Not Even Not Traveling 77: Canada - The Tibetan Temple

The Tibetan Temple

For days, Donna had been offering to take me to a Buddhist temple. And for days, I had felt unsure about going. I know my reaction was puzzling to Donna and my wife. They were keenly aware I had been reading about Buddhism and talking with Buddhists for forty years. Why wouldn't I want to visit a temple?

There are so many reasons, I'm not going to try to list them. Among them, though, are how Western Buddhism, Zen, and Pure Land Buddhism are all different from one another. Navigating among the slightly different faiths can get tricky. And then there's Tibetan Buddhism, which is differently different from any of those. 

Pure Land emphasizes scriptures and devotion to Amitabha. (I realize I'm being so brief it seems flippant.) Zen focuses on meditation and koans. Western Buddhism is in the process of sifting through the parts of the philosophy that appeal to westerners. Tibetans, on the other hand, incorporate a lot of rituals, tantra, incarnations (think 'saints' if it helps), and a hierarchy of instructions under the guidance of lamas. It's not like the others, at least outwardly. And Tibetan temples, as all buildings do, tend to gather a lot of material goods. 

No one has a choice about being material. We live in bodies. Lots of other forms of Buddhism - there's plenty more - have temples hosting rituals and sacred objects. But avoiding attachments is a significant, guiding principle behind the practice of Buddhism in all its forms. That's why it can feel odd to be confronted by the imperfect people, their ceremonies, and their attachments to rituals or ritual objects. 

We were going to have a guide, though. That seemed helpful. He was a longtime resident of the area. He worked as a volunteer caretaker at the temple and he could meet us there. Plus, Donna's friend who knew the guide also sounded like an appealing person to meet. Basically, I thought we would at least meet good people if Donna could make the logistics work.

In the end, she did. Donna made the friendships and appointments line up. And so I leapt at the chance to go.

We arrived at the compound to discover a closed gate. That was usual. Donna's friend had the key to the gate. We rolled on in after shutting it behind us. The place looked beautiful. It also seemed deserted, which I hadn't expected. I didn't understand how the temple made sense here, how it did its business. 

The roof of one of the buildings was slate red. Someone had painted its walls a warm yellow, too. I hadn't expected the colors. The place didn't seem as fancy as some other holy sites or even churches downtown. Likewise, we parked behind a second building that was mostly red and yellow, this one with aluminum siding to keep out the Canadian winter weather. At the door, we met a gray-haired couple. They seemed to be weeding and doing chores. Sure enough, one of them introduced himself as Sangha, our guide to the grounds. The woman was his wife, apparently also a volunteer.

"I'll have to replace this weather stripping," he said as we stepped through the door. He ran his hand over the left side of the doorframe. 

He and his wife were the caretakers for the temple when the monks weren't around, which was most of the time. The monks treated the temple as a summer retreat and a place to hold special events, perform ceremonies on holy days, and hold meditation seminars.

Sangha gave us a private tour. How often do you get a private tour of a holy place? I gathered he had given it a few times before, though. And a minute or two after we started, his manners changed. He asked a few questions. I asked a few in return about Tibet, about the ceremonies, and suddenly he relaxed and grew more energetic. Any reservations I'd had about the visit melted away in the face of his warmth. 

He seemed delighted, and a little surprised, to find I was genuinely interested in Buddhism. And I wanted the details about Tibet and the history behind the establishment of the monastery. He beamed. He wasn't a dogmatic ritual-minder at all. And Sangha wasn't simply a janitor, either. He was spiritually drawn in. He took care of the trappings around him but he didn't seem particularly attached to them.

He didn't quiz me about Tibetan incarnations or rituals. Instead, he told us about how some of the art had arrived here after the Chinese invasion of Tibet, about the practices held here, the statues of incarnations, and more. He seemed happy I knew enough about Tibet to understand details of its geography and history.

(I absolutely did not let on that some of what I remembered came from reading and re-reading Seven Years in Tibet. I was pretty sure everyone even slightly associated with Tibetan Buddhism must get tired of hearing about a single book, however popular and respectful it is.)

As it turned out, Sangha was giving us a tour of the retreat house. It had once been a hunting lodge. To the south of us lay the lama house.

(Backstory on the corporate hunting lodge: for their very first hunting trip at the lodge, the company bosses invited their secretaries with them, not their wives. When the group returned home, someone told one of the wives. And that was the beginning of a scandal, a lawsuit, and the end of the hunting lodge. Apparently, there was never even a second company trip.) 

The monastery bought the land after the lodge closed. Monks converted it to a holy site. It was attractive because the lodge sat with a mountain to the north (as required for temples in Tibetan Buddhism) and a river to the south (again a requirement). All that remained was to orient the monastery facade to the south or east. (They did both.)

I could have spent hours talking with Sangha. We covered philosophy, history, and religious ceremony. He was spiritual and thoughtful. His wife stepped between us to remind him of the time and the chores he still had to do. Maybe everyone started looking at their watches, too. (I don't really think so, though.) 

Normally, when I describe a place I try to recommend it or warn everyone against it. This time, well - I highly recommend getting a private tour of a Tibetan Buddhist temple, especially if Sangha is your guide. It seems sort of hard to arrange, though. 
 

Not Even Not Traveling 76: Canada - Even More Golf

Canadian Golf

The rules may be different. 

We set out the next morning for golf our lessons, which required a drive of twenty minutes. From Queensborough, it always seems to take twenty minutes. To anywhere. This might be a rule specific to rural Canada: no matter where you are or where you're going, you will drive for twenty minutes (rule enforced by the Mounties).

Our destination was a golf course in Tweed, where we met our instructor, a young man who I am fairly confident was old enough to drive. He wore a light blue shirt, khaki shorts, a baseball hat, and sunglasses.

He led us past the driving range and past the putting green to a fairway just east of those. On the way, he grabbed a super-bucket of golf balls. He seemed to have picked our spot based on my request to learn the fundamentals — chip shots, putting, a whole beginner's curriculum. He started in the half-sleepy way of a young man who has taught the same lesson before and will again.

After rubbing his bleary eyes, he watched us. He made corrections. He seemed to wake up to our beginner status.

By the time we strolled over to the driving range, our pro seemed almost alert. He spent time on Diane's straight-legged stance, getting her to take more of a karate, bent-knees approach. After that, he seemed almost encouraged. It was like having a driving instructor relax because he thought we were going to stop knocking over mailboxes.

He kept asking us to switch clubs. He wanted us to find the ones best suited to our style and, at nearly three dollars a club, I thought we were doing our fine. But the instructor excused himself for a few minutes. He returned with a new five iron.

I didn't have one good enough for Diane, he thought.

"People lose clubs here all the time," he explained. "We've got a bunch. Don't worry about it."

It wasn't until I was loading the car that I discovered the full scope of the operation: there was already an extra club in my bag, one I hadn't thrifted. Apparently, Paul had done the same thing the first time we played golf. I think he left me with a three iron.

At this point I started to feel a little like the golf equivalent of a stray cat that keeps showing up and getting fed. The more I thought about it, though, the less bad I felt. These people were being nice. Maybe the stereotype is true, and Canadians really are polite, generous, and appalled by my ancient, thrift-store-special golf clubs. Of course, Paul is American, so maybe the attitude isn't limited to Canadians.

I'll admit the alternatives might be simpler: it could be Donna knowing nice people or it could be a small-town way of living. Tweed was the biggest town around for miles. At a booming population of six thousand, however, Tweed could still the kind of place where everybody's business is everybody's business and good people have the power to exert more goodness.

#

In the afternoon, we went to play golf with Charlie. Charlie was a genuine resident of Queensborough. He had bought the old hotel and fixed it up to be his house. When his family were away, he liked to golf. That's why he met us outside of the clubhouse. 

We shook hands and arranged to rent carts. We figured out how to handle our bags and take turns with the clubs. We had gotten lucky with the weather - it was a calm afternoon, sunny, and the temperature was right for short sleeves but not so hot we broke a sweat.

All four of us played. We relaxed and took shots, lost our golf balls sometimes, socialized, sank our putts, and kept moving. Charlie and Donna are neighbors and they started off most of the early conversations. But soon enough we were all making remarks, mostly about golf. Charlie found himself drafted as our golf coach for this session and he was a good sport about it.

The next day, I found another golf club in my bag. I think it must have come from Charlie.

I'm not sure how he did it or why. Anyway, two days later Diane and I returned to the same little golf course, this time for golf lessons. We so clearly still didn't know anything, the instructor seemed a little scandalized. We practiced for a while and then he told us to go ahead and play without him. We hadn't paid the course fees, so it seemed odd. He dashed off to the clubhouse and returned with two sand wedges, one for Diane, one for me.

"People just leave them," he explained. "Don't worry about it."

In the end, we decided to return to the clubhouse after a partial round of golf, and I donated money to a charity golf event prize. After all, I had still not paid my greens fees or even for the golf lessons and I had gathered two more clubs. So I donated. The lady at the front desk, apparently our instructor's mother, seemed very happy about it.

 

Not Even Not Traveling 75: Canada - Front Porch Ruckus

Canada - Back to Queensborough

The next day, I built a shelf unit. 

Donna's house has books - a lot of them. In time, she will divest herself of many of the big hardbacks, I expect. It takes thought, though, to pare down a collection. First, Donna has to see them so she can think about them. When I finished the kit, I spun the standing shelf to verify everything worked. And I asked her where to put it, which turned out to be a corner of her master bedroom.

Then I resumed my part-time job of stacking the woodpile.

#

The Front Porch Ruckus

In the afternoon, Donna took us to the "Front Porch Ruckus" music festival in downtown Tweed. Now, Tweed is a small place but it seems to be on the rebound. Its city council actively recruits people to visit and, for that matter, the town seems to be looking for new residents. You can move into Tweed; and you can be part of renovating the town; and it looks worthwhile.

We met a man who had revived an empty courtyard between row homes. Once, a building had apparently stood there. After it got taken down, the lot remained vacant. So he moved in, bought an adjacent building and the lot, and turned it all into an art installation. Aside from the beauty of the landscaping, he mixed painted plants and real plants, painted windows and real windows, and a painted door (although there is no real door). These stand on the other side of a cast iron gate. The red, painted bars around the gate keep people from entering the courtyard and messing with the fussy, careful arrangement.

I had been the driver for trips into town before. But for the music festival, Donna took us in her red, stickshift Toyota. She parked at the fair grounds, next to a polka band. She aimed for them deliberately because I said I thought they would probably be interesting - I've heard plenty enough folk singers with guitars - and we strolled up to the brick-colored picnic shelter and listened to a big band number. A moment later, the band played dixieland jazz.

Donna somehow persuaded the band to let us sing along.

This is not a normal thing. As a singer, I can say we do not usually invite anyone up to give it their best. Rock bands tend to throw their musical volunteers off the stage. It shocked me a little to find myself singing with the local horn section. One piece we performed, rather quickly, was 'You Are My Moonshine,' a parody I wrote years ago (for Mother's Day) of 'You Are My Sunshine.' The band members seemed to genuinely enjoy the new lyrics. They acted as pleasantly shocked by our performance as I was. But also, they stayed relaxed and pleasant.

We sang nine or ten songs with them and that’s a pretty long time. Toward the end of their long set, they played something that made me exclaim, “That’s a great arrangement!”

One of the horn players had written the arrangement herself. She beamed, smugly, while the others told me she'd written it. Everyone seemed awfully pleased. After we heard another piece and said, somewhat reluctantly, we had to go hear the rest of the "Front Porch Ruckus" show, the musicians invited us to circle back. They said we could come to them at the close of the day and sing along at their invitation.

They were great sports.

We wandered around Tweed and listened to (and talked with) the other street performers for an hour or two. They were mostly folk and blues guitar players, some of them singers-songwriters, most of them part-timers who were making a little money on the side to play the standards, as they usually did.  

And we did, in fact, circle back for a few more songs with the brass band. 

Past the end of the event, we dodged into a popular cafe in Tweed's downtown. We got there early, before the indoor music started. As we sat, debating whether or not to stay for the performance, the clouds rolled in outside. They rumbled, dark and silvery. Then the skies let loose. Suddenly, all the musicians and music fans scrambled into the cafe with us. Everyone wanted to be under a roof while the rain poured down in sheets. 

After a few minutes, the regularly scheduled folk singer turned on his microphone. He realized he was about to play to a more-than-full house, many of them fellow musicians. And fellow musicians can be judgemental. You could see he wasn't sure what to expect. He played a few folk standards and got hearty applause, which allowed him to relax. 

Then he played 'Country Roads.'

Everyone sang. Right on the first verse. The guitarist hesitated for a moment, thrown off his rhythm before he recovered and leaned into what was happening. Since I may have started the audience participation (after my wife slapped me in the shoulder and hissed, "Sing!"), I was happy to see everyone else knew the lyrics, too. How many folk musicians were drinking coffee and waiting for their food? Twenty? Most of them had been paid to perform this one a dozen times. 

The performer liked the participation so much, he tried to get everyone involved again with other, reasonably popular folk songs. But there were none to quite match 'Country Roads.' Mostly, we chatted and sang in unison choruses until there was a break in the clouds. Then, under the brightening evening sky, we dashed to our car. 

Not Even Not Traveling 74: Canada - Tweed Pt. 1

Canada - Tweed 

We alternated between being tourists in the area - Donna being our expert guide - and giving Donna some help around her house. Since it was a busy time at work back in the DC area - and I mean at both offices I participate in - I spent a few hours each day doing telework, too. It cut into my chores but, since some of the work was billable, it also extended my Canada vacation.

For the next little while, I concentrated on cleaning the house. And I tried out the shower nozzle I'd fixed. It worked perfectly.

In the late morning, we all took a break. Donna directed us into Tweed for a game of golf with Paul and his wife. Paul was friend of Donna's in high school. They had managed to stay in touch despite all the time and, often, lots of distance. The golf course Paul chose for us was called Nine. Not surprisingly, we played nine holes, not a full game. Paul had to teach me to chip, to choose clubs correctly, and more. I knew I was getting good advice (even though I sailed a chip shot across the green and into the rough). In fact, Paul could not be a more relaxed, more fun golf teacher.

It was especially impressive for someone who introduced himself by saying, "I'm not a golf teacher."

All five of us kept an eye on the golfers behind us and ahead of us, aware we were beginners and therefore slow. Eventually, the game degenerated into a match that was basically a coaching session, just Paul and me. Our lady friends entertained themselves by speeding around with the golf carts and planning our lunch, including our strawberry margaritas.

I think my level of play could be described by three of Paul's remarks.

"Wow, that was a pro shot!" he shouted as my drive sailed down the middle for three hundred fifty yards.

"Wow, that's ... something. I wonder what happened." He said as I hooked one into the water.

"Wow, we're not going to find that one." He pointed to the reeds, or perhaps the forest, or perhaps a distant ocean.

When I did get my scheduled lessons two days later, the golf pro made pretty nearly the same remarks. We were on a different course. He taught me chip shots, to start with, at my request, because I knew I was bad. Then he taught us putting. When we finally got to the driving range, he found my drives appalling and entertaining in equal measure, with sprinkle of 'wow.'

"Wow, did you play little league baseball?" he asked.

"Yeah." Every boy in North America had, around 1972. But I didn't want to say that to someone born in 2006.

"Looks like it, Good contact," he said encouragingly as I sliced high into the net that protected the real golfers. I was apparently developing a sort of consistency, meaning I was reliably inconsistent. And for someone who was old enough to be my grandchild, my pro seemed often patient, sometimes amused, and sometimes extra determined to be patient.

 

Not Even Not Traveling 73: Canada - Queensborough

Canada Trip, 2026 


At the end of June, I drove up to see a friend from my undergraduate days.

Donna lives in Queensborough, which has a population of about a hundred, depending on the relatives visiting. A century ago it was a bustling logging village with a railroad stop nearby. Nowadays, it's officially a hamlet. People are moving back in, buying up the old churches and the hotel and turning them into homes. It's keeping the town (okay, hamlet) alive. It is also, undeniably, changing it.

For anything resembling shopping, the residents of Queensborough have to look to Madoc, a thriving metropolis of over a thousand. It boasts two grocery stores, one of which is a package store. The drive takes twenty minutes and it's lovely. But we made the trip in June. I imagine it gets less charming in January.

Officially, Queensborough and Madoc are both unincorporated so they are part of the municipality of Tweed, population six thousand. Tweed has a full-featured downtown with banks, restaurants, and galleries. During our week there, Donna took us to a music festival in Tweed.

More on that later. Because, in truth, we'd come on a vacation with the intent to do chores.

Diane had a plan. Donna had a gazebo kit. Between them, they had worked out how I would help assemble a tasteful outdoor structure, put up a mosquito blanket around it, and sip iced tea while teleworking via my laptop on a sunny day. In reality, the mosquitoes to showed up to the construction site like it was a scheduled event and I was late. They buzzed with impatience. My wife took one look at the situation — me with a half-dozen scout-mosquitoes conducting test raids — and she suggested, not unkindly, that I go be useful somewhere else. 

When I popped back indoors covered with the blood of the bloodsuckers, Donna remarked, "They must really like you."

They really do.

I dressed in layers even though it was summer. Long pants. Long socks. I slathered on an insect repellent lotion. I stepped out to the foyer to spray myself with an odious spray. You would think, by then, I had to be thoroughly repellent. But I was back inside the foyer a minute later, spraying spots I'd missed on my clothes.

“They really, really like you,” said Donna.

Finally, I was safe enough to work on the woodpile. Donna's firewood had arrived two weeks before, about a cord of it. The supplier had dumped it in front of the shed with the confidence of knowing he had not been paid to stack it. Instead, that service was supplied by me. Fortunately, wood does not care about your feelings or your mosquito bites, You just move it, log by log, until the pile in front of the shed becomes a stack inside the shed.

When I had about a third of the woodpile relocated, I went inside to deal with one of the showers. A downstairs shower-bath had developed a problem that can be summarized as "it's in several pieces, but they used to be one piece." Something in the manufacturing had gone sideways and parts of the fixture had popped apart. The threads of them looked like they were never really meant to go together in the first place. But that wouldn't matter because Donna had stocked her house supplies with marine-grade epoxy. It would give us the adhesive, waterproof strength we needed.

The fix didn’t take long, which was a pity. I enjoy the the epoxy-making process. Apparently, I'm one of those people who doesn't get globs of glue or paint where they don't belong. Those types of jobs tend to go smoothly for me - until someone distracts me for a microsecond.

“Let’s go hit a bucket of balls at a golf course," Donna suggested. She knew I had been asked to play in a charity tournament for work. And I had never played.

#

Donna had researched golf courses, including one in Tweed. In the trunk of our car, I'd brought the bag of clubs I got for $40. (Customs agents don't regard pieces of golf equipment as weapons, no matter how bad you are with them.) My first step, aside from learning how the golf bag worked, was figuring out how to rent a bucket of golf balls. The teenager behind the desk thought we were clueless and, because we were, I told him to give me a golf lesson.

"Uh, you need a golf pro," he said.

"Right, I've got a lesson time reserved. That's for two days from now. I'm hitting golf balls today, right now. You just rented me the bucket. Tell me what to do."

"Okay." He took thirty seconds to tell us the main secrets of golf, most of them involving how to stand, which I thought I already knew (but as it turns out, not quite). Basically: take a baseball or karate stance, slightly bent at the knees. Square up your alignment with the ball, parallel to the target. Use a baseball grip, overlapping grip, or interlocking grip. (Overlapping felt right for me.) If you're right handed, bring your left arm back, like in a baseball swing, but keep it straight at the elbow.

Swing and hit the ball. Success! Maybe.

This left out a lot of important pointers but I found the basics to be useful enough. I could hit drives - of a sort - using any of my cheap clubs. Most of the shots went forward, too, which is basically where they should go. Diane and Donna could make shots move forward, too, and they were also beginning golfers.

Special sports note: The three of us originally thought we would go kayaking and take nature hikes between house chores. But I am, as mentioned, a mosquito magnet. The Queensborough area has a lot of biting insects, especially along the hiking trails. In contrast, golf courses take care to eliminate the most annoying insects. So golf ended up being a good answer to the question of how I could spend time outdoors.

At the driving range, I succeeded (if that's the right word) in slicing a ball so far that it cleared the hundred-foot-high shielding net that protected the golfers on the course from idiots on the driving range. Fortunately, there was no one on the course when my ball sailed over. Same with the other three times. Man, I was looking forward to lessons from a golf pro. But first we had to do more house chores. And Donna had arranged for us to play actual golf with a friend of hers, who, we hoped, could be persuaded to give me lessons. Or at least not point and laugh.
 

Not Even Not Zen 448: Poem - Things They Say

Things They Say

When you're young,
they say 'follow your passion,’
but my father puffed blue smoke from his cigar
and responded, "Yeah,
you'll make big money writing poetry."

When you're hurt,
they say, 'Everything happens for a reason'
but my mother in her gardening shirt
glanced at my ankle and said in a slow breath,
"Stop jumping off the roof."

When you’re impatient they say,
'good things come to those who wait'
but after my grandmother said it,
my grandfather looked at me with contempt and added,
"Why aren’t you just doing it?"

They say, "There's no 'I' in team"
and it's literally true but
there is no 'we' in "Who's getting the credit?"
so sometimes we have to speak up
to make sure we do.
It's okay - my wife reminds me.

Sometimes when you’re lonely they say
"It’s the dark night of the soul"
but actually, visibility is pretty good.
I see what I'm doing, no excuses,
I could have helped more
and I know I should do better.

They say 'you’ll always change your mind'
and maybe I agree with that one
because I'm wearing the purple shirt
I used to despise.
So it's just a matter of time.
We'll have to check back about this one later.
 

 

 - Eric Gallagher 

Not Even Not Zen 447: Poem - You Shouldn't Have Asked

You Shouldn't Have Asked

You asked why,
why could I possibly love you.

And I have bad news.

The sun rose in a purple morning sky. 
And that’s why I love you.

And it does that every day.

 - Eric Gallagher

Not Even Not Zen 446: Biomythography - Note 152, No One Converts, Pt. 3

No One Converts, Part III

The world feels holy. 

That's stupid, and yet there are times when simply walking alone in the woods or strolling along a dirt road with friends, or almost any other ordinary thing can bring us a feeling of, more or less, 'this place is sacred.' It can happen suddenly. My friend Michael's comments made it impossible not to remember some of those moments in my life.

Despite our rational approach, despite how my talks with Michael about the reasons behind belief in God (and non-belief) were supposed to be about what's provable, we were left with a difference in our underlying experiences. It wasn't even a big difference in outlook. We both felt holiness around us. We interpreted it differently.

Michael had been raised in a private, Jesuit boarding school. Perhaps it's not much of a surprise that the Jesuits converted him. The conversion from Judaism to Catholicism came to him as a revelation, apparently, as a series of visions of God. He got dream visitations from an actual, white-haired, bearded holy man. He loved the Jesuit priests' rational approach to it all. That's why Michael thought he could prove God must exist. For sure, he told me at length how believing in the Catholic trinity made the most sense.

For my part, I came from a tradition that included some family Catholic church membership, some Methodist, some Baptist, but mostly a bunch of Quaker church ceremonies as part of my schooling. And the biggest spiritual influence of all was reading about Buddhism and about pre-Socratic philosophies (which I often compared to Buddhism, especially the Epicurean school). 

The rational approach, at least for the two of us, seemed to come from a need to explain our sense of holiness. If someone notices a heaviness or lightness in the air, they might search the trees or the skies or look to a nearby river to try to find the cause. We were doing something similar on a spiritual and emotional level. We sensed something. Where was a source?

That's why it was such a disappointment for Michael to finally admit, "I guess there's no rational reason to believe in God."

I remember feeling a slight sense of shock. I hadn't expected to convert him. I'd helped with a conversion before but with a girlfriend. That's suspicious because of all the love and affection and trying to please each other. With a religiously-oriented friend, even a good friend, I had no reason to expect it. And I had no reason to be suspicious of it. 

The next day, when I saw Michael, he seemed depressed. But non-belief can affect people like that. It had depressed me, at first. We discussed the lack of God for a little while that day but I didn't see any reason to try to talk him out of his mood. He had to come to terms with non-belief in his own way. 
 
When we ate dinner together, Michael remained quiet. He didn't want to debate. Then, almost abruptly, I didn't see him for two days. Eventually, at another dinner with friends in the cafeteria, he said he wanted to talk. Almost immediately, before we even walked out of the dorms on our hike across campus, he revealed that he believed in God again.

"Eric, he came to me," Michael said. "He was a sturdy older man, sort of, with a flowing white beard and a voice. And the voice talked to me. I could feel Him. I felt His presence."

"Okay," I conceded. Rationality was not going to win over such a personal, powerful experience. "So really, you still believe."

"Sorry, I thought it was rational. But it's more than that. I can feel God."

We walked in silence for a while. 

"Fair enough," I said. And we started talking about black and white photography and whether it was really art. It was easy to talk with him. 

#

Conclusion

Michael converted back to his beliefs after a few days. Other friends lasted longer, some more than twenty years. But I think everyone I knew who converted from a form of Christianity to atheism has since converted back to the sort of Christianity they'd grown up with. 

Because I was young and fervent, maybe, I could seemingly help people convert themselves. But I think, in almost everyone, conversions are unlikely to last. There's no good way to measure it historically, but I suspect that thousands of years ago, maybe two to five percent of people were non-believers in their local religion. It's a rational thing to be. But more than being rational, it's an underlying judgement of people, a basic sense of experience. You have to determine whether or not other people might be fooling themselves. No one wants to die. Therefore, people might fool themselves about it. And nowadays, it's probably the same two to five percent making essentially the same judgement.

I'm sure the self-reporting has changed. In the middle ages, you might not want to come out and say everyone else is wrong. In the early days of Rome, you might not want to risk your life by saying Zeus is a figment of everyone's imagination. You might keep your opinion to yourself. But I suspect that, throughout the ages and throughout the religions, the proportions of doubters is roughly the same. 

Not Even Not Zen 445: Biomythography - Note 151, No One Converts, Pt. 2

Biomythography 151
No One Converts, Part II

Here, roughly, are the arguments for belief in God as written by Thomas Aquinas. I remember these not as the starting point of the conversation between Michael and I, nor the end, but as a mid-point of sorts. We spent considerable time walking and talking about these concepts, the way you do when you're trying to solve the universe and you're nineteen years old.

**Argument from the First Mover** — posits that there must be an initial source of motion that itself was not moved.

This is a misunderstanding of physics (just think of virtual particles, which appear wherever they want and do whatever they want until they bump into something) and it fails on the initial look, even without physics. If there's a first movement, great. There's no need for a god involved, just a first movement. I mean, what makes God move? Is he finally getting up to change the channel?

Beyond that, it's a lack of calculus. Aquinas objects to infinity because it's infinite and, to him, it can't add up to anything, which is absurd. Well, the objection is absurd itself — not everything needs to add up — and anyway calculus shows us that many infinities do reach a knowable total. On all fronts, this is the worst of arguments, and I've heard plenty of other bad arguments (including one where two people agreed at increasing volume until one stormed out of the room).

**Argument from Universal Causation** — everything that exists has a cause, leading to a first cause, which is God.

Ugh, this is the same as the first argument wearing a mustache and hoping we won't notice. Michael pretty much had to acknowledge the duplication. Also, even as a six-year-old, I could ask, "Well, what caused God?" — which is the kind of question six-year-olds are by nature required to ask, right after "why." 

**Argument from Contingency** — because things exist that could "not exist," there must be a necessary being that causes existence.

Yeah, you could "not exist" instead of existing. Buddhists would say, in fact, your existence is an illusion. You don't actually exist. Conan the Barbarian had an answer to that, which was basically, "fine." Aquinas was definitely not comfortable with such an answer.

Aquinas would have hated the Multiverse Theory in physics. Non-existence, ephemeral existence, and multiple potential existences are all accepted explanations, nowadays.

**Argument from Degree** — varying degrees of qualities (like goodness) imply the existence of a perfect being as their source.

This is stolen from Plato's ideal forms, which isn't an argument against the concept, but the idea itself isn't an argument for anything. That there are degrees of qualities we perceive ("Whoa, this chair is even more green than the couch!") is part of our sensory perception, plus our ability to assign qualities and idealize them.

It's a good argument for humans being interesting. It's not an argument for holiness, except maybe for the delicacy of our perceptions being awe-inspiring.

**Teleological Argument** (the watchmaker argument) — order and purpose in the world indicate a designer.

I find this one the most compelling. As humans, we make things. It's very nearly our defining characteristic, second only to complaining about the things someone else made. It's natural for us to look at a hammer and think about its creator. We tend to imagine creators whether there are any or not — is this stone a tool? Did someone shape it? For sure, it's comforting to think about creations and the purpose of them, and to imagine ourselves, and humanity as a whole, as having a purpose rather than just being a ambitious species of ape that discovered fire and never really calmed down.

Being created for a purpose is a pleasing idea. It doesn't look like it's true, but it's attractive to me because I think our senses of purpose and shared imagination are what enabled us to built civilizations.

Not Even Not Zen 444: Biomythography - Note 150, No One Converts, Pt. 1

Biomythography 150

No One Converts, Part I

They say there’s no point in trying to convince anyone about religion. No one ever converts. Except they do, sometimes.

When I was in college and believed deeply and fervently in my version of atheism, I was always happy to talk. I could go on and on about it. I thought I could convince anyone, really, if they were interested in the truth. Atheism isn't comforting at first but it is a truth and it's a gateway to more important truths. So I was always interested in finding like-minded life explorers.

It's important to have friends with views opposed to yours. Nevertheless, it establishes a bond of friendship to go on a mental journey together, to search for the truth, as much as friendships happen during a physical journey. Literature is full of stories about heading abroad to accomplish a common mission. It's the plot of the Dirty Dozen, O Brother Where Art Thou, Lord of the Rings, and many others. The theme of going on a mission to resolve a coherent philosophy isn't as popular. But, for friendship, it's still as good.

Here's the thing: if you're raised in a Jesuit school, like my friend Michael, and you take philosophical debate seriously, you're a good candidate for the mental journey. And if you're raised by a philosophy major father and you read a lot of his library out of boredom, it's much the same; you’re a good candidate. Together, Michael and I tended to drift from talking about food at the dining table to talking about philosophy.

We were the philosophy geeks at our college, often to the surprise and annoyance of others at our table. Finally, Michael proposed that we set aside time for better discussion

“You like rationality,” he said. “Well, I can describe a rational proof of God.”

I had heard them all, I thought. I had not only been raised on Aristotle, Plato, the pre-Socratics, Dogun, D.T. Suzuki, Paul Reps, and Alan Watts but I had decided on my own to invest in books like Critiques of God. Still, I had to admit there might be arguments or demonstrations of divinity I had missed.

Instead of dominating dinner conversations because we couldn’t shut up about our beliefs, we waited. After dinner, we walked the halls of our dorm and talked about the logic of a philosopher in the Catholic church, Thomas Aquinas. After a couple evenings like that, Michael grew impatient with the people around us. He didn't like the constraints of the dorms. Traveling from wing to wing meant passing through the bathrooms.

The next week, after dinner or late classes, we hiked on the sidewalks between the campus dorms. Our conversations grew longer and more detailed. We roamed farther. We marched from the sidewalks to the dirt paths and outlying roads, talking. We strolled in the purple dusk of sunset. We debated under cloudy skies and next, under a clear, cold starlight. Within two weeks, our debates lasted so long we had to do laps around the campus.

We were true believers. And in a religious sense, our talks were exciting. I didn’t always have immediate answers for Michael's questions. Sometimes I had to think for so long I would put off an answer until our next walk. Michael did, too, because I posed questions of my own and gave answers he didn't seem to expect. For my part, at least, I was inexperienced in such a deep level of debate. And surprised to have the friendship of such an earnest seeker for the truth.

After the first few days I started to recognize every twist and turn in the arguments of Thomas Aquinas. I knew Michael had found them convincing. They were ancient reasonings, though, and had been thoroughly refuted in the ages since. I had, years before, educated myself on some of the logical refutations and added my own notes.

Michael found Pascal's wager someone compelling, too - or at least enough to try it on me. But it wasn't a wager I would make myself. There's no particular logic against it other than my judgement that it's a pointless guess and morally suspect. We both agreed, actually, that God probably wouldn't be too flattered by someone believing in Him for an "eh, why not" sort of reason.

Interestingly, it was my own thoughts that seemed the most compelling to Michael, just as his personal views on a very personal God were the most moving for me. Our logic wasn't pointless - it was the way we both worked as we tried to make sense of our lives - but every logical system has to ground itself on judgements and observations about the world. Some of our observations weren't the same.

“I can feel God,” he said one night as we turned a corner in the road near the Enfield Mods. He stretched out is arm, almost pleading. “Can’t you?”

“I do feel something,” I admitted. For me, it was a sense of calling beyond humanity and even beyond life itself. It was a nebulous sensation but it was there, a duty to humankind, a sense of holiness around me.

In fact, the sensation of holiness was a driver in my search for the truth. In some ways, I was looking for an explanation for why I felt it.

(to be continued)