Contemplate This

 Health care in Canada is deteriorating, and the cause of this is political. The public’s need for reduced taxes---which is where funding for social programs comes from---and the politician’s need to get elected, means hospitals and their staff do without necessary resources. The result:  doctors and nurses are overworked;  patients, who found it hard enough at the best of times to get the attention they needed,  are left facing an insurmountable headwind of tired, cynical health workers, and a heightened level of stress.

My mother was a nurse. Were it not for her inside knowledge, I might not have had the care I enjoyed  through a series of seven major surgeries starting at age nine. She told me back in the early 80s, “You have to fight and scrape for everything you get in health care.”  It was true then, and it’s even truer today.  When you fall ill, getting answers is a little like stepping into a Robin Cook novel.  Many of you have your own medical mystery.  I hope that relating this story will assist others in getting the attention they need.

I moved to the surf in 1998 with several motives: to surf, to meditate and to live simply. Little did I know that meditation would be the easiest of my goals. Living simply is a complicated process that I’m still struggling with, and surfing was wrought with all the pitfalls of the drug addict.

The impression voyeurs and dabblers have of surfing is a lazy life of fun in the sun, hanging on the beach, and doing headstands on waves as they roll shoreward, all followed by beach parties with sun-drenched babes and hunks. The grim reality is that many surfers around the globe are addicted to surf like junkies to crack, and fistfights occur in parking lots over the ownership of something as transient as  gravity waves. Surf pimps.

The addicted surfer

These days, it’s practically impossible to become a political leader in North America without declaring devotion to Christianity. This is not as true in Canada as it is in the US, but in America you have no hope of becoming president without being the right type of Christian. Our leaders actions, however, differ greatly from their professed beliefs.

While growing up Catholic, my impression of the Ten Commandments was that they were behaviors to emulate, ideals to live up to. Upon becoming a Zen Buddhist, I was astonished to see that their Ten Precepts were nearly identical to the Commandments. This would become less shocking when I reread the Sermon on the Mount, and realized it could easily be inserted into Zen text.