When you walk around the Oceania collection—I’m talking about the Pacific Islands: Polynesia, Melanesia, Micronesia, the islands of the deep South Pacific and the western Pacific. Observing these death masks in the showcases—where there are human skulls in a showcase called “ancestral masks,” where they take the head, the skull of an ancestor, put feathers and mud around it, and put it in their house as a totem—a number of thoughts and feelings come to mind. (A) They’re spooky and eerie, and the person is in there and I can feel the person’s spirit in the showcase, and (b) they don’t belong in the showcase. They should be returned to New Guinea where they came from.
If the Greeks or Romans or Italians can demand their art back from the crooks at the Getty Museum then certainly the poor people of New Guinea can demand to get back the masks that contain actual skulls from people who lived. But let me get to the next point—
You stand there and look at some of these Oceanic artworks. First, you can dismiss them as primitive and not really great if you don’t really understand what they are, but if you do understand what they are, you actually see the greatness in some of these pieces of mud and feathers and bone and shell. Now, that’s an area that I really could talk about for hours.
The power of “primitive” art is great—and I’m not talking about the garbage that they carve in the Philippines now for the tourists or the junk that they’re selling in the streets of Tahiti. That’s all junk. I’m talking about the stuff that was collected, let’s say, up to 1920, or even 1940. Pre–World War II Oceanic art is astonishing in terms of its power.
FORTY-ONE
The Time Shelter
I was recently on the streets of North Beach, the once-Italian district of San Francisco. Now it’s the home to bums and Chinese, with a remnant of Little Italy left—the Little Italy amusement park, North Beach. But forty years ago when I came to San Francisco, there used to be women dressed in black—old, lean Italian women. They used to gossip with each other on the street, whispering. I loved it. Being the kind of guy I am, I would once in a while go up and talk to them. (Wherever I’ve been in the world, I’ve had the capacity to go up to strangers. I always get into good conversations for some reason.) I don’t know how the conversation arose. I was talking to one of the old women—she must have been a good ninety-five, probably Sicilian. I said to her, “Mama, what do you do for health?”
She says to me, “There’s hardly anything wrong with a person that a little coffee, a little wine, and a little garlic can’t cure.”
I agree with her 100 percent. Of course, I must add a few things to that mixture: Like, it’s not a little wine; it’s more than a little wine. It’s not a little garlic; it’s a lot more than a little garlic. And there are other things that I like to do, but for her, it worked. They were beautiful old women. They’re gone—you don’t see them anymore.
FORTY-TWO
Being Decent Is Not Love
If you are decent to others, then you’re decent to yourself. You feel better. I don’t want to say if you love others, you love yourself, because I think the word love is overused—and it’s not the right verb anyway. In Latin there are sixteen verbs for love. We have one verb for love and we get mixed up: I love my girlfriend, I love my mother, I love my pizza, I love my bike, I love my car, and I love my dog. In the Latin there are sixteen different verbs for these emotions.
Here, we’re so limited by the choice of the one verb love that we mix up a pizza with our mother and our girlfriend and our bicycle! That’s why I avoid the word love altogether—I don’t like it. It makes me uncomfortable. You love me? You love me, honey? Everything in America is “love.”
I’m an Old World kind of guy. I was raised with it. My father never believed in the word love. He got mad if you said “love” around him. He knew it was b.s. “I love everybody.” You can’t love strangers that you don’t know, but you can be nice to them. You don’t have to go out of your way to be a fool.
My line is: If you are decent to other people, you’re decent to yourself. You feel better. Try it for a day. Look, let’s say you’re a typical, mean S.O.B. You cut people off, you give them the finger, you’re an obnoxious, cheap, hateful human being—the average man in other words. Try one day to be decent to strangers. See the power of human kindness.
FORTY-THREE
Man Is a Creature of Reason
I was reading the teachings of Buddha, called The Way of Practical Attainment. Here’s one; tell me whether this applies to you. It doesn’t matter what your religion is.
A man who chases after fame and wealth and love affairs is like a child who licks honey from the blade of a knife: while he is tasting the sweetness of honey he has to risk hurting his tongue. He is like a man who carries a torch against the strong wind: the flame will surely burn his hands and face. People love their egoistic comfort, which is a love of fame and praise, but fame and praise are like incense that consumes itself and soon disappears. If people chase after honors and public acclaim and leave the way of truth, they’re in serious danger and will soon have cause for regret.*
It’s beautiful poetry, I’ve got to tell you that. It’s universal in the sense that it crosses over to whatever your religion might be. Even if you’re an atheist, you can find these rules somewhat reasonable to live by, unless you don’t believe in any rules at all because you’re so wild and free. Oh, we understand that—we understand that people who aren’t religious are just “wild and free” and they’re so progressive in their freedom and their liberation. As George Orwell said, “The more people chant about their freedom and how free they are, the more loudly I hear their chains rattling.”
“A scripture that is not read with sincerity soon becomes covered with dust.” Who does that sound like? You remember the staged Bibles of the Clintons? Remember that overly large Bible they used to carry on Sundays, that was made for them in Hollywood, on a Hollywood set? It was one-and-a-half to two-and-one-half times the size of an ordinary Bible. The cross was so big you couldn’t miss it from a hundred yards away! “A scripture that is not read with sincerity soon becomes covered with dust.” “A house that is not fixed when it needs repairing becomes filthy; so an idle man soon becomes defiled.”
Why do you think each nation, each people, and each religion has these writings? What is the purpose of any of this? If you were just left to your wants and to your needs and what you’re moaning about—“Oh, I don’t have this, I don’t have that. I don’t have an airplane. Oh, I don’t have a girlfriend. Oh, I don’t have ten girlfriends. Oh, I don’t have a house in Aspen next to Dianne Feinstein, the war profiteer. Oh, I’m not him. Oh, I’m not invited there”—you’re going to just moan and groan through your whole life!
You have to understand that there are millions, tens of millions, of people like you on the earth, going through exactly the same moanings and groanings and that you have to find your way out of it without taking a pill, or using drugs. There’s nothing wrong with taking a pill if you need it, or taking a bicycle ride—trust me on that one—but that’s not the point. That shouldn’t be your only way out of a problem. If man is anything, he is a creature of reason. Do you understand what I’m saying to you? How do you define man? Man is an animal who reasons.
Let’s say you don’t believe in God, our Creator, so you’re into mechanism. You say, “Well, we’re only animals.” We have animal bodies, but you have to admit that we are animals who reason. So, therefore, if a man reasons—or a man can reason—then he can think his way out of almost any problem that he puts himself in. All these problems, by the way, are temporal—small problems, these wants and these needs.
If you thought yourself into them, you should be able to think your way out of most of them.
But, you can’t do it all on your own. Some of them you could try on your own, but you’re probably not going to be able to succeed. See, that’s when people start to turn to the scriptures or to the teachings of Buddha or to another religion—Zen Buddhism, or yoga.
To me it all looks like a burlesque when I look into a yoga studio: I feel like I’m from another planet. If you’re doing yoga, why do you have to wear a costume that shows your private parts to everyone in the room? Can’t you do yoga wearing something that’s a little more dignified, I ask myself? I mean, if it’s purely for the spirit, to get control of the spirit, why are they wearing a show-all pair of tights and they’re on their hands and knees?
See, you have to find the answer somewhere else than in your own head. In other words, we are creatures, we are animals that reason, so we can use reason to get out of any hole that we find ourselves in. But, we don’t have to write the scriptures to get us out of that hole. Let’s go to the people who thought this through ten thousand years ago, five thousand years ago, a thousand years ago. We don’t need some “author” who was on TV to get us out of it! He probably stole it from one of these books anyway and repackaged it! You may as well go back to the original guys who wrote the stuff.
This is another from the teaching of Buddha, and the reason I’m quoting it is not because I’m a Buddhist but because it makes sense. And so, here’s another one of the practical guides: “The duty of a ruler is to protect his people.” How’s that for a starter, Mr. Obama? “The duty of a ruler is to protect his people,” and many of us would say he is. OK. “He is the parent of his people and he protects them by his laws.” Well, when Obama uses drones to kill, we start to wonder what kind of parent he might be.
The Buddhist teaching goes on:
He must raise his people like parents raise their children, giving a dry cloth to replace a wet one without waiting for the child to cry. In like manner, the ruler must remove suffering and bestow happiness without waiting for people to complain. Indeed, his ruling is not perfect until his people abide in peace. They are his country’s treasure.
I love that one: The people are a nation’s treasure. You hear what I’m saying to you? We are the treasure of America! You and I are the treasure of America: not the senators, not the congressmen, not the media. We are the treasure of America!
“Therefore a wise ruler is always thinking of his people and does not forget them even for a moment.” Wouldn’t you like to believe that? Wouldn’t you like to wake up or go to sleep knowing that your wise rulers are always thinking of you and don’t forget you for a moment other than to deceive you and to fleece you?
He thinks of their hardships and plans for their prosperity. To rule wisely, he must be advised about everything: about water, about drought, about storms, about rain. He must know about crops, the chances for a good harvest, people’s comforts and their sorrows. To be in a position to rightly award, punish, or praise, he must be thoroughly informed as to the guilt of bad men and the merits of good men.
I think you’ve got the picture. That’s why I’ve included various religious writings. When you hear people say they’re the wrong gender trapped in a body, for example—the current psychosis among the transgender crowd—he’s a woman trapped in a man’s body so he’s going to go to a surgeon to cut off his penis. To me, that’s total insanity! The doctor should be arrested for malpractice, and the person who thinks that about himself should be given antipsychotic medication or put into a mental ward.
Never before in history has a man awakened and said, “I’m a woman in a man’s body.” Never! This is propaganda. There may have been homosexuals on earth from the beginning of time and there may be homosexuals on earth till the end of time—we understand that—but to say you’re a woman in a man’s body—can’t you just be a man who likes men? Why must you say you’re a woman in a man’s body? Where’d that come from? That comes from the psychosis of the psychiatric movement that has convinced thousands of marginally sane people that they’re men born in women’s bodies!
But just as I can read Buddhist scripture and I don’t have to be a Buddhist, I don’t have to say I’m a Buddhist trapped in an American’s body. I don’t have to become a Buddhist to read the Buddhist tracts. You don’t have to shift religions just to read the other religion’s books. You don’t have to say, “Now I’m trapped in the wrong religion.” You were born in a religion. That’s the religion that’s right for you. It’s genetic! It’s part of your genetic code. Your parents were that religion. Going back many generations. It’s in your genetic code. It’s encoded within your mind and your psyche—and you’re never going to find peace in another religion! You’re always going to be confused. You may find temporary peace by saying, “Oh, I’m a Buddhist.” Stop trying to change religions, jumping from one to another like you’d jump between hobbies.
Have you ever seen these liberal American “Buddhists” walking around? They don’t even know what Buddhism means! They use it as a form of ego pride. They’re trying to show they’re different than you, better than you—that they’ve evolved from, let’s say, Catholicism into Buddhism.
Now, the first teaching of Buddhism will tell you that you can’t use a religion as a matter of pride, as the Iranian Hitler did. He used his religion as a matter of pride. He was misusing his own religion by bashing us over the head with it and saying, “The world will not be peaceful until you all accept my religion.” To me, that’s the mark of a person who doesn’t even understand his own religion. You can’t misuse your religious book and say, “You must be like me, you must follow my religion, or there will be no peace on earth!” You’re abusing your religious teachings! It’s the opposite of your religion to do that!
But nobody said that to Iran’s Hitler. Obama had the chance to do that in the United Nations. He’s our leader; he could have gotten up there and said ten things we would have remembered. He could have had somebody write a speech for him that said, “We have a visitor to America today who is using his religion in a prideful manner, trying to tell us that unless we convert to his religion, there will be no peace on earth. This is the act of a lowly man who is hostile to the rest of the world, and it has no place in the United Nations, where humanism and humanitarianism should prevail—not threats.” He could have said that. The world would have stood up and cheered, and said, “What got into him? Who wrote that speech for him?”
And that’s part of the problem. It goes back to this core statement: that national pride has never been this low in my lifetime. I’ve never seen national pride at this low point. We are at the lowest point of national pride that I can ever remember. Tell me if I’m wrong: Can you remember a day that national pride was lower than it is today? On September 12, 2001, it was higher than it is today! The day after the Islamic murderers hit us, the nation was very proud because we knew we were going to fight back and we were going to beat them—but we haven’t beaten them for all the cowardly reasons that we know to be in play.
But, we were proud to be Americans that day. We all came together. We were prouder the day after we were hit than we are today.
FORTY-FOUR
Talking to a Bum About God
I don’t know how many houses of worship I’ve tried in my life that I’ve walked out of. I walked out of them sometimes because I was bored, sometimes because I thought their politics were too far to the Left. I’ve walke
d out of many houses of worship. In fact, I never found one that I liked. And yet, I’m a man who believes in God. Why? Who am I not to believe in God? Who am I to say, “I don’t believe in God”? What do you think I am: bigger than God? “Do you think I created myself?” a man once said to me. “Follow your logic in your own head,” a homeless man said to me.
I was once into, more so than now, talking to strangers. I was the wandering man who would talk to weird people, figuring they held the truth, or some truth. Now I hold my own truths. I don’t need to talk to strangers to form my opinions. I can come up with my own, but when I was younger, I talked to a lot of odd people. One of them was an itinerant man. You’d call him a bum, but he wasn’t really because he wasn’t really dirty. He wasn’t disheveled; he didn’t look like a homeless man, but he was. He had a backpack and long white hair. He wasn’t particularly clean and he wasn’t particularly dirty, and he wasn’t an alcoholic or a druggie. So, I talked to him about this and that.
His name was Morris (or Moses). So, I said to him, “Do you believe in God?” I remember to this day—it was on Columbus Avenue in San Francisco. I looked at him and he had startling blue eyes. He looked at me and said, as though in astonishment, “Why? Who created you?” In that instant, I had a satori, like the Japanese talk about. I understood more completely than I ever had through any preacher or rabbi what it was all about.
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