BAD LIFE CONDITION

The exile of Nichiren, 1920's Japanese postcard, N.Y. Public Library.

I was welcomed into a Buddhist community in Provincetown, Massachusetts, in 1987. The Japanese sect had been founded by a Japanese lay (Nichiren) Buddhist after WWII as a peace movement. Nichiren Daishonin, an itinerant Buddhist priest, is considered by some Japanese Buddhists to have been a 13th century manifestation of Siddhartha/Shakyamuni/Gautama, referred to commonly as "The Buddha" here in The West. Nichiren left behind written material, such as letters to his followers, unlike Gautama. He was devoted to the precepts of The Lotus Sutra.

My involvement with the Provincetown Buddhists fulfilled my search for community at the time. I had recently moved to Provincetown from Boston after a difficult time. The town was familiar to me. I was a stranger to the town. The Buddhist group, an unlikely conglomeration of smart misfits, was a good fit for me. My job at a locked psychiatric facility in Boston allowed me to work 32 hours in two overnight shifts. That enabled me to spend most of my time in Provincetown. 

The property I rented consisted of two old fishing shacks behind a large house. One had been converted into a lofted studio apartment. The other was a single room with lots of windows, white walls and a painted plywood floor. During the latter part of my stay in Provincetown, that room became a Buddhist meeting house for the town's community. It housed the two daily (morning and evening) chanting rituals of the sect. These were followed by discussions of the Buddhism's place in the lives of the attendees. Our community leader was a lovely Brazilian woman who had infused her Buddhism with the exuberance of a Rio Mardi Gras. 

Eventually I moved to Manhattan to learn about caring for AIDS patients. That decision was influenced by my Buddhist practice, which I maintained in New York's Greenwich Village community. That's another story.

As I write this once again, I realize it might read as slightly exotic in 2018 America. But it wasn't. In the terms of the Buddhist ideology I found, I came to my practice in a "bad life condition". Through the interpreted lens of a 13th century Japanese priest, my life was headed in the wrong direction. I was not really doing anything about it either. I was drifting in a comfy sea of sensual pleasure and weekly habit. 

My image was all too important to me. I rode from Provincetown to work at a prestigious hospital outside Boston (120 miles each way) in leathers on a motorcycle. I still laugh at the hasty exits of some horrified psychiatrists when I entered the staff lounge for my shifts. The sight of a 6-foot-three out gay nurse in black leather must have stirred some deep Angst in some. But the patients generally loved it. 

On the surface of things, I had it all, despite the raging AIDS Epidemic: A secure job doing gratifying work, nice digs by the ocean, lots of free time, plenty of sex, time for hobbies, etc.. Having it all is a great time to pull away from the table before gluttony sets in. The fact is that there is no having it all for an awakened mind. My bad life condition was rooted in my capacity to consume too much of the easily gratifying. This left little incentive to stretch, experience discomfort and grow. Grabbing the new entails letting go of the old when your hands are so full. 

The insecurity of moving to Manhattan after the predictable comforts of Provincetown was damn hard. Within the first month, I had found no work with AIDS patients as I had hoped. I was working at Payne Whitney (Psychiatric) and living in a studio apartment supplied by the hospital at reduced rent. A patient on angel dust tried to slit his mother's throat during one of my shifts. He had gotten his weapon, a long glass shard, by kicking out a window on the ward. I had been promised in my interview for the job that the seventh-floor windows were made of unbreakable glass. Obviously, this shook my confidence in the administration. 

My resignation was accepted graciously only after I threatened to expose the lack of safety at the facility to the New York Post. Prior to that, I had been threatened with being black-balled in nursing all over Manhattan by the Director of Nursing. After a desperate stint in a private for-profit hospital owned by the Kresge Department Store proprietors (origins of Kmart), I answered an ad in the Sunday N.Y. Times. Frankly, I was considering a new career in fast food. 

I was hired by a temp agency for home care nurses after a brief interview with the savvy CEO. I realized soon after that she had hired me to star as her "Bostonian nurse" in her new AIDS hospice division. My patients were wealthy men from the arts, show business and corporate business. And they were all close to death from AIDS. That work was the cure for my bad life condition. Despite battling for housing in Manhattan, traveling from Harlem to the Battery on crowded subways at all hours, and ascertaining my own presumed HIV-positive status, I found a deep strength which had eluded me for most of my life. I became a person of worth, an adult, in my own estimation with little or no regard for the estimates of others. 

This identity, which took me thirty-eight years to develop, sustained me through my own near death from AIDS in 1996 and my own near death from the aftermath of cancer treatments in 2003. If I had encountered those challenges in my previous bad life condition,  I may not have survived with my wits. Many people in my life have succumbed to premature illness and death from their failure to embrace their own worth by letting go of their ostensibly wonderful bad life conditions.

I try to avoid giving advice. Most advice, even some of the best, is ignored by people who are not ready to make a change. I will say that the condition of your life is best judged by your depth of understanding and acceptance of the true person who inhabits your body and mind. Superficial factors and behaviors are worthless in comparison to being true with yourself and those in your environment. The denial of the validity of truth and honesty are currently corrosive elements in our American culture. When dishonesty becomes the cultural norm, we all suffer a worse life condition, no matter what we do.