Torture - A Memorial Day Tale

In Buddhism, there are four stages of mind-development, called jhanas. The first jhana is thinking. The second jhana is not thinking. The third jhana is remembering past lives. The fourth jhana is emptiness.
I have been to all four stages, as, I think, all people have, but we don't know it. The third jhana interested me, from the beginning of my Buddhism, because I thought, "How can I know myself, if I don't know where I came from?".
Memory reveals itself to me, with little video kind of pictures in the mind. If you want to remember what happened a few minutes ago, you look inside and see a little kind of film about what happened. But it is distorted, like a dream, or imagining things, but if it was an occurrence that happened just a few minutes before, it can be pretty clear. However, memories of past lives are not easy as that to believe.
I seem to remember my last life and something about what happened. This is a tale about that.
I was a young man who wanted adventure. I joined the army. It was the Korean War. I was a Christian, but met a Korean woman who I fell in love with. She introduced me to Buddhism. I liked it.
Us soldiers parachuted into the front lines. We came upon a Buddhist temple, and for some reason, the order came down that we couldn't take the monks as prisoners. We had to kill them. So I was facing court martial or killing my fellow Buddhists. I didn't want to face treason, because I refused an order, so we shot the monks.
Later, I was captured by the enemy, and beaten severely in the armpits with the butt of a rifle. I was put in a dark cell. They deprived me of sleep. I was drowned until I almost died, and then they brought me up, and then drowned again, and up again, over and over. I had bamboo shoots shoved up under my fingernails. They gave me ice cream one day, that was filled with maggots which I was forced to eat. They heated up a metal rod to red heat, and burned my genitals. I was completely wrecked.
I think the genital mutilation was more than I could take so I broke and told them what they wanted to know.
Later, I got out, but my own government brought up charges of sedition. While waiting for my court martial and the possible death sentence, I blew my brains out with a pistol, after a last cigarette, and screaming the words, "Help me, Jesus!"
Much of my current life is explainable, knowing or not knowing that this happened.

Enlightenment

Whenever I wonder
if I am enlightened
or not,
I ask myself,
"Well...am I omniscient?",
and the answer
is always,
"No" or
"I don't know, because
I can't even conceive
of such a thing
as a person
being omniscient
and I don't know
what it is"
so I just keep going
with my Zen
like a dummy
who is not enlightened,
and at my temple
we sing a chant
called, "Yebul"
which means
"Homage To Buddhas"
and in the end
of that chant
we say
that we will not become
enlightened
until all beings
become enlightened,
so that's that!

Zen And New Age

My Zen temple
was deciding
quite a few
years ago,
whether to blend
its Zen
with new age teaching,
or stay like pure Zen,
so we all seemed
to have a prejudice
against the new age,
because we thought
that it was too freaky,
so we stayed
with straight Zen,
but I then
sort of left
the temple,
and remembered
that once
I had promised
a woman
that I would read
a Shirley MacClaine book
and I did
and my mind
was freed
from the prison
that one gets into
with fundamentalist religion,
and from there
I have explored much
of new age teaching
and find it
most enlightening,
because, you know,
it's all Buddha!

Life Is Suffering So Hallelujah

In my view,
life is it,
it is the infinite
and eternal,
and Buddha
has been translated
as saying,
"Life is suffering",
but most of us think
that his word
for suffering
was dukha,
which means
"Life seems unsatisfactory",
to me,
so, you know,
it's one thing after another,
one problem after another,
and it gives us
a sickness,
so my new view,
which is not new,
is that dukha is a holy thing,
a kind of grace given to us from life,
because it keeps us going
with hope for something better,
some cure
for the sickness,
and I think the sickness
is not the problem,
it's the solution,
it's life.

Some Of Us Want To Hurt Some Of Us

My computer
recently was hacked
and the hacker
wrecked it.
So, today
I was wondering
why some of us
want to hurt
some of us.
I decided
that we must rub
some of us
the wrong way
and that's why.
So then, I decided
that I was innocent
and hadn't done
anything like that.
Until I thought
about it.
I once threatened
a friend
with a knife
because he wanted
to make me breakfast.
I once threatened
a girl
because she was
flirting with me.
I once blew up
on stage
at a friend
because he wasn't playing
the song
the way I wanted him to.
(and I got booed).
I once shouted
at a friend
because he said
that I was crazy.
(and he was right).

The Perfect Macaroni And Cheese

I don't know
if I remember correctly,
but it seems to me
that one time
in my life
when I was a child,
that I had
some macaroni and cheese
which was perfect.
Ever since then,
I have been trying
all kinds
of macaroni and cheese
and none of them
have quite had it,
like that early memory.
Maybe, it was only
some Platonic ideal
macaroni and cheese,
or some dream
macaroni and cheese.
I tried the box, the can,
the frozen, and the homemade,
but nothing can match
my dream macaroni and cheese.
Zen would say,
"It's all good!",
but I don't know,
I think that at sometime
I once had
perfection.