Wake Up, America!

09/13/2026

I just hung up on a woman who was probably nice enough, doing important research on how I felt about this and that, leading up to one of the most important elections in the Republic's history. Of course I will participate. Of course I will vote straight Blue. But something in me snapped.

We’ve lost our democracy, and you, terribly polite Nancy or Susan, are assisting some highly trained political consultants making enough to send their kids off to college debt-free twenty times over, participating in one of the ugliest chapters of the history of democracy. You’re helping criminals create a smokescreen they’ve designed to shield themselves. America was a democracy based on law, not fickle public opinion.

I refuse to watch TV, but I hear the news; some weird guy in a poorly fitting suit with an annoying high-pitched voice is yelling, “he’s underwater.” I’m outraged. Why isn’t he in jail? “He’s tanking by 53 percent,” as if we’re talking about the popularity of shitty orange bubble gum as opposed to sugar-free Dentine? Let me correct your memory, idiot. We're talking about a criminal who, on the morning of February 28, ordered a military strike that killed 156 people, mostly young girls and their teachers, at the Shajareh Tayyebeh elementary school in Iran. Why isn't he on trial in The Hague? The "American flag blue" paint peeling off the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool wasn’t a contractor’s mistake or a sign of dementia. He’s insane. Where are the real doctors who’ve given him a clean bill of health? He tells us the lie that kids in grade school are subject to sex reassignment surgery (there are zero) and that Mitch McConnell is doing pool yoga in rehab, but you, “legacy media,” refuse to ask how Brain-Dead Mitch engineered the Republican takeover of the Supreme Court. He got away with it, and, hard as it is to believe at this point, he’s still in elected office. You are complicit.

We’ve become idiots. It’s not important whether or not I support his trailer trash interior decorating, or that only 28% of the voting population still support him. I don’t care if gas costs more than 5 dollars a gallon. The cost of gas in France, converted from liters and Euros is $9.60. He’s already escaped impeachment twice. He's also destroyed NATO and ruined one of the most resilient economies the world has ever seen because he paid a smart kid to take his exams at Fordham and Wharton. It doesn’t matter if 99.9 % of the world thinks it’s an open question. No one checked the facts. He paid Stormy Daniels and molested E. Jean Carroll, but apparently that’s OK for a rich guy compensating for what the Lord didn’t give him. Quoting his hooker wife, we don’t care about locker room talk with Jeffrey Epstein, whose number is not in her phone, as long as Alan Dershowitz swears on a stack of Bibles that he did get a massage but kept his underwear on. Oh, yes, it’s an open secret that Melania got paid for sex work, but like other people of that income bracket, she no longer actually does the dirty work herself, but still wears the heels. Come on! She may have the title First Lady, but the receipts still exist.

Poor Susan or Nancy thought I’d tell them where I stood on these important matters and become a statistic so that the guy jumping around CNN had more up-to-the-minute numbers proving that Trump’s tanked.

There’s plenty of blame to go around. I’m not excusing anyone, myself included. But if I’m going to go down with the ship, I’m not singing the Star-Spangled Banner. I’ll still be screaming that he never was a stable genius. Wake up, America.

Feed the hungry ghosts! Stop feeding greed!

I was part of more Zen ceremonies to appease hungry ghosts than seems reasonable for one struggling human. For five years, food offerings, incense, and chanting were part of every funeral during the AIDS pandemic at Maitri Hospice and Hartford Street Zen Center, and we did more than our share. Our procession included plates of fruit, sweets, and tea, as well as the ashes of the poor soul, appropriate gongs, bells, drums, rattles, and weird noise makers. The incense burner was chock full of the sweetest incense over thick glowing charcoal,

Haloween 

October 29th, 2011

Tonight the Castro will be crawling with lots of hot guys all dressed up. Included will be ghouls and ghosts of Halloweens past, present, and future! To mark the event, I am republishing a post I wrote for "spiritually incorrect" several years ago.

 

Years ago, our PZI meditation group worked with the koan, Save the Ghost. I began my own investigation by examining, with the true dharma eye, some of the more domesticated members of the ghost family—the ones hidden in my closet—spiritual versions of the Adams family, though with more insidious, annoying, painful bugs and tricks, plus a big dose of Freud.

This morning, as I was settling into my comfortable routine, checking email and editing yesterday’s writing, a far more vicious and pervasive monster trumped onto the stage, a Godzilla on steroids breathing fire hot enough to destroy little ol' me and my fantasy world with one big blow. It made its entrance with the announcement that the United States Senate could not find the votes, being too distracted by other important matters, making it "impossible" to pass any legislation to curb the continuing environmental degradation of the planet we all share. Hell no!

Actions speak louder than words! I’m issuing an immediate attention action alert to all Buddhists: Feed the hungry ghosts! Stop feeding greed! Remember that greed is not outside you or me. Own it or die.

Firstly, the oil spill, then the hand-wringing, then the brouhaha, then today the news that Congress will not pass an environmental bill (you’re kidding, right?), then the conflagration of billions of dollars of wealth (well, they say it’s just on paper—until you have to pay the grocer) in milliseconds because we have learned to grab so fast!

My mind- no, my gut drags me into dark thoughts about the greed that seems embedded in our culture, in the artifacts of modern life. We have created these monsters that feed on our greedy dark side. Starve them to death, or at least put them on Jenny Craig, which might be worse.

The Buddhist world has traditional remedies for dealing with powerful ghosts. Christian mythology has fallen angels to contend with. In Buddhism, these nasty, powerful beast-gods, through the power of blessed bodhicitta, the mind of enlightenment, convert to the Way and become our guardians. The well-known Mahakala is this black protector with four arms and dripping skulls cinched round its belly.

My attention has recently been so focused on meditation and the images we use, hold, carry, and create that I searched for images of hungry ghosts. Almost immediately, I began to imagine that maybe I could concoct my own magical Tibetan-style visualization to help start the letting go, stamping out the destructive little mind.

I don't have much more to say. I’m just throwing my thought-concerns into the fire of the koan, along with some images that grabbed me. Am I done?

I found images of our phantoms and then tried to match them with what other Buddhist cultures have created by way of appeasements.

No, there is more! And yes, when I said, “other.” I came to the sudden realization that we spend far too much time whining and groaning, complaining and attacking the "other," trying to get some Asian recipe right as if that would save our skin. Goddamn, shut up, eat your hamburgers, eat your tofu burgers, then sit-stand-shout, “Thanks, ancestors, now here’s what we’re going to do.” We have to fill in the blanks ourselves.

America stands at the center of this man-made crisis. Are we going to be responsible? Or are we going to duck for cover under lovely Buddhist robes? The choice is ours, not some god's.

I could get behind creating new American Buddhist rituals to appease our hungry ghosts, though that is just a place to start. Don't let religion fool you. Actions have to equal words, even solemnly chanted ones.

When I speak of rituals for exorcising hungry ghosts, I’m not talking about Halloween in the Castro, though that might be a good place to start. Yeah, wait a minute. It certainly packs some powerful antidotes. We can't let tight-assed practice squeeze all the fun out of ritual. There's already way too much suffering.

I have even more to say. Another time.

The verse is from: “In the Cave of Sister Mary Kevin, Ursuline”

Alok asked me about priest-craft—
appeasing hungry ghosts with big bellies,
tight mouths, and one might presume assholes,
not to mention pussies. Forgive me, Sister.

The antidote contains no eyes, no ears, no tongue,
no body, no mind, no assholes
no thought, no perception, no old age, no ending of old age and death
—and no sex. You know that practice, Sister.

I knew, or at least said, more than I ought.
Phil told me that the rite was no more than sleight of hand:
chocolate, cardamom tea, ripe kiwis,
none of it really satisfying or nourishing.

Hungry ghosts think it’s dinner.
Anything looks like dinner when you’re starving.
Big bellies and big ears arise simultaneously –
evidence, your pictures of starving children in the Sudan.
Trick them. Stuff them with dharma.

No bellies. I know about greed firsthand.

_________________________

HAUNTING THE BUDDHA: INDIAN POPULAR RELIGIONS AND THE FORMATION OF BUDDHISM.

By Robert DeCaroli. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. Pp. 230. 

ISBN 0-19-516838-0.

This intriguing book proposes that one reason Buddhism gained popularity in India after the royal patronage that propelled it into prominence in the centuries following Ashoka collapsed was the connection it forged with the local populace by building a reputation for subduing and converting bothersome spirit-deities to Buddhism. DeCaroli’s source material consists of texts and, equally prominently, Buddhist sculpture. This volume continues a trend in Buddhist studies, highlighted by the work of G. Schopen, to look beyond the moral and philosophical systematics that dominated Buddhist studies for a century and a half toward the material culture of Buddhism, a project that provides a much-needed and more accurate depiction of Buddhism as a multidimensional religion. Beyond the immediate confines of DeCaroli’s project, this volume sheds light on the deep historical precedents for converting negative spirits into positive ones in both Buddhism and Hinduism, an activity that remains fairly widespread today in the popular religious cultures of India, Sri Lanka, and Southeast Asia. While DeCaroli’s skills as an art historian clearly surpass his philological skills, this is nevertheless a well-balanced account of a unique development in the history of Buddhism. This welcome and accessible volume should find a place in an array of courses on Buddhism.

Frederick M. Smith, University of Iowa

"Mindfulness is Not a Part-Time Job."

A Dharma talk given by Issan Dorsey Roshi

Originally posted on 1/13/2012

This transcript appeared in the newsletter of the Gay Buddhist Fellowship in January of 1995, four years and five months after his death.

From Allen Ginsberg's collection

The other day, somebody asked me: “Are you always working on something?” Yes, we're all always working on something, but hopefully not up here in our heads, where lots of words obscure it.

I was talking with a friend about how useful it is to me to work with the phrase “coming to reside in your breath-mind.” I’d been thinking a lot about it. It was so interesting that I thought I’d never really heard it before and was just beginning to use it, but then I realized that it has been with me since I first started practicing; I'd just actually heard it deeply.

It’s a whole way of working with your mind in your Zazen.

I hope you won’t have to wait 20 years to start hearing how to work with this thing we call the mind. People who come to practice today immediately sit much more easily than we did years ago when I first began to sit at Sokoji Temple. I remember everyone sitting with their legs bent up for five minutes, then we’d lie down and moan. Now people come, and it’s like we already did that part for them. It’s almost like we have a shared body that has already gone through that preliminary stuff; people can already experience some aspect of Zazen practice and how we do it together. But we still have to be willing to explore and experiment.

First, we need a sense of humor and a willingness to explore and experiment with our lives and our discomfort. Sometimes we can sit for a few minutes, or even a few days, but at some point it gets pretty uncomfortable. It’s also uncomfortable for us not to invite our thoughts to tea and reside in our breath-mind.

“Don’t invite your thoughts to tea” is Suzuki-roshi’s expression, which I’ve always found useful. They are just words, and we have to remember that every human concept is just delusion. Still, we use words and need them to talk about our experience at least provisionally.

Lately I have been exploring this way of thinking with a friend who has AIDS dementia; the virus is living in his brain. I’m thinking about it, working on it, and talking with him because the virus that is attacking so many of us now ends up in the brain. Is there some way for us to experience that? I don’t know yet. My question is: how to be with people who have dementia, and how to experience dementia? We all have it anyway. It’s called delusion. Mind is always creating confusion, joy and pain, "like" and "don’t like," depression. But there is also a “background mind.” That is what my friend and I have been discussing.

Sometimes when I’m talking about this uncomfortableness, I talk about the five fears. One of them is the fear of unusual states of mind. How can we come to appreciate and respect this fear, rather than resist it? Can we enter our fear and allow new areas of uncomfortableness? When we can enter each of these new spaces, we can begin to look at truthfulness.

Why do we have to sit? Really, there’s no reason to sit. If we’re completely sincere, then there’s no reason to sit. But I’m not completely sincere, so I have to keep sitting to check. Even if we’re involved with unskillful actions, the one quality we should strive for is truthfulness. Truthfulness takes a total commitment to see all aspects of ourselves and our unskillfulness. If we can embrace the totality of ourselves, we can embrace the totality of others and of the world. We tend to think about things before we do them. When we see a beautiful flower, we say, “Oh, what a beautiful flower,” but “beautiful flower” is extra. Just look at the flower “with no trace.”

Suzuki-roshi wrote, “When we practice Zazen, our mind is calm and quite simple. But usually our mind is very busy and complicated, and it is difficult to concentrate on what we are doing.” This is because when we act, we think, and this thinking leaves some trace. Our activity is shadowed by some preconceived idea. The traces and notions make our mind very complicated. When we do something with a simple, clear mind, we have no shadows, and our activity is strong and straightforward.

Even with Zazen practice, it gets so complicated. We’re dissecting every aspect of what’s going on, reviewing and comparing. How do we keep it simple and straightforward? How do we come to know this basic truth of practice and Buddhism? The teaching and the rules can and should change according to the situation and the people we’re practicing with, but the secret of practice cannot be changed. It’s always true.

We teach ourselves and encourage ourselves by creating this space, this meditation hall, so we can begin looking at our minds. “Don’t invite your thoughts to tea.” “Where is your breath-mind?” I used to say, allow this kind of mind to arise. But now I’m saying, create "background-mind."

This practice is simple: watch your breaths and don’t invite your thoughts to tea. But not inviting your thoughts to tea doesn’t mean getting rid of thinking. That is discrimination. There’s no reason to get rid of thoughts; rather, have some blank, non-interfering relationship with them. Don’t make your mind go blank; rather, have a blank relationship with your thoughts. Begin to see the space behind and around the thoughts, and shift the seat of your identity out of your thoughts and come to reside in your breath-mind. We develop our intention to reside in our breath-mind by first bringing our intention to “breath as mind,” and then by shifting the seat of our identity from our thoughts to our breath.

This all ties in with how we use this space, this laboratory. We should be willing to explore with our lives, and this is our laboratory right here—how we use the meditation hall and how we use what happens outside of it. Mindfulness is not a part-time job.


If you want to see more about the life and teaching of this remarkable man, please visit: "The Record of Issan."

Half a Life Ago

It was almost exactly 38 years ago to the day that Issan welcomed me into the Zendo on Hartford Street. In about an hour and 10 minutes, he taught me everything I needed to practice Zazen, as indicated by Dogen Zenji, Suzuki Roshi, & Richard Baker Roshi.

I was in the midst of a personal crisis. By Labor Day, it was clear that my 19-year relationship was coming to a painful end. Though my partner and I still slept in the same bed, it seemed like months since I'd been able to sleep through the night. By 5 AM, I was awake, restless, and agitated. 

I’d heard that there was a meditation hall of some kind in the Castro. I either asked around or looked it up in the phone book (we still had them in 1988). A few minutes before 6 AM on a grey morning, I went down a few concrete steps on the right side of a small garden at 57 Hartford Street, opened a creaky door, and found myself alone in a small meditation hall. I took off my shoes and sat on a black cushion nearest the door in case I needed to escape quickly and quietly. I’d sat before, even done a few day-long retreats with a Theravadin teacher, but that had been at least a decade earlier.

At 6 sharp, I heard a few clacks, sounding like a wooden hammer, and another creaky door opening at the top of some narrow stairs that lead up to the first floor. A small man with a bald head slowly came down carrying a stick of incense. He seemed a bit frail, but he moved with grace and purpose. When he got to my seat, he bent down, smiled, and said quietly, “We sit facing the wall in this zendo.” I dutifully turned around. Then I heard bells and shuffling. A while later, I heard him get up, and within a few minutes I felt his index finger run gently down my spine. Immediately, something shifted in the way I was holding my lower back. Then, after some more time, there was another bell. I stood up, and Issan motioned for me to stand to his left. He handed me a card covered in plastic with a whole series of syllables.

He bowed nine times, and I followed. Then he did the whole service himself, lightly moving from drum to bell to altar, lighting incense and chanting those weird syllables. I had no idea what he was doing, but he moved with such grace and ease that I felt entirely comfortable. Then we bowed three more times. He bent down and folded up a strange cloth he’d placed on the floor; he looked at me and smiled. Then he said, “Don’t worry. If you keep coming back, it gets easier.

He disappeared upstairs, and I let myself out. I did keep coming back. There were a few more people most times. My sitting became steadier, more grounded. I learned when to bow and a few other things. A few of the chants also became easier to follow. When I joined the 6 PM sitting, I learned the Heart Sutra in English.

But looking back, there was absolutely nothing missing from Issan’s Zazen introduction: Do what you’re told, even if initially it seems to make no sense. Sit as straight as possible. Pay attention to your spine. Relax. Don't wiggle. Bow whenever you hear a bell and see others bowing. Watch the more experienced people during the service. Be respectful. Smile. Keep coming back. It did get easier.

Issan didn’t hug me and kiss my cheek that morning. He probably didn’t want to scare me off.

Oh, Issan, you were wonderful. Thank you.