Buddhism for Dudes

A Jarhead's Field Guide to Mindfulness

Gerry Stribling

• Publisher: Wisdom Publications
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781614292296
• eBook ISBN: 9781614292449
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Eastern Philosophy

A tough former Marine leads Buddhist basic training for the average Joe. In Buddhism for Dudes, Gerry "Strib" Stribling, former Marine and all-around good guy, answers questions on life and living with a healthy dose of Buddhist wisdom for the regular guy. Strib takes a good look at who the Buddha was, meditation, karma, and more. With good humor and without sentimentalism, he explains these down-to-earth insights in everyday language. Showing how Buddhism boldly approaches life's problems head on, unflinching and alert—like a soldier in a forward listening post in the dark of night—Strib emphasizes the Buddhist call to moral action for the good of oneself and others.

1

Buddhism, No Bullshit

There is a healthy, reasonable way of living, a simple philosophy that people mistake for a religion, which is a recipe for both world peace and personal sanity. It’s called Buddhism, and it’s hardly new; the Buddha lived five hundred years before Jesus was born. In a very real way, Buddhism is pretty easy to understand—yet many people think that it is mysterious and inscrutable. There are some pretty wacky misconceptions about Buddhism out there, but it can become a real support system for those of us who just don’t otherwise get the point of modern life.

If you Google “Buddhism” and start clicking on sites, you’re going to encounter a confusing array of ideas, writings—and plenty of bullshit. The nitty-gritty stuff you really need to know to understand Buddhism and explore how following the Buddhist path can improve your life—well, dude, that’s harder to find.

Most images of the Buddha have fit, studlier bodies with a round head of curly hair tied in a top-knot.

Americans tend to have a skewed conception of Buddhism. If you’re over fifty, the indelible image seared in your mind from the Buddhist world may be the monk who set himself on fire in Saigon to protest the Vietnam War. Under fifty and you probably picture the Dalai Lama. Some people see Buddhism as an “Asian thing” inaccessible to Americans except for overeducated, vegan, antiwar whale huggers and the like. Misconceptions and partial information tend to typify our idea of what Buddhism is.

Take, for example, the image of the Buddha himself, or at least the image many Americans associate with the founder of this philosophy: until I went to Asia, I didn’t know that the Buddha was not a fat guy—the hairless bag-toting Santa Claus often seen in the front of Chinese restaurants wearing a shit-eating grin on his big, chubby face. That image is actually a Chinese god of happiness and contentment. Most images of the Buddha have fit, studlier bodies with a round head of curly hair tied in a topknot. But when it comes down to it, what sets the Buddha apart isn’t his appearance; it’s what he taught.

My experience with Buddhism is focused on the hard-core basics of the belief system and their application in our professional and personal lives. Buddhism is good stuff. I want my fishing buddies to know about it. Everybody should know some Dharma. If they did, the world would be a more peaceful place.

Everything you need to know about basic, no-frills Buddhist wisdom can be outlined on a half-sheet of paper. There are three refuges, four noble truths, five precepts, and an eight-point guide to proper (and happy) living. You don’t have to “go Asian” to understand Buddhism. You don’t have to quit eating meat or drinking beer. The Buddha ate meat when that was what was offered to him, and a beer every now and then isn’t going to get you into too much trouble.

Buddhism is all about being a stand-up guy, a mensch, someone who’ll never let someone down. Buddhism is being secure and confident in your approach to life. I’m sure a lot of people benefit in many different ways from Buddhist wisdom—what many people don’t understand is that it’s not about them.

It takes guts to be a Buddhist dude. It’s not about hiding in your own little world; it’s about living and meeting all of life’s challenges in a meaningful and unselfish way. It’s about superhero ethics, a soldier’s devotion to duty, and the kind of happiness you come by only from being fearless. A significant contention of this book is that you don’t have to surrender your manly fortitude to adopt Dharma into your life.

2

Who Was the Buddha?

More than twenty-five-hundred years ago in northern India, a prince was born into a world of great splendor and wealth. Siddhartha Gautama lived the lifestyle of the rich and famous. His parents, intent on making sure the young prince’s life was as happy as possible, sheltered him from the ugly realities of the world. In fact, he was pushing thirty—with a wife and a kid, no less—before he learned that people grow old, get sick, and die. For a clueless but otherwise intelligent guy to discover the cold, hard facts of life at that late a stage was a real wake-up-call, a major bombshell. “Suffering!” the prince realized. “The human experience is about a lot of suffering. Holy crap!”

Gautama became obsessed with finding out how to deal with the suffering he saw in the world. It was a pretty tall order, but somebody had to do it. He left the life of luxury (and also his wife and kid) and, like Willie Nelson, he hit the road—Gautama the Dharma bum. How many servicemen and women have had to make the same kind of sacrifice for the greater good? Karen Armstrong, a biographer of the Buddha, says that he probably agonized over that decision.

At first he sought out gurus in order to learn from them and to synthesize their wisdom. They disappointed him. He then tried living the life of an ascetic, an existence characterized by self-denial and self-imposed misery. Because he starved himself, he lost a lot of weight and even ended up near death, nothing but skin and bones. Finally, after giving it his best effort, and after eating a bowl of milk rice, Gautama figured out that such an austere existence was as stupid as his former royal life was decadent and meaningless. After experiencing the two extremes, he eventually realized that the truth was to be found somewhere in the middle between the two—a “middle path,” if you will.

Gautama sat under a tree and started meditating, vowing to himself that he would not leave that spot until he figured it all out: What is the purpose of existence? Why does life have to hurt so much? How should we live and deal with our suffering and with the suffering of our fellow human beings? He sat under that tree for a long time. And then—WHAMMO! The final eureka smacked him upside the head and he achieved perfect understanding—enlightenment. He experienced such incredible bliss that he closed his eyes, tilted his head back, and wagged it back and forth from experiencing the joy of it all. He didn’t stop, they say, for seven days. Tradition says otherwise, but I like to imagine that he felt just as if he’d struck gold at Sutter’s Mill and had to go tell somebody.

He sought out five equally starved buddies in the park, guys who’d stuck with him through thick and thin, and he told them what he had discovered. That speech is now known as the Buddha’s first sermon, or the “first turning of the Dharma Wheel.” In it the Buddha expressed everything anyone ever needed to know in order to survive life and to achieve contentment and salvation. The Dharma, i.e., the wisdom that the Buddha shared with others for the next half-century, is handed down to us today. The essence of that wisdom is called the Four Noble Truths. Contained within the Four Noble Truths is the Noble Eightfold Path, a blueprint for living life the right way. And part of that blueprint is the Five Precepts, the Buddha’s rules for living a stand-up life. (Something like a Buddhist version of the Ten Commandments. Although the analogy is imprecise, you get the idea.) All of Buddhist wisdom can be found in that first sermon. In an important sense, everything else the Buddha taught (and there’s a lot of it) is commentary.

The Buddha was in his midthirties when he achieved perfect wisdom, and for the next fifty years he traveled all around northern India teaching what he learned for himself under the Bodhi Tree. He attracted a great many disciples and died in his eighties from food poisoning. If you ever travel the world and see statues of the Buddha and you see one lying down, that’s the dying Buddha, felled by foul pork just like any ordinary man after a trip to a bad barbecue joint.

After all, that was all the Buddha ever claimed to be: an ordinary man.

After experiencing the two extremes, he eventually realized that the truth was to be found somewhere in the middle between the two—a “middle path,” if you will.

3

Is Buddhism a Religion or Not?

Now, the notion that the Buddha was not divine confused the heck out of me when I first took up residence at a Buddhist temple in Asia. I hung out exclusively in the company of monks for months, during which time I saw a lot of what looked to me a heck of a lot like religious rituals. Several times a day monks would chant what seemed to be prayers, and they frequently behaved toward statues in a way that any Orthodox Rabbi would call “bowing down to false idols.”

Dozens of Buddha statues sat around the temple’s campus, but the main one, the big guy in the shrine, was humongous—at least triple life-sized, and covered in gold. In many parts of Asia, you can’t turn around without seeing a Buddha image—a little Buddha here, a big Buddha there, even Buddhas carved out of entire mountains. Every shop in Sri Lanka and Thailand has its own little shrine, and every home has one too. You’ll encounter roadside Buddha shrines wherever you go. The Buddha is everywhere.

One night at the temple I had the chance to ask some fairly hot-shot Buddhist theologians about what the monks were up to during their services. Revealing my confusion, I asked, “If the Buddha was just a dude and not a god, then why do people bow down and pray to his image? What does all that worship have to do with Buddhism?”

Buddhism, I was informed, is not a religion. It is a moral philosophy. Buddhist “worship” isn’t really worship, chanting isn’t the same as prayer, and Buddha images are ubiquitous because we need to be reminded that there is a code of conduct to live by, and that this guy figured it out. When Buddhists sit before the Buddha’s image they are reminded of the inner peace that they should enjoy if they live meditative, compassionate, and moral lives. The Buddha said that there was no reason to venerate him personally. His message is what’s important.

By chanting we repeat the Buddha’s message in order to remind ourselves of what we already know. Bowing and holding one’s hands together in a prayerful way are Asian traditions. You see people make these gestures all the time over much of Asia, as well as any yoga class you might care to attend. To greet someone with a bow and your hands together is almost like shaking hands in the West, only there is an added element of reverence and respect. Showing respect is not worshipping. It’s also more sanitary than shaking hands.

Most of us need ritual and tradition, even some form of “worship,” if you want to call it that, whether we get it from religion or not. When it comes to ritual and tradition, NASCAR and the NFL and a standing tee time with your foursome might meet that need...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Dedication
• Contents
• Introduction
• 1. Buddhism, No Bullshit
• 2. Who Was the Buddha?
• 3. Is Buddhism a Religion or Not?
• 4. So, Like, What Is Truth?
• 5. The Middle Path
• 6. Karma and Rebirth
• 7. How It’s Done for Real
• 8. A Beautiful Mind
• 9. The Well-Trained Brain
• 10. Meditation: Can I Be “Sorta-Kinda” Buddhist?
• 11. OK, This Is Really Important
• 12. The Real Secret of Life
• 13. Roadside Attractions
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author
• About Wisdom Publications
• More Books from Wisdom Publications
• Copyright