With the end of this school year, it being my fifth, I shed my greenhorn status and become an “experienced” high school educator.  I go into my sixth year with a Masters in Teaching under my belt, and possibly I’ll inherit a student teacher or someone to mentor next year as they experience their first year as a high school classroom teacher — passing along what I was taught five years ago.

My fifth year was a rough one. Not only was I teaching full-time, but I also attended grad school as well — compacting the degree into four semesters. I bitched to friends; complained to whatever unfortunate bastard asked me how I was doing. I humbly bow to all of those who stood by my side and listened to me without judgment, especially my wife, whose faith in me knows no bounds.

I had sleepless nights, weekends that were more stressful than my weekdays, and a never-ending “to do list” nagging and tearing apart every social minute I spent away from my role as a teacher or as a student.

I had rough encounters with parents — vitriol-fueled people taking fifteen to eighteen years of parental frustration and confusion out on me over a B that should have been an A or an assignment that was “designed to make my son/daughter fail.” I was called a “pseudo-intellectual” once and also that, “the parents are bringing pitchforks and torches to the school” against me (never happened by the way). These are all actual parent quotes from the year.

I had students explode at me in the classroom, calling me every name in the book. I  had a kid say things to me that, if he were an adult and I was in a certain frame of mind, would result in a serious scrap. I have had bosses and colleagues throw me under the bus. I have had friends and also my wife’s friends ask me to defend an education system that I know is fundamentally flawed. All the standardized exam scores in the world are higher than America’s; our students can’t meet international standards. Our teachers are ineffective.

Teachers don’t know how to do their jobs.

While most students charge out the door, not giving two shits about the teacher left behind, some stick around for a little while. One student wrote me a letter this year. In it she poured out her soul, the loss of her father earlier in the year tore her apart and she was begging me for help. I had one student, a weepy-eyed 6’0″ 225 lbs. kid, confide in me that he was terrified of a life without football because “it’s the only thing I can do well.” One student, who I had a rocky relationship with when we met, told me that I was her “lighthouse” this year, and she came to view my classroom like “going to church.” On her last day of class, one student just hugged me. She dug her head into my chest for a few extra seconds, mumbled a shaky “thank you,” and walked out my door without making eye-contact.

A male student, a graduating senior who barely made it, came to me this morning, shook my hand and said, “You showed me that I can be smart. I’ll never forget that.” He’s on his way to a two-year college, the first of his family to continue his education beyond high school.

They are correct, teachers don’t know what they are doing because there is no correct way to do what we do. There’s no proper standardized grading system for teachers or our students, because we teach and they learn more than what a standardized test can assess. A good teacher develops human beings — we set high-expectations, provide safety within rigor, we foster a brief moment in the time span of lives where ideas are discussed, laughter and tears are shared — where humanity serves its purpose. A teacher teaches more than content. We do this unknowingly; it happens because we are students as much as we are teachers.

And filling the proper circle A, B, C, or D does not assess any of that.

Today, my classroom empties and my students leave. I’ll clean it, organize it, make it anew. Because I have 135 other students coming my way in two months — and I have to be ready.

This is the greatest job that has ever existed.

Often, the most interesting lessons come when you look at something familiar from a different angle. That’s why I like to try different translations of favorite texts; sometimes a simple rewording can open up a whole new way of understanding what is being said.

The first time I read Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras (the first recorded version of the teachings of Yoga), I used three translations, to better understand the often vague aphorisms. While there was some variety between the three versions, the first sutra had the same basic idea: “I’m about to tell you about Yoga.”

Originally written in Sanskrit, the letters of which I am unable to type, the first sutra is transliterated as Atha Yoganusasanam. Here are the three translations:

Sri Swami Satchidananda: “Now the exposition of Yoga is being made.”

Bernard Bouanchaud: “Now is set forth authoritative teaching on yoga.”

Charles Johnston: “Here follows instruction in Union.”

As you see, each translator, in his own words, was interpreting the first sutra as “Check it out, dawg, I’m gonna to tell you about Yoga.” I remember hearing once that the whole essence of Yoga, the complete teaching, was in the first sutra, and that confused me to no end. How could the whole teaching be embedded in someone telling you they were about to teach you?

Then a passage in Michael Stone‘s The Inner Tradition of Yoga caught my eye. “Yoga begins in the present moment, and the present moment begins in silence. From that silence, words are born. In the Yoga-Sutra attributed to Patanjali… we begin with a simple sentence: ‘Atha yoganusasanum.‘ This is translated as ‘in the present moment is the teaching of yoga.’”

And, boom. Suddenly I see the light. Going back to Satchidananda and Bouanchaud, I found that both authors broke down their translation into literal and poetic versions. The literal translation from Satchidananda reads: “Atha = now; Yoga = of Yoga; anusasanam = exposition or instruction.” Bouanchaud’s tranlsation: “Atha: here and now. Yoga: of yoga. Anusanam*: outline, teaching, doctrine.” Both of these literal translations support the different way of looking at that phrase. The way Stone reads it, the sutra does not necessarily say, “Now I will tell you the teaching of Yoga.” It can also say, “Now IS the teaching of Yoga.”

There’s a big difference there. “Now is the teaching of Yoga” does contain what I could see as the entirety of yogic instruction, just as the entirety of  meditation instruction could be elucidated as “Sit.” What is the lesson of now? Be present. Be mindful. Be aware of how you feel, of what is going on around you. Don’t spend your time on memories or thoughts of the future. The only time it will ever be is now, and now is the only time you can ever do anything. It will never be tomorrow, it was never yesterday. It is only ever now, so take the opportunity to do something now. Or nothing, if you like. Just be aware. That is the teaching of yoga.

*Satchidananda and Stone both transliterate the second word of the sutra as Anustasanam. It is unclear why Bouanchaud uses Anustanam.

The AP update chimed on my iPhone while I was teaching. It simply read, “Breaking News: Beastie Boys vocalist Adam Yauch Dead.” I barely stopped my class discussion long enough to glance at my phone to read the words without comprehending them. I continued the class. After a few seconds, it dawned on me. MCA of the Beastie Boys had died.

I barely remember a time in my life that the Beasties were not present. I was nine years old when Mike Dubuque brought his boombox to school with a copy of Licensed to Ill in the tapedeck. The first song I heard was “She’s Crafty” and I thought it was amazing. “So Whatchoo Want?” came out at the start of my high school career. I saw them at Lollapalooza back in 1994 — a high school graduation celebration among my friends; I danced my ass off to “Hey Ladies!” and took a fist to the face during “Sabotage” with great satisfaction.  Hello Nasty came out when I was at the most successful point in my own music career. Being in New York at the time, a Tommy Boy Records radio marketing guy played me an advanced copy of it. I bought To The 5 Boroughs shortly before I bought my first home. It seemed that the Beastie Boys were always there and always would be there, and now they aren’t. The death of one is the death of the whole, in this particular instance.

People die, and celebrities are people. But I haven’t been this rattled by a celebrity death in a long time. The thing is, I have never counted myself as a die-hard Beastie Boys fan. I’ve enjoyed their music, their stage show, their antics, and their political awareness, but I have never really considered myself a “true fan” — just a guy who grew up shaking his ass to “Paul Revere.” So why have I been listening to Paul’s Boutique over and over again for the last two weeks?

I’ve seen the best minds of my generation destroyed by domestication, full-stomachs and banality. Generation X was touted as the Paradoxical Revolutionaries: iconoclastic and retrospective at the same time, non-conformists through conformity. I became a teacher because of an interview I read with Ian MacKaye where he stated that a firecracker on top of a fist does nothing, a firecracker in the fist will blow the whole hand apart. I wanted to blow hands apart. We were going to blow apart the system inherited from a generation of fat, overpaid, self-centered pigs and lay waste to it. The Boomers invented computers to celebrate their own greatness in a space-race pissing contest. We deconstructed the computer’s purpose and put it into our homes. Fuck you, Boomers. The computer is ours now — and we’re going to fill it with porn and masturbate to it.

The next generation assisted in putting our computers into our pockets. Thanks, Millennials.

Generation X slowed down. The marketing stopped. A new generation stepped forward and the focus of the media moved away from us and towards them. We’ve passed the mic. “Beavis and Butthead” became the insipid “Jersey Shore.” “My So-Called Life” became the over-cute “New Girl.” Our vision of a world of paradoxical conforming non-conformity melted away into total conformity. Generation X burnt out. We swapped our flannel for Ben Sherman shirts. Our philly cheese steaks became paleo diets. Most of us traded our guitars and drum kits for mortgage payments. Some of us are still at it, blowing up fists where we can. A part of me hopes that I do it in my classroom everyday, but I do it wearing my Ben Sherman shirts.

We grew up, and we scoff at those of us who didn’t. Admit it.

Generation X is done. Our heroes die. Adam Yauch is out.

It’s the Millennial Generation’s turn at the plate whether we like it or not. They don’t understand rebellion, nor do they want it. They want success because they feel they deserve it because they are Millennials. They rarely hold our frustrations and our cynicism, and disregard our attempted deconstruction of society as a distraction from their own future accomplishments. They will surpass us in this world and will be remembered as one of America’s greatest generations when they redefine the deconstructed system that we gave up: they created social networks, sped up worldwide communication and they will make it faster and more productive over and over again.

We are sandwiched between the retired Boomers — the largest and wealthiest generation America has known — and the young and, for the most part, driven Millennials. Generation X now sits in the middle, angry and ignored, despite providing giving the world Nirvana and Reality Bites. [Editor's note: as a Gen X'er who still doesn't give a shit, allow me to say I do not give a shit.]

But there is one thing that the Millennials will just never understand: the beauty of paradoxical revolutionaries.  Millennials will listen to the intentionally clownish and easily dismissed music of LMFAO on their Generation X-designed MP3 player (Fuck you, labels!) telling them to “Party Rock” to such a hyperbolic extent that it surpasses absurdity and is stripped of any pretense to rebellion. Millennials will attempt to reconstruct our world for the better, but will never relish in the ecstasy of watching the old world burn away. Everything is rightfully being given to them because they are young, while everything is being taken away from Generation X one piece at a time because we are relics.

Maybe I’m jealous, maybe I’m mourning.

They will know and appreciate the music of the Beastie Boys, but they will never understand the great paradoxical revolution of three iconoclastic Jewish guys from Brooklyn who can pass the mic with equal parts irony and venom and 100 percent skill. And I doubt they will feel this way when they lose one of the guys from LMFAO.

[From our friends at Lux Eterna Records]

We met Frater Parsons de Lautreamont in our travels. An erudite — dare we say recondite — gentleman known to certain fraternal circles, de Lautreamont advised us in matters esoteric, mentioning only in passing his musical exploits. From what we can gather, the Frater rarely indulges in commercial exploitation of sound, preferring instead to harness his expression for ritual purposes.

Lucky for us, then, that he consented to offer this aural talisman, which we have taken the liberty of calling Invocation of My Demon Sister, partially in honor of the infamous Kenneth Anger short (with a clear gender differential).

The work is what some might call “dark ambient,” but we think there’s some light within the Stygian. At moments, Invocation of My Demon Sister even resembles Brian Eno and Robert Fripp‘s Evening Star.

Because of its strange provenance, we are offering Invocation of My Demon Sister to you, free of charge for a limited time.

Free Evil Here

I really don’t know what this word means in practice. Or at least I’m largely unfamiliar. I don’t accept anything, typically. I whine, protest, combat, etc. Occasionally, I recalibrate while trying to convince myself I haven’t acquiesced. But true acceptance? That usually comes accompanied by something awful, like grief. And I’m not sure if I’ve experienced much of that. Even if I have, I likely didn’t respond in the healthiest of ways.

Now, acceptance looks like something a bit different. For me, it isn’t purely situational— it’s more about recognizing personal failings that have been perpetuated over surprisingly long amounts of time. Seeing them, accepting them. Wow. That’s very difficult. Nevertheless, I imagine it is essential to evolution and positive growth. At least that’s what I’ve been telling myself.

It’s pretty funny to see this site become an emo Buddhist blog after nearly a decade of an arm’s-length distance with the personal. But at this stage, I don’t really see any point in holding back. The personal is the metaphysical, the spiritual the mundane. There is a veritable gumbo of psychological and experiential hardship that may or may not produce this heretofore unknown quality: acceptance.

And what lies beyond acceptance? Hopefully not continued delusion. It’s easy to take the skeptic’s view and imagine falling back into old patterns or seeking to reestablish conditions that are ultimately unproductive, or at worst, damaging to self and other(s). That sounds so perfectly awful that I refuse to accept it. So, I suppose I may be an optimist.

Lotus grows in shit, the adage goes.

An old friend on Facebook asked me if I believed in any kind of afterlife, and if there is such a thing, how it might give our lives meaning. He also asked about whether such a belief might influence me, or if it could even be connected to my truest innermost self, perhaps my creative or expressive self. The following is a modified version of my response.

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I tend to chase spur of the moment thoughts, ideas, etc. Bad habit. Could be that I am being true to myself, but who is that, exactly? I doubt that this mind activity is connected to any conscious conception of an afterlife. Also, where is the spiritual awareness in the absence of some kind of tranquility? This seems the opposite.

With regard to an afterlife… no, I’m not sure that I do believe in one. Perhaps a continuum — of energy or possibly even archetype — that re-manifests in infinite forms, infinitely across all strata of existence/nonexistence.

I’d like to believe we’re here to become better acquainted with the fact of impermanence so that we might waken to compassion. No afterlife required.

No irony. No satire. No subterfuge or illusion.

Accept. That’s the first thing. Accept all conditions as they are, or seek within reason to change them, being mindful of the outcome on yourself and others. (The distinction is more arbitrary than you might imagine).

Avoid pre-judging persons, groups or situations. Many externals are not within our control. But our approach to our environment is. How many accidental and deadly rivalries throughout history were the result of hasty estimation? I’d imagine quite a few. Granted, others may not be sharing a similar outlook, but even so, you can still increase your happiness by not coloring your interactions with inaccurate or exaggerated mental projections.

Be vulnerable. This is tricky, as there’s there’s seemingly no way around the discomfort that vulnerability evokes. Still, it is an essential ingredient in being happy. It’s not just openness to information that keeps us healthy and sane, but also the raw exposure to experience, be it painful or blissful. When humans can achieve this profound honesty and openness together, it is truly magical.

Everything is temporary. Love hard, but know there is a time to let go. Work hard, but understand that your labor is not eternal. If you’re inclined to have accepted conditions as they are, attachment is less of an issue. If you have overly-identified your practiced self with the phenomenal world, then you will likely feel more pain. This is not religion; it’s fact. The hard part is trading a habitual mindset of grasping for one based in an healthy apprehension of impermanence. Love (re: compassion) helps.

Embrace new experiences. This is something anyone can do. The unknown seems frightening, but it can hold the key to many possible futures. Making informed choices is obviously wise, but being open to new things is a cornerstone to fulfillment. The surest path to unhappiness is a life closed off from experience. You don’t have to shoot the moon, but expand your vistas even a little bit, and benefit from the result.

Love as much as possible: people, places, things… yourself.

Competency. It’s what humans crave. Ever since Early Man was pulling the first poorly-crafted sabertooth dagger out of some proto-mammal protein dose, humans have sought to be competent at whatever task at hand. And good on us, or else we might have died out.

These days, competency takes on a variety of connotations, but most still associate it with task-oriented activities. To this end, there are many modern people who devote their lives to the pursuit of efficiency and order. Occasionally, this happens through enlightened altruism or a genuine desire to improve conditions for humanity, but more often it’s to mask a deep insecurity or personality disorder. Competents of this variety are prone to martyrdom, yet still pride themselves on retaining composure while burning at whatever stake they’ve fashioned for themselves.

Fun Fact: competency in no way confers success or anything approaching happiness. But control is its own reward!

Spotting a Competent isn’t always easy. Contrary to what you might think, Competents aren’t necessarily the Type-A adrenaline mutants you encounter at the gym or your mom’s house. In fact, many Competent individuals look, for all intents and purposes, to be laid-back. You may even come across some that actually appear compassionate. But make no mistake: Competents are merely here to get the job done. Through this they are revealed.

But how to become a Competent? And who would even want to be? It’s a relentless slog with little reward besides the inner satisfaction one gets from knowing that you managed to drive your demons back into that dark, scary place for some short stretch of time. But they’ll return. They always return.

To truly achieve competency, you’ll need to master a few basic skills. First, remove all pretense to wit. Trust me, it’ll just get in the way. Second, ignore everything outside the immediate or practical (or immediately practical). Third, ensnare and mollify those most in need of your competency. This is extremely important: the only way to ultimately verify competency is through co-dependency. This can be interpersonal or professional. Your desire to excel at every task, coupled with the desperate needs of all those flaky people out there, is all that matters.

To be Competent is to join a long line of humans who have sought to bring order not only to the world, but the roiling chaos within. Are you up to the task? The rest of us desperately needy bastards sure hope so.

The first thing you’ll want is an Ivy League education. However, a top university pedigree is not necessarily a requirement for being a striver. It surely helps to be a scion of old money, but that, too, is not a prerequisite. In fact, to be a striver, you really only need a few basic qualities. I will say this, though: your success in striverdom is very much like the old real estate adage, “location, location, location!” To up your odds of ending up in a position loftier than, say, janitor, you will need to move to a major metropolitan area. (Detroit does not count.)

Being a striver is essentially an attitude. A bit like being a douchebag, but there are some key differences. To achieve this sublime state of being, one must project a relentless desire to be more important than anyone one encounters. To work your way up and build confidence, start small. Berate your local barista. Cut people off in traffic, then honk your horn repeatedly and flip them off as though it’s their fault. Criticize someone for some aspect of their selves that they can’t change — personality, appearance, etc.

Once you feel that you can commit callous acts without the slightest twinge of guilt, you are ready to go after your dreams. (Provided that you’ve moved to the major metropolitan area.)

The first thing you’ll want to do is get hired at a place with any amount of prestige. Again, you may need to start small, if you don’t have that Ivy League education or family money. But it’s important to get this right, because this initial perch will prove to be your stepping stone as you claw your way to greater power and notoriety. Be very aware of existing hierarchy. Flat structures may seem ideal, but careful — this could also mean you will simply have MORE people standing in your way. If there is a rigid reporting structure, well, seek out those who must be obliterated, and do just that. With EXTREME PREJUDICE.

At some point, if you’ve made the right moves, you will be noticed by outside entities. These could be potential employers, sexual partners, stalkers or documentary filmmakers. Take advantage of anything that has the potential to advance you, but be careful not to waste your precious and expanding influence on just any old person, project or thing. And if you find that those seeking your skills or currying your favor may, at some point in the future, pose a threat to your continued striving, destroy them with EXTREME PREJUDICE.

You may become President of the United States of America. You might become the CEO of a Fortune 500 company. The important thing is that you DON’T STOP STRIVING. To do so would be to submit to a life of the ordinary, to join the ranks of the befuddled masses who stumble like something far more noxious than zombies through numbingly quotidian existences. That’s not for you. You’re a striver. Trust me, we can smell our own.

PS: Might wanna keep an eye on your backside…

First of all, you’ll have to lie a lot. Like, a lot, a lot. It may appear at first blush that the act of lying is uncharacteristic with being a Good Person, but this is exactly the kind of cognitive dissonance you will experience as you try to spackle appealing personality characteristics into some semblance of a wholesome, trustworthy individual. So keep your putty knife handy; you’re gonna need it.

Another key to being a Good Person is by attending — superficially, of course — to the emotional needs of those around you. One way to do this is to listen. Again, nothing requires you to listen closely, or even have anything of use to say in return, but rather to simply sit there and let another person prattle on about themselves without betraying your disgust through facial expressions or an axe pick to the forehead. Difficult, of course. But possible, I assure you.

If you are to truly become a Good Person, you must have the appearance of putting others’ needs before your own. You do this by not having any interests or passions. You can still have personal opinions, so long as they are kept deeply submerged and never, ever made public. But you are absolutely not to have any desires that could supplant or override another’s. Because that is not what Good People do.

If you follow these simple steps, you will achieve a glory known to very few. You will also undoubtedly be one of the most pathetic individuals on the planet. But you will be Good.