Friday, March 7, 2014

Fake Advice Column #2

Dear Fake Advice Column,
Are you for real?
Signed,
No fool

Dear Fool,
No. Can you read?
Love,
Fake Advice Column

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Dear Fake Advice Column,
I am sick of all the things I have to do. How do I make life less work and more play?
Signed, 
Dull

Dear Dull,
How should I know?
Love,
Fake Advice Column

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Dear Fake Advice Column,
I am a Zen student, and I like sex. I like drugs. I like rock and roll. I have many attachments to and desires for these and other things. Do I have to give it all up to be enlightened? That seems like a lot of work! And, why would I want to? Honestly, it reminds me of Catholicism and Lent. Why, why? What was I thinking when I did this Zen thing anyway?
Signed,
Zen wannabe

Dear Zen wannabe,
This conflict of which you speak is a big pet peeve of mine, since this particular misunderstanding of Zen is
A) kind of dumb and
B) perpetuated by white male hetero American Buddhists and
C) demonizes pleasure and natural emotions (especially sexual and intimate ones) in a very Judeo-Christian way that is NOT related to Buddhist belief and is NOT cute and is, furthermore, supremely unoriginal. The actual Zen idea of non-attachment, in my opinion, is much like its concept of being free from desire. As in: to be free, we surrender to attachment completely. We let ourselves attach to everyone and everything. We attach so hard that we become the attachment, until there is only the attachment, and we disappear within it, and that is real connection, and it is beautiful. When we lose ourselves in the intimacy, and what/whomever we're with does the same. We don't run around trying not to desire anything. We give in to it so wholly that we become desire. We don't experience these things. We become them. That is the essence of Buddhist belief and what I find helpful in it as a spirituality. Our ego and self disappear in our experience. And we strive for this because it feels good.

In one Zen koan I love, a Zen student says to the Zen master upon seeing him weeping over a starved fawn, 
"Master, why do you cry for the fawn? You shouldn't be attached to it." 

Zen master says, "no, you don't understand. The fawn was hungry because it lost its mother. So I went to many nearby villages asking for milk to give to the fawn. But no one would give me any. I went to so many homes, asking for milk. When I came back with nothing, the fawn had starved. But I don't cry for the fawn. I cry for myself. I am hungry. I want my mother. I need milk."

Because, like, he became the fawn.
Cool, no?

I think so. Trying to know the nature of attachments and desire by getting rid of them is wrong. Freedom doesn't mean absence, knowing doesn't mean being--those are very different things.

Love,
Fake Advice Column

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Dear Fake Advice Column,
I am distraught and in a misery of despair. My brother has stolen my true love away! Do I slash his tires? Drink all of his beer? Make an oragami voodoo doll and set it on fire with all the hatred of my black, black heart? Eat some junk food?
Signed,
Sad, not angry 

Dear Sad,
I must admit I don't understand your question. Furthermore, monogamy--blargh! Please do not offend my ears (eyes? Since I am reading?) with such drivel. Why can't you share? Did you not learn to do so as young siblings? 

No matter. Here is what you must do:
1) Find a device that plays music and has a dial for the volume control, instead of buttons. (In a Subaru, perhaps?)
2) Play "Rewind" by Rascal Flatts, at volume of 20 or so.
3) Put your fingers on that volume dial.
4) When it gets to 35 seconds, crank it up to 40, hard and fast.

There, now. Doesn't that feel better?
Love,
Fake Advice Column

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Dear Fake Advice Column,
We know who you are!
Signed,
Know it alls

Dear Know it alls,
No. I am not the mommy whose blog this is. I just rent the space, but I am not she! We have similar ideas, as it happens, on Buddhism and monogamy and Subarus and Rascal Flatts, but that is just because those are the only sensible opinions to have. She's a teacher who drinks wine (yawn), whereas I am a mythical old queen who loves a gimlet and blanches in the sun. She will spend all day at the beach and cannot handle her liquor. My beauty shan't ever wither with age nor storm nor sun, nor the world's great savagery. Hers is fading, and fast. She eats things I would not even deign to touch. We are as different as we are similar. The same, not the same. And this advice column is not here. It is the place within a place where we can say whatever we want because we are hidden inside one another. Don't you wish you had a place like that?

So, no, bitches, you do not know who I am.

Love,
Fake Advice Column