I Love my Brother!

I just spoke with my brother, Bjorn, who lives in Denver.  I told him about the blog, and knowing that he’ll probably check it out tomorrow… well, this is for him. 

To put it in a nutshell: I don’t love my brother just because he’s my brother, but because he is, without exaggeration, one of the most kind-hearted men I know.  

I also love him because we’ve grown so much together: there was a time when he was embarrassed to be in public with me – a crazy kid in his early twenties, doing back flips down the street with a purple Mohawk and shredded fluorescent green pants.  In my crazy getups, I would talk ostentatiously about philosophy and spirituality, while he glared at me with eyes that said very clearly, “you’re so full of it!  Just shut the fuck up!”  And I thought of him as a pothead who wasn’t doing anything with his life.  It’s been a wonderful process to grow together, to come to admire each other for the occupations we have chosen or seek to pursue, for our spiritual feelings, and for having admirable hearts. Today, when we think of those past times, we both can't help but laugh.

I feel close to him because, as men, we’ve walked very different paths but have experienced similar hard times: we both followed a woman we hoped to one day have kids with to another state, and we both experienced having our hearts torn out while being far away from friends and family.  Far away from support, we both fought the devil of heartbroken alcohol abuse.  Both of us have battled various forms of self-hatred.  We’re both intimate with that feeling of wanting nothing more than to never wake up again.  I’m so happy for my toughest experiences, as they helped me understand his. 

Of utmost importance: we both suffered so much because we both loved so much.  When we hated ourselves, it was because we hadn’t succeeded in caring for someone as profoundly as we had hoped.  And when we didn’t want to wake up, it was only because we didn’t like being in a world where we couldn’t love and give deeply. 

For these two brothers, their own beauty has been the source of their pain.  And it will be the source of a wonderful life to come. 

While that may be a good line to end on, one more thing: I wrote this wanting to tie it into the notion of sangha.  I told Bjorn that I have been contemplating the precepts recently, and explained briefly what that meant.  He was happy to hear it, partly because he’s witnessed the maturation of my spiritual path, but I think also because he experiences the desire to be nurtured by a spiritual community.  I can see him wanting to walk a path, but he has yet to discover what that path is.  Not that it has to be clearly defined!  But if spiritual intentions are to be cultivated, it’s incredibly important to be supported, to have people who help us consider how to deepen and stick with our intentions. This has nothing to do with any tradition or particular path.  Its pure, dumb luck that I happen to have found an institution, lineage, and sangha that suits me so well.  For many people, a place that suits them so well simply may not exist.

We should support all people.  And perhaps this means supporting all people in considering the precepts.  Like most of the warm hearted people I know, Bjorn will most likely not take up a meditation practice, much less become a Zen Buddhist.  But like many people, I think he may want to take the precepts in spirit, and live a life according to what they signify.  In ways that he may not be aware of, he will be supporting me in the precepts.  And even though he has never even heard of precepts before, in a way I will be supporting him in his efforts to live according to the precepts, inasmuch as I support him in living a thoughtful and compassionate life.

Perhaps we help people consider the precepts best by allowing the precepts to shape us.  Then people can be present with the precepts when they are present with us.  Perhaps discussing them explicitly is only important inasmuch as those discussions help us embody the dharma.