bitch to wean.”

The response to Narcissus is a point of divergence between West and East.  Take Christianity. Christianity promises to fill the void, that is, to satisfy the narcissism, everything from inheriting the earth, mansions in heaven, streets of gold, gates of pearl, to being made complete in Christ. In the Garden of Eden, immediately after God pronounced, “It is not good that the man should be alone,” he declared, “I will make him an help meet for him.”  Genesis 2:18.  To fix Man’s problem, God’s answer was to give him “something” to fix him. Eastern philosophy offers an alternative: The extinguishment of craving:

One of the most feared criminals of the Buddha’s time, Angulimala distinguished himself by his habit of garlanding himself with the severed fingers of his murdered victims…On seeing the Buddha from afar, Angulimala armed himself and began to follow the holy man. But the Buddha, through his extraordinary powers, made it impossible for Angulimala to catch up with him no matter how strenuously he was pursued. Exasperated, Angulimala paused and shouted out, “Stop, recluse! Stop!” Although the Buddha continued to walk, he shouted back paradoxically, “I have stopped, Angulimala, you stop too.” Puzzled, Angulimala gave his famous response: “While you are walking, you tell me you have stopped, but now, when I have stopped, you say I have not stopped. I ask you now about the meaning: How is it that you have stopped and I have not.”

Mark Esptein[4]

Even those in the West who do not profess faith (or are actual atheists) usually do pick up with the solution offered by God: Give humanity something to fix it.

Jesus did say however:

The kingdom of God cometh not with observation: Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you.

Luke 17:20

It is a fundamental tenet of Buddhism that samsara is nirvana.  What comes about to relieve the suffering is a change in the person—a change in perception—not a change in the external world.

The Apostle Paul counsels us to “put on the whole armor of God.” As Paul states in Ephesians 6:13, “Wherefore take unto you the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand.” Out in the world, I can usually spot those who have taken Paul’s admonishment and “armored” themselves.  It comes across as a “stiffness” or “rigidity.” You see it when a homeless person asks for money and the person being asked can’t look the homeless person in the eye, even to say no.  Or when a homeless person tries to have a lucid (or semi-lucid) conversation with someone, and the someone can barely answer back yes’s and no’s. Or when a baby starts making faces at a person in the checkout line, and the person cannot return the infant’s gaze. Or it’s the person in the crowd that is afraid to let out a good belly laugh at something funny. It’s as though these people will “break” if they let down their defenses and just “let go.” And indeed they will break. That person they are trying to maintain—so controlled and so structured—will die. But the person will survive the death, and that’s the sad thing: seeing they are unaware of this and insist at staying at the pond beside Narcissus, dying a death of utter languor. Perhaps there are “principalities,” “powers,” “the rulers of the darkness of this world,” out there against which to “wrestle,” as Paul alludes to, but there is nothing in here that will not survive its own death.

Freud tells the story of a trip to the countryside with his friends.[5] He observed how his friends were unable to “let go” to enjoy the moment. He attributed this to their way of handling transience, of either being despondent over the future loss or pushing the current object away in order to avoid the future loss altogether. The bottom line: They had armored themselves and could not let those defenses down. This is no different from the young girl we spoke of earlier who developed hysterical blindness: All are self-made purgatories imposed from within as a means of defense against a perceived threat “out there.” It’s truly sad to see what is lost by this defense.

Mark Epstein relates a story of a patient named “Joe” and Joe’s experience at a meditation retreat when he began to focus on his breath: Joe experienced “the feeling of an iron band constraining his abdomen, hurting him and restricting his breath.”

Nevertheless, he tried to watch the pain with bare attention, although he found it necessary to walk around, lie down, and stretch out, changing his position constantly. No amount of attention, no change in position, no associated thoughts or feelings, no advice from his teachers seemed to affect the intensity of the sensations, which lasted for the better part of the day. Finally, Joe lay in one position and found himself overcome with sadness. He sobbed and shook for several hours and then had a childhood memory that was new for him. He remembered hiding in the closet from his raging father, filling his mouth with rags to stifle his sobbing out of fear that his father would hear him and become even more angry. Attention to the breath had evoked the memory of choking in the closet…

Joe’s response in therapy, “I knew what had been done to me, but not what I had done to myself.” [6]

Finally, the ego is N O T the cause of all our suffering. For our discussion, the ego is that aspect, or aspects, of the human psyche we would say whose role is to create “I.” There is nothing “wrong” with ego as such. It gets us out of bed each morning, gets us showered, shaved, and dressed, gets us to the doctor when we are ill, get us to school, to work on time, etc. etc. As such, we need ego to function in the world. (FYI, this ego is a fundamental necessity in Buddhist meditation.)

There is nothing wrong with maintaining myself in some image. There is nothing wrong with putting on a clean shirt if I get guacamole on my shirt. The “problem” arises when I can’t accept the death of my image—which will inevitably come—or when I can’t accept that I’ve done the best I can do, and that is all I can do.

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
The courage to change the things I can,
And the wisdom to know the difference.

Serenity Prayer

There is such great freedom and peace in knowing that there is nothing I need to be and nothing I need to do, no persona to maintain, no persona to defend, whether it’s the calm cool and collected person, the spiritual giant, or someone with a clean shirt. I can simply be.

All worry about the self is vain; the ego is like a mirage, and all the tribulations that touch it will pass away. They will vanish like a nightmare when the sleeper awakes.

He who has awakened is freed from fear; he has become Buddha; he knows the vanity of all his cares, his ambitions, and also of his pains.

It easily happens that a man, when taking a bath, steps upon a wet rope and imagines that it is a snake. Horror will overcome him, and he will shake from fear, anticipating in his mind all the agonies caused by the serpent’s venomous bite. What a relief does this man experience when he sees that the rope is no snake. The cause of his fright lies in his error, his ignorance, his illusion. If the true nature of the rope is recognised, his tranquillity of mind will come back to him; he will feel relieved; he will be joyful and happy. This is the state of mind of one who has recognised that there is no self, that the cause of all his troubles, cares, and vanities is a mirage, a shadow, a dream.

Buddha[7]

The concept of self is a necessary fiction, a conventionalism, needed to function within external reality, but “reality” didn’t impose this concept of self upon us; we constructed it and imposed it upon ourselves.  In seeing this, there is great relief, a freedom from the bondage of self.

[1] Mark Epstein, Thoughts Without A Thinker, (New York, New York: BasicBooks, 1995), p. 164.
[2] Mark Epstein, Thoughts Without A Thinker, (New York, New York: BasicBooks, 1995), p. 118.
[3] Mark Epstein, Thoughts Without A Thinker, (New York, New York: BasicBooks, 1995), p. 60.
[4] Mark Epstein, Going To Pieces Without Falling Apart, (New York, New York: Broadway Books, 1998), p. 56-57.
[5] Mark Epstein, Going To Pieces Without Falling Apart, (New York, New York: Broadway Books, 1998), p. 61-62.
[6] Mark Epstein, Thoughts Without A Thinker, (New York, New York: BasicBooks, 1995), p. 168-169.
[7] Mark Epstein, Thoughts Without A Thinker, (New York, New York: BasicBooks, 1995), p. 47-48.

As we all know, several of Fullerton’s “finest” have been videotaped beating a homeless man who later died of the injuries.  See the article.  Investigations are being flung around like (you fill in the blank), while the accused are on PAID administrative leave.

I wish I could inflict some “blunt head trauma with multiple broken bones in his face, and with rib fractures” to the cops who killed this man—and then get a paid vacation (aka “administrative leave”) after doing it!  If anyone else did this, they would be in jail—NOW!  And this notion of an “internal investigation”…duh, fox guarding henhouse!  What happened to the concept of checks and balances?  The officers said the homeless man fled when he saw them.  They ASSumed it showed guilt.  It looks more like he had a good reason…maybe not so schizophrenic after all…

It would be a waste of resources on their part.  See CNN article.

Al Qaeda didn’t need to raise a finger after the 9/11 attacks.  All they had to do is sit back and watch what we would do to ourselves in the aftermath.

I wonder if the Emperor Honorius watching the Visigoths coming over the seventh hill truly realized that the Roman Empire was about to fall.

Captain Jean Luc Picard
Star Trek: The Next Generation,
The Best Of Both Worlds: Part I

Imagine for a moment that you are a householder in the old west living on the open prairie. You are sitting on your front porch, and off in the distance, you see a man slowly approaching. You see he is carrying a shotgun. Now imagine that as this man approaches, he begins to load the shotgun.  As he continues towards you, he begins to raise it.  Next, he begins to point it at you and your family. Having your pistols at your side, at what point do you draw and shoot?  Or do you shoot at all?  Or do you even draw your gun at all?

As you probably already know, Iran’s nuclear reactor officially went on line today.  CNN News Article

Since the Islamic revolution of 1979, Iran has shown no hesitation to pull the trigger on that symbolic shotgun.  When the Ayatollahs came to power in 1979, they immediately committed an act of war against the United States: Seizing the U.S. embassy in Iran and taking its staff hostage.  That embassy was American soil, and the act of seizing it was equivalent to seizing a city in our homeland—an act of war.  Since that time, Iran has declared a silent war on America:

And then it occurred to me, as clearly as it had been hidden the moment before: The IJO [Islamic Jihad Organization] had never existed. It was only a name the Pasdaran [Iranian intelligence] used for communiques to claim terrorist operations. What’s more, the CIA knew the IJO was merely a front for the Iranians. It was clear from the documents I dredged up that, by at least 1997, the CIA knew the Pasdaran’s command structure inside and out, just as it knew that Ayatollah Ali Khameini and President Rafsanjani approved every terrorist operation to come out of Iran. As I looked at the evidence in front of me, the conclusion was unavoidable: The Islamic Republic of Iran had declared a secret war against the United States, and the United States had chosen to ignore it. [1]

Robert Baer
Retired CIA Case Officer

Iran, vis-à-vis the Pasdaran, vis-à-vis the Islamic Jihad Organization is responsible for the 1984 kidnapping, torture and death of William Buckley, then CIA station chief in Beirut, the 1983 bombing of the U.S. embassy in Beirut, among other things.

Given those facts, does anyone honestly believe that the Iranian nuclear reactor is for peaceful purposes? Iran is oil rich, and at the same time, a third world country in need of very little energy, so, again, how can anyone believe the reactor is for any purpose other than the manufacture of a nuclear bomb—targeted at the United States?

The question now is: As we see that hypothetical man off in the distance, drawing his shotgun, and taking aim at us, when are we going to draw our gun and shoot back?

Jimmy Carter’s approach—of silence—did nothing to persuade Iran to holster its gun.  It was only after Ronald Reagan—portrayed in the media as a hawk—took power that the hostages were released.

I am convinced, if Jimmy Carter had asked for a declaration of war against Iran, there would have been no 9/11.  Now, as he criticizes the war in Iraq, he should do what he did in 1979: Sit there in silence.

Unfortunately, it seems that regardless of who is in power, as long as it’s not on the front page of the “times” (New York Times, Washing Post, L.A. Times, take your pick), they are content to pick up where Nero left off:

The mantra at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue seemed to be: Get through the term. Keep the bad news from the newspapers. Dump the naysayers. Gather money for the next election-gobs and gobs of it-and let some other administration down the line deal with it all. Worst of all, my CIA had decided to go along for the ride. Now that such horrendous neglect has come home to roost in such misery-provoking ways… [2]

Robert Baer
Retired CIA Case Officer

Unfortunately, like the CIA—just like the CIA—the electorate who put the politicians in power, has “decided to go along for the ride.”  As long as our own personal comfort is not touched, we are content to go blithely along on the ride.

Forget imaging that hypothetical man approaching with a drawn shotgun, the Visigoths—in the form of own apathetic, short-sited, bury-our-head-in-the-sand, fiddle as Rome burns worldview—are in very deed approaching. Rome is truly about to be sacked, unless—and it’s not a question of unless we pull the trigger on our guns. No. It’s a question of the worldview behind the person who has their finger on the trigger.

[1] Robert Baer, See No Evil, (New York, New York: Crown Publishers, 2002), p. 264.
[2] Robert Baer, See No Evil, (New York, New York: Crown Publishers, 2002), p. 265.