Two days ago, I was walking my daughter to the Montessori preschool she attends. I look forward to this amble - it gets my day started in a good way. We spend lots of time stopping to look at ants on the sidewalk and a pair of pigeons that feed at the same corner every morning. I try to start my daughter's day by asking her to reflect on yesterday. "What do you remember about school yesterday?" "Umm, nothin'." "Nothin', huh?" "Mm. A baby was cryin'." "A baby was cryin'? How come?" "Mmmmm, he was angry." "He was angry? Well, why was he angry?" "Mmmm, maybe, mmmmm, he was hungry!" "Oh. He was hungry. Do you get angry?" "No. I'm a happy." "You're happy, huh? Well, that's real good. You're happy. That's good to be happy." "I'm happy. Not angry." "Oh. Does daddy get angry?" "Mmmmmm, daddy happy." She shakes her hands in front of her. "You're right. I'm real happy right now." We walk on a bit longer, silently, on the lookout for ants. "Daddy should always be happy. Don't be angry, Daddy. It's no good. Be happy." "Okay, happy it is." "Okay!!" And so my daughter started my day with a reflection on the simple and foundational notion that happiness is good - and that is good and meaningful enough to begin and live each and every day.

This morning, as I awoke, my 3-year-old daughter welcomed me with a hand-colored birthday card and her natural smile.  So many precious gifts in life, now and in memory.  And then I remember, memory is now.

Looking back into the moment, my mother gave me Jack Kerouac's Dharma Bums for my 17th birthday. I started reading it many times, and I remember getting to Japhy Ryder hopping around the High Sierras in his jockstrap. I don't remember much beyond that.

You know, I never finished that book, and though I read but a few chapters into his tale, Kerouac inspired me to pick up the poems of Gary Snyder (Turtle Island) and Edward Conze's translations of Buddhist texts. More importantly, I came to value my landscape, spending as much time as I could in the ancient and rolling Appalachians and the Piedmont. Twenty-five years ago, somewhere on the Fall Line, on a granite cliff along a river, skipping school, I carved an image of the Buddha under a slight overhang, Kerouac's Dharma Bums tucked in my knapsack along with Conze's Buddhist Scriptures. I carried Kerouac's book around a lot, along with a copy of his haiku from City Lights Press.  Maybe my first act of making merit.

At some point, in university, I guess, I quit carrying the book around, quit trying to be a beat-come-lately in Ronald Reagan's America. I left home. I spent a long time in Asia. Never committing to the dharma, but never straying too far from the path. Then, I returned home and helped to care for my mother as she passed from this world.

Since the day my mom gave me that book, among all the different things I've read - the sutras, the Chinese mountain hermit poems, Schopenhauer, the Asian art books, Peter Matthiessen, Basho's haiku, parts of the Pali Canon, Kenneth Rexroth, Shinran - well, these things I've read, I think, because Mom gave me the Dharma Bums for my birthday. And I laugh because I was probably led to chanting the nembutsu by the image of Japhy Ryder hiking in nothing more than a jockstrap and his boots. Mom would be laughing, too.

I still have my copy of Conze's Penguin paperback. I don't know what became of the black Signet edition of Kerouac's book. I guess I should find a copy and finish it up, now that more than a quarter-century has passed. Though I know it ends, I still don't know how.

Find a copy of Dharma Bums in a library near you by going to Worldcat.
http://worldcat.org/oclc/23051682

I've sought refuge in the Buddha. I've sought refuge in the Dharma. But I've only approached the Sangha before. I move, often, and I have never been one to make close friendships quickly. Stumbling upon Zaadz, I think that perhaps I've found a community that will strengthen my resolve to practice, that will be my Sangha. Like many North American Buddhists, I've taken bits and pieces of various and diverse traditions and teachings in putting together my initial understanding of Shakyamuni Buddha's awakening and the teachings that flowed from that awakening. I'm already feeling that there is a sangha here, on Zaadz, that will help me along my way. There are two teachings that I have taken to the heart of my practice. The first is the metta sutta. Its clarity is without flaw. I've recently been reading the Dalai Lama's "How to Expand Love," and the path he describes to achieving compassion and loving kindness is a way of metta in a tradition outside of Theravada, but it is metta all the same. Metta is a meditation I can do anytime, anywhere, knowing that every moment it awakens, if only I am awake to the awakening. The other teaching in my practice is that of the nembutsu, the chanting of 'namu amida butsu'. It's only been recently that I've started saying the nembutsu, and I can't really say why. This blog will, in all likelihood, be an exploration of that particular 'why' as I study the teachings of Honen and Shinran. All the more simply, I am glad to be here. Be glad, be safe, be all at ease. Mike