Burgers on the grill, too.
Sunday, January 30, 2011
Thursday, January 27, 2011
A follower of the Way does not take what is not given.
Buddhist fundamentalists interpret this precept to mean that their religious royalty should not handle money. So, when a person who is regarded in such a way travels to somewhere like the United States, for example, this person will require someone to always be with them who is singularly saddled with responsibility to pay for things like plane tickets, hotel rooms, and even meals, because money is tainted by this notion that it is not offered freely.
Even if the money is given to the teacher, it was presumed to have been taken from someone else at some point along it's karmic path, that is, someone somewhere down the line had to give something up in order to make the money manifest. The very notion of commerce is believed to be irretrievably intertwined with human greed, so the religiously pure cannot risk being associated with it by even touching coins or bills.
This pious being grips (or more likely this person's community grips) very tightly to something that is believed to have been attained, some high level of enlightenment, that would be stained and lost if money, I mean the actual coins and bills, got involved with this person's life in any way.
Of course, in a more practical sense, this precept is the moral admonition against stealing.
This precept serves to remind us that when we believe that there is something in the world that we need so badly that we are considering taking it away from someone else we have lost contact with reality. When we believe that we fundamentally lack something, and so desperately need to possess it that we would consider depriving another of it, we have lost sight of the simple truth that all we really need is available to us at all times. The only thing we ever need is right in front of us all the time. It is reality itself.
The Buddha was fond of lists, or those who finally committed his teaching to the written word were fond of lists (it's easy to see why lists would be popular in an oral tradition), and he is said to have asserted there are four basic human needs: food, clothing, shelter, and medicine. Everything else is a desire. When you think you need something other than the simple beauty of a full moon, your mind has led you astray in it's grasping, you're being fooled by the notion that peace, happiness and satisfaction is contained within and by means of the possession of that iPod, or that million bucks. This is delusion itself.
I use this maxim in my own life, it is interwoven into my personal decisions all the time. It is why I began a process of divesting myself of my possessions four years ago, a process that continues to the day, and I expect will continue for some time to come. It guides my decisions about what to buy every day.
I suppose one can steal food, money or clothing. One could skip out on the rent or a hotel bill. It is possible to craft a scenario in your mind to back one into a corner where one MUST steal in order to satisfy what the Buddha is said to have called a need. Yep, watch your mind do that, it inevitably will.
Once you've convinced yourself that this precept is flawed, you have just demonstrated it's fundamental truth, just as surely as the religiosity discussed above is profoundly deluded. You have reached for and grasped at something you decided you needed--the scenario to prove that it is sometimes okay to steal. Congratulations.
These monks, or their communities who insist on these "no handling money" standards are also grasping. There's something out there they have to have. They have to have it so badly that they are willing to insist that another person handle money for them when they could, and should, be doing it themselves. This sense of attainment, this notion that "I am now the kind of being that can be exempted" from something as basic to human existence as paying your own way is exactly the grasping of which this precept warns.
They take from this assistant their time and energy for this silliness. The assistant may be willing, or even eager to do this service, bit that's because they are grasping at another notion of attainment, some special status for being Buddha's butt-wiper or something. They are likely not interested in running around with you and I and paying for our sandwiches just because we can't be sullied by money, are they?
I just use this laughable extreme as an illustration. I'm sure there are teachers in those traditions that are very weary of this game, who just go along because to not do so would upset a cherished apple-cart. This isn't really the point.
The point is that when you take something that isn't freely given to you, either by exchange for something you give, such as money, or because it was given out-right, you are grasping, your mind is lost in the delusion that this thing is important enough to cause harm, or loss, to another.
The truth is that before you attach to such notions you are already aware that there is nothing you really need that is not always available to you, right in front of you, at all times. Christians may call this God's love, or the love of Jesus. It's the same assertion. Everything is desire.
So, this precept serves to remind us that when we want something so badly that we are willing to cause someone else to experience a loss, we are deluded. Whatever it is, we don't really need it.
So, when you see things as they really are, you do not take anything not given to you.
Even if the money is given to the teacher, it was presumed to have been taken from someone else at some point along it's karmic path, that is, someone somewhere down the line had to give something up in order to make the money manifest. The very notion of commerce is believed to be irretrievably intertwined with human greed, so the religiously pure cannot risk being associated with it by even touching coins or bills.
This pious being grips (or more likely this person's community grips) very tightly to something that is believed to have been attained, some high level of enlightenment, that would be stained and lost if money, I mean the actual coins and bills, got involved with this person's life in any way.
Of course, in a more practical sense, this precept is the moral admonition against stealing.
This precept serves to remind us that when we believe that there is something in the world that we need so badly that we are considering taking it away from someone else we have lost contact with reality. When we believe that we fundamentally lack something, and so desperately need to possess it that we would consider depriving another of it, we have lost sight of the simple truth that all we really need is available to us at all times. The only thing we ever need is right in front of us all the time. It is reality itself.
The Buddha was fond of lists, or those who finally committed his teaching to the written word were fond of lists (it's easy to see why lists would be popular in an oral tradition), and he is said to have asserted there are four basic human needs: food, clothing, shelter, and medicine. Everything else is a desire. When you think you need something other than the simple beauty of a full moon, your mind has led you astray in it's grasping, you're being fooled by the notion that peace, happiness and satisfaction is contained within and by means of the possession of that iPod, or that million bucks. This is delusion itself.
I use this maxim in my own life, it is interwoven into my personal decisions all the time. It is why I began a process of divesting myself of my possessions four years ago, a process that continues to the day, and I expect will continue for some time to come. It guides my decisions about what to buy every day.
I suppose one can steal food, money or clothing. One could skip out on the rent or a hotel bill. It is possible to craft a scenario in your mind to back one into a corner where one MUST steal in order to satisfy what the Buddha is said to have called a need. Yep, watch your mind do that, it inevitably will.
Once you've convinced yourself that this precept is flawed, you have just demonstrated it's fundamental truth, just as surely as the religiosity discussed above is profoundly deluded. You have reached for and grasped at something you decided you needed--the scenario to prove that it is sometimes okay to steal. Congratulations.
These monks, or their communities who insist on these "no handling money" standards are also grasping. There's something out there they have to have. They have to have it so badly that they are willing to insist that another person handle money for them when they could, and should, be doing it themselves. This sense of attainment, this notion that "I am now the kind of being that can be exempted" from something as basic to human existence as paying your own way is exactly the grasping of which this precept warns.
They take from this assistant their time and energy for this silliness. The assistant may be willing, or even eager to do this service, bit that's because they are grasping at another notion of attainment, some special status for being Buddha's butt-wiper or something. They are likely not interested in running around with you and I and paying for our sandwiches just because we can't be sullied by money, are they?
I just use this laughable extreme as an illustration. I'm sure there are teachers in those traditions that are very weary of this game, who just go along because to not do so would upset a cherished apple-cart. This isn't really the point.
The point is that when you take something that isn't freely given to you, either by exchange for something you give, such as money, or because it was given out-right, you are grasping, your mind is lost in the delusion that this thing is important enough to cause harm, or loss, to another.
The truth is that before you attach to such notions you are already aware that there is nothing you really need that is not always available to you, right in front of you, at all times. Christians may call this God's love, or the love of Jesus. It's the same assertion. Everything is desire.
So, this precept serves to remind us that when we want something so badly that we are willing to cause someone else to experience a loss, we are deluded. Whatever it is, we don't really need it.
So, when you see things as they really are, you do not take anything not given to you.
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
A follower of the Way does not kill.
A fundamentalist, myopic and narrow view of this precept is the reason many people believe that Buddhists must be vegetarians. Me? I love vegetarians, they're delicious. I like to eat dead cows. Venison is also among my favorite meats.
As I sit here and write I am breathing. Each time I take a breath I am ending the life of untold numbers of microbes as they encounter the lining of my lungs. When I walk to the kitchen to fetch another pot of green tea I squash millions more under my feet.
Carrots live, until you pull them up to put them in your vegan salad. Life and death are inseparable. One cannot live without constantly bringing about death. This is the way things are. We are all food. My body will be food someday, so will yours.
This walk with death that is a part of all life is not the killing referred to in this precept. This hand-in-hand partnership between life and death is part of the way things are. It is beyond concepts of right and wrong. It simply is.
Of course it is wrong to murder someone, but it is also wrong to kill a friendship, or a conversation, or an idea. What this precept is getting to is that once you've decided that anything is objectionable enough that you willfully end it's existence you have stepped off the path.
In the most obvious sense this applies to another human life. If you decide that you have something to gain from willfully ending another's life because you object to something they do, or are, you are deeply lost in delusion. But anytime that you believe that there is anything out there which is not you, and that ending it's existence will somehow benefit you, you have completely lost sight of reality.
When you realize that everything is interconnected, everything is one huge web of the same thing, you realize that there is nothing out there to kill that is not also you, and any killing you do is really killing yourself, because there is no other thing out there, and there's nothing to be gained from killing yourself.
Or, as one of my favorite Jimmy Dale Gilmore songs goes "it makes no sense, committing suicide in self-defense."
So, the point here is not about murder, although murder obviously falls into the category. It is about this idea that there are things that are here that shouldn't exist. Really? You might as well decide that the sun really shouldn't rise in the east.
If someone were to get up before sunrise, facing east, and as the sun came up scream "No! That's not right! Sun! Go back down! Rise over there! Out of the North!" you'd rightfully call the guys in the white jackets who check troubled souls into the padded rooms. The guy screaming at the sun is completely nuts. What else could that mean?
In the context of this precept, it's just as ridiculous as a guy in Arizona deciding he would somehow be better off if he gunned down some politicians. It's just as deluded. Of course, the consequences aren't the same, the guy yelling at the sunrise is just making some noise, that doesn't compare to the suffering of gun violence, but the delusion is identical.
So, the point here isn't really what one should or shouldn't do, it's about orienting one's view to see things the way they really are. Reality is one thing. Any notion that arises that something shouldn't exist is delusion. If it exists it doesn't require a reason to do so, so there similarly can't possibly be a reason for it not to exist.
This doesn't mean that one shouldn't act when acting is the thing to do. If someone could have prevented what happened in Arizona of course that's what they should have done, even if that intervention would have involved the gunman's death. That's not the killing to which this precept refers.
You will be tempted to create an endless number of such hypothetical scenarios in order to craft ways to deny the simple truth of this precept. That's what our minds need to do in order to persist in this notion that a self exists. Just look at that, it's your mind defending this notion that there is something separate that exists there. This is the fundamental problem.
This notion of separateness, a self and an other, is what is at the root of all human suffering.
This precept serves to remind us that this process, this insistence on the existence of this self, is at work. In the absence of a sense of self/other any notion of killing simply would not arise. There's nothing to kill, nothing to do the killing.
This is how things really are. So, when one is following the Way, that is, seeing things as they really are, one does not kill.
As I sit here and write I am breathing. Each time I take a breath I am ending the life of untold numbers of microbes as they encounter the lining of my lungs. When I walk to the kitchen to fetch another pot of green tea I squash millions more under my feet.
Carrots live, until you pull them up to put them in your vegan salad. Life and death are inseparable. One cannot live without constantly bringing about death. This is the way things are. We are all food. My body will be food someday, so will yours.
This walk with death that is a part of all life is not the killing referred to in this precept. This hand-in-hand partnership between life and death is part of the way things are. It is beyond concepts of right and wrong. It simply is.
Of course it is wrong to murder someone, but it is also wrong to kill a friendship, or a conversation, or an idea. What this precept is getting to is that once you've decided that anything is objectionable enough that you willfully end it's existence you have stepped off the path.
In the most obvious sense this applies to another human life. If you decide that you have something to gain from willfully ending another's life because you object to something they do, or are, you are deeply lost in delusion. But anytime that you believe that there is anything out there which is not you, and that ending it's existence will somehow benefit you, you have completely lost sight of reality.
When you realize that everything is interconnected, everything is one huge web of the same thing, you realize that there is nothing out there to kill that is not also you, and any killing you do is really killing yourself, because there is no other thing out there, and there's nothing to be gained from killing yourself.
Or, as one of my favorite Jimmy Dale Gilmore songs goes "it makes no sense, committing suicide in self-defense."
So, the point here is not about murder, although murder obviously falls into the category. It is about this idea that there are things that are here that shouldn't exist. Really? You might as well decide that the sun really shouldn't rise in the east.
If someone were to get up before sunrise, facing east, and as the sun came up scream "No! That's not right! Sun! Go back down! Rise over there! Out of the North!" you'd rightfully call the guys in the white jackets who check troubled souls into the padded rooms. The guy screaming at the sun is completely nuts. What else could that mean?
In the context of this precept, it's just as ridiculous as a guy in Arizona deciding he would somehow be better off if he gunned down some politicians. It's just as deluded. Of course, the consequences aren't the same, the guy yelling at the sunrise is just making some noise, that doesn't compare to the suffering of gun violence, but the delusion is identical.
So, the point here isn't really what one should or shouldn't do, it's about orienting one's view to see things the way they really are. Reality is one thing. Any notion that arises that something shouldn't exist is delusion. If it exists it doesn't require a reason to do so, so there similarly can't possibly be a reason for it not to exist.
This doesn't mean that one shouldn't act when acting is the thing to do. If someone could have prevented what happened in Arizona of course that's what they should have done, even if that intervention would have involved the gunman's death. That's not the killing to which this precept refers.
You will be tempted to create an endless number of such hypothetical scenarios in order to craft ways to deny the simple truth of this precept. That's what our minds need to do in order to persist in this notion that a self exists. Just look at that, it's your mind defending this notion that there is something separate that exists there. This is the fundamental problem.
This notion of separateness, a self and an other, is what is at the root of all human suffering.
This precept serves to remind us that this process, this insistence on the existence of this self, is at work. In the absence of a sense of self/other any notion of killing simply would not arise. There's nothing to kill, nothing to do the killing.
This is how things really are. So, when one is following the Way, that is, seeing things as they really are, one does not kill.
Monday, January 24, 2011
on the Ten Grave Precepts of Mahayana Buddhism
In one sense, the precepts are the moral code for Buddhists. If one could just hold that notion of them very loosely, that's a complete description. The problem is, human beings being what we are, we can't do anything like hold such a thing loosely. Once you draw a boundary we want to test it, probe it, capture it.
The root "-cept" is derived from the Latin verb "capio," which means "to take" as in to capture, as in capturing a flag or something, and also to comprehend, to understand, to grasp a concept, or what Uchiyama might refer to as "closing the hand of thought."
The prefix "pre-," of course, means "before."
So, one way to approach a deeper understanding of the precepts is to look at them as the conditions of the mind before we mentally grasp something--pre-concept, i.e., before grasping. The precepts describe our natural state before we separate into self and other, into good and bad, into safe and dangerous, etc. So, as such, they serve to remind us when we have done just that, that is, when we are viewing the world of dualistic opposites, populated with individually-identifiable separately-existing entities. The precepts are a way to remind ourselves that the self has come into existence.
This is when all the trouble starts. Once we start to see the world as populated in this way, with definite separate entities that live and die, we are bound to suffer in the way that human beings suffer. Buddha's fundamental teaching sought to reveal this pattern to his students, and to further assert that it can be released, i.e., there is a way off this merry-go-round.
The precepts help us recognize when we've signed up for another ride.
Stating them is problematic all by itself. Stating anything is problematic, because once you do you have declared what something is and isn't, and reality really doesn't work that way. There is only reality, there's nothing not reality.
But, as one of the beloved teachers in my lineage is known for saying, you've got to say something or there will never be any understanding. So, here goes.
A follower of the Way does not kill.
A follower of the Way does not take what is not given.
A follower of the Way does not engage in sensual misconduct.
A follower of the Way does not speak deceptively.
A follower of the Way does not intoxicate oneself or others.
A follower of the Way does not slander others.
A follower of the Way does not praise self.
A follower of the Way does not possess anything selfishly.
A follower of the Way does not harbor ill will.
A follower of the Way Does not abuse the Three Treasures.
You could also say, don't kill, don't steal, don't rape, don't lie, don't get drunk, don't disrespect, don't brag, don't be selfish, don't hate, and don't defame the Buddha, the teachings of Buddhism, or other Buddhists.
I think that's pretty good advice, and like I said, if you could just hold that loosely, like a handful of sand, you'd be in good shape. But, you won't.
The value of the precepts for me is they help me recognize when I'm similarly gripping things too tightly, when I've lost contact with reality, when....oh anything else I say is just closing the fist around something, so I'll leave it at that. They help me recognize when my mind is leading me away from my direct experience of reality.
I am planning to "take" the precepts because I want to show up for my functioning role as a member of the human organization that is responsible for passing these teachings along. People have been doing things like this for 2500 years before me and I am grateful to them. They're dead, I can't really thank them, or buy them a beer or something, but I can show up for others the way they showed up for me, so that's what I'm going to do.
In practical terms this means I will be endeavoring at least to be a role model for others. I will live my life with attention to this moral code.
In these next few essays I will discuss each of the precepts singularly, relating a bit of what each of them means to me. Thanks for reading.
The root "-cept" is derived from the Latin verb "capio," which means "to take" as in to capture, as in capturing a flag or something, and also to comprehend, to understand, to grasp a concept, or what Uchiyama might refer to as "closing the hand of thought."
The prefix "pre-," of course, means "before."
So, one way to approach a deeper understanding of the precepts is to look at them as the conditions of the mind before we mentally grasp something--pre-concept, i.e., before grasping. The precepts describe our natural state before we separate into self and other, into good and bad, into safe and dangerous, etc. So, as such, they serve to remind us when we have done just that, that is, when we are viewing the world of dualistic opposites, populated with individually-identifiable separately-existing entities. The precepts are a way to remind ourselves that the self has come into existence.
This is when all the trouble starts. Once we start to see the world as populated in this way, with definite separate entities that live and die, we are bound to suffer in the way that human beings suffer. Buddha's fundamental teaching sought to reveal this pattern to his students, and to further assert that it can be released, i.e., there is a way off this merry-go-round.
The precepts help us recognize when we've signed up for another ride.
Stating them is problematic all by itself. Stating anything is problematic, because once you do you have declared what something is and isn't, and reality really doesn't work that way. There is only reality, there's nothing not reality.
But, as one of the beloved teachers in my lineage is known for saying, you've got to say something or there will never be any understanding. So, here goes.
A follower of the Way does not kill.
A follower of the Way does not take what is not given.
A follower of the Way does not engage in sensual misconduct.
A follower of the Way does not speak deceptively.
A follower of the Way does not intoxicate oneself or others.
A follower of the Way does not slander others.
A follower of the Way does not praise self.
A follower of the Way does not possess anything selfishly.
A follower of the Way does not harbor ill will.
A follower of the Way Does not abuse the Three Treasures.
You could also say, don't kill, don't steal, don't rape, don't lie, don't get drunk, don't disrespect, don't brag, don't be selfish, don't hate, and don't defame the Buddha, the teachings of Buddhism, or other Buddhists.
I think that's pretty good advice, and like I said, if you could just hold that loosely, like a handful of sand, you'd be in good shape. But, you won't.
The value of the precepts for me is they help me recognize when I'm similarly gripping things too tightly, when I've lost contact with reality, when....oh anything else I say is just closing the fist around something, so I'll leave it at that. They help me recognize when my mind is leading me away from my direct experience of reality.
I am planning to "take" the precepts because I want to show up for my functioning role as a member of the human organization that is responsible for passing these teachings along. People have been doing things like this for 2500 years before me and I am grateful to them. They're dead, I can't really thank them, or buy them a beer or something, but I can show up for others the way they showed up for me, so that's what I'm going to do.
In practical terms this means I will be endeavoring at least to be a role model for others. I will live my life with attention to this moral code.
In these next few essays I will discuss each of the precepts singularly, relating a bit of what each of them means to me. Thanks for reading.
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
Testing blogpost via e-mail
Please disregard, except to note that if you see this it is possible to post to a blogger/blogspot site over e-mail. That might be useful.
Saturday, January 1, 2011
The Tar Horn
It was weird. I attended the NCAA Men's college basketball game played Saturday, December 18th, at Greensboro Coliseum between The University of North Carolina Tar Heels and The University of Texas Longhorns. I am a Tar Heel fan and a Longhorn alum. The Longhorns won, with less than two seconds left. It was an excellent game, hard fought and well-played on both sides, and with an few more seconds on the clock it could have gone the other way. It was one of those games that makes college basketball so compelling to watch.
I wore burnt orange to this game this year (burnt orange is the team color of The University of Texas at Austin), even though I am a very dedicated University of North Carolina Tar Heels fan. I also attended this game last year when it was held at Dallas Cowboys stadium, which was almost as much of a home court for Texas as Greensboro Colliseum is for the Tar Heels. I wore Carolina blue for that one.
Wearing Carolina blue for that game was entirely natural, I barely gave it a second thought. It was just like going to any game, I am almost always decked-out in Carolina blue when I attend a college basketball game. This year, as I was going to a Tar Heel game which was more or less on their home court as they played my Alma Mater, I decided I *should* wear the colors of my Alma Mater. So, I did.
It was disturbingly weird. As much as I intended to, I couldn't cheer for the Longhorns with any genuine enthusiasm, so as the game got close I found myself cheering on the Tar Heels, much to the confusion of those around me--why was the guy in burnt orange cheering for the Tar Heels?
Why indeed? This is a tale about unexamined notions and imagined expectations.
I felt like I should go in burnt orange. I was going with three UNC alums, and I felt like I was betraying my Alma Mater if I didn't at least make an appearance of loyalty, especially on what is essentially an away court for my Alma Mater. I felt wearing Carolina blue would have been less than genuine, like I was pretending to be something (a UNC alum) I'm not.
Bullshit. It was actually exactly the other way around.
Let me tell the tale of how I became a fan of UNC basketball. At the University of Texas I had the good fortune to take a year-long course in the history of the US Civil Rights movement. Since it stretched over two semesters we could examine a lot of different aspects of this topic in detail.
In January we got to intercollegiate sports. To make a long story as short as possible, Dean Smith, the long-time legendary coach of the Tar Heels, was a pioneer in the integration of intercollegiate athletics. His father played the first black player on a high school basketball team, under threat of his own resignation (and they won the state championship). Carrying on that proud family tradition of righteous courage, in the late 1950's Coach Smith defied popular opinion, his school administration, and even probably put his own life and limb at risk in order to do the right thing and treat college athletes the same regardless of their skin pigmentation. He stood down a whites-only restaurant in Chapel Hill in 1959 by bringing a black college student along with him (and a local minister) to eat one evening. He recruited the first black player to the Tar Heels at a time when the ACC was all white. Dean Smith did not waver, he took his Christian ideals, and his American ideals, seriously.
The timing for these revelations in my life was very fortuitous from a college basketball standpoint. It was the 1981-1982 school year, and UNC had a promising sophomore playing for them named Michael Jordan, along with another guy with some game named James Worthy. I decided to watch a few games and I was hooked. The Tar Heels won the national championship that year, beating Georgetown 63-62 with a now-legendary final winning jump-shot by Jordan. It was a good year to become a Tar Heel fan. I quickly caught on to the fact that UNC basketball was guided by simple ideals: play hard, play together, have fun.
I was no fan of the four corners offense, a creation of Coach Smith's earlier in his career, it's existence led to the shot clock, but I forgave him for that. I liked the style of basketball UNC played and they were in the midst of several seasons of great college basketball.
UT was not. UT's basketball team was never very good while I lived in Austin. It's a football school, and a baseball school. Even when the basketball team played well, no one really cared.
So, I've kept up with the Tar Heels ever since. For years and years I kept my fandom more or less to myself. I didn't have any friends who were Tar Heel fans until I moved to NYC in 1999. At my first job in NYC the woman who led the organization was a UNC alum, we discovered our mutual interest and quickly bonded over it. She is now my closest friend, in some ways the Tar Heels are responsible for one of the most important friendships of my life.
But, since I was not a UNC alum, I realize now that in spite of my dedication as a fan all those years (I am sure that until my first visit to North Carolina in May 2010 that I was the most rabid Tar Heel fan who had never stepped foot in the state), subconsciously I felt a little like a pretender, somehow less of a real fan because I did not attend UNC. I felt a bit like a party crasher, an uninvited guest, because I had *chosen* to be a Tar Heel, I was not Tar Heel born and bred.
I can't believe I took all that so seriously, (in fairness to myself, it was sub-conscious) as if there was some kind of litmus test I needed to pass, some sort of authenticity check I failed! Examined in the light of day, everyone knows that one chooses fan loyalties freely, it isn't assigned to you, or granted as a privilege of birth. It's just college basketball, after all. But, until I wore burnt orange to a Tar Heel game, this self-doubt was buried beneath the surface.
I harbor no desire to have attended UNC rather than UT-Austin, no regret for my choice of schools. I consider the education I received at UT to be world-class, I love Austin, and spending 20 years of my life there made me into the man I am today. But, I am a UNC basketball fan. This loyalty is heart-felt, it goes a little beyond just a preference to support a particular team, it goes to my resonance with Dean Smith's values, my admiration of him for truly having the courage of his convictions and my gratitude for many, many seasons of great college basketball.
Also, I have to say, it's also pretty fun to "hate" Duke, which is part-and-parcel of being a Tar Heel. Duke is over-run with the kind of self-impressed, arrogant, frat-boys I developed a enthusiastic distaste for while a student at UT-Austin (which is similarly over-run with these assholes), and I don't sincerely believe that Mike Krzyzewski, as good a coach as he is, is the kind of man who would have singularly confronted The Pines restaurant in Chapel Hill as Dean Smith did, but I concede I really don't know that.
I can sit down with any Tar Heel fan my age or younger and go toe-to-toe with stories, knowledge and insight about the teams and players, current and past. I witnessed the 2009 national championship game in person. I have plenty of credibility as a Tar Heel fan, and I did graduate from The University of Texas at Austin, so as few can can legitimately say...
I am a Tar Horn.
I wore burnt orange to this game this year (burnt orange is the team color of The University of Texas at Austin), even though I am a very dedicated University of North Carolina Tar Heels fan. I also attended this game last year when it was held at Dallas Cowboys stadium, which was almost as much of a home court for Texas as Greensboro Colliseum is for the Tar Heels. I wore Carolina blue for that one.
Wearing Carolina blue for that game was entirely natural, I barely gave it a second thought. It was just like going to any game, I am almost always decked-out in Carolina blue when I attend a college basketball game. This year, as I was going to a Tar Heel game which was more or less on their home court as they played my Alma Mater, I decided I *should* wear the colors of my Alma Mater. So, I did.
It was disturbingly weird. As much as I intended to, I couldn't cheer for the Longhorns with any genuine enthusiasm, so as the game got close I found myself cheering on the Tar Heels, much to the confusion of those around me--why was the guy in burnt orange cheering for the Tar Heels?
Why indeed? This is a tale about unexamined notions and imagined expectations.
I felt like I should go in burnt orange. I was going with three UNC alums, and I felt like I was betraying my Alma Mater if I didn't at least make an appearance of loyalty, especially on what is essentially an away court for my Alma Mater. I felt wearing Carolina blue would have been less than genuine, like I was pretending to be something (a UNC alum) I'm not.
Bullshit. It was actually exactly the other way around.
Let me tell the tale of how I became a fan of UNC basketball. At the University of Texas I had the good fortune to take a year-long course in the history of the US Civil Rights movement. Since it stretched over two semesters we could examine a lot of different aspects of this topic in detail.
In January we got to intercollegiate sports. To make a long story as short as possible, Dean Smith, the long-time legendary coach of the Tar Heels, was a pioneer in the integration of intercollegiate athletics. His father played the first black player on a high school basketball team, under threat of his own resignation (and they won the state championship). Carrying on that proud family tradition of righteous courage, in the late 1950's Coach Smith defied popular opinion, his school administration, and even probably put his own life and limb at risk in order to do the right thing and treat college athletes the same regardless of their skin pigmentation. He stood down a whites-only restaurant in Chapel Hill in 1959 by bringing a black college student along with him (and a local minister) to eat one evening. He recruited the first black player to the Tar Heels at a time when the ACC was all white. Dean Smith did not waver, he took his Christian ideals, and his American ideals, seriously.
The timing for these revelations in my life was very fortuitous from a college basketball standpoint. It was the 1981-1982 school year, and UNC had a promising sophomore playing for them named Michael Jordan, along with another guy with some game named James Worthy. I decided to watch a few games and I was hooked. The Tar Heels won the national championship that year, beating Georgetown 63-62 with a now-legendary final winning jump-shot by Jordan. It was a good year to become a Tar Heel fan. I quickly caught on to the fact that UNC basketball was guided by simple ideals: play hard, play together, have fun.
I was no fan of the four corners offense, a creation of Coach Smith's earlier in his career, it's existence led to the shot clock, but I forgave him for that. I liked the style of basketball UNC played and they were in the midst of several seasons of great college basketball.
UT was not. UT's basketball team was never very good while I lived in Austin. It's a football school, and a baseball school. Even when the basketball team played well, no one really cared.
So, I've kept up with the Tar Heels ever since. For years and years I kept my fandom more or less to myself. I didn't have any friends who were Tar Heel fans until I moved to NYC in 1999. At my first job in NYC the woman who led the organization was a UNC alum, we discovered our mutual interest and quickly bonded over it. She is now my closest friend, in some ways the Tar Heels are responsible for one of the most important friendships of my life.
But, since I was not a UNC alum, I realize now that in spite of my dedication as a fan all those years (I am sure that until my first visit to North Carolina in May 2010 that I was the most rabid Tar Heel fan who had never stepped foot in the state), subconsciously I felt a little like a pretender, somehow less of a real fan because I did not attend UNC. I felt a bit like a party crasher, an uninvited guest, because I had *chosen* to be a Tar Heel, I was not Tar Heel born and bred.
I can't believe I took all that so seriously, (in fairness to myself, it was sub-conscious) as if there was some kind of litmus test I needed to pass, some sort of authenticity check I failed! Examined in the light of day, everyone knows that one chooses fan loyalties freely, it isn't assigned to you, or granted as a privilege of birth. It's just college basketball, after all. But, until I wore burnt orange to a Tar Heel game, this self-doubt was buried beneath the surface.
I harbor no desire to have attended UNC rather than UT-Austin, no regret for my choice of schools. I consider the education I received at UT to be world-class, I love Austin, and spending 20 years of my life there made me into the man I am today. But, I am a UNC basketball fan. This loyalty is heart-felt, it goes a little beyond just a preference to support a particular team, it goes to my resonance with Dean Smith's values, my admiration of him for truly having the courage of his convictions and my gratitude for many, many seasons of great college basketball.
Also, I have to say, it's also pretty fun to "hate" Duke, which is part-and-parcel of being a Tar Heel. Duke is over-run with the kind of self-impressed, arrogant, frat-boys I developed a enthusiastic distaste for while a student at UT-Austin (which is similarly over-run with these assholes), and I don't sincerely believe that Mike Krzyzewski, as good a coach as he is, is the kind of man who would have singularly confronted The Pines restaurant in Chapel Hill as Dean Smith did, but I concede I really don't know that.
I can sit down with any Tar Heel fan my age or younger and go toe-to-toe with stories, knowledge and insight about the teams and players, current and past. I witnessed the 2009 national championship game in person. I have plenty of credibility as a Tar Heel fan, and I did graduate from The University of Texas at Austin, so as few can can legitimately say...
I am a Tar Horn.
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