San Jose, Costa Rica–Spiders on Acid

June 21, 2021 by fearlesspuppy

I hope you are happy and healthy.

It is the beginning of the full blown “monsoon” or cloudy/rainy season here in Nepal. I like rain as much as the next guy but this is ridiculous!

Costa Rica certainly has its own severe rainy season, but I remember a lot of sunny days there. From the new book in progress, here is a report on the capitol city.

Thanks very much for reading, and for clicking the backlinks.
Stay well. Love, Tenzin

***p.s. As always, if you find these weekly bits bothersome, let me know and I’ll stop sending them to you. If you find the reading at all enjoyable, please—it literally takes only seconds—click one or more or all of the highlighted backlinks following this paragraph. This simple process is completely without risk, cost, or difficulty. All it does is bring you to the site that is highlighted. Each click is a big help in pushing Fearless Puppy up in the Google rankings. Whether you browse the sites or close the windows immediately, your help has been delivered when you click. Thank you!
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FEARLESS WEBSITE

San Jose, Costa Rica—Spiders on Acid

Did you ever see that National Geographic episode about the effects of drugs on wildlife? One very impressive experiment featured a lone spider. Researchers gave the unsuspecting little arachnid a bit of LSD and waited to observe behavioral changes. They got their show. The web spun from this wedding of spider and hallucinogen resembled an Escher staircase after a visit from a psychotic bulldozer.

Welcome to San Jose, Costa Rica—the city that appears to have been built by spiders on Acid! It is home to a bizarre architectural schizophrenia unparalleled anywhere in the known universe. An average downtown street can house a white stately-columned mansion next to a dilapidated red, yellow, and black Rastafarian restaurant next to a rococo masterpiece of a building in powder blue that neighbors an orange grocery store that shares a wall with a soot-charred auto repair shop that borders a massive post-modern glass-front high-rise office building adjoining a cemetery that is fenced in protectively by shiny barbed wire while the ornate church on the same grounds sits with doors wide open and its gold crosses unguarded against possible thievery.

A fellow traveler from America struck up a conversation with me while we waited in the immigration line at the airport a few days ago. He was making his fifth trip to Costa Rica. I asked him for the most important fact he would tell a first time visitor who had nine months to spend in the Land of Pura Vida (Pure Life). He replied, “Stay out of San Jose. It’s the asshole of Costa Rica. The rest of the country is beautiful.”

Of course, he didn’t know that I was death-deep into a fun-loving withdrawal and reincarnation experience, making San Jose the perfect place for me to be. There are plenty of great opportunities to die here, and just as many wonderful opportunities to be reincarnated. (***This is explained in last week’s chapter post. If you missed it, it is available at the Fearless Puppy website blog section.)

There is discomfort in this withdrawal experience, but no major problem! I’ve certainly had more severe withdrawal experiences in much less hospitable places. Quitting a half dozen mildly addictive substances in a cozy apartment will be a lot easier than quitting heroin as a homeless person was thirty years ago.

Things felt pretty bleak upon entry to San Jose but by the third day, the Tico (that’s what Costa Ricans call themselves) hospitality has me feeling good. The Passion Flower/Saint John’s Wort herbs and stepped-up meditation time has helped as well. The assorted withdrawals are already starting to lighten up a bit as they run their course.

The landlord couple seem, for the most part, like very nice people. He works for the Costa Rican government’s foreign service. She comes from a rich family of successful clothing manufacturers. This couple adopted a pregnant street dog whose back legs were destroyed by a car. They built the crippled dog a set of strap-on rear training wheels. The couple take the dog, Bonita, for regular wheel-walks. They kept one of Bonita’s pups and got the rest farmed out to good homes. Knowing that these people do things like that makes it hard to think ill of them for owning (what should be) a criminally excessive number of cars. I still don’t like the lord-of-the-hacienda tone they use with their laborers or the way they flaunt their privilege and entitlement. The gap between the social and economic classes is more severe here than it is in America. It seems that even the nicest of rich folks treat the help like shit. I’d rather not get used to seeing that, so I hang out with the help. That slows down the damaging overdose of self-esteem that too often directs Mr. and Mrs. Bossypants. They are more polite to my friends when I am present.

Looking around San Jose for a few days reinforces my first impressions. It seems an odd mix of hip, pretty, small-city bits thrown into a blender with what the less inviting neighborhoods of post-apocalyptic Cleveland will probably look like. Some sections of San Jose seem like a lovely little country town at first glance—but not for long. Watching the bizarre traffic flow that is responsible for the barely breathable air makes it hard to think of any part of this city as a country village.

But the East End of San Jose comes close. It rocks! There are Japanese, Argentine, Italian, and Caribbean restaurants within two blocks of my apartment on Fifteenth Avenue. The Caribbean place has live Calypso music on Thursday and Friday nights. There is a community Cultural Center featuring a large theater nearby. The neighborhood also houses an architectural university, a language school, a Brahmin meditation center, a kindergarten school, a bowling alley with pool tables, a public elementary school, several eateries serving local cuisine, and a vegetarian tea house/restaurant featuring freshly squeezed fruit juices. The latter has a yoga and massage school attached to it.

It is likely that I will be less clever than usual for a few weeks while the initial withdrawal poisons move out and adaptation to new environments take place. Today is no exception. I try to give the juice-bar lady 20,000 Colones (@$40 US) for a juice. She insists on only 2,000 Colones (@ $4) and takes fifteen minutes to explain the monetary system to me in Spanish with sign language. The same friendly honesty may not be available throughout the city, but the folks in this neighborhood are wonderful. My relatively high rent is just as much a payment for being in this area as it is a payment for the apartment itself.

San Jose’s “asshole of Costa Rica” reputation is only relative to the extreme beauty of the rest of the country. It is no worse than any other big city in any other nation. Much of it is pleasant, some of it is culturally wealthy, and certain parts are beautiful–but the the core downtown area known as El Centro defines hell as a street corner. It has all the nasty dilapidated buildings, broken glass, garbage in the streets, rats, and fractured sidewalks of the worst neighborhoods anywhere. It also has a large assortment of dangerous looking characters that keep tourists and residents alike a little nervous.

The city has many monuments of historical interest as well as several great little parks featuring pretty flowers, an assortment of trees, and some interesting people to watch. I saw one of these interesting people reciting a poem to a dog and another attacking a tree with its own dead branch.

The National Museum on Second Avenue houses one of the most amazing pre-Columbian artifact collections anywhere. Housed in a restructured military fort, the building itself says a lot about Costa Rica’s peaceful temperament. Jade, carved stone, very well-preserved wooden and gold pottery, jewelry, rare antique musical instruments, and other cultural treasures trace the Tico people’s history back through time into an era long before European conquest began in the West.

The Plaza de Cultura in the museum area can be the most entertaining spot in town. Street musicians, artists, and other assorted characters including soap box preachers and prophets entertain the public with 1960s Greenwich Village style free expression. Coincidentally, the main action is on Fourth Street—as much of it was in 1960s Greenwich Village. One animated man on Fourth Street worked very hard to convince me of something. I told him that my Spanish language skills were not at all good enough to follow his monologue. This preaching prophet or Amway salesman or political candidate or whatever he was refused to believe that. He kept rambling on. His other-worldly eyes, possessed tone of voice, tattered formal dress, and a body odor that would scare rats out of a dumpster were all wasted on me. I thought better of my instinct to remind him that cleanliness is next to godliness and left quickly. It guess I will never get to find out what he was so excited about.

Several casinos are available to the gambler. These are usually in the same buildings as the whorehouses, for those interested in that type of gambling.

Costa Rica is a consistently religious and sometimes spiritual country. Catholicism is the main religion and cathedrals are spread throughout the capitol city, as they are in most of Latin America. But Costa Rica also has the highest concentration of Buddhist activities in all of Central America, noticeable Brahmin and Jewish presences, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and several other factions of Christian. Herbal spiritualism akin to the Wicca tradition is strongly present. There is also a good deal of New Age activity here. Yoga centers, Pilates, and various other forms of spiritually related exercise systems are very popular. Legitimate massage and acupuncture are available. There are even tiny smatterings of Goth and Satanism.

San Jose’s central market takes up a few full city blocks and offers every type of meat, fruit, vegetable, clothing, and medicinal herb available in the country. There is a much smaller organic market on Saturdays at Collegio Mexico.

The National Theatre is the architectural pride and joy of San Jose, and the nation. It is definitely worth a visit. Belgian architects did the structural designing and Italian decorators put the flourish into this masterpiece of a building. It seats a thousand people and still hosts live performances. There are Renaissance style paintings on high ceilings above large open interior spaces, cut crystal chandeliers, indoor fountains, museum quality sculpture, and furnishings fit for royalty. The whole building, both inside and out, looks more like a royal palace than a theater.

There is no end to the number of day-trips a person can take from the city. Within striking distance are hot springs, volcanoes, jungle canopy zip-line rides, beaches, and a beautiful, unique array of flowers and wildlife.

In spite of its problems and being referred to as “the asshole of Costa Rica,” San Jose can be a wonderful city that has as much to offer as any major city in the world. If you can stand to be in any place that has too many people living in it, you would enjoy parts of this one. If you are hallucinating and a bit dizzy from a metaphysical, metaphorical death and reincarnation of your own manufacture, I highly recommend adding San Jose to your cartoon for a week.
next week back to Nepal

Many thanks to our wonderful friends at Pema Boutique Hotel for their help and support. ***The books Fearless Puppy On American Road and Reincarnation Through Common Sense by this same author are also available through Amazon or the Fearless Puppy website, where there are sample chapters from those books. Entertaining TV/radio interviews with and newspaper articles about the author are also available there. There is no charge for anything but the complete books! All author profits from book sales will be donated to help sponsor an increase in the number of wisdom professionals on Earth, beginning with but certainly not limited to Buddhist monks and nuns.
***If you missed the Introduction to the new book that will be titled Temple Dog Soldier, or would like to see several chapters of it that are available for free online, go to the Puppy website Blog section. This is a book in progress. You will be reading it as it is being created! Just like you, I don’t know what the next chapter is going to be about until it is written. As the Intro will tell you, this is a totally true story—and probably the only book ever written by and about a corpse journeying completely around the world!

The Bizarre Costa Rican Pura Vida Metaphysical, Metaphorical Death and Reincarnation of the Fearless Puppy

June 14, 2021 by fearlesspuppy

How is life going where you are? I hope you are happy, healthy, enjoying yourself, and enjoying the company you keep.

From the Costa Rica section of the new-book-in-progress, here is the very beginning of what might be the absolute strangest “vacation” ever taken by a human being! This short section will be in the beginning of the book. It actually happened15 years ago, but is an essential premise to the current around-the-world-after-diagnosed-death trip that will make up most of the new book.

The current trip and the book about it are both being seriously stretched out by virus related tragedy and the accompanying politically manipulated mandates. At times it feels like someone else is pulling this story’s strings.

At other times it feels like someone else is pulling everyone’s strings.

Thank you for reading, and thank you for clicking on the back links.

Be well. Love, Tenzin

FEARLESS PUPPY ON AMERICAN ROAD/AMAZON PAGE

REINCARNATION THROUGH COMMON SENSE/AMAZON PAGE

FEARLESS WEBSITE

The Bizarre Costa Rican Pura Vida Metaphysical, Metaphorical Death and Reincarnation of the Fearless Puppy

There is an important definition of reincarnation that does not involve physical death. It is described well in Reincarnation through Common Sense, the book between Fearless Puppy on American Road and this one. The very short version of it says that the concept of reincarnation can be seen from an angle that has nothing to do with migrating souls entering new physical bodies. We are each constantly being reborn within this very life. Each time a person changes his or her mind and acts on it, the change is added to that person’s makeup. He or she becomes, to a certain extent, a new person. Just how new we become is up to the person doing the becoming. It can be a slight and temporary change or a bigger and much longer lasting one. The change can have a minimal effect on one singular person or affect the entire world and change history.

Every slightly new person has the option to turn their recent revelations into solid habits and convictions. That can take time and consistent reinforcement. It involves both instant recognition and continuing process.

This definition of ongoing reincarnation is the root system of evolution. As we change the thoughts that produce our actions, we influence our development not only as individuals but also as cultures and as a species. The evidence suggests that evolution can happen a lot more quickly, pleasantly, and efficiently when it is consciously directed.

I need to start practicing my own personal reincarnation and consciously direct it pretty damn quickly. This “calling” I feel is not a spiritual direction. It is time to shape up or die in the more literal sense. Like so many folks my age, I have been indulging excessively on several fronts for decades. This pleasant stupidity cannot last much longer before the physical degeneration invites death to pay its visit. Death will, of course, happen to us all anyway—but the evidence says that with a little bit of conscious effort and change, it can be delayed.

So it seems that in order to put off physical death, I have to achieve a more spiritual and psychological death—a slaying of many old, destructive habits and a dismantling of the attitudes responsible for them.

This job calls for the “Nothing to it but to do it” approach. This approach starts with the immediate understanding and ongoing recognition that all destructive habits, attachments, and restrictive relationships with anything or anyone are, and have always been, self-manufactured. That’s right. I built these habits with my own thoughts and actions. Of course there have been bad influences and societal coercions, but no one ever tied me down and forced me to take part in unhealthy activity. I carry the responsibility of having orchestrated my own physical decay, so it only makes sense that I can orchestrate attitude adjustments that will produce the right changes in habit to allow an increase the number of years I get to stay on the planet.

As with everything else my generation has accomplished or failed at, I’ll do this orchestrating in an excessive way. Several near-lifelong habits are now being instantly evicted including: cigarettes, fried food, coffee, sugar, forty years of daily ganja, and near-daily alcohol consumption.

Just to make things interesting, I will also quit a decades-long mission that included raising funds for worthy well-established ecological groups as well as inventing and then implementing independent charity projects of my own to help various causes. Joining these on the temporary chopping block are my significant other, friends, country, and a few other things that I can’t remember right now due to dizziness from the withdrawal symptoms that are already starting to kick in. I don’t want to permanently quit doing the charity projects, having friends, intimate relations, or ganja. Those changes will be temporary. But an iron logic dictates that cigarettes, fried foods, alcohol, sugar, and a few other health liabilities need to be drastically reduced immediately, and should probably be eliminated altogether in the long run. It all begins right here and now, writing this while sitting on a plane to Costa Rica. No doubt several other changes are waiting to accompany the withdrawal symptoms that the initial full-bore cold turkey onslaught is already producing. Life on Earth, and in the sky, is starting to look and feel like a cartoon.

There are usually nine months between conception and birth. Since this is a rebirth of sorts, it seems fitting that I stay in Costa Rica for that length of time. The total experience should be a lot more fun than the withdrawal symptoms that bring me to it. There are good reasons to spend time in Costa Rica besides reincarnation. Most reports about this country are positive. All the shining reports seem to stem from and revolve around one major factor.

Costa Rica may be the only country in the world that has been without a standing army for the past fifty years. They haven’t dealt with any deadly combat, threatening enemies, or the highly dramatized media-induced paranoia that usually accompanies even the emptiest of military threats. Fear-based, defensive tendencies are not part of the national psyche. This lack of fear (admittedly made possible by a major US military presence) fosters a practical, humane, working consideration for all living things. Costa Rica puts its resources into more intelligent processes than the ones most countries allow to occupy their policies and suck up their budgets.

The country has a ninety seven percent literacy rate, an unparalleled respect for nature, and a thriving ecotourism industry that financially and functionally supports that respect. While CR has only one-quarter of one percent of the world’s total landmass, it contains a full five percent of the biodiversity on Earth. Habitats range from rainforests and volcanos to beaches and mangrove swamps. Strong environmental laws protect twenty five percent of the country.The enlightened national conservation system is considered an international role model.This, in combination with the lack of military concerns, makes Costa Rica perhaps the most comfortable and securely protected nation on the planet.

Looking at nature as something to cherish rather than conquer has been a benefit to the Costa Rican humans as well as to the environment that contains and sustains them. The people here are as beautiful as the natural surroundings. This is understandable. The war consciousness embraced by most of the world has been replaced by ease, security, and self-respect as well as the ever-present fondness for nature. This shiny cultural package produces more smiles than fear. If a culture doesn’t focus on fear, the odds drastically increase that the citizens within will stay happy. Happiness shows up on people. It keeps them from aging quickly. There are relatively mild drug and crime problems here, especially in the capitol city—but for the most part Costa Rica is a happy, democratic, prosperous, and politically stable nation in the midst of a very unstable region.

Some of Costa Rica’s autonomy comes from the fact that at the time Columbus landed there in 1502, and for centuries after, Guatemala City was the main base station of Spain’s empire in the Western Hemisphere. Spain didn’t want to bother much with anyplace as far away and as sparsely populated as Costa Rica. Colonizing folk never liked to work their own land–especially in the torrid heat and humidity of Central America. Costa Rica didn’t have enough natives for the conquerers to enslave, so it was mostly left alone. Lack of colonial socialization allowed the native people to maintain and develop their own unique and very pleasant way of life. That pleasant way of life included a democratic nature. Freedom has almost always been a big part of living in the Land of Pura Vida (Pure Life).

more from both Costa Rica and Nepal soon

Many thanks to our wonderful friends at Pema Boutique Hotel for their help and support. ***The books Fearless Puppy On American Road and Reincarnation Through Common Sense by this same author are also available through Amazon or the Fearless Puppy website, where there are sample chapters from those books. Entertaining TV/radio interviews with and newspaper articles about the author are also available there. There is no charge for anything but the complete books! All author profits from book sales will be donated to help sponsor an increase in the number of wisdom professionals on Earth, beginning with but certainly not limited to Buddhist monks and nuns.
***If you missed the Introduction to the new book that will be titled Temple Dog Soldier, or would like to see several chapters of it that are available for free online, go to the Puppy website Blog section. This is a book in progress. You will be reading it as it is being created! Just like you, I don’t know what the next chapter is going to be about until it is written. As the Intro will tell you, this is a totally true story—and probably the only book ever written by and about a corpse journeying completely around the world!

Defeating The Bait & Switch

June 6, 2021 by fearlesspuppy

How’s it going there? All is as good as it can be here in Nepal—considering that we are still locked down. The lake and mountains are still very beautiful, most folks still have food, and the police seem to be very understanding. But there’s not much happening and so not much to report.

The latest in a long series of delays puts the end of lockdown at June 14. Hopefully that really happens. More live-from-Nepal chapters will appear shortly after. Meanwhile, here is an oldie but goodie from the Fearless Puppy On American Road book. Most folks that have read it tell me it’s funny. If this is your first read, I hope you get a good laugh from it too.

It is offered now with a different intent than in years past. This time it is not only the true story of dealing with a troublesome person at work, but is also posted in the spirit of remembering that individual humans are not the only ones baiting and switching us. Institutions, industries, and systems—whether they are informative, corporate, political, educational, cultural, religious, entertaining, or medical—are just as good or better at it than any singular human.

Thanks very much for reading, and for clicking the backlinks.

Please stay well and happy. Love, Tenzin

***p.s. As always, if you find these weekly bits bothersome, let me know and I’ll stop sending them to you. If you find the reading at all enjoyable, please—it literally takes only seconds—click one or more or all of the highlighted backlinks following this paragraph. This simple process is completely without risk, cost, or difficulty. All it does is bring you to the site that is highlighted. Each click is a big help in pushing Fearless Puppy up in the Google rankings. Whether you browse the sites or close the windows immediately, your help has been delivered when you click. Thank you!

FEARLESS PUPPY WEBSITE BLOG

FEARLESS PUPPY ON AMERICAN ROAD/AMAZON PAGE

REINCARNATION THROUGH COMMON SENSE/AMAZON PAGE

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Defeating the Bait-and-Switch
We’re having a little trouble at my workplace. There is a mean-spirited person dragging my co-workers down to her level. She’s an expert at the bait-and-switch move. I smile, refuse her bait, and stay undistracted—but several members of our crew have fallen victim.

What is the bait-and-switch move? Several different psychological maneuvers call themselves by that same name. The one I’m specifically referring to is the oldest trick in the book. It is most often done without the perpetrator’s conscious awareness. That’s right! More often than not, the folks who do this aren’t even in touch with themselves enough to realize that they are doing it. (It is occasionally more intentional and malicious.)

Let’s say that you are Party B. Your boss, a co-worker who wants to climb the ladder of success over your dead body, a new customer, an old acquaintance, an ex, or whoever else you want to think of is Party A. (If you are already saying, “Hey I’m the A. Let that other pain-in-the-ass be Party B,” that’s great! Your chances of avoiding the pitfalls of the psychological bait-and-switch move are very good!)

You are a nice, friendly, kind, and cooperative person.

Party A and others like him are nasty, sarcastic, wired-up people who live to annoy and manipulate. They love to pull on your chain and wouldn’t climb off your back if you bought them a diamond-studded rope ladder to do the climbing with. These people may suffer big and truly heart-rending problems in life but behave so badly that they regularly earn more rejection than compassion. Many chronically dissatisfied folks act as if it is their job to insure that everyone else becomes as miserable as they are. Again, this is often not a product of conscious evil intent as much as an unconscious bit of emotional lava spilling out of an abused volcano that has never been hugged enough. But if you’re getting burned to the core by flowing lava, the historical origins of the volcano’s problems cannot be your primary concern.

As usual, you try to be nice to everyone. You speak to Party A as you would to anyone else—intent on a happy and harmonious relationship. But Party A doesn’t know how to handle this. The painful rip in the fabric of this person’s reality tells him or her that it’s a dog-eat-dog, me-or-you, take-advantage-before-being-taken-advantage-of world where an aggressive defense is the highest priority. This attitude often results in behavior that is nastier than a pickled egg fart collection in a tightly sealed chamber.

You step up your efforts to make peace. Day after day you are kind and polite to this person, hoping your good attitude will prove contagious. Mr./Ms. A stays deaf to your most cordial approaches and continues to dump bucket loads of emotional garbage and irritating drama into your life.

It may take a few days, weeks, months, or years but sooner or later it happens. You lose it. After what seems like countless eons of dealing with this situation in a civilized manner, you just can’t take it anymore. You give Party A a rebate on the ration of bullshit that he or she has been shoveling in your direction. After five or ten minutes of yelling and snarling, you stomp away with your blood pressure raised and your day ruined. You are now as stressed, aggravated, soured, angry, and miserable as Party A has always been.

This is you now! The painful attack on your peace of mind is no longer singularly directed from an external, defensible source. It now grows from an internal base that is a lot more dangerous to you. The nastiness of A, formerly a minor influence outside of your psyche, has eaten away slowly but steadily at your patience and compassion. It has succeeded in boring a hole right through your previously harmonious state of mind. The result is a weakened mental structural integrity, now being further eaten away by your psychologically triggered, newly acquired chemical imbalances. Physical problems arise from the chemical problems. Your stomach may hurt, your head may ache, and your happiness is in pain.

As this happens to folks like us, Party A people will likely be laughing their asses off! As the old saying goes, “Misery loves company.” Misery now has the company it loves. As mentioned before, they may have had a conscious plan to do some damage —but it is more likely that they are just blindly lashing out and unaware of the real cause or result of their actions. They are happy anyway!

A subconscious mind can be a dangerous thing. That’s why so many of Earth’s wise folk have spent so much of their time very busily moving their subconscious depths to the conscious surface.

So now, anyone walking into the place where both A and B are present would be fooled. It would appear that Party A was a B, and that Party B was an A—and in fact, until B regains basic composure and simple sanity, that has become the sad truth of the situation. B has now effectively taken over the job that A was doing and is now getting on his or her own nerves! Party A doesn’t even have to be around. B will still have a nervous concern about what A might do or say next. B will now suffer from self-engendered attitude attacks as well as any external attacks that A might still be generating. B may also be burdened with a self-loathing caused by embracing an inferior mindset as well as the embarrassment of losing composure in public.

The bait-and-switch is complete.

But believe it or not, there is an even worse scenario! Some folks are just too kind-hearted or timid to explode upon their aggressor. In most of these cases, a B person completely internalizes the stress of dealing with the A person. The resulting internal malfunctions can range from a nervous condition and assorted mental problems to migraines, stomach ulcers, and in the long run even heart problems or cancer.

I refuse to get involved with any of this.It seems best to stay happy and realize that what I want me to be is more important than what any negative external influence wants me to be.

I don’t rent out space in my head to bullshit.

Disengagement, a simple non-cooperation with the game, seems to work well. I find that chronically toxic human irritants either vanish quickly or start adding some respect to their communication once they realize that you are someone who will not take the bait.

When you run into someone that wants more than it is possible to give; when challenged by an insatiable black hole of negativity that cannot be filled; when you feel the vacuum from that hole starting to suck you into it, perhaps the best way to win the game is to not play.

Lockdown Resiliency–Nepali Style

May 16, 2021 by fearlesspuppy

How is life going where you are? I hope you are well.

The latest from beautiful Pokhara, Nepal follows.

It’s a given that we’re all going to get a little pissed off and frustrated occasionally under current circumstances. That only becomes a real problem if we forget that like all poisons, anger and despair are much better spit out than swallowed. We have to face the facts. Global change and planetary stability are not within our immediate control. The good news is that personal change and mental stability are not only completely within our own control, but also make us more adept at influencing external change and better at dealing with the effects of worldwide malfunctions. This piece of the new book-in-progress is about recognizing and facing undeniable difficulties, spitting out what isn’t serving us well, and moving on to more comfortable and fertile ground—Nepali style.

At the risk of being redundant, here for the umpteenth time is one of my favorite quotes. “The most revolutionary act that a person can perform in this country is to be happy.” Patch Adams.

I’m finding that even if I don’t care at all about being revolutionary, and regardless of which country I am in, practicing the maintenance of common sense, clear vision, and internally generated happiness is still the smartest thing to do.

Breathe very deeply. It helps! No joke. Be well. Love, Tenzin

***p.s. As always, if you find these weekly bits bothersome, let me know and I’ll stop sending them to you. If you find the reading at all enjoyable, please—it literally takes only seconds—click one or more or all of the highlighted backlinks following this paragraph. This simple process is completely without risk, cost, or difficulty. All it does is bring you to the site that is highlighted. Each click is a big help in pushing Fearless Puppy up in the Google rankings. Whether you browse the sites or close the windows immediately, your help has been delivered when you click. Thank you!

FEARLESS PUPPY WEBSITE BLOG

FEARLESS PUPPY ON AMERICAN ROAD/AMAZON PAGE

REINCARNATION THROUGH COMMON SENSE/AMAZON PAGE

FEARLESS WEBSITE

Lockdown Resiliency—Nepali Style

“Why can’t we just use all the money to fix shit?!?” Jon Stewart

We are obviously living in a troubled world—but trouble often brings resilience, resilience sponsors resourcefulness, resourcefulness facilitates survival, surviving hard times inspires confidence, confidence can be the birthplace of success, success gives rise to gratitude, gratitude often feeds emotional abundance, and emotional abundance will foster happiness. I’m no Pollyanna. We have a row to hoe that is even longer than that sentence. But humanity has survived and in many cases artistically responded to mass-murdering tyrants, slavery, famines, floods, fires, televangelists, wine in a can, petroleum products in our food, life-size inflatable sex dolls, and Andrew Dice Clay. We will also survive this nasty virus, and the cartel of mentally ill people that are currently facilitating human suffering for personal satisfaction and material gain.

There are many things happening in Asia right now that resemble the America of fifty years ago. Many people here are more innocent and naïve than Americans have been for several decades. They are more trusting of their government, news media, and popular institutions. They are more likely to believe and hope than they are likely to critically think or doubt. This can be a very sweet way to live. There are some very good reasons why the phrase “ignorance is bliss” became one of our more popular expressions during the past century. But folks around the world, certainly not just in Asia, are rapidly discovering that certain types of bliss can be dangerous as well as delusional.

Faithfully accepting that there is a “buddy” God who is on your side to the point where he will slay your enemies for you can make life very comfortable for a while—as can blindly believing that politicians work for the benefit of all the people, all the police always protect and serve the entire public, all doctors have the improvement of your health as their primary motivation, parents always know what is best for their children, the news media reports the unbiased truth, schools teach you what you need to know, legitimate business is always legitimate, banks protect your money, the government protects your interests, the church protects and mediates your relationship with Creation, and of course advertising always gives an honest representation of the product for sale. But like any house that is built on a foundation of bullshit, a collapse is imminent. Unfortunately, any systemic collapse will take a lot of the folks within that system down with it.

Such a collapse is in progress throughout the world right now. Our institutions, economies, and personal belief systems alike are facing the guillotine. Many of us are having trouble releasing our life-long ways of thinking, living, and believing while trying to simultaneously hold on to them. We are stepping on the gas and brake at the same time, and our engines are understandably smoking as they melt.

This is a strange world we live in and it is getting stranger all the time. Thank goodness people are still people! Some folks may be reacting to their fears more than they usually do, but most of us are as loving and trustworthy as ever. In contrast, most of our global information systems have become a cruel and manipulative joke. Bullshit has now become the prevalent norm, truth is rare, and everyone has suddenly become expert on subjects they know nothing about. Fractions of truth that warp badly under the strain of their division from the whole picture, exaggerated fears that long ago crossed the line between constructive caution and flagrant intimidation, and some very unrealistic wishful thinking have morphed into unfounded subjective beliefs that masquerade as facts while folks panic themselves into irrationality.

Regardless of any and all theories about the causes and origins of viral disease, or about the motivations of those pulling society’s strings, the results are obviously tragic.

The reports tell us that India is getting hit as hard by the virus this year as the Western Hemisphere was hit last year. It is often true that as goes India, so goes Nepal. The deaths and many other sad results are due at least in part to an actual plague—and in at least as great a part to the mind-bending results of the way the Corona situation at large has been steered. There is a one-plus-one-makes-three effect that has intensified the problem. Media dramatization fosters fear as corporate/governmental socioeconomic mismanagement and manipulation foster a loss of the control we used to have over our own lives. This produces stress. That lowers the ability of our immune systems to fight off illness. This then strengthens the communicability and effects of the virus, increasing the spread and potency of disease, which then further increases stress. These elements feed each other in an endless loop.

That being said, a couple of very simple, basic understandings have kept life fun and productive for me in spite of dire global circumstances, a liver cancer diagnosis, and being the foreign round peg that doesn’t exactly fit into the domestic square hole for nearly the past two years. The first is that human beings have, from first breath to last, the obligation to work for positive change within our own minds as well as within our own culture. I’ve found that if the inside of my mind isn’t quite right, everything outside of it suffers. Don’t believe me? Ask anyone that knows me whether life is more fun for them when I am being a jackass than it is when I am taking their happiness as well as my own into serious consideration. Ask your neighbors if the mood in the ‘hood benefits or suffers when you throw trash, be it physical or emotional, into the streets.

The other thing that keeps me from occasionally wanting to bite down on a big blasting cap or just walk around all day with my head buried in my own little bullshit is remembering that, in the long run, there may end up being a lot more silver lining to this cloud than we can possibly see now. Precursors of better days are obvious in the lighter, more hopeful, more encouraging, and even amusing sides to the horrid world situation. I see them in action every day during this current lockdown. Our resiliency, and the human ability to adapt and survive in any situation, is astonishing! Our manners can sometimes be very sweet as well. Even the most stubborn among the folks in this town that harbor a blind and total disbelief in any damaging abilities of the virus wear their masks out of respect for their fear-ridden neighbors, as well as a respect for the legal ordinance.

Food stores and essential services are only legally open from five to nine a.m. But a whole Speakeasy/Roaring Twenties style culture has been spawned by creative shop owners and patrons. It is now noon. I knock three times on a sheet metal gate, then wait behind a nearby brick wall as the shop owner behind that gate prepares my carrot juice. With a mindset of invisibility that I remember using during trips through Spanish Harlem to buy heroin from Mr. Lopez in 1972, I slide back around the wall long enough to pay for the juice through a small opening in the sheet metal—and then slide back behind the wall to drink it. While all this goes on, I notice that several other people are also on the street, also on the way to their Speakeasys.

We respect the understaffed police force and the job they are trying to do. Everyone tries to stay out of their range and not force them into a situation they would have to respond to. Such situations are uncomfortable for everyone. It seems that, at least to some extent, the police respect and understand the public’s needs as well—especially the needs of the area’s remaining tourists that live in hotel rooms without kitchens.

After juice, I head from my south side ‘hood to the north side of the lake. A friend of mine from Kathmandu lives on the north side. I want to say hi, make sure that he is well, and take home a bread from the Speakeasy cafe/bakery there. There are several police blocking the main street. They don’t want citizens to be wandering any further than necessary to get essentials and so have set a blockade to cut Lakeside Road in half right at its center point. I slide around the blockage through a back street and then a side alley with the stealth of a smuggler on a pirate ship in a Jimmy Buffett song. I meet up with my friend in the alley. We have breakfast behind the closed sheet metal door of the nearby café. I buy a bread, then leave through the cafe’s back door. That rear exit feeds back into the alley and I retrace my steps home.

For dinner, a restaurant close to my hotel has a similar arrangement. I knock on the window. The manager slides it open. A waiter takes my order and the window closes again. I move away to a nearby stairway while they cook where I’m sheltered from street view by a giant tree. When dinner is cooked and bagged, I slide money through the re-opened window, grab the bag and hide it in my little backpack. Myself and the waiter both smile, nod, and say thank you. I head home to enjoy dinner. No one has been put at risk. I get to eat. The restaurant employees and their families get to eat too.

No one knows what the future holds for humanity. Our history runs from mass murder to divine benevolence. Our most extreme participants have ranged from Stalin, Cheney, and Pol Pot to Mother Teresa, Gandhi, and the Dalai Lama. But I have to think that if confused residents and business folk that are functionally under house arrest in a small tourist city without tourist traffic, in a third world country that has limited resources even under the best of circumstances and now suffers closed borders in addition to its closed businesses, under what may be the most bizarre and debilitating conditions our planet as a unit has ever seen, can figure out ways to keep most of the population fed and at least part of it employed while not doing any harm, then there is certainly reason to believe that we can fix everything that is broken.

The Pokhara story continues in the weeks to come.

“If you need a sign to remind you to laugh, are you alright?” Sara Schaefer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJUhlRoBL8M

	Eric Idle – “Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life” – STEREO HQFIND ME AT https://twitter.com/DoryStentorian De-dum-de-diddly-dum-de-dum…www.youtube.com

The Society For Creative Maladjustment

May 9, 2021 by fearlesspuppy

Hello from scenic Pokhara, Nepal! I hope you are happy and healthy. What’s new where you are?

We are on temporary virus-related house arrest here. They say it may go on for a week or two. They said that last year during the first lock down. It continued for several long months. This situation sucks, but also has positive value. It leaves everyone here with the choice of either becoming a walking whining factory, or finding the silver lining in the clouds and being happy. This is a no-brainer! Time to enjoy the quiet and do the extra things that time will now allow.

Fortunately, most folks here look at being miserable on the inside due to miserable circumstances being forced upon them from the outside as a non-option. Many Nepalis consider happiness to be a serious social obligation to the local and global communities, as well as an obligation to their own immediate family and self. This notion is a regular part of everyday life, but even more pronounced now that the immediate family and the self will be stuck indoors with each other for who knows how long.

I still have some pre-lockdown Pokhara material that will be polished and posted soon. Meanwhile, please enjoy another little bit from Tribute to Teachers, my favorite section of the new book-in-progress.

I’m pretty sure that everyone alive is familiar with the folks mentioned here. No further introduction to the modern masters that inspired this piece is necessary.

Thank you for reading, and thank you for clicking the backlinks. Please stay well and stay happy. Most other options will be less pleasant for you—and much less pleasant for everyone around you. Love, Tenzin

“It’s all in your mind.” George Harrison

p.s. The same crew as last year is again called to action in order to feed the hungry families that are again isolated from their incomes. Please help if you can. If you can get us the support, the crew can defy lockdown for long enough to deliver the food. Thanks very much for whatever you can do. https://www.gofundme.com/f/keep-kathmandu-from-starving?utm_source=customer&utm_medium=copy_link&utm_campaign=p_cf%20share-flow-1&fbclid=IwAR2f5767GP3_ydBmbGmSnWXkKwGjT6tVsL3-KEpPRE8Ajb6BYxbc-bHFE3w

Keep Kathmandu From Going Hungry, organized by Zak AldridgeHello friends, a brief intro: I’m Zak, a language student from NY and recent Columbia U… Zak Aldridge needs your support for Keep Kathmandu From Going Hungrywww.gofundme.com

***p.p.s. As always, if you find these weekly bits bothersome, let me know and I’ll stop sending them to you. If you find the reading at all enjoyable, please—it literally takes only seconds—click one or more or all of the highlighted backlinks following this paragraph. This simple process is completely without risk, cost, or difficulty. All it does is bring you to the site that is highlighted. Each click is a big help in pushing Fearless Puppy up in the Google rankings. Whether you browse the sites or close the windows immediately, your help has been delivered when you click. Thank you!

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THE SOCIETY FOR CREATIVE MALADJUSTMENT

Based on a speech by the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.Dedicated to him, the Giraffe Society, human Giraffes everywhere,and to the Giraffe that lives in each of us.

Most institutions, including government, religious, and economic ones, share a stance that profits when the public craves stability and fears change; when the public clings religiously to as many aspects of status quo as possible and to all the things that are considered “normal.” These institutions promote as well as embody a deep aversion to diversity, change, and progressive thought. Their main priority and concern is always the defense of their place at the top of the social hierarchy. Even while they are manipulating the most drastic social changes throughout the general population, the stability of the power structure that controls that population remains as solid as a mountain. Those on top of the cultural food chain will often do whatever it takes, no matter how cruel or how kind, to maintain their positions and possessions.In a vain, ridiculous, and doomed quest for permanence, status quo attempts to avoid the growing pains and paradigm shifts required by progressive change. One very popular method used to accomplish profitable stagnation is to downplay anything new and better. Status quo has tagged brilliant folks throughout history with some pretty dubious titles in an attempt to trivialize the importance of what these people had to say. We’ve heard “fruitcake,” “crazy,” “heretic,” “lunatic,” “revolutionary,” “hippy,” “traitor,” “on the fringe,” “dangerous,” “weirdo,” “loose cannon,” and “commie” every now and then, but the label most often used in polite society to describe those who would rock the boat is “maladjusted.”

Status quo itself is something that lives in a glass house and really shouldn’t be throwing stones. Fear, bigotry, war, poverty, and poisoning the biosphere as well as its inhabitants are all stones with which our established systems could easily and justifiably be hit. Many popularly accepted societal trends are certainly not well adjusted. The same could be said of the people who blindly follow these trends. Not so long ago, our society considered owning other people to be well adjusted.

It is unfortunate that so many of our better, kinder, more humane citizens suppress or even amputate their feelings in order to fit in and gain acceptance. They are often frozen into non-action. They accept the unacceptable in fear of being ostracized, ridiculed, or facing other social penalties for being thought maladjusted. This frightened, impotent intelligence may be even sadder than the brutal ignorance it complies with.Some folks believe that even the most intense degrees of human suffering can be tolerated—as long as they themselves are not the particular folks doing the suffering. Most of us are better than that. Most of us cannot comfortably adjust to seeing others suffer brutality. Some of us are courageous enough to speak out in a maladjusted manner against such injustices.

Look at the folks who were considered maladjusted by most of the people who shared their era! Jesus, Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., Saint Francis, John Lennon, Huxley, Copernicus—there’s no end to the list. Isn’t it amazing that more people aren’t excitedly running toward becoming creatively maladjusted rather than being frightened away from it?

When Mother Teresa first began on her mission “everyone thought she was cracked.” (This quote is from Father Gabrich, a fellow Albanian expatriate and a fifty year friend of Mother’s. He said the first Mass given in the first rooms where Mother Teresa began her care of the sick and poor.) There are now very few people of any religion who do not recognize her as a Saint. She bucked the traditionalists with an inner strength that a “well adjusted” person cannot access. She didn’t just sidestep, but actually defied conventions of the very church that her life was based upon. Mother did so with a revolutionary attitude that leaned on ferocious courage and dismantled even the most liberally minded ignorance. She made the world a better place by sticking her neck out.

It’s not just famous people that do the creatively maladjusted thing. The Giraffe Society recognizes people worldwide who stick their necks out for the good of us all. They have a long list of regular folks just like you and I that are charter members of their own special branch of Dr. King’s Society for Creative Maladjustment.

An older couple walks to the bank. They have spent most of their long lives fighting off frosty winters in the northernmost reaches of America. They are going to their bank in order to transfer accounts to a sunny retirement spot and arrange for the sale of the home they will leave behind.

Before they can get to the bank, they meet a cold, hungry, homeless man with a heart-wrenching true story. They listen. The couple never makes it to the bank that day. Instead, they take the man back to their home.

The couple’s next trip to the bank is to refinance the mortgage on their house, not sell it. They open a homeless shelter in that house and never move south. Their sunny retirement spot is now internal. They have never been happier.

They are publicly acknowledged and awarded membership in the Giraffe Society by virtue of their spiritual membership in Dr. King’s Society for Creative Maladjustment. At one time, the suffering man they met on the way to the bank was a member too. He got lost, had some bad breaks, slipped downhill, and had his membership lapse. He has pulled himself back together, now helps to manage the homeless shelter he inspired, and is once again a member in good standing of The Society—and society at large. He got by with a little help from his friends.

It can be said that many of the Monks and Nuns I see every day here in Nepal are full time members of The Society for Creative Maladjustment. They live without many things that you and I consider essential. There are folks among us that see these choices as signs of maladjustment, but the result of these sacrifices increase the ability of the Nuns and Monks to help other people. It helps them to focus on things they believe to be more important than physical comfort. They practice this focus with an inspired altruistic intent, inspiring dedication, and no thought of reward—aware that every action contains its own inherent automatic reward or punishment that is inseparable from that action. Both instant and long-term karma are facts of life. (“Your karma is not what is happening to you. Your karma is how you experience and respond to what is happening to you.” Sadhguru)

Reading and talking will only take us so far. Only the doing gets a thing done.Thinking, talking, or reading about doing is like trying to scratch an itchy leg through leather pants. It is a start, but doesn’t get the job done. People have talked about wanting to live on a peaceful, happy planet since the beginning of people. It hasn’t happened yet. The only chance for the survival and happiness of our loved ones, ourselves, and future generations is being defined by what we are doing to increase cooperation, happiness, well being, sanity, love, inclusiveness, and respect for each other right now.

The Society for Creative Maladjustment has shampooed the red carpet in anticipation of your arrival. This society’s door is always open. When anyone joins, everyone gets stronger. Any and all approaches to a better world—whether they are scientific, spiritual, economic, or political—must pass through this door eventually. There is no sensible option to the compassionate cooperative effort that is inspired by constructive, creative maladjustment to the world’s evils.

“Every society has its protectors of the status quo and its fraternities of the indifferent who are notorious for sleeping through revolutions. But today our very survival depends on our ability to stay awake, to adjust to new ideas, to remain vigilant and to face the challenge of change.” Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

“Among the most remarkable features characterizing Zen we find these: spirituality, directness of expression, disregard of form or conventionalism, and frequently an almost wanton delight in going astray from respectability.” D.T. Suzuki

“Once social change begins, it cannot be reversed. You cannot un-educate the person who has learned to read. You cannot humiliate the person who feels pride. You cannot oppress the people who are not afraid anymore. We have seen the future, and the future is ours.” Ceasar Chavez

“Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible.” Frank Zappa

A Nice Slice of Paradise on the Nepali Riviera

May 2, 2021 by fearlesspuppy

Hello and love from the Himalayas! How are you? What’s going on there?
Pokhara is described below, so no sense being redundant here. I hope you enjoy this initial report about Nepal’s wonderful lakeside city and gateway to the world’s greatest mountain ranges. There will be much more to tell about it in the weeks to come. If you have any questions about this area, or whatever, let me know. Maybe I can find the answers.
Thanks very much for reading, and for clicking the backlinks. Be well, Tenzin

***p.s. As always, if you find these weekly bits bothersome, let me know and I’ll stop sending them to you. If you find the reading at all enjoyable, please—it literally takes only seconds—click one or more or all of the highlighted backlinks following this paragraph. This simple process is completely without risk, cost, or difficulty. All it does is bring you to the site that is highlighted. Each click is a big help in pushing Fearless Puppy up in the Google rankings. Whether you browse the sites or close the windows immediately, your help has been delivered when you click. Thank you!

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POKHARA

The Road From Kathmandu To Pokhara

The road to Pokhara from Kathmandu is only one hundred and twenty five miles long but takes almost six hours to travel. After more than a solid year in the big concrete city of Kathmandu, the ride through mountainous jungle bordered by river seems like a ride through ecstasy. The road is nothing but curves! The longest straightaway of the entire trip lasts only twenty yards.

Dusty brown earth accents the lush green vegetation rising into the skies. It is more greenery than I have seen in one place since leaving Vermont a year and a half ago. Twenty foot wide shelves are carved into several of the mountains, giving a stairway-to-heaven appearance. Some of them accommodate crops. They may also help prevent landslides.

One out of every half dozen vehicles on this busy two lane highway is a truck spitting out toxic black fumes so noxious that the vehicle would be impounded, with its driver fined and likely arrested, in many countries on Earth.

Small towns and smaller villages pop out of the mountainsides every five or ten miles. As is true throughout small-town Asia, there are some very nice houses but at least as many tin shacks with no running water or plumbing. A river follows the road for most of the distance between Kathmandu and Pokhara. In places it flows well enough to accommodate rafts and kayaks. In other spots, and especially in the tributaries, exposed stone river beds let everyone know that it has been a dry winter—and monsoon season is still a ways off. Nationwide forest fires are a serious problem. Smoke sits over most of the mountains. It joins the truck fumes in making the air very unpleasant if not downright dangerous to breathe. Luckily, I coughed up a little extra money for a Jeep with AC instead of coughing up a lung.

With only an hour left in the trip, a severe thunderstorm accompanied by violent wind pops up very suddenly. It mercilessly bounces the few motorcycles off the road whose drivers aren’t smart enough to pull over immediately. Luckily, no one appears to be seriously hurt. Even the deluxe size Jeep I ride in gets blown around a bit! Visibility is at no more than a car’s length for half an hour, but this doesn’t stop the berserk drivers from continuing to pass each other on blind curves. Even near-zero visibility, explosive thunder, lightning massive enough to be in a National Geographic photo, and water flowing from the sky in thick sheets instead of drops can not slow down a Nepali driver!

The storm finally stops about a half hour outside of Pokhara. The air is more breathable and the terrain more visible. Everyone in this nation hopes that the rain has also put out some of the wildfires.

My car pulls up to the hotel where a cordial staff helps unload too much stuff and haul it all up to my room. The view from the balcony is stunning!

Yumpin’ Yimminies! Those are Mountains!?!

The hundred hotels within view do not diminish the natural splendor that surrounds them.

They are dwarfed by it.

On the north side of the hotel is a beautiful lake nestled between emerald hills. I wouldn’t swim in it, but it provides a view as sweet as any in Ireland or Thailand. Composing the horizon on the south, as well as much of the east and west, are breathtaking mountain ranges. Massive snow covered behemoths of rock and earth whose tops have been jaggedly carved by nature for millennia hug the sky. They tower over the rest of life with such a silent majesty and total authority that all of civilization below resembles an ant farm by comparison. These mountains make much of the Rockies look like foothills, and Vermont’s Green Mountains look like large speed bumps. I stare slack-jawed at the glorious Himalayas for a half hour, then head into town.

The lakeside main drag of Pokhara looks a little like Waikiki’s ocean front main drag in Honolulu, Hawaii, but it is so much sweeter, smaller, cleaner, more diverse, and prettier that the comparison is short-lived. There are restaurants that feature international as well as local cuisine. Many of these have live music several nights per week (temporarily suspended due to virus-related government restriction on public gatherings). There are travelers from many different countries around the world. Most of the international travelers here use the city as a base station for trips into the mountains. They are more accurately called trekkers, rather than tourists.

There is a very noticeable difference between the vibe in Pokhara and the vibe in Kathmandu. Pokhara is also a big city, but the more natural and less man-made aspect of the physical environment seems to keep the population moving at a more natural pace. There is less hectic motion, less hustle and bustle. Of course the people here are also going places and doing things, but it feels like that action is taking place in a California or Cape Cod beach town. The action in Kathmandu feels a lot more like it is taking place in Brooklyn or Boston.

Kathmandu, especially in the monastery-filled Boudha section where I spent last year, is a rich spiritual environment in spite of the physical environment. Pokhara is a rich spiritual environment because of it. Winters are mild and summers hot in Pokhara. It is, or so it seems after only one week, among the more beautiful places in the world that I have ever lived.

Paddleboats and row boats are for rent on the lake. You can flow solo and row for yourself, or you can have an oarsman do it for you. The sun rises up from behind the distant Himalayan snows in the morning. At twilight it sinks down behind the hills that caress the lake. A Hindu spiritual service is performed every evening on the lakefront’s shore. This “Araati” ceremony is complimented by one strikingly beautiful background containing a brilliant bloodshot orange sunset and vibrant green hills, and by a second background exactly as beautiful that shimmers as a reflection in the lake. Three priests dressed in their finest ceremonial red and gold swirl massive fiery…

The Pokhara story continues in the weeks to come.

Genius Clowns and Silver Tongued Uncles

April 26, 2021 by fearlesspuppy

Hello from scenic Pokhara, Nepal!
I hope you are happy and healthy. What is going on in your part of the world?

There will be a lot to tell about this lovely town, but I have to do it before I can write about it! That report should be ready next week. This week please enjoy two bits from what may be the most important section of the new book in progress. Here is the first piece and then some more from the Tribute To Teachers section in that soon-to-be new book.

The prophetic George Carlin has been without question one of the major influences in my life, and the lives of many others. He used a no-nonsense, tell it like it is, often crude, pull no punches, blue collar approach to what he saw going on in the world. He often envisioned, then clearly and accurately commented on, events that didn’t actually happen until years later—as well as having cutting edge interpretations of the present. He was our canary in the coal mine, and much more a comic genius with immense foresight than a simple class clown.

Leo Buscaglia was favorite uncle to the world. Among the many brilliant strokes of pure honesty to come out of his mouth is the line mentioned as the title below. He asked a friend with a sour look on his face, “How are you?” The friend answered with an unconvincing. “Fine.” Uncle Leo replied, “Why don’t you tell your face!?!” Leo Buscaglia was filled from head to toe with good-willed honesty. He could say things like “Why don’t you tell your face?” without being insulting. His good intentions and love of humanity always shined through whatever little sting might result from his honesty and accuracy.

I hope you enjoy my two little tributes to these incredible modern masters.

Thank you for reading, and for clicking the backlinks. Be well. Love, Tenzin

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No Misunderstandings, Please/What Does Matter
Thank you, Mr. Carlin. You brought us laughter, truth, integrity, courage, and conscience—and did each of them better than most folks do any one of them.
Just so there are no misunderstandings, I would like to officially state something right here near the beginning of this section of tributes to teachers. Almost none of the people (there are a few exceptions) who are complimented here as teachers and influences actually know or ever knew me. I’m not trying to make believe that I am in some kind of intimate buddies club with every genius on Earth, or that I have personally met and had social what-to-do with any of these people. I go to lectures, classes, concerts, get the books, and watch these folks on HBO specials, YouTube, or PBS just like nearly everyone else who has been smart enough to seek out these human lighthouses, or has been lucky enough to just stumble across them. I do have an active imagination. Even the repetitive contact with videos can affect me strongly at times, but that’s where most of these “relationships” end.

A very small number of people have become a lot more famous than the rest of us. Sometimes this happens because we admire a person’s genius, talent, or merit. But just as often, it happens through no actual accomplishment on the part of the famous person. It often happens because shill marketing and media conglomerates are selling the public an image, as well as an artificial relationship to that image. These marketing and media folks work for corporate pimps. The corporate pimps and their companies collect big money from these processes because these methods result in bizarre purchasing habits on the part of consumers. These bizarre purchasing habits materialize when consumers become hypnotized by vast avalanches of enticingly designed commercial messages into believing their imagined connection with the celebrity is not only real and meaningful, but also has a connection to the product that is for sale.

But even truly meeting or knowing someone admirable doesn’t make you, yourself, an improved or admirable individual. That happens when you are actually being, doing, or taking part in something admirable.

Why do people make such a big deal about this associating with/meeting/knowing a famous person thing, anyway? Brag about meeting, say, Mother Teresa or the Dalai Lama? I don’t think so. I’d brag if I spoke and acted as nobly as Mother Teresa or the Dalai Lama!

No, on second thought, I guess I wouldn’t.

I feel so strongly about all this that the following true story is still, thirty-five years after the fact, one of my very favorite moments in life.

It was a beautiful autumn day in the 1980s at Hugo’s bar on Pleasant Street in the lovely town of Northampton, Massachusetts. After an all-day effort to deplete the world’s beer supply, a sudden flash of inspiration came to me. Over the course of the following year, that inspiration developed into a successful local, and then statewide, charity project. It got a lot of attention and press because it involved high-level politicians, famous musicians, major league sports teams, labor unions, volunteers who didn’t get paid at all, and a hot button issue. Above all, the project went well because none of the money passed through me or our little volunteer group. It went directly from contributors to very well established and reputable charities. There was no possible question-of-trust factor. (Details in news articles at fearlesspuppy.info, if you are interested.)

Shortly after the project, I was back at Hugo’s, again doing my part to help society drain free of its alcohol content. I made this effort many times during the 1980s. A guy (decent sort) who infrequently frequented our watering hole came through the back door. He was known and well liked by one of the regulars at our table, so we invited him to join us. Decent-sort-Mike was then introduced to several people who were well known for not being able to remember names.

Mike downed half a beer and suddenly turned wide-eyed. He stared at me for a few very long seconds. It was the kind of stare that made me wonder if he was on some powerful drug and I was showing up as a freshly tapped keg in his hallucination.

That wasn’t it. The mad stare was his sudden recognition of a person whom he knew had experienced the proverbial fifteen minutes of fame.

“You’re that guy from the newspapers. You’re great!” said decent-sort-Mike.

I had to reply, “Don’t be fucking ridiculous. I’m a drunk from Hugo’s, just like you are.”

The light went on in Mike’s more than slightly bloodshot eyes. It was that deeper kind of understanding that rarely happens, even between people who know each other very well.

He got it.

A big slow “Wooooow!” came out of his mouth.

Mike suddenly realized that he could have done that charity project and would have received the same attention from the media if he had. Instant insight told him that anyone could have done it. It was all just about getting up and doing it. All I did was kick my own drunken ass into the process. That didn’t make me any more of a superman than Mike. The only difference between us was that I put a situation’s potential to actual use.

We bought each other beers and talked for hours with no further misunderstandings.

All of us humans have the same potential to be incredible.

Who you’ve met or know doesn’t matter.

Who you choose to be and what you choose to do with your life is what does matter.

“Why Don’t You Tell Your Face?”
With love and thanks to the world’s favorite uncle, Mr. Leo Buscaglia

I ask how you’re doing and you tell me you’re fine, but you’re staring out off into space. The look in your eye tells me something’s awry. You’re not sitting in your favorite place. You appear to be thinking that to speak your true feelings would surely result in disgrace. If you’re feeling fine, I’ll kiss my own behind. If you’re happy, you should tell your face!

No one feels perfect all day and all night, and if you’ve got a problem then you’ve got a right to share it with people who care ‘bout your plight and can help you recover, recycle your sight.

But you don’t.

You just sit there with that frown covering you.

Seems kind of silly.

If someone sincerely asks how you are, that’s a sign of your luck and their grace.

They can help wash your clothes and straighten your wrinkles, pull joy through the holes in your lace. So do not sit there with your head up your butt wishing you were in some other place. Open up the damn door when your friends come knocking. Let them help you stabilize when you are rocking. You can’t tell them anything that will be quite as shocking as “If you’re happy, why don’t you tell your face?”

Many thanks to our wonderful friends at Pema Boutique Hotel for their help and support.

***The books Fearless Puppy On American Road and Reincarnation Through Common Sense by this same author are also available through Amazon or the Fearless Puppy website, where there are sample chapters from those books. Entertaining TV/radio interviews with and newspaper articles about the author are also available there. There is no charge for anything but the complete books! All author profits from book sales will be donated to help sponsor an increase in the number of wisdom professionals on Earth, beginning with but certainly not limited to Buddhist monks and nuns.
***If you missed the Introduction to the new book that will be titled Temple Dog Soldier, or would like to see several chapters of it that are available for free online, go to the Puppy website Blog section. This is a book in progress. You will be reading it as it is being created! Just like you, I don’t know what the next chapter is going to be about until it is written. As the Intro will tell you, this is a totally true story—and probably the only book ever written by and about a corpse journeying completely around the world!

Is Big Bird a God?

April 10, 2021 by fearlesspuppy

Hello! I hope you are happy and healthy.
I have heard and am paying attention to those friends that have said things like, “My husband and I love the writing, but my brain hurts after reading it.” I will post more strictly upbeat, happy, fun bits of the books for at least the next month. There will be minimal scathing rants about social injustice, or so-called obscenity, or deep philosophy—and more Puppy-ness. Here we go.

A lot of strange things can happen after you are pronounced dead at the hospital, brought back to life by a rebellious second doctor putting a post-mortem second shot of adrenaline in your heart, and then very shortly after regaining consciousness decide to manage your own heroin withdrawal without help.

I met Garuda. This trip through the Twilight Zone bounced between being deeply into and all the way out of conventional reality. The experience would actually be eligible for a spot in the Guinness Book of World Records as the most fun ever had by a human being during heroin withdrawals, except for the little physical and psychological torture inconvenience. That “inconvenience” actually was not as much of a problem for me as it usually is for folks. It was gracefully overshadowed by the rest of the experience.

Garuda can be quickly but only semi-accurately translated into Western as the Asian Phoenix. Mine was a little different. It very rarely presented itself in any conventionally described Garuda form. It also changed forms at will. In the interest of keeping these posts within the thousand-word range of quick and easy reading, here are a few random paragraphs plucked from the twenty-plus page section in the book Fearless Puppy On American Road that describes the entire experience. Thank you very much for reading, and for clicking on the backlinks. Stay happy please, Ten***p.s. As always, if you find these weekly bits bothersome, let me know and I’ll stop sending them to you. If you find the reading at all enjoyable, please—it literally takes only seconds—click one or more or all of the highlighted backlinks following this paragraph. This simple process is completely without risk, cost, or difficulty. All it does is bring you to the site that is highlighted. Each click is a big help in pushing Fearless Puppy up in the Google rankings. Whether you browse the sites or close the windows immediately, your help has been delivered when you click. Thank you!

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REAL?

Ever been kicked in the crotch by a horse? Neither have I, but it seems that it might be a lot of fun compared with the effects of heroin withdrawal.

Some details have been forgotten and some particulars may be restructured, but this book is pretty much a true story. Except for this piece here. Maybe.

You might call it real. Maybe not. Then again, who knows what the word “real” actually means?

A lot of folks think that real is what materially exists and can be registered by the five senses. If you can see, feel, taste, smell, or hear it, that’s considered real by most people. But there are other schools of thought on the subject. Some folks think that our material definition of reality is just a collectively agreed upon hallucination.

A breeze comes up. It blows dust in my eyes.

Wipe eyes. Blink.

Opened eyes after blinking see that the highway has disappeared.

Angelic sky blue surrounds me. Totally surrounds me. I am standing on it, as well as in it and under it. There is no solid ground but the blue is as secure to stand on as any of the Earth’s densest terrain. It is, oddly enough, also as comfortable to move through as Earth’s atmosphere.

A strong but pleasant beam of light sprays right through me, treating me as a transparency. Something nonphysical within me is being cleaned up enough to be wherever it has arrived.

Whoever my hosts are, they want me to be here but don’t seem to want the bunch of garbage that has traveled with me. All this is much less than clear. Ordinary sense is on vacation.

Thousands of large white birds become visible. Each brilliant wing in the flock is composed of tiny feathers, alternating silver and crystal. Each tiny feather is as sharp as a razor. The wings begin to flap as the birds take flight. As they do so, a wind chime symphony at the volume of soft jazz is manufactured by the clank of silver against crystal. The symphony ends as the birds land in (and on) the blue.

“We are Garrruda. Welcome.”

It is somehow apparent that these thousands of birds are actually one combined energy. This energy displays a presence and beauty the likes of which I have never seen before. It is easy to believe myself in the presence of a Goddess.
        I feel as if two trains of thought are traveling my mind at once. One of these trains is so smart, happy, and healthy that it seems borrowed. The other is the ordinary mind that I have been using for the past year or two.
        “OK,” I think to my selves. “A little stranger than usual, but it’s a pleasant strange. This is not my first altered-state experience. We can deal with this.” I make my selves comfortable.
         My lower self is having a cynical day on Sesame Street. It thinks, “I wonder if I’m ever going to get a straight answer out of Big Bird and company here!”

I think of another question. “What, please, is Garrruda’s purpose?”

“Aha!” sing all the birds in a singular melodic voice that is accompanied by a symphonic flapping of wings. “That is an easy question to answer. Garrruda is here to protect you!”

“Well, thank you very much. But protect me from what?”

“Garrruda is here to protect you from your lower self. We are here to shelter you from that which informs you that you may never receive a straight answer from Big Bird and company.”

Garrruda gives a soft giggle, this time in multiple voices. It is accompanied by a glance containing such a gentle compassion that it melts my embarrassment.
“Every once in a while you get a residual, shall we say, subconscious drive-by shooting from the psychological remnants of that experience. Sometimes that bad memory, which aggregated to your psyche so long ago and associates success with punishment, attempts to surface as you are approaching a door of success. The memory is a defense mechanism. It is based upon previous conditioning. It thinks it is your friend. It is warning you not to succeed because, according to this little piece of history, you will be hurt if you win.”

The memory is a bit unnerving. “Yes! I recognized that problem many years ago and actually remember talking myself out of it. This memory was told that it was a bad piece of information and was not a valid thought for me to live by. I dismissed it.”

The birds smile and flap their wings. After an angelic ten-second wing chime sonata of silver and crystal, Garrruda speaks again. “When you recognize and repair dysfunctional conditioning in such a manner, you are at one with me. Byuncovering your obstacle and dissolving it, you are protected from being less than your better Self. This process requires nothing but the courage for objective self-examination. This process is a secret to many, but common knowledge to Garrruda. Through internal awareness of the root causes of our obstacles, we can cut those obstacles out. We thereby prevent being bound by them. This is the formula for psychological liberation and happiness.”

Garrruda smiles and wraps its wings around me. Thousands of razor sharp feathers caress me without inflicting any pain or injury. An electrical charge of well being saturates my body—and then goes deeper than that. My whole life is being energized, not just the body. The sensation is like breathing pure oxygen straight from the tank. Oddly enough, there is also a feeling of being encased in water.

Within an instant, I find out why.

As Garrruda opens its wings, it dissolves. It disappears slowly, fading from bottom to top with its benevolent smile being the last part to vanish.

* * * Jonah’s Frying Pan

The bird is gone altogether and I am indeed encased in water. The blue that made up Garrruda’s world has maintained its color but become liquid. It seems odd to be breathing in water and odder yet to not be worried about it, or anything else for that matter. An all-pervasive comfort surrounds me. Everything seems better than fine—and exactly the way it is supposed to be.

A multicolored fish joins me. It appears to be about ten feet in length and weigh nearly three hundred pounds. My new friend has a very pleasant nature, a happy demeanor, and a smile as wide as a row boat.

***Believe it or not, the chapter gets even stranger and more fun from here on!

Many thanks to our wonderful friends at Pema Boutique Hotel for their help and support.

The Treasures At Our Fingertips

March 28, 2021 by fearlesspuppy

Hi! I hope you are happy and healthy. What’s new where you are? Life in the big city of Kathmandu rolls on. This place has many wonderful qualities. Air quality is not among them. Smoking cigarettes here is redundant. Within a month or so, I will be moving to where there are more trees, more quiet, a lake, and less pollution.

I’ll miss the many wonderful people that I have met here in Kathmandu.

The following are two very, very short pieces. Some folks tell me that both are a little abstract. Considering that the whole world seems to be painted in a bizarre shade of paisley these days, I don’t suppose that a bit of abstract will hurt anything. The two pieces are in the spirit of a couple of guys that taught many people what the phrase “walk your talk” means. The first is about overcoming obstacles that prevent us from being who we want to be. It comes from the book, Reincarnation Through Common Sense and was inspired by Archan Den. He was the head monk of the forest temple in Kok Ta Hom, Thailand that took in a very troubled man from Brooklyn, New York and allowed him an unconditional half year of living among saints. Archan never asked me to, nor did I while there, study Buddhism. The one job he gave me was “Make your self comfortable.” That half year turned me back into a human. The second section is from the book Fearless Puppy on American Road. It was mostly inspired by Kunsang Dechen Lingpa Rinpoche. He is the Tibetan Lama and mystic that I have seen more often than any other. He has been dead for a decade or so. I still see him sometimes. I have met many other very wonderful Lamas before and since, but Kunsang Dechen Lingpa Rinpoche was just the right one for me to meet at just the right time.

In spite of the fact that both pieces were written by a nearly 70 year old juvenile delinquent, I hope you will enjoy them. Thanks very much for reading, and for the backlink clicks. Please be happy, Tenzin

“All talking will become sheer nonsense, if one cannot elucidate the Truth.” Milarepa

FEARLESS PUPPY ON AMERICAN ROAD/AMAZON PAGE

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Would You Rather Be a Finger or Part of a Hand?

Waiting for God or Congress to fix things won’t work. The Collective Human Attitude cannot change until the attitudes of the individuals composing it do. This has been proven many times.

Great Masters have come and gone. We immortalize their words and images. But the actual purpose of their teachings was to inspire us toward functional applications of those words in real life situations. Unfortunately, much of humanity seems to mislay those functional applications as consistently as a teardrop in the rain.

Why?

It may be true that some people are just too damn lazy to change their minds. The bigger problem is that many of us are too stressed out, distracted, and preoccupied to concentrate on the process of making this a truly better life for our selves, and a better world for everyone. Inhumane stress levels numb us into surviving under comfortably fossilized lies instead of living with truths that might be disturbing in the very short run, but will save us in the long run.

The inhumane stress levels that modern people suffer are largely fueled by two pieces of drastic misinformation. Nearly all of us have been brutally misled regarding the qualities defining our most critical human directions—the purpose of life and the meaning of success.

A more functional definition and a consistent practice of these terms are necessary in order for us to maintain peace and decency on an individual level. Only after plenty of that has been accomplished can peace and decency arrive, survive, and thrive at the community, national, and planetary levels.

The bigger masterpiece can only be painted by combining the brush strokes of all our little self-portraits.

All the great teachers, religions, and spiritual traditions seem to be nearly unanimous in their on-paper notions of the terms “purpose of life” and “success.” Their notions—unlike the general public’s questionable and constantly wavering standards for doing Earthly business—usually nail it.

The purpose of life is to not only achieve health, love, and happiness but also to assist whatever else is alive to do the same. Personal success is defined as developing the individual decency and courage to promote that universal well being, and building the skillful means to turn that brilliant motivation into actions that are realistically helpful to self and others.

Great ideas! Of course, the big problem is the “on-paper” part. Installing these notions from the on-paper version into actual practice seems to be a rare happening among humans.
No One can save humanity now. Salvation has been circling the planet for a long time. It has no place to land! We can provide that landing pad by personally moving toward what we are asking for, by actually becoming dynamic peace and cooperation, and by leaving a lot of old bullshit behind.

It can be difficult for a person to independently redirect his or her focus. Millennia of outdated conditioning and our present-day hypnosis by modern media only scratch the surface of what needs to be overcome. But we have to start somewhere.

The best place to start may be to simply make ourselves comfortable with our selves.

It is a sad fact that the pressures of life in our modern world make being uncomfortable in one’s own skin a very taken-for-granted condition—a condition that often seems like it is an insurmountable obstacle to so many people. There are very few insurmountable obstacles in life. What may seem like insurmountable obstacles at first are more often just challenges. We can victoriously rise above almost any challenge by just making a consistent, stable, relaxed, focused, determined effort to do so. This is true whether that challenge comes from the darkest corners of the world—or the darkest corners of our own minds.

“There are no problems. Only solutions.” John Lennon

The Ties That Bind/The Treasure That Heals

I am not a qualified teacher of anything except English as a Second Language—and am not very good at that. I have always been a haphazard and rebellious student. In high school, I threw pencils at the backs of teachers and attended more drug parties than classes. I’m not going to try to tell you things that I have no spiritual or intellectual authority to tell you—except for this one thing. Here’s the reason.

Years after high school, I fell in love with a teacher. Not in the romantic sense, of course. He might more likely and more accurately say that I fell in love with what was coming through him. As a result, I might have paid attention to what he was saying in a different way than most folks pay attention in class. I may have picked up some of his unspoken thoughts well enough to fashion words around them. (There might also be some residual LSD notions of my own that have survived from long gone decades and are mixed in here.) So here goes.

We are all connected. There is a singular fabric of life that contains everything that is living. This bigger picture is more real than our little individual ones. We are each a part of one big unit as surely as, and more profoundly than, we exist as independent individual humans.

Choose any of the well-known cloth metaphors: cut from the same cloth, threads running between us, woven into the fabric of… They all have truth to them.

There’s a thread that ties you to your mother. There’s a lesser one that ties you to the grocery clerk. You and I have a strand that connects us. There are other threads—and they may be a lot less visible but believe me, there are other threads—that tie you to every other living creature on Earth. You have never met most of these people or other living creatures in the flesh. You never will get to meet most of them. There is still a connection so true that your wireless provider would kill to figure out its technology.

There is also a connection between every person (including you!), and some powerful esoteric energies. We may not be aware of these connections and energies. They exist nonetheless.

One of my stronger threads ties me to an energy represented by a mythical bird that can rebuild its life from the ashes of its own destruction. This energy teaches how to transmute poisonous experiences into success and benefit. Relative to this, there seems to also be a thread running between my self and some very wise people who can translate, even to a relatively dense human being like me, exactly what that mystical bird symbolizes. These wise folk can make a complex concept more easily understandable.

Millions of people everywhere are consciously enjoying these types of connections. Folks of every conceivable nationality, occupation, and spiritual tradition receive transmissions of energy and information from who or whatever their teachers may be.

These teachers offer this information openly. They send it out like the sun sends out its warmth and light—but have no control over whether folks choose to receive that warmth and light or shiver in the shadows. The quality of attention paid by the student is at least as important as who the teacher is.

Teachings may come through exemplars such as Jesus and Buddha, or through a pony’s ass or an alfalfa sprout. The lesson to be learned is within the student. Anything or anyone is potentially a catalyst, a vehicle, that opens up a deep mental circuit for us.

The frames of reference, language, and nuance that all these catalysts are carried on can vary greatly according to the needs of the individual student. They consider the unique receptive abilities and disabilities, the habituations of cultural programming, and the reflective tendencies of the student. The presentations may all be different, but the root nature of the non-verbal information and energy being transmitted are the same.

The common denominator among the people I know to have received these sorts of transmissions seems to be a simple but active motivation. If you have a deep inclination to transmute harm into help and be of benefit to others—whether they live next door, on the other side of the world, or in the Twilight Zone—you will eventually be connected with the sources of energy and information that will assist your effort. If your motivation is less altruistic, you may be in for a bumpier ride. Contact with these sources seems to be a matter of continuously asking for it through action as much as word, then persevering (maintaining direction, strength of conviction, and determination) until assistance arrives.

Another thing seems apparent. Teachers aren’t only teachers. They were, and usually continue to be, students themselves. In Lincoln, Vermont, I saw evidence of a very strong thread running between a modern-era Lama/mystic and a legendary teacher of a thousand years ago. Almost everyone with any knowledge of Tibetan Buddhism is familiar with the famous teacher of a thousand years ago. The modern-era teacher is nowhere near as well known.

My text book research of this modern teacher says that Lama Kunsang Dechen Lingpa Rinpoche is considered to be a “treasure revealer.” I have to disagree with my own research. All personal experience tells me that the man, himself, is a treasure. p.s. There may also be a connection running between what we commonly know as time-and-space, and a pathway to detour them—but that’s another story.

Not There Yet

March 22, 2021 by fearlesspuppy

I hope you are happy and healthy. I am still in Kathmandu, currently coming back from a severe dog bite, a few weeks of loose-stomach problems that fried my brain with dehydration, and attempting to recover from it all with construction noise in the apartment beneath me that sounded like an industrial jack hammer performing a lobotomy through a skull with a thick steel plate in it. The experience has turned me into a mildly shell-shocked, part-time short-tempered asshole. I have now moved back to the lovely Pema Boutique Hotel, into a room that is quieter and more amenable. Rapid progress is being made both mentally and physically. Meanwhile, the following seems to be an appropriate post—and will be a piece within the new book-in-progress. I hope it gives you a good laugh. Laughter, as the old saying goes, may well be the best medicine. Back to more about Love, Dharma, Nuns, and Lamas next week.
Be well. Love, Tenzin
***p.s. As always, if you find these weekly bits bothersome, let me know and I’ll stop sending them to you. If you find the reading at all enjoyable, please—it literally takes only seconds—click one or more or all of the highlighted backlinks following this paragraph. This simple process is completely without risk, cost, or difficulty. All it does is bring you to the site that is highlighted. Each click is a big help in pushing Fearless Puppy up in the Google rankings. Whether you browse the sites or close the windows immediately, your help has been delivered when you click. Thank you! FEARLESS PUPPY WEBSITE BLOG FEARLESS PUPPY ON AMERICAN ROAD/AMAZON PAGE REINCARNATION THROUGH COMMON SENSE/AMAZON PAGE FEARLESS WEBSITE

NOT THERE YET

A friend of mine in America told me he was interested in finding out more about Buddhism. I directed him to the closest meditation center, and told him which day and at what time to catch the best meditation for beginners.

We spoke again a week later. He told me, “The meditation was cool. Some of the people were nice—but some weren’t so nice at all! I thought they all were supposed to be Buddhists, and be like mellow and friendly all the time!?!”

I asked him, “Does everyone who goes to your church act like Jesus all the time? People go to these places because they want to become something that they haven’t already become. They want to get somewhere, but they aren’t there yet. If everyone was already there, there wouldn’t be much need for churches or temples or mosques or synagogues—and for that matter there wouldn’t be much need for police forces, armies, jails, mental institutions, or many other unfortunate things.”

His eyes opened wide with sudden revelation. It never occurred to him that everyone going to a Buddhist center was not a Buddha! He is not alone in this innocent ignorance.

Many folks take it for granted that people within their own faith have, to say the least, not attained the exalted spiritual stature of their icons. They figure that falling short of the spiritual high mark is a sign of normalcy, and that being forgiven for this comes with the package. But for some reason it is harder for many folks to accept it when adherents of other faiths aren’t successfully living up to their own creeds. In my experience, this judgment is heaped upon the Buddhists more than it is heaped upon the followers of any other faith. Perhaps it is Buddha’s serenity, reputation for unsurpassed wisdom, and the mystical, exotic nature of the East that makes people in this troubled world think that every sheep in the flock is actually wearing The Buddha’s wool.

I think I can help here. I think I can do my little part to put an end to that misconception. Here is something that proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that I am definitely a not-there-yet Buddhist. These are a couple of short bits from the very short section (only these two pieces!) of the new book-in-progress. I call the section, Better Pissed Off Than Pissed On. You may notice that both bits are in a general style and rhythm that I have to thank Jeff Foxworthy for.

for my “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” friends You Might Be A…

If you are a woman (or a man with a wife, girlfriend, mother, or sister that you love) and you like a guy who says he can “grab pussy” and get away with it because he is famous

You might be a schizophrenic

If you love, pray to, worship, revere, or even just respect the Prince of Peace but support carpet bombing that murders thousands of innocent goat herders who don’t even know where America is on a map while it is trying to kill a few psychotic fanatics

You might be a schizophrenic

If you think that using the words Democrat or Republican puts you on the just and moral side of any argument

You might be a schizophrenicIf you think that unnecessary oil pipelines or any other ventures proven to poison the water of your fellow citizens are fine and dandy as long as your personal drinking water is pure

You might be a schizophrenic (and are obviously a self-centered asshole)

If you think it is a good idea to spend all your country’s money destroying strangers overseas while your own country’s infrastructure collapses before your very eyes, then either you don’t know what “infrastructure” means or

You might be a schizophrenic (and are probably a bit slow-witted too)

If you tell me I can’t speak whatever way I want to speak about a country that constantly brags about “giving” its citizens “the right” to free speech

You are very obviously a schizophrenicIf you worship a God that hates the same people you do You are the text-book definition of schizophrenic

If you are writing about how life in America has gotten schizophrenic instead of having fun and helping to make things better in whatever way you can

You may be discovering just how contagious schizophrenia can be

Go Fuck Yourself
If you think some mythical cartoon character from someone else’s ancient imagination is going to ride in on a white horse or fly in on a cloud at the last minute to save us from the results of things we knew all along were wrong but kept on doing anyway,

go fuck yourself.

If you care when The Cowboys are torturing The Redskins on the football field but don’t care that it happened in real life,

go fuck yourself.

If these phrases are part of your life: “Ethics don’t apply to business,” “That’s just the way it is,” “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em,”

go fuck yourself.

If you would step over a hundred hungry and homeless people to get to a charity benefit at the country club,

go fuck yourself.

If you like Black music, clothing, slang, style, and cool, but you distrust or despise Black people whom you pass on the street—even though you have never personally met those individuals,

go fuck yourself.

If you’ve never given a moment’s thought to the difference between being self-centered (in the negative sense) and being centered in self (in the positive sense)—well, that happens. A lot of us just don’t get exposed to those kinds of notions. But if you don’t think about it now,

go fuck yourself.

If you work all day at a job you don’t like to make money you don’t need to buy things you don’t want in order to impress people you don’t really care about,

well, you’ve already fucked yourself.

If you are the kind of person who would put a venomous chapter called “Go Fuck Yourself” in what is otherwise a perfectly good book,

go fuck yourself.

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Tag Archives: self-determination

San Jose, Costa Rica–Spiders on Acid

The Bizarre Costa Rican Pura Vida Metaphysical, Metaphorical Death and Reincarnation of the Fearless Puppy

Defeating The Bait & Switch

The Society For Creative Maladjustment

A Nice Slice of Paradise on the Nepali Riviera

Genius Clowns and Silver Tongued Uncles

Is Big Bird a God?

The Treasures At Our Fingertips

Not There Yet

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