Zombie Mass in the Dessert

This year December 24th I went to my local Catholic church to celebrate the birth of the zombie god.

It certainly was pretty.

The first surprise was that when I crossed the threshold neither did I burst into flames or get attacked by rabid Christian maniacs. No big unbeliever alarm went off when I went in.

My wife walked me through the little steps as we went along and I asked questions when necessary. We walked in through the front door instead of the side door to get the full effect of the hall. I was very surprised by the beauty of the church. From the outside the place looks a bit like a desert brick. Like some Egyptian 3000 years ago slapped some clay and straw together into a square shape and dropped it on the corner. It truly is one of the uglier of the buildings in the city.

But on the inside it's lovely, it really is. Firstly it's not gaudy at all. The ceiling is very high and crossed with enormous beams.


We stopped by the holy water and my wife showed me how to cross myself. She walked us past the altar to which I bowed. I learned later that this was the appropriate action and I was pretty much the only one doing it. I just did it because my purpose there was to honor my sisters and brothers who live under Christ. To give my energy and love to them and to support them on this day which is so holy to them.

We arrived an hour early. We'd set out early to hit the store on the way and to avoid traffic. We needed plastic forks, the one thing that we'd missed in our Christmas brunch preparations. We passed the time with my describing the various bits of the church and answering any questions that such descriptions or the actions of the other people filtering into the hall raised. Also by picking on the priests outfits which make them look terribly fat. Perhaps it's not the outfits.

Mass followed pretty much as I had expected it and I won't even bother to try and go into it in detail here. For those of you interested look up 'Catholic Mass' on the googles. They have a very prescribed system and you will find almost 100% of what we did documented there. I will touch upon a few points where it raised interesting points.

There was a lot more singing than I had anticipated which I liked, even though the songs were slightly creepifying. I feel modern Christianity has very little soul. I think the white churches could learn a few things from gospel singing churches. There were readings from the old and new testaments and a little sermon, which I'm told is called a homily and a homily is different than a sermon but a lot like one. I'm totally going to have to look that up myself because I really don't get the difference. I think it's supposed to be less 'preachy.' That is less telling you what to do and more sharing with you. 

I have come a long way in the arena of interfaith and brotherly love and I think I'm doing worlds better in the arena of not being so damned judgemental. I didn't spend much time shuddering in revulsion. In fact I didn't feel judgemental much at all and slapped myself around any time I did. I wasn't there to be judgmental. I was there to share, to offer my own faith, power of prayer, spirituality, whatever. There are monks in seclusion who live their whole lives meditating or praying for the world. Working for the betterment of all. I wanted to do this in my tiny little way for my brothers and sisters in this church.

Watching the ceremony was kind of cool. It's just interesting to watch ceremonialized stuff. It's like watching the history channel. There's a point in mass where you kneel on these little kneeling benches that fold out from the pew in front of you. It's the image you see in all the movies where people are kneeling behind a pew and have their elbows on the seat in front of them.

I didn't get to do that. What I got instead was a whole ton of pain. The guy sitting in front of me was about five hundred years old and came in with a walker. Each time we stood his son, who is older than me, would grab his arm and hoist him up. When we go to the kneeling part it was no surprise that he didn't get up. So instead of resting my arms on the back of the chair I just knelt there with my palms together. What did come as a surprise though was when he leaned back. This forced me to do the same so I spent about five or ten minutes in this position. That doesn't seem like much until you do it for the first time in years. My legs were shaky for an hour afterwards.

The highlight for me was the homily. The priest told a cute little story of some family that couldn't give each other presents so cut out pictures and told us how god wasn't afraid to get down and dirty, he came amongst us. He started the whole thing by asking us questions. Questions he wanted us to ask ourselves and keep in mind. This was where the 'Jeezusy' really kicked in. His first question was 'Who brought you here?' To which I started to go all esoteric but he clarified it to mean who had introduced you to Jesus, who was responsible for you learning of the beauty and love or whatever of our old boy Jesus. This is where the brainwashing started.


But what I realized is that I was hearing what I had hoped for and not the brainwashing that I had feared. Because as he went on about the meaning of the questions and the meaning of the holiday and what not. What was important was that for every time he said "serve Jesus" or "In his name." For every time that he said some variation of "live God's will" He said "spread love to the whole world" at least five times often in the same breath. When he said that we were called to live as Jesus did it was bringing peace and joy to the entire world.


One thing that has driven most, like me, who have been driven away from Christianity is that 'His message' the message that Jesus seems to want us to spread is apparently to spread his message. All we ever seem to hear about the word of god is to spread the word of god. We are pushed away by this unrelenting need to convert everyone in the world to Christianity. It is that creepifying homogenization that scares us and that makes us think of  Pope Urban II commanding Europe to "destroy that vile race from the lands of our friends." A.K.A the Crusades.

What I saw on this night had none of this flavor but instead had the flavor of peace and love. It tasted not of commandments and hellfire but of a teacher offering us some suggestions on how to figure out the answer to a problem and where to go to learn more.

Shredding Monks and the Shao Lin Theme Park

So I clicked on this link because I hoped there would be a video of the skating monk and that, honestly, sounded funny.

And while there's a lot of discussion about the skating monk I really don't care. Anyone that's getting worked up over a monk on a skateboard needs to get their head out of their hiney. See who the fuck are all these Buddhist for some info on why.* But what did freak me out however was THIS link to a NY Post article about Shi Yongxin's plans to _sell stock_ in the Henan Shaolin temple. While I personally love the idea of scantily clad martial arts hotties I also wouldn't really appreciate them in my Zendo.**

I understand the need to raise some capital and I certainly don't think that they should have any reason not to supplement their income by allowing film companies to film on their grounds or other actions that could be considered questionable by some. The whole sale conversion of the temple into a huge caricature of itself however is just too much for me.

Shi Yongxin claims that his interest is in promoting the shaolin temple and Zen throughout the world. However all this is going to promote is the idea that Zen is a consumable commodity. We already have enough of that. You can' hardly pass gas without hitting some form of consumerised Buddha. While this happens to some extent for Christians it's not nearly as prevalent. I think this is due to a couple of reasons. One is probably because there's a whole lot more Christians in this country to get offended by the Jesus representations than there are Buddhists to get offended by Buddha representations. What's probably even a larger impact however is the fact that it's a whole lot easier to put the Buddha's face on a t-shirt than Jesus. Just imagine a big blood dripping Jesus on a t-shirt over the caption 'Smile!' or 'Shit Happens.'

*Well, not during service.

Twitter hacked by iranian cyber terrorists?

Twitter is currently down. Only moments ago it was up but hosting only a page that said 'This site has been hacked by Iranian Cyber Army'

Which really doesn't look much like an Iranian thing at all. It really looks like a bunch of Iranian-American jackassed teenagers.

Apparently I won't be tweeting this one. The crap part is I just tweeted a post minutes before I found this. Which means if the site is pwned my password is pwned. Time to change it.

 

**update**

Very Little out there on this 'Army' Apparently they hit another site yesterday, which I won't post because it's still got the above logo on it but there's a little blurb on it here that I don't quite understand. Twitter is back up.

More about BNHA

More pleas from helpbnha.

A video of one of the Bhat Nha monastics Thich Trung Hai who is also the author of a letter to the French government requesting asylum.

Not sure how this will play out. I am constantly surprised by some of the tactics that less savory places like Vietnam employ. Not that I'm surprised about the things that corrupt governments do to people, just that I am frequently surprised by the obvious BS that they spew about it and the crappy ways they go about doing it. Like we won't notice that 400 monks have been harassed for several years now. If, say, they had all died in a 'mysterious fire' several years ago this would all be over. Not that I'm condoning it, just that I'm surprised they (the Vietnamese government) let it go this far and continue to resort to crappy poorly thought out tactics that are only pissing off the international community.


I guess as long as they continue to suck China's great red cock they are probably going to maintain the same comfy status that they have currently. Theory goes, that's how this whole mess started in the first place anyway.

Sickest Buddhist Video Back Online

Apparently I'm a dumbass who doesn't scroll down far enough because The Worst Horse posted this three weeks ago now but the youtube video for 'The Sickest Buddhist' by comedian Arj Barker is back online. I've heard the lyrics but never seen the video until now.

Watch, click, laugh.

Oh noes tha booz!

I wanted to take a minute and talk about the booze.

I drink

I plan to continue to drink.

I hate when I see all the time someone say something like. I never really drank so I don't have a problem with this precept but I decided to try it once and now I understand why the Buddha said not to. Then they recount a story where they get plowed, it makes them stupid and they get a terrible headache.

Well of course they had a fucking problem. They've got no tolerance for alcohol and then they go out with some yahoos and let those people tell them how much to drink instead of listening to their bodies like they should. Plus since they don't drink they really don't understand the signals that their body _is_ giving them. What the fuck are they expecting? Maybe they should start with one beer or one glass of wine?

Now they think that everyone who drinks constantly wakes up with huge hangovers and is just soo taken in by the booze that they can't bring themselves to stop drinking. Instead of maybe thinking that there are a couple of people out there who have a drink or two and then FUCKING STOP before the puking* and the memory loss**.

Alternatively they'll say "I used to have a big problem with it and it almost killed me. One day I crashed my car and ended up hospitalized and now I understand drinking is bad"

Drinking isn't bad. Not having control is bad. The second set of people really should stop drinking but they judge the rest of us based on their experiences. Which are wrong.

what about people who have a single drink and STOP. what about people who drink mindfully enjoying the flavor and aroma of the beverage. Who don't just plow through a whole six pack or who can take ~1hr to drink like two thimbles full of Scotch***?

What they aren't thinking of is that since they're taking that second drink usually that means they enjoyed the first one. If you enjoyed the first one, why not get some and try it at home. Or go back to whatever bar you went to a different day. See what it does to your body and then see what happens with two. Figure out where it makes you feel good and where it stops making you feel good.

OR

Here's a little idea I've been working on. Just drink it because it _tastes_ good and STOP before you get so fucked up that you start calling your ex girlfriends at two in the the morning to reminisce about the great times you had back in high school****.

I'm not saying everyone should drink. I know a few people who really are better off staying away from it. Of course most of them don't. I think that's the trouble. You never notice the people who don't have a problem. All we notice are the people with the problems. They are the ones who make the news for killing a family of six drunk driving. Or for pissing in a flowerpot at a restaurant. The rest don't look drunk, because they're not stupid.

I'm also certainly not saying that everyone should enjoy drinking. It's a beverage, if you don't enjoy it don't drink it. But recognize that if the person who is giving you the drink gets drunk on it daily. They are probably buying the cheap stuff. I can't afford to be an alcoholic on the booze I drink. Hell at ~$60+ for my favorites I'm lucky if I can one bottle a year. There's a huge difference between a beverage you can get at Vons for less than ten bucks and something truly crafted.


By the way just a little side note if you drink till you're drunk then get behind the wheel of a car you are a fucking asshole who is taking the lives of children everywhere in your inebriated, delayed reflex, lowered perception and poor judgemented hands.

Just so we're clear drunk people kill CHILDREN (and others) all over the world every day. Sit the fuck back down and drink water till you sober up, call a cab or have someone else drive.

Gassho ^_^


* Which I have had precisely 4 times in my entire life. I've been hung over 6. I crossed the 'can count them on 1 hand' line about 6 months ago a half a year after my 35th birthday.
** Which I have never had.
*** Yes I really can savor my Scotch that much.
**** Never done this. Seriously.

Volunteering

This was a really weird place to find this information.
Realtor.com? really.

I've been poking around trying to find some information on this but I have a couple of hiccups with it. First, where is there a Google like interface where I can just put in my zip code and they send me somewhere that I can help people. I've poked around on volunteermatch but so many of the opportunities on there have you fill out a form and they'll contact you.
Contact me? Why don't you just tell me if you need help and I'll just contact you? WTF? I don't want to say that having to fill out a form is being more put out than being homeless but for many of these things all I have is a name and I'd rather not give my email address to some company that is going to turn out to be in fucking Florida or something and start constantly asking me for money.

If all I wanted to do was plunk down money.* Then I would do that but I'd like to actually go and help somewhere. And I want to take my kids and teach them to help people. I really don't want to be giving my email address or phone number to every tom dick and harry that's going to beg me for money. Not that they don't need it but have you been on volunteermatch? There's fucking MILLIONS of charity organizations out there. Honestly some I'm going to be a little bit more likely to volunteer for.

Secondly. I started my search looking for Buddhist charity organizations and there's just not many in the little white bread corner of the world I live in. It gets quite a bit more prevalent as you get further into Los Angeles where there are, you know, more than two cultures but out here where you're either white, Mexican or here on visa, Buddhism is a little thin.

It's not that I want to get any special 'Buddhist street cred' or anything it's more that I'm still a little nervous about going to like the Salvation Army (who is their own church and has their own bible) and having people talk to me about god ALL DAY LONG. That kind of crap is annoying.
I'm also worried I'd end up at one where they got all preachy with the people they are trying to help.

And honestly I'm also a little worried I'd be at one of these goddy places and the poor folks I'm trying to help would go all "you're a true messenger of Jesus, thank you." And I'd end up saying something like "no actually I'm with one of those new aged Buddha Religions."

A.K.A The Devil.

And that could just go even more poorly from there. And then where would I be. Fucking defending Buddhism, fighting for Buddhism? Because that's a real virtuous thing to do.

And then this leads to the great guilt spiral of now getting down on myself for letting this bs stand in my way of helping people. Speaking of BS standing in the way I now have more.

So I started looking outside of my comfort zone and found the above. They actually have a couple of places not too far, one in Hollywood, right next door to white bread hell where I live, and another a bit deeper into LA. The closest one is Food on Foot. It's based in Hollywood and they not only feed the homeless every Saturday but then they have an additional program where they give them jobs cleaning the streets in exchange for food vouchers redeemable at McDonald's and stuff.

But it costs $20 to volunteer (which is probably an important part of how they can buy the food.) Which for me isn't a big deal but I'm planning on taking the whole family. If I could afford $80 a week I'd be donating more money to charity.

Shit.

I've already gotten past the part where I wouldn't be comfortable handing out Chicken meals to people but all the other crap is still either a pain in the ass or more than I can handle right now.

So now am I just looking for excuses not to volunteer? I think it's time to just bite the bullet. I'm sure there's probably a place right here in town that does something like that. Of course I'd much prefer to go over the hill to the valley where they probably have more than like 5 homeless people and help them. I guess I'll just suck it up and find a Catholic place or something.

* wow that makes it sound like I have money. Right!