August 17, 2020

When my next door neighbor Mike started baying at the moon a couple months ago, I thought he was a drunken fool. But he wasn’t alone in what became his nightly ritual. Other neighbors answer back with their own anonymous yelps, and one person sounds an air horn blast to contribute to the cacophony. Local dogs and coyotes may be chiming in as well for all I know; I can’t distinguish humans from animals in these primal roars.

And maybe that’s the point. There’s something primitive in these plaintive calls and responses, similar to owls calling to each other late at night and early in the morning to announce to one another, “I am here.”

It turns out that Mike and company aren’t wailing at the moon. I probably should have just asked Mike what he was braying about each night at 8 pm, but I was reluctant to reveal my true feelings on the subject, which are that I would prefer that he shut the flock up and crawl back under his rock. So I took the less confrontational approach and consulted my electronic oracle Ghoulgull, where I learned that my neighbors are part of a nationwide trend that started in Colorado on March 27 with a Facebook group called “Go Outside and Howl.” Apparently the 8 pm howl originated as a tribute to pandemic healthcare workers, but it has morphed (degenerated?) into a cathartic release from the shelter-in-place coronavirus blues.

As much as I value peace and quiet, I can’t really blame my yahoo neighbors for unleashing their pent-up frustrations, whether or not that liberating is fueled by alcohol. Well, OK, I do blame them, but I won’t dwell upon my self righteous judgements. Rather, I will acknowledge that sometimes we humans need to vent our frustrations and feelings of isolation by raging at the winds of political, economic, social, and pandemic upheavals. The poet Allen Ginsberg expressed his apocalyptic despair in his angry rant Howl, and Shakespeare showed King Lear voicing his madness by shouting his angst into the stormy night.

Venting may be therapeutic, at least temporarily, but it’s not a good long range strategy. Even Allen Ginsberg and King Lear calmed down eventually. Fortunately for me, the nightly vocalizing of my neighbors is brief and good natured, an understandable (if mildly annoying) expression of a desire for connection and community.

I’m more concerned with the mental and emotional well being of young people these days. I’m currently interviewing teenagers and their parents by phone for a smoking and health study being conducted by my research employer on behalf of the federal government. I’ve known some of these families for several years because I’ve visited them in person each year, but now the Covid 19 pandemic prevents me from going to their homes. Until recently I would hand my laptop to the kids and let them answer the health questions privately, but now I’m required to read the questions to the teens and record their answers.

It’s never easy being a teenager, but I’ve been surprised by the amount of stress that the coronavirus is causing some of these kids. Not only do many of them experience anxiety about the health risks of the virus, but their high school and college schooling has been severely disrupted or curtailed and their access to their friends greatly limited. Add to those concerns the economic and political chaos in the United States, and my heart goes out to them. I wish I could offer them more encouragement than I do, but I’m required to be neutral and professional as I administer the survey, and the telephone is a poor substitute for an in-home visit.

Almost all of these kids have social media accounts, but Facebook and Instagram are no replacement for human touch and in-person comraderie. And some social media interactions are negative and even toxic, leading to teen suicides.

We live in a time of increasing alienation for adults and especially for teens, a time made worse by our culture of individualism, competition, and materialism. But I hope that our social and climate change upheavals will eventually lead to an awareness that we are all in this together, and that we need each other.

In our local author Jack London’s classic short story, The Call of the Wild, the canine protagonist Buck suffers great tribulations before joining, and becoming the leader of, a pack of wolves: Buck’s “great throat a-bellow as he sings a song of the younger world, which is the song of the pack.” The call of the wild is the song of the pack. In our case the pack is not tribal, but the entire human race, and the planet upon which we all live together.The song of our pack is a song of grief, anguish, and torment, but also a song of oneness, joy, and belonging to something greater than ourselves.

May our journey of disintegration lead to a call of awakening, reintegration, and celebration.

July 24, 2020

Being judgemental can be fun.

I enjoy the feeling of moral superiority and clarity that comes with the tendency to divide people into good guys and bad guys: Democrats are good, and Republicans are evil. Western democracies are superior, and authoritarian countries like China and Russia are inferior. People who litter or play loud music are jerks, and those who are considerate of others are worthy of respect. Smokers are self destructive fools, and health nuts like me are virtuous.

But sooner or later, I usually discover that individuals and institutions are more complicated than my simplistic caricatures of them might portray. Some Democratic politicians are corrupt, and some Republican politicians have integrity (I can’t think of any examples of current Republican politicians with integrity, but I’m sure they must exist). A few Western democracies such as the United States, Hungary, Poland, and Turkey have become more authoritarian, and there are free spirits and open minded people in Russia and China. Litterers and loud folks might also be generous or compassionate. My dad was a smoker and a loving father, and this virtuous health nut was once a heavy drinker.

I was reminded of those complexities last night during our weekly Thursday night Zoom meditation meeting. Eight of us listened online to a recorded talk by meditation teacher Jack Kornfield, who at one point invoked the name of Mother Theresa. This famous nun, celebrated for her works of charity, is now known in the Catholic Church as Saint Theresa of Calcutta. But she has also been dubbed Hell’s Angel for her controversial and polarizing legacy of supposedly neglecting and exploiting the same poor people she served. I think it’s safe to say that she did a lot of good while also behaving as a flawed human being. In that respect she can join the ranks of other imperfect saints, including George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Mohandas Gandhi, and Martin Luther King.

Another name that came up last night was that of Red Cloud, the admired and vilified Lakota Sioux leader who fought the invading U.S. Army in Wyoming and Montana in the 1860’s. My dharma buddy Guy appreciates Red Cloud’s ability to be flexible enough to transform himself from a war leader to a peacemaker, and I agree with him. But I didn’t always feel that way.

One of my boyhood heroes was Crazy Horse, the renowned Lakota war chief who triumphantly fought George Armstrong Custer at the Battle of the Little Bighorn, also known as Custer’s Last Stand. I looked up to Crazy Horse not only because of his extraordinary skill in battle, but also because of his inspiring and prescient dream vision that accurately predicted both his success in war and his tragic death. And this youthful dream gave him his mystical name, which has been crudely rendered into English as Crazy Horse but is more accurately translated as His Horse Behaves in a Sacred Manner.

I also admired Crazy Horse because he ferociously protected his people, their land, and their way of life from an invading force. And that’s why I disliked Red Cloud. To Crazy Horse and his followers, Red Cloud was a sellout who betrayed his nation by being too willing to surrender to the Americans. Crazy Horse and others saw Red Cloud as a politician maneuvering for his own gain and status. And so, if Crazy Horse viewed Red Cloud in a negative light, so did I.

But now, almost 60 years after first reading about Crazy Horse and Red Cloud, I have softened my understanding of who Red Cloud was. Like my friend Guy, I now realize that Red Cloud was a realist who saw the futility of resisting a conquering power that had vastly superior technology and numbers. He may or may not have been a self aggrandizing politician, but he served his people well as a military commander and later as a negotiator. Yes, he was a bitter rival to my hero Crazy Horse, but who am I to judge which man was more or less noble?

I do find it interesting that when, in the 1930’s while the images of four U.S. Presidents were being carved into the granite face of Mt. Rushmore in the Black Hills of South Dakota, Lakota chief Standing Bear requested that a Lakota leader be similarly honored with a nearby mountain sculpture. The leader that Standing Bear and his fellow Lakota chiefs chose to be so honored? Not Red Cloud or Sitting Bull, but Crazy Horse. I have twice been to the ongoing construction site that is the Crazy Horse Monument, and I have mixed feelings about it. I’m glad to see monuments to men I respect: Crazy Horse, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt. But I wish the sculptors didn’t have to dynamite the Black Hills to carve these giant likenesses.

And I hope that someday we can find a way to honor the contributions of those men and the contributions of people like Red Cloud and Mother Theresa while acknowledging the complexity and human shortcomings of those individuals. They, and we, are all heroes and villains, and maybe we can all eventually learn to accept our own dark sides if we can allow other people to have their dark sides too.

June 30, 2020

Race is a touchy subject. So perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised that two readers of this blog wrote to me to express their disapproval of something I said in my last essay, “White privilege, Dad privilege,” dated Father’s Day, June 21 (scroll down to read that blog post).

In that essay, I said that I don’t feel privileged because of my white skin, but that I do feel fortunate to have had the father that I had. I added that “the biggest advantage that I’ve had and that anyone could have, other than good health, is having a loving family with two supportive parents. Being loved is way more important than being white.”

The two women who wrote to me are friends of mine, so their criticism was gentler than it might have been if they didn’t know me. Since their comments were essentially the same, I’ll let Sandy speak for the two of them:

“Your Father’s Day tribute to your father actually disturbed me. Not for the love of your father, but for a blatant comment that having a loving childhood was much more important than the color of (your) skin. I was literally gasping…George Floyd grew up with a great deal of love. He was killed for the color of his skin.”

Here’s part of my reply to Sandy:

“I agree that George Floyd was killed because of the color of his skin, and that love could not save him…But I still stand by my statement that ‘being loved is way more important than being white.’ Being loved may not protect a black person from the police, but it does greatly increase a person’s chances of having the self respect, confidence, financial, emotional, and educational support needed to live in this difficult world. It’s hard enough being black in this or any society, but without love a person has far less chance of survival or happiness. Yes, black skin color is a huge disadvantage, and yes white and Asian and Latino people need to reduce our fear of black men and open our hearts more to all black people. But Barack Obama became who he is thanks to a loving mother and grandparents who raised him when his father abandoned him. He and many other black folk have overcome racial barriers thanks to their hard work and their loving families. Obama himself has spoken about the need for black men to not abandon their women and children.

“Strong, loving, intact families, whether white or black or whatever, are a greater predictor of a person’s future than is their skin color. If you don’t believe that, read Hillbilly Elegy, the memoir of a white man who survived a family with generations of dysfunction. There are more poor white people in this country than people of any other ethnicity, and these white folk are the polar opposite of white privilege. Skin color has gotten them nothing. The best role models for white or black families are Barack and Michelle Obama, who are exactly the kind of parents that this country needs more of. If all parents were like them, our race problems would be solved much more quickly. Love is stronger than color.”

But color does matter. So does culture, and so do families.

I remember the assassinations of Malcolm X (by three black men of the Nation of Islam in 1965) and Martin Luther King (by a white man in 1968). In the summer of 1970 I volunteered in housing projects in San Francisco, helping to provide recreational opportunities for the black kids in those horrible urine-reeking mid-rise apartment buildings. In 1971 I was assaulted in Berkeley by a group of young black men who screamed their hatred of white people as they rained blows upon me. Yet even after that incident, I ended up having lots of black friends in the SGI Buddhist organization, as well as having a few more ugly racial incidents. I lived in two African American neighborhoods in Berkeley for four years, and I have occasionally worked in similar environs as a social science researcher for the last 25 years. So the subject of race relations has been and continues to be of great interest to me.

If you’re a white person like me, the subject of race can be sad, frustrating, and depressing. If you’re black, the subject is a daily reminder of pain, anger, injustice, humiliation, and danger. Liberals tend to blame black poverty on external factors such as housing segregation and job discrimination, whereas conservatives usually believe that internal considerations such as family values and personal choices are greater determinants of prosperity and happiness. I think that both perspectives are valid.

One impediment to racial progress is the high crime rate in the African American community. According to the U.S. Dept of Justice, African Americans, who comprise 13% of the U.S. population, committed 52.5% of all homicides between 1980 and 2008. That’s a shocking murder statistic. And according to the National Crime Victimization Survey in 2002, robberies with white victims and black offenders were more than 12 times more common than vice versa. So it is not irrational for whites, Asians, and Latinos to fear black men, and it’s not surprising that black men continue to attract police attention and have encounters with law enforcement that have negative consequences. But having said that, it’s also true that all too often it is innocent black men who are stopped by police because of the color of their skin. And while George Floyd may not have been innocent of a crime, he certainly did not deserve the brutal treatment he received at the hands of a cruel white cop.

But if you talk about police violence against African Americans, then you also have to acknowledge that 93% of black men are killed by other black men. If black lives really matter, then that slogan needs to start being honored in the African American community first. Respect starts at home.

And home is where, if we’re fortunate, we learn lessons of love, respect for self and others, the importance of education, and the necessity of strong families with two or more adults providing emotional and financial support. This is as true for the 15.7 million white Americans living in poverty as it is for the 10.5 million Hispanic Americans who are poor and the 8.9 million African Americans who are poor.

The truth is that all of us live to varying degrees in spiritual poverty and ignorance, and so all of us need to find a path of awakening that will enable us to get along with one another and to lead rich, meaningful lives. We shall overcome our ignorance and fears when we learn to stop oppressing each other and stop oppressing ourselves. Yes we can improve police training and pass new legislation. But the hardest changes of all are the changes each one of us needs to make in our own consciousness, in our own heart.

Race matters. And love matters more.

Father’s Day, June 21, 2020

It’s fashionable again for many white liberals to feel guilty about their skin color. This was true during the civil rights movement of the 1960’s, and it’s true now with the Black Lives Matter movement against police brutality. But while self reflection and introspection are healthy responses to any personal or social problem, self flagellation is another matter entirely.

As a white man, I don’t feel guilty or privileged, especially since the word privileged is often a negative, judgemental term that implies elitism or wealth. But I do feel fortunate. I don’t have the disadvantages that black people suffer from. My health is excellent. I live simply, but in a beautiful area in a mostly peaceful and prosperous country. And I had a head start in life by having two parents who loved me and who made sure that I got a good education in the pubic schools.

Our family dynamics were complicated and rocky when I was growing up, so I did experience some turmoil, confusion, and misery. But we always had enough to eat, and we lived in nice middle class neighborhoods. As a salesman, my dad was a good provider, though not such a great husband.

My father’s dad abandoned him and his sister when they were small children, and my dad never got over the pain of having a father who didn’t love him. So when my parents divorced when I was 14, my dad did not abandon me and my three siblings. He stayed in touch with us by letter and phone, and he never missed his child support payments.

Roy George Wigginton was the first in his working class family to graduate from high school, and the first to go to college. Raised by his mother and grandparents, he developed an empathy for the little guy, and became a lifelong Democrat. A tolerant, non-religious man, he voted for JFK and heatedly defended him when the other guys in his carpool attacked Kennedy for his Catholicism.

When I became a Buddhist at age 17, my dad was supportive. When my brother became a pot grower and one of my sisters became a lesbian, Dad accepted them and their choices without hesitation. He might have been disappointed when I left the business world to become an aspiring writer, but if he disapproved of my decision he never let on, saying instead, “Always do what you love.”

I’m glad that I’m white and male in this society, because it’s easier than being black or being a woman. But the biggest advantage that I’ve had and that anyone could have, other than good health, is having a loving family with two supportive parents. Being loved is way more important than being white.

So thanks Dad for being such a good role model. And happy Father’s Day, wherever you are.

June 13, 2020

Dead or alive, now is not a good time to be famous.

J.K. Rowling, feminist author of the Harry Potter books, is being publicly attacked by transgender activists and their celebrity supporters for being insufficiently sympathetic toward transgender people.

Tonight Show host Jimmy Fallon and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau have been denounced for appearing in blackface decades ago.

Statues of Winston Churchill, Mohandas Gandhi, Christopher Columbus, and Robert E. Lee have been vandalized this week because they have been accused of racism.

Martin Luther King, long criticized for plagiarism and womanizing, recently has been alleged to have been a witness to and encourager of a rape in a hotel room.

It seems that sainthood isn’t as much fun as it used to be.

In the past, iconoclasts (Greek: image breakers) were people known for smashing idols such as religious images that the iconoclasts considered to be heretical. Nowadays we have cancel culture, also known as callout culture, online shaming, and outrage culture, which often occurs on social media and is used to publicly humiliate, ostracize, and bully individuals whose ideas or behavior don’t match those of their harassers. These modern Puritans feel superior to and holier than the targets of their wrath, and therefore entitled to insult and abuse those human beings who don’t share their world view.

I can certainly understand a desire to reform institutions or challenge beliefs that may be harmful to individuals and society. Many police departments are in urgent need of improvement, and politicians such as the current occupant of the White House need to be held to account. Some statues of historical figures, dubbed “ghosts of oppression” by one BBC writer, may need to be relocated to museums.

But I’m concerned about the rising intolerance from left wing and right wing fanatics whose hatred of people who are different from themselves masks an inability to see their own shadow. Anti fascist anarchists have a lot in common with white supremacists, including the tendency to see evil in other people but not in themselves. Black protesters demand that white people change their attitudes and behavior, but say nothing about their own need to reduce their crime rate and build strong families.

In the Salem witch trials of 1692 the Puritans hanged 14 women and 5 men as witches, and in the red scare of the 1950’s Senator Joseph McCarthy ruined the lives and careers of many American citizens. But Nathaniel Hawthorne in The Scarlet Letter and Arthur Miller in The Crucible later exposed the hypocrisy of those 17th and 19th century Puritans.

And now in the 21st century we have our anti racist crusaders and our white power true believers determined to exorcise the devils in their opponents but not in themselves. And hey – I can be as judgemental and opinionated as any of them. But fortunately or unfortunately for yours truly, I have met the enemy and he is me.

As much as I might enjoy the view from atop a pedestal, now is not the best time to be an icon. Someone would be sure to come along and knock me off my perch. So I’ll just have to hang out with my fellow sinners until such time as I can pose as a self righteous saint and get away with it.

A self righteous saint – just like my left wing and right wing compatriots today.

May 30, 2020

Culture is more important than politics. (David Brooks, New York Times)

It’s tough being black. So I’m glad that I’m not speaking from personal experience. But I’ve heard enough and seen enough to know that, generally speaking, black people in the U.S. have a harder time than most white, Asian, or Latino people in this country.

African Americans are dying from the Covid 19 pandemic at much higher rates than people of other ethnicities. African Americans suffer from more poverty, violence, discrimination, and despair than other groups. And as we’ve been reminded this week in Minneapolis, African American men are often on the receiving end of police brutality. Black people’s grief, frustration, and outrage are heartbreaking.

But it is also true that the African American community is the most dysfunctional of any of the major racial groups. Other Americans fear the high crime rate and violence for which some African Americans are infamous, and this week’s rioting, arson, vandalism, and looting in Minneapolis and elsewhere only confirm the antipathy that large portions of the public and the police feel toward their fellow citizens who are of African descent. Broken families, drug abuse, and poor educational performance are often blamed on the legacy of slavery, Jim Crow segregation, and white supremacy, with some justification. But whether African American suffering is the result of outside abuse, or is self-inflicted, or both, it is evident that something is terribly amiss in that culture. Yes, American society overall is deeply flawed, but for whatever reasons, African Americans have it worse than everyone else.

And yet…

African American contributions to American culture have been enormous, especially in the fields of music, entertainment, and sports, but also increasingly in literature, politics, business, and the military. The resilience of this formerly enslaved population over time has been extraordinary. A few years ago a longtime black friend in Oakland informed me that, whatever their challenges, “black don’t crack” – in other words, black people will endure whatever hardships they meet, and they will ultimately survive and succeed.

I don’t believe that the solution to African American problems is primarily political or economic. True, a better economy and less income inequality would decrease the financial suffering in that community and in all communities. And political pressure to improve police training and professionalism will gradually yield some improvements in law enforcement’s interactions with black Americans. But such changes will not be enough to reduce the negative encounters with police. Rather, all of us, and especially African Americans, would benefit from building stronger families with two parent households to provide the love, financial support, and educational encouragement needed to give children a head start in life. Such a cultural shift among African Americans would be the most effective anti poverty program ever. I don’t know how to bring about such behavioral and attitudinal changes, but much could be learned from successful, self reliant, and entrepreneurial groups such as Mormons, Jews, Chinese, and Koreans. Poor and working class white people would also benefit from the same cultural lessons.

For now we have to hope that something good will come out of our current racial tensions, pandemic catastrophe, and economic disaster. These are tough times for almost all of us. I like to think that the planet is evolving, the human race is evolving, and each one of us is enduring and growing through hardship. I’m a short term pessimist and a long term optimist.

Ultimately, black creativity and American resourcefulness will prevail. And that’s a fact, Jack.

May 21, 2020

Death is headed our way, and that is fine with me.

This morning, as the sun rose through the redwoods and oaks and over the distant ridge of the Mayacamas mountains, I was spinning, turning, whirling, as I looked past my family photos at the light streaming through the trees and into my windows. It was a beautiful scene, yet one tinged with sadness.

The sorrow arose from gazing at the pictures of my parents, grandparents, great grandparents, siblings, niece and nephew, and realizing that before too long, all of them would be gone with the wind. Some of us are still alive, but we too shall pass.

Yet while I was spinning in this, the first of my morning yoga poses, a dawning sensation of joy penetrated my family wistfulness as I circled in place. For a few moments I noticed a strong sense of well being, of oneness, a feeling of eternity that transcended my regrets and fears, as I let go of clinging to my body, family, and fate. I got a glimpse of forever, and it was illuminating.

This sunrise epiphany was especially welcome in the current climate of anxiety that has been triggered by the coronavirus and its health and economic repercussions. Several friends and relatives have been frightened, angered, or depressed by what some people have viewed as an impending apocalypse. One friend told me last night that she dreads what could be a series of disasters: pandemic, economic depression, California wildfires, and an ugly presidential election in November, not to mention the ever present threat of earthquakes.

Whew!

But if you stop to think about it, none of these catastrophes are new. Well, maybe climate change. But war, disease, and death are inevitable, as are sufferings of all kinds. This point was underscored to me two days ago when friends Simon, Anne, Jim, and I visited the Holocaust and Genocide Memorial Grove at Sonoma State University. The memorial commemorates the mass murders of American Indians, Armenians, Jews, Cambodians, Rwandans, Chinese, and people of Darfur. Apparently the human capacity for depravity is endless. But suffering is not endless, and neither is happiness. Everything is impermanent.

The temporary nature of phenomena is illustrated by the Buddhist concept of the Eight Winds, or eight fluctuations in life’s fortunes. Those eight changes are success and failure (gain and loss), pleasure and suffering, praise and scorn, honor and disgrace. Such ups and downs can be exciting and stressful, a roller coaster of emotions and confusion.

Holy crap. How are we supposed to ride that bucking bronco?

One way might be to get off the damn horse.

In my daily meditation practice I’m learning to notice how thoughts and emotions come and go, and I’m learning to release my desire to control the people and events in my life and in the wider world. I observe the Eight Winds and my attachment to the positive ones and my aversion to the negative ones. And then, I let ’em all go. And instead, through prayer and intention, I align myself with the flow of the river of life, the Buddha nature, the Christ consciousness, the love force that animates my life and all life.

I know, I know – easier said than done. But that’s why it’s called practice. And hey – today that practice paid off, if only for a brief, shining moment. This morning I saw the light, and no, it wasn’t Jesus or Buddha. Or maybe it was both of ’em. Whatever it was, it was enlightening. I momentarily lost my ego, and gained God.

I don’t care about death, because forever feels wonderful.

May 6, 2020

It’s not often that I donate to a charity. But yesterday I was reminded of an act of goodwill and generosity in 1847 that is still reverberating down through the years to the present moment, a gesture that inspired me yesterday to give a small amount of money to the Navajo and Hopi people for their struggle against the coronavirus.

So what happened in 1847 that moves me to tears in 2020?

In 1847 the Irish were in the midst of The Great Hunger, a potato famine that caused a million Irish to starve to death or die of disease. Here in the U.S., word of the mass suffering reached the Choctaw people who themselves had recently endured the Trail of Tears forced migration from Mississippi and nearby lands to Oklahoma. A quarter of the Choctaws died on that terrible relocation journey, so they knew from personal experience how starvation felt.

When the Choctaws heard about the massive hunger and death of the Irish, that news touched them deeply. And so the Choctaws, themselves living in abject poverty, managed to scrape together $170 and sent it across the ocean to a people they had never met. That $170 (about $5,000 in today’s money) was distributed in Ireland by Quakers as part of their famine relief efforts.

The Irish never forgot the magnanimous spirit of the Choctaws.

In 1995 Irish President Mary Robinson visited the Choctaw Nation in Oklahoma to thank them for their altruism. In 2017 a large outdoor sculpture commemorating the Choctaw benevolence was dedicated in County Cork, Ireland. The “Kindred Spirits” sculpture consists of nine stainless steel eagle feathers that reach 20 feet toward the sky. The giant feathers form a circle representing the gift of a bowl of food for the hungry.

Two years ago Irish Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Leo Varadkar also thanked the Choctaws in person in Oklahoma. He announced a scholarship program for Choctaw youth to study in Ireland, and called the relationship between the two communities “A sacred bond…which has joined our peoples together for all time. Your act of kindness has never been, and will never be, forgotten in Ireland.”

And now, in the last few days, word has reached Ireland that the Hopi and Navajo people have been especially hard hit by the coronavirus. So hundreds of Irish citizens have contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Navajo and Hopi Families Covid 19 Relief Fund, a GoFundMe fundraiser for food and medical supplies. One donor, Richard Keogh, wrote, “Native Americans were there for Ireland in our time of need.” Another donor, Pat Hayes, said “From Ireland, 170 years later, the favour is returned! To our Native American brothers and sisters in your moment of hardship.”

The coronavirus may be exceptionally contagious. But so are love and gratitude.

April 29, 2020

Yesterday I had a close encounter with a crackpot. He wasn’t the problem – I was.

I was at the halfway point on my daily walk, in this case on the West County Trail here in Sonoma County. I had just turned around at the end of one section of the trail when I heard someone comment that I wasn’t wearing a mask. I looked over to see a man standing in the tall grass next to the trail. He wasn’t wearing a mask either.

Not sure whether he was being critical or friendly, I commented that I only wear a mask when going into a grocery store, and that I didn’t feel a need to wear a mask outdoors. He responded saying that wearing masks is bullshit and that the whole coronavirus pandemic is a plot created by rich power brokers to take over the world.

Uhhh…….Okay……

It sounded like I was in for a political rant. I was right. But I didn’t know whether I should wish him good day and continue on my walk, or whether I should stick around for a bit and find out if he was a Trump supporter or just a generic nut case. Having nothing better to do and momentarily grateful for the entertainment, I decided to cautiously engage him and see where it would lead.

As we spoke – or rather, as he spoke and I politely listened – I looked him up and down for clues to his degree of sanity. He appeared to be about my age, maybe a few years younger, clean-shaven, short blond/gray hair, stocky but fit, wearing a red baseball cap, lime green jersey, black bicycle shorts, black bicycle gloves, and sunglasses. His bike was propped up against a nearby pole.

I asked him who he believed was behind this mysterious virus scheme, and he warned darkly that I would soon find out. I pressed him for details, and he said that the panic was being caused by big corporations, Republican and Democratic politicians such as Mitch McConnell and Nancy Pelosi, and the Chinese. Well, that pretty much covered the bases. I could have suggested that he forgot to mention the Jews, but that would have been unkind.

When I inquired about his possible solutions to the pandemic hysteria, he was briefly flummoxed. Then, noticing the grass all around him, he said that grass is a healthy food, and that if people harvested wheat grass and juiced it like he does, they would be better off mentally and physically and would therefore be less likely to be deceived by conspiracies.

To my surprise, he began to ask me personal questions, and having nothing to lose, I answered them. We discovered that we have several things in common: we live alone, have never married, have no kids or grandkids, have both given up on the dating scene, and both have lived nearby for decades. He owns his home and a small business, and once we got off the subject of his kooky conspiracy theories, he came across as rational if desperately lonely. With his poor social skills, he probably has few if any friends. I felt sorry for him. He told me that his name is Jeff.

I realized that Jeff had accosted me about not wearing a mask because that was a choice that we both had made, a choice that united us, however superficially. Jeff wanted someone to talk to. Jeff needed a friend.

I understand loneliness. It has been a lifelong affliction of mine. And especially in these times of social isolation, I understand the human desire to connect with other people. Wasn’t that what I was doing myself by sticking around to humor a stranger spouting wacky beliefs? I also felt that it was my civic duty to listen to a troubled soul, and to help him feel, however briefly, like he is part of a community.

But how much of an obligation do I have? How much time do I need to spend with this guy? Unlike my old friend Alfonso (see my April 18 essay), I don’t have infinite patience to spend hours listening to a bore rave about his fears and insecurities. I’m not a therapist, and don’t get paid to hold Jeff’s hand. Yes, I want to be compassionate and helpful, but not at the cost of my own mental health. Even if I were to meet him again and continue to listen to his rants, how could I gracefully extricate myself from the situation without rejecting him or otherwise inflicting pain upon him? Maybe it would be better not to engage with him in the first place.

When Jeff informed me that he bikes this trail regularly, and that perhaps we would meet again, I heard his unspoken plea for friendship. I tactfully noted that maybe we would meet again, but that I only walk that trail a couple times a month, so it was unlikely that we would cross paths anytime soon. We wished each other well, and went our separate ways.

I felt guilty, and relieved. I had escaped from the probability of a doomed relationship, but had not offered him a lifeline of hope or connection. I was being wise, but selfish.

I think I need a shot of wheat grass.

April 18, 2020

Sometimes I have regretted spending my youth in a crazy Japanese religion. But when I remember comrades like Alfonso, I have to admit that maybe it wasn’t so bad after all.

When I first met Alfonso Generalao in the Soka Gakkai in 1969, that organization’s U.S. branch was comprised mostly of Japanese immigrant women, American ex-military service members (mainly sailors), and young hippies and students. We were joined in the 1970’s by large numbers of African Americans, which was and is a unique demographic among Buddhist sects.

We were “America’s Proud Gakkai,” as one of our songs boasted, out to save the world by remaking it in our Japanese image. As a white 17 year old high school student in suburban Lafayette CA, I met Alfonso, a Mexican/Filipino American and an Oakland warehouseman who was several years older than me and who I learned was now to be my leader in the Young Men’s Division. We could hardly have been more different, but we quickly bonded in our quest to become the equivalent of good Buddhist boy scouts.

As a child, Alfonso worked with his Mexican bracero father in the fields as a farmworker, and later served (I think) in the U.S. Air Force. Strong and muscular, he became a skilled martial artist, and then married his German wife Doris and joined the Soka Gakkai in the 1960’s. He later told our mutual friend Montgomery that he never felt accepted by either the Mexicans or Filipinos, but he did find a home in the multicultural Soka Gakkai.

Alfonso was a humble soul – humble, yet bright. Not intellectually bright, but heart bright. What I remember most about him was his incredible warmth and ready laugh. And his patience. He would spend hours and hours listening to his religious subordinates pour out their troubles to him, then offering them his words of encouragement. He once told me that we might be poor now, eating peanut butter sandwiches and driving junk cars, but in 20 years our Buddhist practice would create such good fortune that we would be eating steak and riding around in limousines. I had no desire to be driven in a limo, though that did come true years later (see my personal essay Limousine Love elsewhere on this website).

Peanut butter sandwiches and steaks remind me of a small gesture by Alfonso that meant the world to me. Due to my own foolish choices and poor judgement, I was hungry for most of 1974. I had a little food to eat every day, but it was never enough, and, skinny to begin with, I gradually lost weight and became weak, sickly, and depressed. But I told no one, and kept up a good front, because I had to set a good example of confidence and success for my fellow Gakkai members. One evening after a senior leader meeting Alfonso told me to meet him at the Denny’s restaurant in Emeryville. I had no money, and didn’t want to go, but he insisted. When it came time to order, I said I wasn’t hungry – water would be fine. Surprised, he looked at me, and then encouraged me to eat something. I politely declined. I don’t remember whether I failed to make eye contact with him, or what gave me away, but somehow it dawned on him that I was lying about not being hungry. He ordered a hamburger for each of us, and told me that it was his treat. That was one of the best hamburgers I’ve ever had.

Sometime after that, he invited me to dinner with him and Doris at their house in Oakland.

I eventually outgrew Soka Gakkai. Alfonso never did. But I did not outgrow Alfonso, and I never forgot his multiple kindnesses to me.

I didn’t see him for over 30 years. And then, about five years ago, I ran into him at a memorial service for one of our old comrades. After catching up, I told him how much I appreciated his treating me to dinner at Denny’s and at his home. He didn’t remember either event, but smiled warmly as always.

Yesterday I learned that Alfonso died this week of Alzheimer’s disease.

I am so glad that I got to thank him for his friendship and his generosity. I may have been better educated than him, but Alfonso was wiser and kinder than I am. And he taught me, through his example, what it means to be a true human being.