The Buddha is my homeboy

There is no need for temples, no need for complicated philosophies. My brain and my heart are my temples; my philosophy is kindness.
--His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama


Fig. 1 Dharma punk

There are as many slight variations to the Buddha’s life story and initial enlightenment as there are schools of thought, and technically, since there are as many schools of thought as there are people who perceive them, and all can be considered equally valid, I’ll equally do no justice to all except one: Mine.

Siddartha Gautama was born into a ruling Hindu family in India around the fifth century BCE. His mother Mahamaya had a dream that a white elephant entered her womb through a slit in her right side. Everyone she told about this dream flipped out, saying the kid was either going to be a super awesome king or an enlightened being. While she was pregnant, she was traveling to her parents’ home and gave birth along the way, popping out a perfectly clean baby who started walking only moments later with flowers blooming under each footstep he took while devas(minor gods) sang his praises… until they had to change his first diaper.

Sid grew up with all the lavish comforts of a great prince and was completely sheltered from the outside world right up until his adulthood. His father made sure Sid never saw anyone grow old, get sick or die. Sid grew up, got married, had a kid, and one day decided to cruise around the kingdom outside the palace walls in his chariot, to you know, survey all that would be his one day… other than the curtains. I imagine the historic event of “The Four Sights” unfolded not unlike an episode of Jeeves and Wooster.


Fig. 1 Hugh & Stephen are enlightened beings

“Oy, Chandaka,” Sid said, pointing at a man on the street as they drove by. “Who’s that?”

Chandaka, the long-suffering and worldly valet, calmly answered with a polite British accent, “That would be an old man, Sir.”

Sid cringed at the man’s wrinkles and sluggish pace, saying, “Is that normal?”

Chandaka said, “Yes, Sir. All people grow old.”

Next, Sid pointed at a dude face down in the gutter, covered in oozing sores. “Ugh! Who’s that?”

“That’s a sick man, Sir.”

Sid shook his head in disgust. “What’s that all about?”

Chandaka said, “All people get sick from disease, Sir.”

Sid pointed at a corpse on the ground and Chandaka rolled his eyes.

“That’s a dead person, Sir. People tend to die.”

“Ewwww,” Sid said. Then he saw a guy in robes sitting under a tree. “And what about him?”

“That’s an ascetic, Sir. They take a vow of poverty and walk from village to village meditating and learning sacred scripture.”

“Oh, that’s not so bad,” Sid said, scratching his chin. He held up a finger and said, “Maybe I’ll give it a try.”

“Your father won’t be very chuffed, Sir.”

“Forget him!” Sid blurted. “I’m doing it!”

That very night, Sid kissed his sleeping wife and son goodbye and set off into the forest, shedding his royal robes and donning dodgy rags. For six years he wandered around, picking up some flunkies along the way. They all tramped around, eating things no more nutritious than Altoids and enduring the harshest conditions. It was said that Sid once meditated in a circle of fire in the middle of summer, bringing new meaning to the phrase “schvitzing your toochis off.”

Though he was a Hindu who believed in the Hindu pantheon, the enlightened Buddha never really talked about God or gods in general. As far as he was concerned, the Supreme Whatever couldn’t free humans from suffering to save the world(literally), and no compendium of creation stories or polytheistic parables was going to help. Sid made it his mission to find out how to stop suffering if it killed him, and it almost did.

Sid came so close to death from starvation that he realized that he wasn’t a fan of dying, so he resolved to give his body the necessary sustenance it needed for the sake of finding the Truth. He ate one grain of rice and his mendicant buddies said, “Awe, forget you, man. You fell off the wagon. We’re outta here.”

Dissed and abandoned, Sid sat under a tree and meditated for a long time. When he was on the verge of enlightenment, Mara (the deva of wordly temptation) arrived with his armies to try and seduce Sid into staying in samsara, this imperfect human realm of existence.

“Come on, man, you know you wanna make love to my hordes of sexy ladies for all time,” Mara said.

Sid just sat and shook his head. “What’s the point? They’ll all be dead someday.”

“Oh yeah, well my attacking elephants will change your mind!”

Sid just smiled and touched the earth, calling up the earth goddess as witness to his hundreds of past lifetimes filled with good deeds.

Sid smiled and said to the earth, “Hey, baby, show Mara how cool I am.”

The goddess then happily wrung out her long hair, which was soaked with the water of Sid’s meritorious actions, and washed away all Mara’s armies.

Fig. 2 Boo-yah!

Upon his rejection of Mara and further meditation for three more nights, Sid became the bodhisattva formerly known as Siddartha Gautama and awakened as The Buddha—“enlightened one.” The ten thousand world systems shook, he saw all his past lives, he saw everyone else’s and their brothers’ past lives, and he gained the knowledge of the causally conditioned workings of reality. It’s like getting a One Million-Up in Donkey Kong. Plus omniscience.

But there was no Game Over screen. Buddha was enlightened, and he escaped the cycle of re-birth, but he was still dwelling in this world.

So what was next for the Big B?

Spread the word.

The first thing he did was track down his old peeps. They were all sitting around, thinking to themselves, “We’ll show him to eat rice. We’ll just sit here and ignore him as he swaggers by.” As the Buddha approached, they couldn’t resist the plainly apparent aura of love and compassion emanating from him.

“Hey man, what’s up?” one said.

The Buddha held up his hand and said, “My friend, call me the Tathagata (one who has gone onto the path of enlightenment).”


Fig. 3 Peeps in the park

He sat down and rapped with them, conducting the “first turning of the Dharma wheel” right there in Deer Park, not far from Varanasi. He told everyone the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path and continued to travel India for a 45-year tour before he merged with the infinite and finally attained nirvana. The Dhammapada, The Buddha’s Greatest Hits, sold like hot chapatiya bread.

No one has to believe this story is true to benefit from the Buddha’s teachings. I love the story, especially the part about the earth being witness to all deeds. It’s the Pagan within me. Yes, it’s a fantastic story full of faith-testing elements of miracles and moral themes, but I’m not going to be punished in some unfathomably scorching piece of real estate for not insisting it’s the absolute truth. I don’t feel an ounce of cosmic guilt for what I believe or don’t believe about dinosaurs or evolution or intelligent design.

The Buddha couldn’t care less what I believe. I could believe in Jesus, Vishnu, Allah, or the Flying Spaghetti Monster and the Buddha would say, “If the sandal fits.” I’m leaning toward the pasta, by the way. It’s the Italian in me. The Gospel of the FSM is very mouth-watering.


Fig. 4 Yes, I have

The Buddha just hopes I listen and seriously meditate on some stuff, then only use what works. The Dharma teachings are like pennies in the change tray sitting next to the cash register at the Circle-K: take one, leave one, whatever. A penny ain’t worth much until you use it to buy gas. You can quote scriptures till your vocal cords snap, but they only gain worth when they’re applied to your life.

Proud To Be Pagan

“This religion is not a joke. We are not what you think we are from looking at TV. 
We are real. We laugh, we cry. We are serious. We have a sense of humor.
 You don't have to be afraid of us. We don't want to convert you. And please don't try to convert us. 
Just give us the same right we give you—to live in peace.
 We are much more similar to you than you think.”
--Margot Adler

Fig.1 Scared yet?

Everything I ever needed to re-learn about witches I learned from Hollywood AND the people denouncing Hollywood. How many dozens of depictions of witches and witchcraft have I seen in movies and TV? About a hundred dozen more negative ones than positive (or even remotely true) ones. Ever since I was a child, I’ve been bombarded with images and portrayals of evil witches in Disney movies, ugly witches in horror movies, bitchy witches, crazy witches, nasty witches, hungry witches who eat little children, and stupid witches in cartoons. They’re always female, they’re always plotting against the hero, they’re always wild and extreme. A “good witch” was an anomaly, not the norm.

I know America doesn’t like to be accused of flatly discriminating against a religious group by disseminating profoundly unverified and monolithic propaganda in pop culture, but it sure as hell is guilty of it when it comes to paganism. I know why: “unbelievers” have long been held up as the “dark opposing force” of Christianity throughout history. Ancient indigenous pagan peoples in Europe were relatively disorganized compared to the rising Christian population and conquest was a two-fold strategy: seize the land and convert the people. So it went for hundreds of years.

America today is by no means the homogenous “Christian Nation” many people insist upon, but its cultural influences are dominated by Christian views. Naturally, pejorative definitions of anything pagan are to be expected, and are usually informed by casual ignorance rather than outright hatred. The fear of pagans and paganism isn’t fear of evil so much as it is the fear of the unknown, and there is plenty that people don’t know about pagans, and plenty of pagan things that people engage in but don’t even know it.

That’s why I was especially keyed up to study pagan traditions. I knew that watching Harry Potter movies and Supernatural on CW wasn’t quite enough.


Fig.2 I'm here for the sexiness, not accurate portrayals of witchcraft

Broadly defined, the archaic use of the term “paganism” includes anything outside the Abrahamic-based faiths, which is pretty damned broad. Hinduism, Zoroastrianism, Jainism, Shamanism, Taoism, Native American religions, Wicca, Vodou, various world folk religions and Buddhism fall under that category. Basically, anything that doesn’t involve Moses or Jesus or Mohammad is pagan. That’s some group!

Obviously, this is the strict Western perspective. The modern definition accepted in a comparative religions course would be any earth-based religion that may or may not include shamanistic, animistic, pantheistic or polytheistic aspects. That eliminates much of the major “world” religions previously included in the list. But it includes ancient “dead” religions such as those that worshiped the Greek, Norse, Roman and Egyptian gods. The rule of thumb, so far as I can tell, is that what we may consider pagan is any religion that does not include adherence to a precise dogma or a specific scripture. There can be oral traditions and stories, or general guidelines as to the meanings behind practices, but there is no organized collection of progenitorial texts proposing to be the “word of God” or divinely inspired by a deity.

When I think of paganism, I have a whole set of images and concepts defined mostly by American Neopagans (specifically, Wiccans), because they’re the ones making all the awesome podcasts and websites. Wicca, while relatively new on the scene (it gained popularity only within the last century), has its roots in ancient pagan belief systems, drawing spiritual figures and ideas from all manner of sources.

Neopagan-based moral beliefs work on an honor system. Because they don’t have any official scriptures to read and get irrationally adamant about, they function by the Golden Rule or the “Wiccan Rede” which basically says, “If it does no harm, do your will.” Therefore, anybody conducting “black magic” or evil hoodoo should know that they’re in for a world of hurt.

Fig.3 A helpful diagram for your altar planning

Wiccan practice is definitely a far cry from anything I see on Supernatural. As much as I adore that show (that’s a whole other blog post for later), I know that the only thing they get right is that paganism exists.

A ritual (which may include spell-casting and meditation) is rich with symbolism, employing elements and objects that may evoke fear in some people: fire, a knife, potions, a wand, etc. But each one is represented on an altar for a reason. A candle flame banishes darkness and can be different colors according to the god or goddess the practitioner chooses. The blade (athame) is double-sided and represents the fusion of male and female. It's not necessarily sharp and it's even understood that if the athame is ever used to draw blood, it must be destroyed. The chalice filled with wine is the female womb, a live-giving symbol. The wand is used to focus energy during a ritual. That broom in the corner is not for riding, but for sweeping clean the circle in which a ritual is to take place. The pentagram contains five points for each of the basic elements: fire, earth, air, water, spirit.

Neopagans worship the Earth, the god and the goddess, respect nature and the spirit within all living things. They value life and freedom and expression. They’re all around us, too.

I wanted to post this entry now because it’s Renaissance Faire season here where I live in old snow-free Florida. I’ve been to the Hoggetowne Medieval fest already, which I’ve gone to for three years in a row with my Gainesville friends. I’m preparing to attend the big Tampa Bay Renaissance Festival in March like I do every year as well. It’s a family tradition at this point, and a deliriously enjoyable one as well.

Fig.4 Fairies keep it in the family

It’s a place where regular Joes mingle amongst everyday regular Joe Pagans without any fear whatsoever on either side. This is not to say that all Wiccans or pagans love Ren Faires or that the people who work there are representative of all pagans. That would be like saying ALL sci-fi nerds love Star Trek and dress up like Spock for sci-fi conventions. That is simply untrue and will probably get you mildly tongue-lashed if said within a ten-foot radius of a comic book store. Not by me, though, I love Star Trek (again, I'll save that for another post).

Based on the wares presented in many of the festival tents and booths--mugs & bowls painted with the names of sabbats, pentacle jewelry, cauldrons, chalices, even witches' hats (they have a sense of humor)--it’s pretty obvious that most the tenants are at least very familiar with pagan culture if they’re not pagan themselves. The art, jewelry, costumes, books, and various appurtenances of Neopagan and earth-based religions are ubiquitous… and completely inoffensive to the festival guests. Sure, they may find some of it fantastical and wild and odd, but it’s expected and generally accepted. The tradesmen themselves are as "out of the broom closet" as they can get at these gatherings, often dressed to the Medieval nines and more than happy to explain the significance of their trinkets.

It’s a breath of fresh (hay, pony, incense, and roasted turkey-leg infused) air.

As a backyard astronomer, I follow closely the movements of the moon and planets and stars. I love gardening and growing special herbs for my meals and teas. I love animals and especially birds for their beauty and idiosyncrasies. I love to meditate outdoors in the open air of nature, under the warmth of the sun. It's not difficult for me to understand many Pagan interests and beliefs. It’s not a stretch for me to recognize the sacred wisdom they seek in their practice. It may seem a stretch for others, and I understand that too. But if you've ever admired the stars, planted a flower, thanked God or the Universe for a beautiful day, or even celebrated Easter (bunnies and eggs are ancient pagan fertility symbols and "Eastre" is the goddess of the Spring), you know more about true paganism than you realize.

See you at the Faire! Blessed be!

When the saints come marching back

“Saints are the Sinners who keep on trying.”

--Robert Louis Stevenson


Fig.1 St. Louis Cathedral, Jackson Square, New Orleans

The summer of 2004, I was in Gainesville taking my last required summer course so I could graduate one semester early in December. It was a fun class on one of my favorite subjects—Ancient Egyptian history—but there’s only so much hieroglyphics a girl can take, especially if it’s the only class you have with nothing else to do but sit around in your tiny closet of a dorm room the rest of the time. It was a particularly lonely summer.

Luckily, my buddy in nerdiness Elissa came to the rescue. At the time, she lived with her father not far from the campus and she’d break the boredom every so often, but one hot sticky July weekend, she outdid herself and spirited me off to New Orleans.

Her mother lived in Crestview in the Florida panhandle, so we stopped and slept there the first night, then woke up before dawn to make the three-hour car ride to Louisiana. Driving that stretch in her little blue Geo Metro, switching the air conditioning off just to give the little car enough juice to get over each hill, in the Vulcan heat of July in the American South… it was our obligatory college road trip, and we loved every moment.

We spent the daylight hours doing the tourist rounds in the French Quarter, with naught but iced café au laits the color of the Mississippi River and Styrofoam cups of cold beer to cool us down during our tour. It was a long walk filled with trinket stores, voodoo shops, Mardi Gras mask boutiques, the steamboat Natchez, gumbo-serving restaurants, and the St. Louis Cathedral—undoubtedly the most beautiful church I had ever stepped into in my life. Elissa, who had made the Crestview-to-New Orleans visit before with her mom, taught me the wonders of this new world that wasn’t so very far away.

Fig.2 Everyone loves a Boondock Saint

Over a year later, I was in Orlando for a nerd convention—this one the “ElfCon” of 2005, specifically catering to Lord of the Rings fans. Connie, Katrina and I stayed the night before the big day in the hotel, hanging out by the jacuzzi and sipping drinks from the poolside bar. It was to be our last big get together before Katrina moved out to Los Angeles to pursue her career in the TV biz, and we were having the time of our lives.

The morning of the day we were to get our photos taken with Elijah Wood—a massively spiritual event for us—we watched the news in the hotel room. The day before, a hurricane blew through the Keys, and we were worried it would turn north and cancel the convention. Instead, it headed into the Gulf of Mexico, and overnight, it exploded into a massive storm. Luckily, Florida was no longer in its path.

I remember knocking on the bathroom door as my friend was taking a shower and saying, “Hey, Katrina, you’re a Cat Five!”

“What?!” she said, her voice still noticeably shaky despite being muffled by the sound of running water.

“You’re a Cat Five!” I repeated.

She came out of the room and said, “I thought you said my cat died!”

Katrina was a Category Five. And as we walked from the room to the main convention hall of the hotel, the sky was overcast and drizzly, the clouds shaped like faded but distinct bands of a hurricane. It was so big that the weak outer bands covered Orlando even though it was headed straight for Louisiana.

Fig.3 Never again... we hope

June 2008, my sister and her husband invited me to help them move to Killeen, Texas, home of Fort Hood, where he would be stationed. We were to drive out over a few days, stopping in New Orleans for a break halfway through. I was to be their French Quarter tour guide.

Not only were we to grab our beignets and stroll Bourbon Street, we were on a mission—a mission to find saints.

A few weeks before this great road trip was to take place, I was listening to the Saintcast by podcaster Paul Camarata on my computer. He had an interview with Father James Martin about his book and being on TV. I just had to hear him discuss his impression of Stephen Colbert, and I got a little thrill from the interview. Having finished that very fascinating episode, I started in on another one, just to get a better sense of the podcast, whose goal it is to discuss the stories of a few saints in each episode and even go on trips to some of the pilgrimage sites associated with the saints. Some episodes consist of the audio “soundseeing” tour of the places Paul went.

In one episode, Paul interviewed the founder of SaintsforSinners.com—Rob Clemenz’s homespun operation to tell stories of the saints and sell hand-painted saints medals. It was a fairly successful little business based in New Orleans. When Katrina hit, all the medals were washed away, and he was resigned to give up on doing the website and practice law instead. But then he heard some stories from hurricane survivors who pulled up their bootstraps and didn’t give up on their homes and jobs and Rob changed his mind.

Fig.4 Our Lady of Perpetual Help

Today, a Saints for Sinners medal can be found around Bruce Springsteen’s neck, as well as The Tudors’ star Jonathan Rhys-Meyers. Even Paula Deen, the Butter Queen, has a medal. They seemed the perfect souvenir from New Orleans, and I told my sister we had to find them.

Addresses of medal-selling boutiques in hand, we set out for New Orleans. Of course, we were headed for the part of town least affected by Katrina, but I couldn’t help but see the big difference as we drove through the city, even compared to my memories from four years before.

Like a red welt left behind after getting slapped in the face, the damage from Katrina still lingered. It seemed that half the buildings and homes and roads I saw were still damaged and dilapidated, while the other half were brand new from being very recently rebuilt. Our arrival at the Superdome and Canal Street was like coming out of a half-baked virtual reality into an isolated sector of a fully-realized Second Life island. The French Quarter felt untouched. Standing on the boardwalk nearby Jackson Square, one would never know anything resembling the finger of God had ravaged the city to a degree that many people couldn’t imagine it ever being rebuilt and repopulated.

Fig.5 We are New Orleans

In the years following Katrina, I had seen much new coverage and documentaries on the storm’s effect on New Orleans, and contrasting those horrific images with the beautiful ones in my memory of the place was heartbreaking. Adding to that ache, the subject came up in a conversation at my work one day and someone casually tossed off a comment that the place was “sinful” anyway, that if any place deserved it, it was New Orleans.

Astonished at such callousness coming from an observant Christian woman, I tried to disabuse her of the ignorance behind that statement, enlightening her to the profound history and beauty of the city, of the God-fearing people who lived there, of the breathtaking St. Louis Cathedral where many worshiped. I had only seen one part of the city, but I saw enough to know that the world would be a lesser place to lose any part of New Orleans, a city built on its complexity of human experience.

Turns out it’s not hard to find saints in New Orleans. Sure, we had a few hitches in locating our medals in some boutique stores and we did eventually get some, but the real saints of New Orleans are the people who came back. Walking around the Quarter and seeing how many small businesses made the tough decision to start all over for the sake of their lives, for the sake of their hearts and souls, for the sake of their faith that they would resurrect their home so America could still count this jewel of a place in its vast collection… it became clear the real saints had never truly left.

There was no more appropriate souvenir to take home from NOLA than a Rob Clemenz medal. Mine may have a colorful depiction of St. Francis of Assisi on it, but it’s essentially a St. Clemenz medal, Patron Saint of Survivors.

Fig.6 We are the Saints