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.

Today I'm Changing

Change comes to us at difficult times. It can be a divorce, a child's birth or it can be an awakening.

I'm 37 years old. I've never been overseas, I've never done all the things I wanted to do when I was 17. I wanted to see the world but I let getting discharged from Marine Boot Camp change that.

If there is one thing in my life that has inhibited my understanding of who I am it's that discharge. I knew who I was at 18 and I knew what I wanted, I have felt that way in a long time and it's been twenty years.

Recently I've been thinking about that 17 year old, brought on by a post I wrote for The Today Voice that will go live onTuesday April 2nd.

I hadn't thought of that 17 year old in a long time and what he wanted out of life because I felt like I've been a disappointment to myself and to my dad, who hasn't really been in my life for the last thirteen years.

In three years I'll be 40. In one years I would have been available to retire from the Marines with twenty years in. But as change happens and sometimes it's not very pleasant, I see through different eyes now.

My life now isn't what I thought it would have been then, but who's is?

Today I make a change for me. To take control of who I am, what I am and where I'm headed in my life. I never thought I would write words like this, but something we have to write what scares us in order to move forward and make changes instead of letting them happen.

Today I'm changing!

Why I Lost Faith

I remember going to a friend’s house as a child, his mother was nice as was the rest of his family, but there was one time that stands out for me.

His mother asked if I was Mormon, I didn’t know what she meant. I was a kid and I didn’t understand the question. My friend said I was before I could say anything. I don't fault him or his mom, they're wonderful people and I still care about him even though I haven't seen him in person in twenty years.

It wasn’t until I was in my teens that I realized what happened in that moment. I had friends who did Scouts, who were into those types of things, but I couldn’t do, I wasn’t Mormon and I lived in Utah.

I believe that moment caused my first doubts in God. If there was a God, why would he shun me for not believing in him. What purpose does it hold for his believers not to let me participate in activities other kids were doing.

I realized in my late teens, early twenties that I had no belief in God. A lot of this came about because I’d been shunned by the faith which surrounded me through my life, but when I began to look for something other than a deity based religion I came upon Buddhism.

It’s been over ten years since I read my first book about Buddhism and I believe that leaving Christianity and finding my way  caused problems with my family, friends, girlfriends and eventually with my in-laws.

My in-laws still live in Utah, my father-in-law has nothing to do with the church, he still follows the Christian faith and in following his faith he doesn’t understand my wife’s beliefs and my own when it comes to a God figure, which Buddhism doesn’t have.

I grew up surrounded by a faith that shunned those who didn’t believe and I felt like an outsider my entire life because of it.

Today I still feel like an outsider, or like there’s something wrong with me because I don’t believe in a God. Those who’ve always believed in a God don’t understand why I feel this way, they probably never will, but I lived in Utah as non-Mormon and even though some people never said anything offensive to me about being non-Mormon in Utah, there were numerous people who did.

Growing up I felt like I was being punished for being who I was, for not being the same faith as everyone else around me. This is the main reason I’ll never move back to Utah.

I’ve been Buddhist for over ten years and I still feel shunned by Christians who don’t understand my beliefs.

Buddhism has led me out of some very dark places in my life. It led me out of committing suicide when I received an awful letter and it’s helped me guide my kid’s lives the way in which I never felt mine was.

My parents were always searching for their God and never thought to think about us.

My kids have no concept of God or the Devil. They don’t know who Jesus is and we like it this way because of the torment I went through and the way I was treated.

When our kids are old enough to make their own faith choices I’ll support them regardless of their choice, but my hope is what I’ve taught them about Buddhism will lead them away from a God and toward a path they make, not one that has been set in front of them.