“I am as fully impressed as anyone with the fact that this world is not our permanent abiding-place; but that is no reason why we should underrate, abuse or malign it. There is such a thing as being too other-worldly: the grand teachings of God’s gospel do not conflict with the grandeur, the beauty and the mystery of God’s handiwork, (aka) our own planet. And we can no more afford to despise and dispense with the one than with the other. It seems to me that we cannot better prepare for enjoying the life hereafter than by a healthy, hearty and rational enjoyment of the one that is here.”

~ From Broken Idols, by Richard Wolcott. circa 1867

I really love this quote, found in my second jail notebook, the one in which I began to add a more diverse collection of quotes and aphorisms, apart from the mostly-Biblical verses that filled the first volume. Wolcott’s observation sagely marries divine creation with nature’s wonderment, and from my own contemplations, I couldn’t agree more. The problem is, upon transcription, I can’t for the life of me find the source material; diligent searches on Wikipedia, Google and GoodReads come up empty. So if you, dear reader, can help pinpoint the original exposition, please note it in this post’s ‘reply’ section. Thanking you in advance.

If you’ve been kind enough to read previous entries (specifically “The ‘B’ Side”) you already know that I’ve worked hard to ascertain a personal balance between theology and ethical philosophy; to wit, by coming to realize that God’s wisdom, voiced most notably in Jesus’ teachings, very often parallels the inspired teachings of the Buddha. The universal concepts of truth, love, joy, kindness (and others) appear again and again in both doctrines, and a wise scribe like Richard Wolcott (whoever he may be?) properly lays it out for us in layman’s terms.

You may have seen that sly bumper sticker, “My Karma Ran Over My Dogma” and if nothing else, it made you think about its meaning. Taking the wordplay a step further, it might be more aptly written as “my actions cancelled out my good intentions.” For our purposes here, “dharma” can be translated as “truth” and “karma” as consequences. In Buddha’s words, “our good or evil deeds follow us continually like shadows.” Our trusty King James Bible, in over 11,000 examples, simply reminds us, “For as we sow, we shall reap.”

You’ve probably gathered by now my passion for reading; how it consumed my time in lock-up and continues in the half-way house. In between the Hollywood tell-alls and suspense novels here on our bookshelf, a couple of surprising gems surfaced. Just yesterday I finished Toni Morrison’s crushing post-Civil War saga Beloved, with its portrayal of tragically inhuman racism. The novel was graphic and disturbing, the kind of raw story-telling they didn’t teach us in white history classes. I’m told that the award-winning 1998 film version, starring Thandie Newton as the title character, pulls very few punches, and it’s high on my growing list of must-sees.

My previous read was a non-fiction discovery, Seven Years in Tibet by Heinrich Harrer, that I almost passed on and am glad I didn’t. This 1952 memoir from a German mountaineer/alpine skier tells the incredible tale of prison-camp escape followed by a mind-and-body numbing 700-mile trek through the Himalayas, ending at the forbidden Tibetan city of Lhasa, where the author becomes tutor to the 14th (current) Dalai Lama. (I’ll add the 1997 film version, starring Brad Pitt, to my watch list, several notches below Beloved.)

I bring it up because just as I finished the book, I heard that one of our house-mates, set to leave that day, was from Nepal, so I gifted it to him on his way out the door, covertly inserting a bookmark on which I wrote the following Buddhist pledge: “To follow the ethical law leads upward to inner development, to higher rebirths and richer experiences of happiness and joy.” Noble guidance, I thought, for a young bhikkhu in America, leaving a sober house and re-entering the so-called “real world.”

In closing, let’s pair up that passage with this New Testament token from the Apostle Paul, in 2 Timothy 1:7, and send it in spirit to Mr. Harrer and all adventurers: “For God hath not given us the spirit of fear but of power and of love, and of a sound mind.”

Dedicated to Richard Wolcott, wherever you are…