Author Archives: Brian Ambrozy

Tolerant Christians. They do exist.

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First Christian Church of OrangeA few years back I got invited to a wedding in California. A very good friend of mine was marrying his love—who just so happened to be a pastor at a Christian Church.

I went to their wedding, which was small, touching, and beautiful. While I was there I met some of their friends and I learned a lot about their church—the First Christian Church of Orange.

One thing that struck me immediately was that Olivia, the bride, went out of her way to make sure that she respected and understood my Buddhist beliefs, and wanted to make sure that I was comfortable at her Christian wedding—something no Christian in my experience had ever done for me. I was quick to ensure my friend and his bride-to-be that there wouldn’t be any issues. I was totally awestruck at the fact that they even considered my feelings in the matter. It was very humbling and a striking turn of tables, as generally Buddhists in America have to make sure to explain or apologize to their Christian friends and ensure their comfort in awkward situations like weddings and funerals.

I tell you that anecdote to set the stage for the kind of church that Olivia presides over. Over the time I spent in Orange with the newlyweds, I came to have a great deal of respect for their church. They were openly tolerant of everyone, regardless of race, background, and (most strikingly) sexual orientation. They had many openly gay congregants.

The church doesn’t just pay lip service to being “open”, either. In getting to know my friend’s new wife, she used her convictions and biblical knowledge to explain exactly why her church believes that Jesus Christ was, above all else, a tolerant and loving man. Their mission was only to share Christ’s love of everyone.

One of the friends I met while in Orange was Michelle. She is also a member of the church. She writes a blog about being a single Christian mom and today’s post, on Valentine’s Day, really struck me as capturing the spirit of the church.

The post is called “Be Loud in Love“. Reading it brought me back to my trip to Orange and was a refreshing reminder, in a world that is filled with news of hatred, violence, and intolerance, there are indeed loving and kind Christians out there. This particular passage struck me:

There are some Christians who “love the sinner, hate the sin.” This seems to me like a backhanded insult, that the Christian does not love the whole person, but instead they love who they, the Christian, want the ”sinner” to be. You can’t only love someone’s potential, you have to love their reality, too. That’s like saying “I love the thin person inside of you.” This idea is not love, it is simply tolerance.

I know a lot of Buddhists have, if not outright hostility, a general distaste for Christianity—in a pushy Christian society like America, it’s not hard to see why. Just try to remember our own philosophy of loving kindness and let’s try to practice a little tolerance of our own.

Must be the full moon

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I’m not exactly sure what has crawled up everyone’s ass lately, but I’ll say this:

NewBuddhist is a light-hearted community. We laugh. We don’t take things too seriously. We are here for people who are reaching out to Buddhism to answer some question or fill some gap in their lives. We have compassion for those who are new to Buddhism. We are not jerks.

If you have trouble with taking things far too seriously, or you are by nature an angry person, or it bothers you when people are “wrong on the internet”, or if you feel the need to be correct all the time, NewBuddhist is probably not a great place for you. There are, I’m certain, other Buddhism-centric communities that appeal to advanced practitioners or embrace the drama.

But drama? NewBuddhist ain’t it. Lincoln and I (the two guys who run this site) are just normal, happy dudes. We chill. We drink bourbon once in a while. We joke. We laugh. And we believe, with all our hearts, that practicing lovingkindness and compassion in an online space is entirely possible, appropriate, and so very, very modern.

Making good coffee as a form of meditation

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The meditative aspects of making coffee

Be fully aware while making coffee, and you may just make the perfect cup

While tradition holds that meditation practice is usually observed in a quiet, peaceful room while sitting or reclining in one of a few specific positions, the benefits of meditation can be experienced while doing normal daily activities as well—even something as mundane as making coffee.

I’ve learned a lot about coffee over the years. I started off as a young adult with the normal grocery store coffee; Maxwell House or whatever was on sale. I would put the grounds in the pot, fill it with tap water, and push the button. It was completely brainless, and I wasn’t remotely aware of my actions while I was doing it. It became a habit, and there was no magic involved. Push button, receive drink. It didn’t taste very good.

I learned from a friend that premium coffee tastes better, so I started ordering mail-order coffee from a specialty roaster. It came in aluminum, vacuum-sealed bags. I did the same thing: Put the grounds in the pot, add water, push button. It tasted slightly better, but it still wasn’t very good.

I started to become more aware of my actions. Was I making sure the carafe was clean? Was I aware that the coffee maker was dirty and needed to be rinsed out? I opened my eyes and actually looked at the coffee maker. It was dirty. I spent some time reading instructions on how to clean it. Looking back, I now realize that this act of taking conscious effort to improve things was an early form of practice.

I still wasn’t pleased with the coffee and over the years became much more educated about the beans, the process, and the art of making coffee. I began to learn about how interconnected the flavor of the drink was with the place it was grown and the people who picked it and cleaned it and processed it. I spoke with growers in faraway lands. I learned to understand the full extent and the magic of how this simple daily pleasure was deeply intertwined with my persona and my daily happiness.

Today, I am very careful about making coffee and I enjoy making it for others. It’s ritualistic, calming, quiet, reflective, and rewarding—all hallmarks of a good meditative experience. I use a Hario ceramic funnel, a Hario kettle, Hario filters, and a Bodum burr grinder. I get my beans from the lovely Chazzano Coffee in Ferndale, Michigan, as Frank (the owner) is one of the most conscientious coffee roasters I’ve ever met.

Making the coffee

I check the cleanliness of my kettle and wipe it down if it’s dirty or clean it out if needed. I admire the craftsmanship of the metal, the shape, and the design. I appreciate the artistry and skill that went into crafting the kettle. I think about the person who designed it. It’s a Japanese kettle, so I think of how awesome it is that I live in a world where I can use this implement that was created a half a world away. Next, I begin to fill it. I contemplate the impurities that have made their way into the water and the journey the water takes to get to my tap. I am careful to filter the water to make the coffee as clean and bright as possible. I enjoy the sound of water pouring into the empty metal pot. I love staring at the cool, still water in the shiny metal kettle.

I put the kettle on the stove and go to the grinder. I smell the beans, remembering where I bought them and from where they came. I think about the growers, the sunlight, the coffee cherries drying, and the marvel of transportation that allows me to have these so soon after being picked. The roaster I go to has taken great care to roast them to perfection; I’ve seen him fret over these beans, smelling them, watching them, listening to them crack as they turn dark brown in the heat.

I grind them and take deep breaths as the beans are turned into coarse powder. The smell makes me feel at peace.

I take the filter and fold it carefully. I love the texture of the filter as my finger runs along it, making a tight crease. I take the ceramic funnel and marvel at the skill that must have been involved with designing it. It has spiral channels built into it and it’s almost a work of art on its own.

I put the filter in the funnel and run some filtered water over it to wet the filter, while waiting for the kettle to come to a boil. I fill the filter with grounds, taking care to gently tap the grinder cup to get the grounds out.

When the water is ready, I start the pour. The pour-over method should take three minutes if done properly. It’s very slow, contemplative, and you have to be aware of what you’re doing the entire time. You start with a slow pour in the center of the grounds, and since I’m using extremely fresh beans, the bloom that appears due to release of carbon dioxide is beautiful, and the smell is intoxicating. I count carefully and when thirty seconds have gone by, I begin slowly to swirl the kettle. to wet the rest of the grounds.

The kettle is designed to pour very slowly and consistently (thus the swan-like neck). This allows me to swirl the kettle in a spiral fashion, careful not to touch the sides of the filter, while ensuring that all the grounds continue to get evenly distributed without the funnel filling up too quickly, causing the grounds to stick to the side. It takes a great deal of attention and patience to get it right—just like meditation.

The joy of the experience

In the end, I am left with a wonderful, truly remarkable cup of coffee; more than drinking it myself, I love giving it to a friend and seeing the look on their face as they inhale the aroma and take their first sip.

It’s one of the most peaceful parts of my day, and it helped me realize that peace and contemplation can be found in everyday experiences. It doesn’t always have to be on the zafu or in the meditation room.

Spammers that mean well, and how we deal with them

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Once in a while on a site like this, we get visitors who are excited to share something that they think is valuable with the community here. Recently, we had a person sign up to the forum and post a link to a free book that was an American interpretation of the dhamma.

It’s great that people want to share things. This is a very welcoming community, but there is still etiquette and protocol to consider.

The problem is; it’s rude to spam, no matter which way you spin it. It’s not that the content of whatever site was linked is not valuable or helpful, it’s the way it was delivered to us.

It is considered impolite–bad online etiquette, if you will–to sign up to any site and, as a first post, make a link to another site. No matter how altruistic the post or link is, it’s considered “spam”. If the poster really wants to share their content with the community that we’ve fostered and built over the years, by all means, they are welcome into our humble home. Engage. Discuss. Make friends. We encourage it!

After they’ve been here for a while, have made some friends, have become a presence, and we can be sure that they’re not here just to get visitors for their site, then by all means, we’ll let them post their links.

Communities like this are online homes. It is just as rude for you to come into my online home and paste advertisements as it would be for you to do it in real life. To me, it’s the same as those annoyingly cute precious old ladies who come to my door with pamphlets advertising all manner of noble and worthy charities.

No matter the message, it’s the method that is distasteful.

In the end, I simply emailed this well-meaning woman, and let her know that after she joined our community and engaged more, she would be more than welcome to post her link. Polite, simple, and the same thing I’d do at home. At least bring brownies or something!

The cliff – jump, or turn around

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I’m a serial entrepreneur. I’ve been self-employed for over half of my working life. I’ve started three businesses, and learned a lot along the way.

My first business died a quick death because of youth, inexperience, and rapid life changes (marriage, babies). The second became moderately successful (financially), but was undermined and ultimately destroyed by a number of factors, including a massive drop in my state’s economy, as well as plain bad luck and lack of planning for such.

The third was born of passion, however. I am fervently passionate about what I do, and I can truly and honestly say I love my job. I love my job.

The problem is: it doesn’t remotely pay the bills. Not even close.

I have reached that point that any entrepreneur in the audience will understand: Jump off the cliff.

I am standing on the cliff that overlooks the land of dreams. Jumping off of cliffs is scary. There’s no safety net, there’s no guarantee of a soft landing, it’s far, and it’s painful. I could, I should, turn around and walk back to safety.

But behind me is a life of unhappiness and misery. Behind me is a life that I cannot lead. I have accepted and resigned myself to the fact that I am not cut out for that life. I’ve tried; believe me, I’ve tried, to be a member of that world, to live that lifestyle, to play that game. I do not have it in me. One of the things age and wisdom brings is the gift of self-acceptance; I accept that I cannot be that person.

I’m at that point again. The bills are piling up, money is not coming in, and things are looking bleak.

I have found, however, that this is when the magic happens. If I had never gone through this before, I’d be terrified right now.

I’m not scared. I’m tired. I’m introspective. I’m a little sad. But I am not scared.

I’m jumping.

Misery part II

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Remember my Misery blog post a couple of months ago? Wait, here’s a coincidence–it was exactly two months ago; anyways, yeah. I had that night again, except in bike form.

The pattern was the same; I was bad with my water intake, I had a beer tonight, I had a crappy dinner. I knew I’d pay the price when I got out there on the bike tonight. To top it off, it has been pouring rain all day, and now everything is soaked and the humidity is through the roof. My bike is already in bad shape, and now that it got really wet, the bearings are shot and the wheels barely spin. If I stop pedaling, the bike coasts about 15 feet and grinds to a halt. The work to get this thing moving has doubled. In addition to that, just like Misery, my music player for some reason stopped working tonight. I have no idea why.  The stage was set for a bad night.

It doesn’t really matter; the point of this is to sweat, work out, and lose weight, not go long distance or set any speed records. Why should it matter if the bike is easy to pedal or hard to pedal? If it’s hard to pedal, that means I’m working harder to move. That’s a good thing, right?

Still, it’s one of those nights where I just want to bitch about it. It hurt, I didn’t want to do it, and I almost turned around before I even started.

In fact, I did turn around after I got to the end of my block. I turned around, and started heading back, and then got really pissed at myself and went right back past my house and kept going.

All told, I got a two mile ride in, and when I got back I was drenched in sweat. I suppose I should give myself a cookie for completing a hard ride that I absolutely didn’t want to take, but I didn’t earn it because I’m being a bitch about this whole thing.

The next week is going to be extremely tough with the Expo Icrontic here; guests are dribbling in. I will have a friend from Norway here tomorrow and a friend from LA as well, and it’s just gonna be more eating bad and making other poor choices. I’ll try to suffer silently.

Blergh.

Then and now

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then:

  • I would have stared at pictures of her all night
  • I would have gotten lost in a sea of memories, reminiscence, and self-loathing
  • I would have been mean to other people, snapped back, and been snarky
  • I would have taken out my pain in a million subtle ways
  • I would have ended the night in tears

now:

  • I closed the website of the girl who reminded me of her
  • I stopped listening to the song that reminded me of her
  • I shut off my computer
  • I got on my bike
  • I pedaled hard and fast, taking my anger out on the bike and the road
  • I came home and wrote this
  • I ended the night drenched in sweat instead of tears

The skunk hunters

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Tonight I walked instead of biked; I took my kids skunk hunting.

By hunting, I mean looking for skunks. I see them all the time on my adventures, but for some reason whenever I take my kids out (neither of them have ever seen a skunk) I miss them. Tonight was no exception.

I even went to the usual haunts. The scrubby field by the expressway ramps, the paths along the factories, the bushes and fences they run along, snuffling and searching for whatever it is skunks eat.

Nothing.

My kids think I’m making it all up.

When I go on a long walk, sometimes I pretend that I stepped through a wormhole and instantaneously appeared in another city, another state, another country, or even another world. Did you ever do that? Consciously try to will your familiarity with a place away and try to see it with brand new eyes? Once in a while I can pull it off, and I find myself talking to myself in my head, narrating my fantasy like a bad science fiction novel.

“Where am I? How did I get here? What’s going on?”

“How is this possible? Something has gone terribly, terribly wrong!”

Et cetera.

My younger son said something hilarious though; he must have read it in a cheesy book or a bad video game. He said, and I quote:

“It’s quiet. Too quiet.”

What a strange night.

Pizza is not workout food

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And I would do well to remember that.

When, at mile 2, you start burping and belching, you know something is wrong. We cheaped out tonight, got lazy, and got pizza for dinner. Now, I could make excuses about having company here, or having no food in the house due to lack of proper shopping, or what-have-you, but instead I’ll just own up to it and say: We got pizza tonight and it was not good workout food.

Yesterday, today, and for the next couple of weeks, I’ll be biking with my friend Greg. He’s in much better shape than I am, due to a less slovenly lifestyle and also being a mailman. My intense biking workout is, to him, a pleasant evening stroll. Still, he gamely coasts along behind me, even though I can feel him itching to plow ahead on the pedals and turn it into a real workout. It’s nice to have someone along, even though it reminds me how far I have to go. But that’s a good thing.

Tonight’s ride was definitely better than the last, pace-wise. My technique is not to set any speed records, but to make sure that I am pedaling and working for the entire ride; I’ve found a good gear setting which makes it relatively high resistance on flat ground but doesn’t completely exhaust me. I can maintain my pedaling at a fairly consistent rate (the goal, if you look at my BuddyRunner charts, it to maintain as flat a “pace” line as possible–that indicates consistency over the miles). The idea is that I will eliminate the bike as a variable by keeping it at the same gear whether it is optimal or not. Any increases in pace can therefore be seen as improvements to my own power and speed rather than optimization of the machine I’m using.

The way I see it, if I can pedal for basically the whole ride, I’m getting a good workout. My muscle fatigue and dripping sweat tell me that I am indeed working out.

It’s getting hot

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And the sweat is starting to pour.

I knew these days would come; the days of enjoying the crisp cool nights, where even though I was vigorously working out I kept cool because of the weather were destined to end. I knew that the humid Michigan summer would kick my ass.

I was right; it’s starting to get hot, it’s starting to get humid, and it’s just going to get worse.

I did a lot of yardwork the last couple of days. Yesterday I mowed down a hill in my back yard with a roto-tiller. Doing this is like going to the gym and having a major upper body workout. You are constantly fighting the heavy machine as it tears its way through roots, hard soil, and rocks. Your job is to keep it level and keep it moving. This involves a lot of pulling, pushing, grunting, and in my case, sweating.

Today I finished my final phase of transporting and deploying 31 bags of lava rocks for the tree box in front of my house. I have planted Lantana, a couple of petunias, some sage bushes, and a basil plant. I repotted a Ficus that inherited from my grandmother years ago. Things are starting to shape up.

I didn’t bike the last couple of days. Tonight I got back to it, and I knew it would be rough from my weekend with lots of alcohol and my breaking of routine these last couple of days. I did make sure to stay hydrated throughout the day, and accordingly, I seriously picked up my water consumption. That, and the sweaty yardwork I did today were probably the only things that saved my ass from collapsing on my bike ride. My pace sucked, it was the worst ever, and each pedal was a struggle, especially for the last mile. I also really need to do some maintenance on my bike; it sounds like a damned jalopy. It squeaks and moans all over the place.

Bleh. Anyways, I got it done. 3 miles, dripping sweat, hot, miserable, and painful. Sounds familiar? It sounds like when I started my walking blogs, doesn’t it?

More yardwork, and another bike ride tomorrow. See you then.

Work work work

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It may be the incredibly mild and beautiful Michigan spring, it may be the fire in my belly from my LA trip, it may be a bunch of things, but the end result is that I have been working like a fiend lately. I’ve gotten so much work done for Icrontic (my day job) lately; the kind that makes you look at the clock and see that it’s 1am and you realize you’ve been essentially working for 12 hours straight without getting tired. I think they call this “in the zone”.

So yes, I’m in the zone. I didn’t have the same rah-rah go-getter attitude that I did last night when I got on the bike tonight, and I started off dragging ass for the first few minutes, but by mile 1 my pace was back on par with last night’s great ride.

If I could just channel this determination into my diet, things would be unstoppable. I could make excuses about lack of healthy food in the house, and the “bare essentials” grocery shopping that got done today, which was mostly bread, ramen, and boxed food, but that would just be … making excuses. I mean, it’s not like I’m completely off the wagon, but I could definitely do better. I am still eating way, way better than I did before but then my roommate goes and does shit like… make fresh chocolate chip cookies and buy delicious loaves of fresh baked sourdough bread. And I hate him. And I love him.

I still get that thing where I look in the mirror and don’t see any difference. It’s like I’m losing my weight in strange places in my body, like my arms and thighs. My belly, my neck, and other places where I’d really like to see a difference are still looking the same. It’s discouraging. Don’t get me wrong, 20 lbs (probably more by now) is still 20 lbs. I am still able to fit into pants that I haven’t been able to fit into for years. I am still down two pant sizes. It just doesn’t look like it. At least not to me.

When I get like this, I go back and read my first few days of blogs, and I remember just how fucked I truly was. I could not walk to the end of my block. It still boggles my mind just how out of shape I was.

A year from now, I’ll look back and think the same thing about this very moment.

Back in the saddle

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Literally.

While I wouldn’t consider my last week spent in Los Angeles to be a “week off” exercise-wise, it certainly wasn’t a dedicated, focused effort either. I spent the week covering the E3 conference in LA and our hotel happened to be 1.25 miles away from the convention center; I’ll estimate that we walked at least five miles every day between hotel trips, meetings at other locations, and general floorwalking in the gigantic LA Convention Center.

At any rate, before the trip I got sick with a cold; I had it the entire trip, and I still have it. I was kind of out of sorts between the change of atmosphere and routine, the sickness, the timezone changes, and the crappy air in LA. I got back late Friday night and I’ve had trouble getting back to EST and reality.

I knew that my biking adventure would be an either/or proposition tonight; it was either going to be stellar, or it was going to be shit. I rolled the dice and left.

Luckily I had good music with me. It rained all evening here in Detroit, so the humidity was exceptionally high. I started sweating almost immediately in the thick and heavy air. Still, I am in awe of how fresh and clean everything smells here compared to Los Angeles. Michigan air has the warm and seductive scent of flowers, trees, and leaves. The rich scents of late spring are thick in the air.

I cranked my music and took off. Normally my biking goes like this: pedal pedal pedal driifffffftttt pedal pedal pedal drifffffttttt. Tonight it was constant pedaling with no drifting. I set a firm pace and stuck with it. I went 3.5 miles and kept up the pace. If you’ve been keeping up with me on BuddyRunner you’ll see what I mean–my pace this evening was the most even it’s ever been, and it was the best I’ve ever done.

When I got home, I was dripping, but extremely satisfied with how things went. I needed this to clear my head and get out of this funk.

It’s good to be home.