THIS I KNOW: BHUDDA NATURE MATTERS!

I don’t need God. God needs me.
He’s trapped like Merlin inside a tree.

— from Dave’s “Songs of Innocence”

The one hand I use for clapping is busy writing this. All five of its fingers are united in exclaiming: “Buddha-Nature Matters!” If they didn’t agree, I fear one of the five fingers would be pressing a trigger to end the misery of these Kali Yuga days.

Only kidding.

Maybe half-kidding.

In the meanest meanwhile, let my united writing hand continue my last, first and only will and testament:

Age blindsided me in the middle of the night. I awoke aching from the right side of my neck down thru my shoulder blade. I’m still pang-prone, although Advil has gauzed things.

I had been dreaming I was sent with a long-dead spiritual sidekick Mitch Gilbert to talk about Sufism at an orthodox mosque filled wall-to-wall with beginners in the early ecstasy of shariat. I should have known they had no use for advanced Islamic concepts like the “Nur Muhammad.” We were chased out of there. I felt stupid for attempting self-assigned preaching and strangely sympathetic to the congregation for its antipathy toward it. Served me right, I thought, for serving them wrong.

That’s when I awoke to the remainder of a long, dark night of physical stress and discomfort. Doomsday is not the last day — just the worst one. But I vowed not to let current fears rule my mind and…