I'm Not

I was asked recently if I'm anti-religion. I can understand why I come across that way. I'm not anti-religion, I'm anti-bigotry, anti-using the bible for their own purposes and ignoring all the other things the bible says, anti-using their beliefs as a crutch to get their way and most of all I'm anti-lack of intelligence.

The person who asked me this is someone I respect immensely. I understand his point of view, but growing up in a Christian dominated society and not knowing what my religion was or if I had one was something I fought with for a long time.

In my life I've been verbally abused and beaten up because I didn't know which faith was mine. It wasn't until my late twenties I found my place in Buddhism.

Those who don't understand my beliefs mock it, much the way every belief has been mocked throughout history. Those who understand me and what I've been through in my life know what Buddhism means to me and how much its changed my life.

Before I discovered Buddhism, or even Buddhism discovered me, I was very angry for a lot of reasons. I was verbally abused by my dad for most of my life, which in today's world would be called bullying, but we don't call our parents bullies, do we?

When I finally discovered who I was and what my beliefs were I began to understand my dad and his anger and my anger and where it came from and how to deal with it without throwing my life away.

But before I get too much into what happened to me I have to say this, I love my dad and I meditate on the suffering he goes through a few times a week. I may not talk to him on the phone, but I try to help him through the suffering in his life in my own way. He may not understand these words, but I know there are those who do.

I will probably never see my dad, not because of anything he's said or done, but because I lived that life as a child, I'm not doing it again. I've moved on in my life and I've discovered a peace I never knew existed.

I'm Buddhist because my life needed peace and a path to walk not because I hate other religions but because I love other religions, I'm just not crazy about what they stand for. Have you ever met a Buddhist who was angry at the world or have you met Buddhists who wanted to make it better? I'm guessing the latter.

Have a blessed day!

Reasons for What Not?

This blog has always been a journal more than an actual blog. IF you want to read my "blog" go here.
What not? started because I needed a place to put my thoughts about politics, life, religion/beliefs and other meanderings.
What Not?: Urban Dictionary Definition - a way to encompass many items, thoughts, absolutes that are defined but are too numerous to be listed or the communicator is unsure what they actually are.
I didn't know the definition before i started the blog. But it seems to fit what I'm doing with it.
There are times when I'm writing the "blog" and things come to my mind and I understand that I can't post them there, so I write a small not of the idea of the article and write it here. IT keeps things separate from the other and doesn't make my readers on the "blog" go crazy, "WTF" and other types of queries.
I love both equally, though What Not? helps me get things out that I'd either rather not post on The Bleeding Inkwell and look better on this page.

Dark Room Test

We all seek to impress those around us, whether it's clothes, thoughts or attitude. But, it's with these things we can lose ourselves in those impressions. We'll find ourselves lost in the lie, lost in discovering who we are and not ever really finding out.

Living in Las Vegas I see it everyday. People buy a certain purse or a type of shoe, or this book or phone or that car. But in the end all we are is the things we've bought. We've never found true love because we've been hiding behind a facade of who we are.

Know ourselves and finding our true nature, our true selves is what we should be doing, not trying to impress those around us with the falsities of a trend or the life of buying things we'll never truly need or use.

Knowing all along that we're never as true to ourselves as we are in a dark room, surrounded by nothing but air.

Sit in a dark room, by yourself and you'll understand what I'm talking about. No sound, no sights, nothing but emptiness. After you've done this you'll discover yourself and you'll like yourself a lot better for having done it.

The dark room test is the closest you'll ever be to finding who you are. There's nothing around you to truly think of, no light to distract and no one to talk to but yourself. Have the conversation you've always wanted to have.

Things Haven't Changed That Much...

This week we've seen the darkest of human nature. The creature that lies inside each of us has come to roost in those who conceived and carried out the acts in Boston.  The people who did these acts have not come forward and may never do so, but the people of Boston will remember the day it happened and they've come together as Americans often do in tragedy.

What has journalism become but a shoddy mix of jumping the gun and posting things that are fabrications and lies of the sort that in other countries would be punishable by death, but we don't do that in the States, because it's not who we are. We point, laugh and other journalists point and ridicule them.

Someone said that the world is more violent than it was when they were younger, I disagree. I believe it's just as violent, we just don't have the filters we used to have.

We see the things on the TV, our smartphones and internet and it comes instantly. The explosion of the plant in Texas is a perfect example. The man who took the video that is making its rounds around the internet was posted shortly after the explosion, but things are more violent now?

I remember watching the Berlin wall come down, the aftermath of Oklahoma City, Reagan giving his speech in front of Brandenburg Gate and the time Gorbachev was held hostage by his own party.

These moments are no different than the ones we see now, they're just diluted by the passage of time.

We get information faster than we have in the past. The destruction is the same, but we're getting it a faster rate than we would have twenty years ago.

Without the advance of technology we'd still be waiting to hear about these things. I'm glad I've seen the things that have happened in Boston, not because it's a tragedy, but because it reminds me of the will of evil men to do unspeakable acts in the name of what they think is right.

Americans have dealt with evil men before and evil acts, but just as we have before our spirit and our will to push on and push through to another day and to stand in front of the sun on another day, another year makes us who we are and what we believe we stand for.

Don't Label Me!

For ten years I've been a practicing Buddhist, I haven't always followed it to the letter, but I've called myself Buddhist for most of those ten years.

Last night my wife and I were having a discussion about Buddhism. She was raised in an LDS household, that's Mormon for those that don't understand what LDS is. It stands for Latter-Day-Saints. Growing up in Utah you're always asked if you're Mormon, because they have to put you in certain category. I was raised non-Mormon in Utah, which was tough.

The discussion we had last night delved into whether she wanted to take the label of Buddhist. Growing up in Utah, like I said, you're given a label, as you are in most of society. Labels are societies way of defining who you are.

I asked my wife, after she told me she didn't want to label herself with anything, what she would say if someone asked her what she believed? Her response was, "I don't believe in a God, but I like a lot of the teachings of Mindfulness."

This doesn't categorize her as Buddhist, Christian or Atheist, anymore in categorizes her as American. A large majority of Americans don't believe in a deity, they take things from different religions that fit who they believe they are,

I know my wife's fear of taking a label stems from her growing up in Utah and being classified as Mormon whether she believed in the teachings of Joseph Smith or not, but right now she believes she is someone who, like me, doesn't believe in a God and likes certain things about Buddhism and Mindfulness, but doesn't want to be labeled with anything.

This labeling of who we are is solely an instinct in society so everyone knows who we are. The problem with defining someone by a label is that person's view or beliefs will most likely change, like my wife's has.

Throughout our lives we're given labels of who we are by society, these labels, whether they are fair or not, shove us into a box. They put us where society wants us, not where we want to be.

My wife doesn't want a label of who she is, and she shouldn't have to claim one, regardless of what society says.

After our discussion last night I told my wife that, as Buddhism teaches, everything is impermanent anyways. This life only leads to another existence. That who she is in this life doesn't define who she'll be in the next rebirth, and that seemed to help her with figuring things out.

We shouldn't label people as one thing or another, they're people no matter what their beliefs are.

Have you had trouble in your life with being labeled? Answer in the comments.