celluloid Zen

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Some Saturdays were pure Nirvana. Those were the Saturdays when my mother might agree to take me and some third-grade pal from our home in New City over to Haverstraw and drop us off for a double-feature movie. Like as not, it would be a war movie and a western ... and when it wasn't that, perhaps it was a western and a war movie. Manly adventures were like nectar to eight- or nine-year-olds.

We would leave at around noon and wouldn't get home until after five: Two movies, cartoons, previews, Movietone News, serial adventures of Tarzan or Tom Mix ... plus candy like Dots and Jujubes and the whopping, quarter-pound Baby Ruths for a whopping 25 cents ... and don't forget the popcorn. It never occurred to us how relieved our parents might be in our absence. I would sit in the balcony with Gordon Groland or Rene Auberjonois (later to become an actor in such tales as "M*A*S*H" and "The Patriot" and an ill-fated TV series based on "The Three Musketeers") and we would throw the the licorice-flavored Dots down on the audience below and purely b-a-s-k in the adventures unfolding on the big screen. Everything was so big and competent and assured and unambiguous and true ... and we wanted to be just like that! In technicolor!!!

In the days that followed such heavenly Saturdays, we might grab our cap pistols or wooden swords and try to re-enact the stuff we had seen on the screen. Swash and buckle! We even memorized the hefty and heroic songs and would sometimes sing them at the tops of our lungs as we tried to recreate the bigger-than-life, adult-world wonders. It never quite worked -- action on the screen flowed like melted butter, but re-enactments did not allow for any cut-and-paste splicing that could take the hero from Ohio to Okinawa in an instant. Our world of re-enactment didn't quite work like that, but it was not for lack of trying: My mother once heard me playing with a friend in the basement, creating a world of big-screen heroics, and she heard me say, voice-over fashion, "Now it's ten years later and we're all grown up."

I was about 30 -- an age which a nine-year-old might call "all grown up" -- when I came across spiritual life. I fell for it as I had fallen for John Wayne and Randolph Scott. Big time. I was as swept up and delighted and full of youthful yearning as I had been on those 'childish' Saturday afternoons. I once calculated that I read something like 500,000 pages worth of tales and scriptures before I got around to the actual doing part, trying to meditate, trying to re-enact the heroism and derring-do of my beloved actors and actresses. I chose Zen Buddhism as my stage. And this effort, of course, was more grown-up and sophisticated and worldly-wise than any Saturday-afternoon Nirvana.

My re-enactments suffered from the same problems that my earlier re-enactments had. I really longed for a jump-cut from Ohio to Okinawa in a nanosecond -- from 'deluded' to 'enlightened' in some magical, imperviously-conclusive moment. Of course, there were bright-light moments, but in general I was stuck with the moment-to-moment plainness that any re-enactor was stuck with. Real life was not Hollywood and yet the habit of trying to make my life as good as Hollywood, as grown-up as the great teachers and hermits and monks and nuns ... well, the habit clung like body odor.

Over time, the habit took on more and more sophisticated excuses and explanations -- there was 'lineage' and 'ineffable meaning' and 'settling this matter' and 'edgeless peace' ... and it all sounded and felt very grown-up. True, I outgrew the longing to be a 'teacher' and left behind the desires to know all the secret rituals and hand-shakes and realized that however kool kool clothing might be, still I couldn't afford it and even if I could, what the hell good would it do me? Celluloid Zen might be OK for some people -- sometimes lots of them -- but it left me increasingly edgy and dubious and sometimes cranky. Longing to be Randolph Scott or Buddha, to achieve 'enlightenment' and forswear 'delusion,' might be a pretty good inspiration to action, but as a continuing diet, it struck me as childish in the worst possible way.

Reading my own words, I can imagine thinking that I was all more grown-up than that, that I might somehow have escaped or could escape such a childish net. But that really is a delusion heaped on a delusion. Wanting to be Randolph Scott or Buddha is just wanting to be Randolph Scott or Buddha. When there is no spotlight to be in, where is the spotlight? When there is no hero, who is the hero? When Zen Buddhism is just a movie starring John Wayne, where is the Zen Buddhism?

There is a lot of celluloid Zen Buddhism available. Just ask Google and all dreams will be fulfilled in an instant. I just typed "Zen Buddhism" into Google and got "About 2,830,000 results (0.21 seconds)." The celluloid world is alive and kicking. There are people with "lineage." They are "authentic" in the eyes of others ... hell, sometimes they are even "authentic" in their own eyes. They are "wise" or "enlightened" or "compassionate."

And what's the problem with all of this, this celluloid Zen that lingers like bad breath?

The problem is that no one is providing Dots or Jujubes or Baby Ruth ... you know ... the good stuff.

Yummmmmmmmy!
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