How to Grow Up (17 page)

As these gray areas of lying may make me a compromised Buddhist, so does gossip. It's not that I enjoy laying a reputation to waste—I truly don't. But I'm a
writer
. I love
story
. And what is gossip if not story? It is the same oral tradition that created the best of our myths and legends, albeit in a super-duper debased form. As someone who has tried to shut my trap and felt, well,
trapped
, I have come up with some guidelines. First and most important is, whom am I talking to? My significant other? My tried-and-true bestie? I think this is fine. Do I run around sharing the business of people I hardly know with other people I hardly know? That looks tacky. It
is
tacky. You're sending out a big message to all that you're not trustworthy. And guess what—you're not!

Also, what's the purpose of the gossip? Although the individual being gossiped about may not appreciate being discussed regardless of the purpose, I think there is a difference between sharing a compelling story and trying to turn people against a person. The former is a minor sin, understandable and human. The latter is just mean. I've indulged in both and the contrast is visceral—when I'm gossiping with an agenda I'm hot and cold, sweaty and clammy, and there's a dark jaw gnawing in the pit of my stomach. (Or maybe I was just on speed. Most of my harmful gossiping happened whilst under the influence of the hot-cold sweaty-clammy substance.) Bad gossip makes me feel bad: I've given in to my desire to control what people think of each other, which is always—always!—none of my business. The
conversation sits in my guts for days; I'm hungover from it. Like getting caught shoplifting, the punishment is preventive. I don't want to feel like that. And I don't, in my heart of hearts, want to strew negativity and ugly feelings throughout the land. If someone truly is a lousy person, their behavior will doom them without any help from me. Then I can just sit back and enjoy the schadenfreude.

The final Buddhist precept I actually aced by failing: Avoid fermented beverages. I tried my best to drink like a lady, but heedlessness prevailed, and I had to cut the sauce or watch my life swirl down the toilet. Although many people seem capable of imbibing the occasional cocktail without destroying everything they love, many others cannot, and are oblivious to the fact that it's the cocktails that are ruining everything. It's one of the great and terrible powers fermented beverages possess, this ability to get you hooked, wreck your life, and still have you wondering what the hell the problem might be. It took me forever to figure out I was an alcoholic—fighting every night with my boyfriend, feeling sick every morning, a sense of hopelessness, spontaneous weeping, blaming everything but booze for my ever-saddening life.

When I was drinking, my rapper ex and I fought all the time. This was at least partially my fault. That's the thing with being a drunk fighter—you'll never
really
know if you were correct to take offense or if you were just being wasted and irrational. But one thing is certain—you'll be the one apologizing the next day. If you are the drunk person in the fight, you are the one who has to grovel and beg for forgiveness. Sure, maybe your date
did
say
something passive-aggressive, but your judgment was so busted, how can you be sure? The only hard fact is that you were wasted. If you consume fermented beverages with your significant other, be ready to spend some mornings humbly soliciting mercy from behind the veil of your dehydration headache.

The best worst drunk fight I ever lost had me hopping out of the car at a red light in Los Angeles and running onto the freeway exit, to hide out on the little slope of bushes and shrubs. He'd never find me there! I eventually left my slightly dangerous hideout and sulked down to the Frolic Room, a real drunk's bar, where the patron saint of asshole alcoholics, the poet Charles Bukowski, used to drink. I ordered a cocktail and sat there, angrily smoking. The bar phone rang. The bartender walked it over. “There's a person on the phone asking if there's a girl with blue hair here.” This was in the days before cell phones, thank God, because if there's one thing an alcoholic loves to lose track of it's her cell phone. My ex picked me up from the bar, then drove to the taco truck where transgender hookers hung around selling crystal meth. I would have preferred some speed but my ex made me buy a couple of tacos. I ate them with bizarre defiance, the cheese spilling down the front of my shirt, making a performance of how pissed I was with each petulant chomp. What were we fighting about? I don't remember, though I'll never forget the fight itself because for years my ex liked to tell the story of when I ran away to the side of the freeway and then angrily ate some tacos. He is likely telling it to someone right now. It's a great story. Drinking fermented beverages really puts you at a disadvantage in an argument.

These five precepts I have more or less struggled with throughout my life, and I expect I will continue to flail and to fail in my efforts to uphold them. And what I like about Buddhism, what has drawn me to its message and kept me there in spite of how fickle I can be with my spiritual practices (remind me to tell you about when I interviewed to join Aleister Crowley's creepy Thelemic temple) is its embrace of failure. Buddhism embraces failure because it embraces humanity, and to fail is human. It is a study of human nature and potential, offering a sort of best practices guide to getting over yourself. When you inevitably fuck up along the way, there is no old man doling out punishment prayers, as there was in the spiritual practices of my youth. There is a larger, transcendent view, and the opportunity to try again. Buddhism is just like life in this way. Buddhism
is
life.

Another famous Buddhist countdown is the four noble truths, a cluster of hard-won understandings about our shared life on earth. The first noble truth is, people suffer—something that in the moments after my breakup I took to heart. People misunderstand it as all life is suffering, which paints Buddhists as a pretty somber lot, and I suppose they can be, but not always. It's more like, in life there is suffering. Suffering is real; it exists. (Bonus—in the Pali language, suffering is called
dukkha
, which sounds a lot like
dookie
, which means “shit.”
In life, there is dookie.
)

The second truth is that there is one reason for all suffering: We humans have a hard time adjusting to reality. We often have a desire for life to be different than it is, and that hurts. In my case, I wanted my ex to just admit he was a fucking asshole and
that we broke up so he could go and date a DJ. Knee-deep in
dukkha
, I mistakenly believed the cause of my suffering was my ex's inability to give me this simple acknowledgment. The reality of the situation was, I was in pain because I needed my ex to be different. In Buddhism, when you have a problem,
you
have a problem. It's yours. When you get over the tantrum you inevitably throw about the injustice of this, it's actually quite nice. If
you
have the problem, you also have the ability to solve it.

The third noble truth essentially boils down to: If you stopped giving a shit, you'd be happier. Why did I
need
my ex to admit he'd left me for a DJ? Because I wanted us to be on the same page about our breakup. But we'd never been on the same page about our relationship, so why did I think our coming apart would be any different? Okay, maybe I wanted to win. I wanted the simple, time-honored pleasure of being the “good one” in the breakup. After all I'd done for him, couldn't he at least give me
that
? Apparently not. And I couldn't make him do it, but I could stop needing it. And according to the final noble truth, getting into Buddhism and following the eightfold path (damn, do Buddhists like to number things or what?) is the way to stop needing all the things you can't have, and thus be happier.

And so, post-breakup, I made my way to the Zen Center, a large, beautiful, welcoming compound that invites the public inside to learn more about the practice through meditations and those wisdom-sharing monologues called dharma talks. The wide hall is intimidating to enter when you are but a failed and dabbling Buddhist whose “practice” consists of a couple of Pema Chödrön books sitting by your bedside for when you're too
angsted-out to sleep. The room exudes a dignified calm, covered with a tatami mat, the Buddha in his many incarnations represented by a row of statues next to what appears to be an altar. The respect I felt as I entered was enormous, creating a fear that I would somehow disrespect it by, like, walking somewhere I wasn't supposed to walk, accidentally and unintentionally sending a
fuck you
to the Buddha. It seemed that when people walked to the far end of the room they did a little bow toward the Buddhas; the thought froze me in terror. I decided to not cross the room. Thus began my practice of grabbing a zafu
—
a round black meditation pillow—from the shelf by the door, then finding the closest spot on the mat for me to shove it under my butt and wait for further instruction. Eventually, a
real
Buddhist—someone who had taken the vows, who had trudged the long, hard road of true Buddhist practice—would take a seat at the front of the gathering, ring a little bell, and impart some simple meditation instruction: Sit like this, keep your eyes open, bring your thoughts back when they stray. Okay, go. And the room, packed with people, became totally quiet, and together, we strangers, all of us engaging with the miseries that brought us here (few Westerners turn to Buddhism because life is going awesomely), hoped this new way would give us
something
. Peace. Wisdom. A new perspective. Acceptance.

There was no end to the misperceptions about Buddhism I encountered as I told people about my cool new hangout.
Oh, I can't meditate; my mind just jumps all over the place; I really can't do it.
Uh, that's sort of the
point
of meditation. You're not special. Everyone's mind jumps all over the place—that's what a mind
does
. Meditating doesn't make that go away—well, maybe it does for super extra awesome meditators who have stuck with it for a decade, but for the average monkey-brained human who sits down and tries to be silent and still for a moment, the whole experience is about sitting there with your crazy jumping thoughts. You sit and observe your jumbled inner narrative—
Hmm, what word should I get tattooed on my neck? I should write a television show! I wonder how so-and-so is doing in the wake of her failed marriage; I should call her—would that be awkward? Speaking of awkward, I can't believe I said that thing to that man about his artificial eye five years ago; God, that was so shitty of me—should I apologize? Huh, I know who should apologize—my ex! I've done
everything
for him and he's done
nothing
for me!
And as you observe this circus,
your perception of your own thoughts begins to change.

We love our minds
so much
in this culture.
I think; therefore, I am! My opinions are super important and also witty and smart—I think I will broadcast them all over the Internet!
Our minds are everything. A good one can get you into a good school, which then gets you a good job and all the good cash and prizes that come with it, right?

More important, we
are
our minds. Our thoughts define us. When we're impressed by someone's intelligence, we say they're smart. We don't say they think smart thoughts or express smart opinions; we say they are smart, as if there is no separation between what we think and who we are. I am Michelle Tea because I think Michelle Tea–esque thoughts. But the more you sit back and experience how little control you have over your mind's
ramblings, the more your mind seems to be, like all the other organs in your body, on a sort of autopilot, pumping out thoughts and opinions like your heart pumps blood and your lungs pump air. And, like an immune system that has turned on itself, my mind was pumping out sentiments that were harmful to me. They were harmful because I believed them. If I think it, it must be true—right? But maybe I didn't have to believe in the things my mind insisted upon. Maybe I'd be a little bit happier if I didn't.

Sitting in meditation, you get to understand the nature of the mind in general, and your own in particular. Increasingly I began to relate to my mind not as the highest point of my being, the apex of my essence, but more like a rambunctious toddler who wants everything and likes to pout and throw fits—something that required my firm and gentle guidance. And in discovering this, you acquaint yourself with the mind
behind
your mind, the one that can tame the chatter, take you out of the imaginary fight you were having with your ex and return you to the present—you are sitting on a pillow, your legs cramped into a pretzel, counting your breaths. One, two, three.

After instructed meditation in the public hall of the Zen Center, I was ready to go where the
real
meditators meditated, a dark little room in the basement called the Zendo. Though I had mostly mastered the forms of meditating in the public hall, my descent into the Zendo brought back all my fumbling intimidation in an anxious rush. One does not just sashay into a Zendo and plop down on a zafu. There are ways of doing things down there. Which foot steps into the space first, the right or the left? How are you holding your hands? When do you bow, and in what
direction? How do you climb off your pillow when it's over? In what order do you exit, and, again, what do you do with your hands? There are answers to all of these questions. I'd gotten some instructions from friends, but I was still nervous. I knew I'd forget, or fuck up. In my nervousness I felt myself rage against these oppressive constraints. Why couldn't I just walk into the fucking room and throw my ass on a pillow? Because some long-ago monk with OCD developed these repetitive behaviors and we've all been following in his compulsive footsteps for millennia?