I was homophobic as a young man. It's true the logging town I grew up in wasn't the cultural nexus of the world, but that's an excuse, not a reason. The embarrassing part is that I kept being homophobic long after I left to get an excellent university education.
So the first lesson shall be:
Don't assume that bigots are ignorant, that they're "just doing what they've learned". It starts that way, sure, but if you're still doing it as an adult, something else is going on.
Something less innocent and more actionable.
What makes my case even less parsable is that I was always the kid who brooked no redneck crap from his peers. Bad-mouth any race or religion on my schoolyard, and you were in for a throw-down.
Homophobia is the only bigotry I ever went in for.
Figuring out how that happened took me a few decades, and is, for our purposes, peripheral. What's less mysterious is why it continued, long after I saw better, and how it finally ended.
The first is shamefully simple: into my twenties, friends and I bonded in part over regressive "jokes" – hack work that taxed our literary talents very little – and I was loathe to be "that guy", the one who takes exception, smashing the fourth wall and casting a pall over the party.
Sadly, it truly was as basic as that. And I suspect it's the same for most bigots: cowhearted fear of being excluded from a social cohort that defines itself, in whole or in part, by that reflex.
The end finally came when I just couldn't stand the ignominy anymore. One day in my early 30s, the rest of me sat the pathetic part down and said, "You're done. From this point, we're Queen's evidence on sexual orientation."
And that was that.
But here's the point of this post:
I thought I was doing this for my gay brothers and sisters: bringing them some greater measure of peace by leaving off my unsolicited judgement on matters well outside my jurisdiction.
But the instant I put that baloney down, a tremendous weight slid off my shoulders.
The relief was palpable – so physical I nearly wept. See, maintaining opposition against an entire demographic – any demographic, whether a certified target of the Right or Left – draws a killing amount of energy. You don't see it; you think your contempt and criticism hurt those other people. You think you're getting even, winning, reigning supreme, in your hammer-headed refusal to stand down from this fight that you picked.
While in reality your designated enemy doesn't even know who you are; the American expression "get over yourself" is germane here. So the only person out of pocket is you.
And the day you stop wasting yourself on that sustained tantrum sticks in your mind forever. That day you authorised yourself to invest all that capital in other, better, useful things. Now you can put those resources to ends that bring comfort, fulfilment, and satisfaction, rather than incinerating them in the firebox of your petty anger.
And the next day, of course, I immediately discovered how many of my closest friends, even family, were gay. They'd been isolating me from that truth so as not to trigger the disdain that denied me their full companionship. And because my pouting kept me stupid, I was literally the last in our circle to know.
In other words, after all that concentrated rejection in the name of continued membership in my peer group, the odd man out was me. My friends, good people all, had given that rubbish up years before.
I think this early experience of clear-seeing primed me for the kensho that would make me a monk ten years later. Because convictions are worthless.
You can generate endless justifications for the unjustifiable, build palaces of pretext, rehearsing your case for a non-existent court that has no judge. But your efforts influence no objective outcome.
You don't change any law of physics; your hard frown wins no argument.
Because what is, is.
And unless you're an idiot, you don't resist it.
Perceiving how little the universe gives a damn about me liberated me from slavery to myself.
(Photo courtesy of Matthieu Bühler and Unsplash.com.)
(I've lived in the rural districts of several countries, but never witnessed this phenomenon to the extent it's typical in the States; in fact, I can't remember seeing it anywhere else. Bullet holes in roadside objects, such as signs, utility boxes, mailboxes, and such. In this case it's a safety rail on a bridge.)
Appearing also on My Corner of the World.
In killing my Self
The monster is defeated
Eat my Zen, dickweed
("Enrag'd Monster" courtesy of John Hamilton Mortimer, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Wikimedia Commons.)
"It is better to light one candle than to hit the wax museum with a flamethrower."
- Wisdom I collected from the wall of a university library men's room back in 1974.
(Close-up of flamethrower dahlia courtesy of Andrea Stöckel and PublicDomainPictures.net.)
(Квас из овса. Made from toasted rolled oats. Very good; light and dry when well-chilled, with a honey-like perfume. Will be most welcome this summer.)
When I first became a hermit monk I had no zafu, so I sat on a sofa cushion. That got me off the ground – no pun intended – but was bulky, interfered with my thighs, and couldn't be transported on road trips. So a few months in, having researched zafu alternatives on the Enlightenment Super-Path, I upgraded to this. Since it took some time to perfect, I thought it might help others to share my experience here.
The suggestion I found online was "use rolled-up towels". This proved underwhelming for a few reasons, worst of which is that bath towels unroll readily beneath a sitter.
So I rolled the three thick terrycloth bath towels again, as tight as I could – painfully so – and bound them with jute twine. That prevented them migrating in the cardinal directions. It did not, however, stop them from telescoping out of integrity and firmness.
So I cut them loose 
again, fluffed them up, and started over. This time, after layering them on the floor, I cut two lengths of jute about a foot longer than the towels were wide and laid them width-wise across the stack, about four inches from the end. Then I cut four new jute bindings and tore up my knuckles hard-rolling them again.
After retying as before, I knotted each lengthwise string on opposite sides of the roll. (Be sure to weave them over and under the four shorter bindings before tying, to dissuade all from wandering. Also, I suspect four long strings would do even better.)
This was major improvement. But the roll still mushed down quickly, no matter how hard I rolled and tied it, and contact with the floor and my backside caused the bindings to wander and fray, and even untied the knots.
So… again with the unrolling, fluffing, knuckle-grinding, and tying. But this time I also made a drawstring cover to protect the bindings. (The 
velours I used has velvety knap that grips mat and meditation trousers and reduces travel while sitting.) For maximum structural support, I cut it so tight I could barely get it on. And because the fabric was under constant stress, both from me and the resentful towels inside, I double-sewed all seams and took other sailmaker measures to toughen them up.
After a lot of jerking, shoving, and swearing, I managed to force this cover on. (Pro tips: push the terrycloth down with two fingers and pull the cover up over them a half-inch with the other hand. Then turn the roll three inches and repeat, continuing patiently till you've got the cover on. A quicker trick is to tape collars cut from round plastic bottles around the roll and remove them as you progress.)
The result served me daily for a year, until I received the buckwheat zafu I now use, a birthday gift from my mom. (And during my 100 days I sat on a roll of closed-cell foam, which worked out somewhat better than the towel roll.) 
But I still keep the old bolster around, just in case; for example when passing my zafu and/or seiza bench to people who've asked me to teach them how to meditate. It's also a memento of the determination I brought to this pursuit, and the wonderful sense of growth and success in that early practice.
To be sure, even a well-built towel zafu isn't the equivalent of a real one; it's heavy and hard, and needs regular rebuilding – say, every two months or so – to restore loft and elasticity and repair bindings that come adrift. Also at those times, launder or rotate out the towels, which tend to compress and become stiff and thin with service. If at all possible, machine-dry before rebinding, because hang-dried towels don't recover their nap until they dry somebody.
The bursitis I've since developed would axe my old friend for twice-daily, hour-long sits – a problem I also had, though not as severely, with my closed-cell foam on the mountain.
But at the time this old bindle technology was just the ticket. I sat on it daily, travelled with it, and built a solid monastic practice on it. Given that store-bought options are expensive, this can get you into Zen right away, even if you don't have much money.
Deep bow to all who enter the Path, by whatever trailhead.
