My toxic overload!

[Steven Sweeney]

So, this Lutheran and this Buddhist and this scientist go into a bar . . .

Some decades ago (the exact number is classified) I minored in Religious Studies, partly out of keen interest in comparative religions but mostly because of the opportunity to study under the most thoughtful, even-tempered, brilliant professor I ever knew. In this curriculum, we spent some time proving and disproving the existence of God. I forget which side won. It has been suggested that God laughs at all our proofs anyway.

I was quite interested in particular in Eastern thought and religions, and I now find myself residing in the mountains north of Taipei, a vantage from which I'm able to witness the full gamut of medical and well-body practices, from modern Western to ancient Eastern. A few minutes' train ride from me is the National Taiwan University Hospital, rivaling the best Western medical care centers in the world. Along that train route are dozens of Chinese apothecaries dispensing all manner of herbal and other mysterious packets. Every morning at 5 a.m., the road in front of my house is well traveled by people making their way up a nearby mountain path that leads to areas for tai chi exercise. Which of all these practices and approaches is "true", which are useful, which are mere intellectual and emotional opiates? Beats me.

I went to a nearby Zen monastery a few weeks ago to look into a more structured sitting meditation than I could put together on my own. Toward the end of one three-hour session, which had nearly dislocated (or dis-lotus-cated) my hips and knees (my mind didn't wander at all -- it was focused on pain), we were sort of stretching out the kinks with a walking meditation, and the gray-robed Buddhist nun half my height came up behind me with a flat wooden stick and, to my surprise, whacked me twice between the shoulder blades, saying "Too much tense here! Too much tense!!" "Lady," I wanted to turn and say to her, "You don't know the half of it." I'm not sure if I was experiencing alternative Chinese medicine, but in any event, I remain too much tense.

My wife, a completely literal and pragmatic person, has nonetheless undertaken a series of acupuncture treatments, which she swears have greatly moderated her tension headaches and stress-related discomforts. And if she says that's so, then as far as I'm concerned, it is. Doesn't entice me to volunteer for pincushion duty, but that in no way diminishes her experience.

While I do tend to look for explanations for phenomena -- which is why I enjoy, for example, medical doctor Deepak Chopra's presentations -- I do so not so much as a skeptic but as someone who simply wants to understand. That desire can't always be met. In the summer of '91 I was taking my son on a long trip to visit my father, and a couple of days before we left, I sat down in a chair in front of my wife and wept, telling her that this was the last time I'd ever see my dad. This was completely off the wall and had no basis in any facts known to me, and though my wife tried to reassure me, she tempered her response with the knowledge of having seen this sort of thing happen to me before many times. We made the trip, had a good visit, and a few weeks later my 59-year-old father died. Where's the proof of the basis for or existence of my premonition? I haven't any. But it was as "true", as real, as the keyboard under my fingertips.

If you're still reading along, waiting for my "big point", I haven't got one of those either. Just seemed like someone from the back of the room needed to have a say, while everyone else caught their breath. My third cup of coffee has gone cold, and just as well. Time to go to the studio and paint what I *can* see and what I *do* know.

Cheers,
Steven