This Read online

  1. Seeking the Ox

  2. Discovering the Tracks

  Intentions

  THE FIRST NOBLE TRUTH

  Life Is Suffering

  THE SECOND NOBLE TRUTH

  Suffering Is the Attachment to Desire

  THE THIRD NOBLE TRUTH

  The End of Clinging Is the End of Suffering

  THE FOURTH NOBLE TRUTH

  The Way

  Fairy Gardens

  Acknowledgments

  THIS is all there is.

  Yesterday and tomorrow are just wounds and stories.

  THIS is not all there is.

  There is also that—desiring milk while you drink water.

  That is suffering.

  Of course, that is absurd, for THIS is all there is.

  Does this confuse you, beloved??

  Perhaps I could say it a different way?

  If I ascend to the heavens, you are there;

  If I make my bed in Hell, you are there.

  3. Finding the Ox

  Intentions

  My editor, Nancy, wisely wondered if addressing the reader as “beloved” in that first little poem might be a little too forward so early in the book. It’s a valid concern. The thing is, if someone really good-looking or charismatic were to approach you and tell you with all the right facial expressions, body language, and tone of voice that they love you, your heart would probably melt and you would feel good about it. Others of us have personalities that might lead some to assume that we have played a lot of Dungeons and Dragons. And when people like me, with our unkempt hair and our how-do-you-tie-these-on variety of pants, just come out of the blue and tell you that we love you, it doesn’t always come across in the same way as if Oprah or George Clooney or someone whom you know and love were saying it. But just because I like sci-fi, have divergent fashion tastes, and compensate for what some would call a weak chin by sporting a fairly patchy, neck-heavy beard doesn’t mean my love for you isn’t sincere.

  “But you don’t even know me!” says the reader whom I don’t know.

  Again, this is a valid concern. I might not have a familiarity with the depths of your individual soul. I may not know your name, your specific wounds, what keeps you up at night, or what dreams you have for the future. But those are all just stories. Masks and costumes that, impressive as they may be, don’t fool me nearly as much anymore. None of the aspects of your personality, memory, or imagination are the real or fullest You. No, you, the real You, are Life itself, God herself, the All in All that gives rise to stories like you’s and me’s and Clooney’s and neck beards. Under it all, there is always and only THIS—your very heart and self.

  This book, Beloved, is my love letter to you. It’s full of stories and ideas and bizarre hippie shit. But it’s also full of my heart. Because the real reason I’m writing this is to simply tell you that I love you and to remind you of who you really are under all of those stories of yours.

  4. Catching the Ox

  THE FIRST NOBLE TRUTH

  Life Is Suffering

  THE SPA

  Part 1 (2012)

  Not Okay

  One

  It’s Not the Soap

  Broken (1999)

  Shoes on the White Couch

  Bitter

  Church Boy

  The Altar (2009)

  WALKING MY DOG IN THE RAIN

  A Parable (Part 1)

  Meaningless

  THE SPA

  Part 1 (2012)

  The spa where I became an atheist was nice, but you know, Aunt-Rhonda-from-the-suburbs-goes-shopping-at-Ikea nice. Thankfully, it was the middle of the day on a weekday, so there was hardly anybody in there. The young woman at the front desk smiled and greeted me even though she probably wondered what a guy who looked like me was doing in a place like that. My appearance often rides the line between musician and homeless, and this didn’t look like the kind of establishment that marketed to either demographic. Normally, I might have made sure to smile extra big and stand up extra tall, holding my shoulders back like my mother always told me to do, trying to assure the young woman that I was gainfully employed and housed and that my credit card would not be declined. Maybe if I’d been feeling better, I would have said something polite about the weather. But not this time. I was in no mood for small talk. Just get me into that steam room as soon as possible. I’ve got to get out of my head.

  The nearly constant theological and existential angst spirals had increasingly impeded my social skills as of late. Normal human interactions like a simple and sincere greeting were sullied with an underlying contextual circus in which I desperately tried to make sense of the entire universe through a phrase like “have a good day.”

  Have a good day? I’m supposed to have a good day while siphoning off the spoils of my privilege, ignoring the tremendous suffering of the world? A good day where I kill another who-knows-how-many living organisms in order to eat and survive? What is a good day in this cruel and cold universe?

  Then I would feel guilty.

  Come on Michael, you need to show this person love, because God is love, and that love and justice is the arc of the universe, and I am supposed to be the very embodiment of that love in the world.

  Then again . . .

  Why should I go through the trouble of bending myself toward this supposed subtle arc of divine love in the universe if God doesn’t even give enough of a damn to make sure all his little girls and boys in his “good world” have enough food to eat, clean water to drink, or that they don’t get sold into the sex trade?

  That’s the headspace I was in when the young woman at the front desk of the hotel spa greeted me. So, sorry, but I was not in the mood for meaningless pleasantries. I barely said a word. I paid her and made a beeline for the men’s locker room.

  I wondered what was wrong with me. On paper, life was good. Really good actually. I had parents who loved me. A smart, gorgeous, talented wife and a beloved daughter who was my very heart. I had lifelong, devoted friendships with wonderful people. We owned a comfortable home near the Rocky Mountains with a little backyard that had a fire pit and a sandbox shaped like a pirate ship. Lisa and I had built a successful career together in the Christian music industry. People often stopped us on the street and told us how much our music meant to them. I had everything I needed and nearly everything I’d ever wanted. What was I missing? Why was I so miserable?

  I knew. I just didn’t want to know.

  My whole world was built on a lie.

  The spa had really nice showers. Double heads. Incredible water pressure. Man, I loved a good shower. I had a good showerhead at home, but why wasn’t it this powerful? Where can one even purchase such a thing? How unfair is the world? Sometimes I wondered why we didn’t all just commit suicide and get it over with.

  These showers really were exemplary though. I turned both nozzles on as hot as I could handle and stood under the unfairly impressive, nearly scalding jets of water. It was almost enough to make me forget about the whole my-life-is-built-on-a-lie thing. Almost.

  It’s just hard to enjoy a day at the luxury spa when you’re paying for it using fairy tales and violence. I was a sort of pseudo-Christian celebrity living in America. You know . . . the country founded on life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness and built on the backs of slaves? One nation under God, right? That mythical entity “up there” who watches and judges us and gives us permission to steal land and commit genocide against indigenous people. Everything in my life was built on these skeletons and lies.

  I hadn’t always been this pessimistic. What made me like this?

  Not Okay

  “Both speech and silence transgress.”

  —ZEN SAYING

  When the Buddha, Siddhārtha Gautama, said “Life is suffering
,” the world was a different place. Life expectancy was less than thirty years old, as opposed to the current global average of seventy-two. They obviously didn’t have air-conditioning, Tylenol, or antibiotics back then. Falling down and scratching your knee could easily become a mortal wound. Getting a cavity could become a living hell on earth with no solutions but the crude instruments and excruciating processes of ancient dentistry. We in “civilized” Western society today have more convenience, comfort, and wealth than anyone in the Buddha’s day could have possibly imagined. Still, despite all of the luxuries and conveniences of modern life like accessible food, clean water, cars, chiropractors, therapists, Wi-Fi, and marijuana-infused gummy bears, most of us are still drowning in suffering.

  Of course, most readers of this book are probably not currently living in the “Oh God, a bear is eating my arm!” realms of suffering, or else they would likely and wisely be spending their attention elsewhere. Those with the time, resources, education, and ability to sit down and read a book have been afforded a level of privilege that most other people through history have not. Still, let’s be honest with ourselves—the Netflix binging isn’t working as well as we’d hoped. We’re destroying the planet’s ability to sustain life. We hate each other. We are afraid. We are ashamed of our bodies and not at home in our own skin. Even if we have the means to avoid the loud versions of suffering like agony or terror, most of us still dwell in duller forms of suffering like depression, anxiety, apathy, or boredom.

  Though most of us would much prefer an emotion like boredom over, say, anguish, they both are born of suffering, and both keep us from living a vibrant, full life. It’s like eating sand rather than rusty nails. Despite the conveniences that come with a world that has gotten so good at sanitizing death and anesthetizing pain, so many of us still do not live full and satisfied lives. The material suffering of the privileged may be paler and duller than of those whose bodies fuel their luxury, but mental suffering is not bound to class, race, gender, age—a life devoid of color, of love, of joy takes place across the human spectrum. So many of us have central heating and iPhones, but we still can’t see the magic of spinning on a blue orb hurtling through space at thousands of miles an hour around a giant burning ball of fusing gases. We live with access to clean water and public education but we fail to notice the absurdity and wonder of all of the space-time and electricity and puffy white clouds and cargo pants and sour bubble gum. We don’t hear the music in a bird’s song. We don’t stop to listen to the wisdom of the old oak tree. We don’t feel the gravitas of yet another day of the sun bathing our world with warmth and light. Every day, Earth’s atmosphere gifts us with over twenty-three thousand lungfuls of breath, and how many of them do we even pay attention to? Our hearts beat the necessary nutrients for life through our entire body a hundred thousand times a day, but how often do we take all of that work for granted? Most of us are just mindlessly running on autopilot most of the time.

  We take a walk down the sidewalk and encounter another sentient Earth being with her own pumping heart and breathing lungs and human brain, which as far as we know is the pinnacle of the complexity and beauty of the universe’s evolution to this point, and what do we do? Do we bow in reverence and amazement at this wonder of the universe? Do we gasp in awe as she engages in the millions of subtle, powerful, and unimaginably complex movements—firings of neurons, communication of nerves, constrictions of muscles—necessary for human locomotion? No, we barely notice unless maybe this particular one has huge boobs or unusual pants or is riding a unicycle or something.

  This is the human predicament. There is an endless not-okayness at our core.

  One

  “Distinctions of ‘important’ and ‘unimportant’ are surely unknown to the Lord, lest, for want of a pin, the cosmos collapse!”

  —PARAMAHANSA YOGANANDA

  I have good news for you, friend—the liberation that you seek from a life of suffering and meaninglessness can be found within the period at the end of this sentence. This may sound fantastic and absurd, and of course, it is. But that doesn’t mean that it’s not true. That period, like every other jot and tittle of this universe, is nothing less than the fullness of an infinite, interconnected, nondual1 mystery being the ineffable reality that is always and only THIS. And to directly experience THIS is freedom.

  That’s a lot of fancy talk for a period. But do you have any idea what went into me typing out the complete first sentence of this chapter and ending it with that insignificant-looking little dot? Do you know how many people had to die for that particular mark to make it onto this page? Do you know how many pig orgasms occurred to get that tiny dot to appear in your conscious awareness? Do you know the eons of evolution and revolution that had to transpire, including all the necessary cultural memetic conditioning that may have made you uncomfortable with the phrase “pig orgasms” being included so early on in a book about spiritual realization? All this and immeasurably more took place in order for that easily overlooked speck to be perceived by your nervous system in tandem with all your previously stored memory of language and grammar and punctuation. That period, dear reader, was 13.77 billion years in the making. Countless wars were fought. Supernovas exploded, asteroids collided, planets cooled and whirled into orbits. Empires rose and crumbled. Suns gave rise to black holes that ended up swallowing up suns. Milk Duds gave rise to soft-bellied guys who ended up swallowing more Milk Duds. Are you understanding what I’m telling you?

  Dearest reader, how can I explain this? Perhaps we could start by considering how that period was typed on a plastic key on a laptop computer. What amount of evolution and innovation did it take for that key to exist in this precise moment of space-time? How many philosophers, mathematicians, chemists, linguists, physicists, and factory workers were instrumental in the line of necessary work for this laptop computer to have a period key? Try, for a moment, to take in just a fraction of the amount of artistic experimentation, electrical engineering, technological change, business development, and social engineering it took. How many court cases, laws, regulations, contracts, tax codes, dress codes, and fire codes did it take? And that’s just for one single key for one single dot that a third-century bce librarian named Aristophanes thought might be helpful.

  How many other moments needed to happen for me to write this particular book with that particular period to this particular you?

  For instance, I wrote much of this chapter while riding in an airplane, but I’m writing this sentence on an elliptical machine at a gym.

  This one was written in a Chinese restaurant.

  This one was written in a combination of places, including riding on an escalator, standing in a perfume shop, sitting in a jury assembly room, and waiting in the surprisingly ornate, marble lobby of a post office.

  This book was penned from, and as, a diverse set of happenings, a series of patterns and moments that were all tied together within the stories that I think of as “my life” and “this book.” The words were written early in the morning and late at night. It was written in bliss, in tears, in heartache, and in joyous wonder, and with some occasional Duds here and there, but none of these events were cleanly isolated from any of the others. They all bled together in, and as, my life and this book.

  And what about you, dear reader? Unless you are the middle-aged Japanese businessman sitting next to me in 12B right now and sneakily glimpsing at my screen, you are reading this book in an entirely different context of space-time than the ones I’m writing these words within. But somehow the incalculable number of events leading to your reading this and my writing it have become strangely intertwined. Not only did you have to experience all of the moments that you have in order to pick up this book and read it but I had to create an imaginary “you” in hopes that the real you would eventually come along and materialize my dream like an observer collapsing a probability wave into a particle. For you to be reading this right “now,” the “me” now writing it has to imagine some sort
of “you” out there who can, or could someday, read and make sense of these letters and symbols. Who are you in my mind, dear reader? Maybe you’re a listener of The Liturgists Podcast or my band, Gungor. Perhaps you are a janitor who pulled this book out of the trash at a Southern Baptist seminary. Maybe you are me, proofreading this chapter in a month or two, feeling a little self-conscious about all of the Milk Duds talk and taking stock of your physical fitness by gently poking your belly fat. To summarize this left-of-good-writing-techniques paragraph, regardless of who you really are (the infinite THIS), your current experienced “now” is being formed in part by the now of my admittedly inaccurate and illusory imagination of your currently experienced now. Trippy.

  It is only with my illusory imagination, of both what sort of person you are and what I would like to say to you, that I’m able to whittle down the vast, interconnected mystery of my present experience into some sort of subjective, finite, manageable, and coherent narrative with which I can construct enough meaning to keep you turning these pages.

  For instance, do I want to tell you how, just a minute ago, a flight attendant interrupted my writing to ask me, “Would you like warm nuts?”—which my inner junior high school adolescent found humorous? How and why did I make the decision to write that? A few moments ago, I wasn’t planning on writing it. If free will is a thing, I could have chosen to keep that bit of information to myself, but instead I opted for full disclosure. I am doing this for at least two reasons that I can think of. First, I wanted to see if I could weave the moment into the imagined, meaning-making matrix that I’m using to write this book, which happens to depend a bit on chaos and absurdity. Like my grandma used to say, “When life gives you lemonade, there’s no need to fuck around with lemons.”2 Secondly, in my illusory imagination of you, you’re the type of person who might chuckle or at least be willing to press on beyond the normal and understandable questions about this writer’s sanity, out of curiosity about where all of this is headed. I admit, this book is off to a bizarre start, but, please friend, bear with me a bit longer before I really bring all of this home because I want to bring aliens into it. “Aliens?” you ask? Yes, aliens with really powerful telescopes that can help you understand that the world you experience is completely subjective.