Dumpster Gem Jamboree

How do we stay sane when the world feels like it’s on fire? In this episode of Be Your Own Zen Master, Justin explores how media feeds our fear — and how taking refuge in the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha can help us stay grounded, compassionate, and human. Includes lo-fi vibes, sincere reflection, and a parody ad you probably shouldn’t take.

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Transcript

Speaker: 0:18

Hi friends, thanks for tuning in to Be Your Own Zen master, DIY Buddhist podcast for anyone walking the path without a guide but still showing up. I'm Justin, just a guy with a microphone, a few creases in my map, and a chicken who's determined to cross the road. Today I was thinking we could have a look at how media influences are suffering. Things are constantly changing and sometimes just trying to keep up with the big news stories seems like too much. What can we do to keep ourselves informed without freaking out? How do we protect ourselves from being overwhelmed or misled? In times of uncertainty, even when we walk the path alone, we can take refuge in the triple gem, the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha. That means we can look to the Buddha for inspiration to realize our own true nature. We can turn to the teachings, both his and those of his many wise followers for guidance, and we can surround ourselves with good people for support. It's gonna take time and effort to put this knowledge into practice, but you already have what it takes to be your own Zen master. But first, a word from our sponsor. There are 10s of people suffering every day, people just like you. Stop suffering and start living with Parmesan. Parmesan begins by harvesting golden nuggets of wisdom from only the most organic, most enlightened masters. We opened the hand of the teacher to apply a generous sprinkling of our secret herbs and spices finally using our proprietary. System we inject this tasty wisdom directly into your ear holes. Are you currently or have you ever been diagnosed with clinging, craving? or thirst, ask your doctor about pharma-zen, tozay. Minor insight, moderate confusion boredom groaning we'll refund 100% of your suffering guaranteed. of humor results may vary, not actually guarantee. Do not take Pharma-zen. News events have been happening since long before any of us were here, but the way we communicate them has changed a lot. Going back just a few generations, all that existed outside of print was radio. TV blew up big after World War II, then the space program made it possible to deploy commercial satellites and usher in the era of cable television. Satellites made the 24 hour news cycle possible. According to History.com, CNN was the first to broadcast 24 hour news on June 1st, 1980. This was before the end of the Iran hostage crisis and during the Carter-Reagan presidential race. I was too young to be aware of it then. It didn't hit me until the end of the 1980s and early 1990s. The Berlin Wall fell in 1989. The USSR dissolved by the end of 1991. Somewhere in there was the Persian Gulf War and CNN was there, the first to broadcast the remote war live. This was the first time I recall feeling a significant sense of dread. I remember lying in my bed, barely a teenager, worried sick that war was going to come to us, to our home. Oil fires and bombings were being fed directly into our living room and played on repeat. Generals and cabinet members were household names, the faces on trading cards along with the machines of war, stickers and chewing gum. My dad painted a political map of the Middle East to help us follow along. The news media only grew from there. After the Gulf War, CNN didn't go on vacation. They were joined by other cable networks, and they were all there to cover the first Trade Center and Oklahoma City bombings. They were all there for Branch Davidians in Waco, the LA riots and everything else. I remember the news of those events well, but I don't recall having the same fear. Maybe I was too busy being a teenager, maybe we had been desensitized. Then came the morning of 9/11. I was at work per usual, the guys had stern on the shop radio when the first plane hit. We thought it was a sick joke, but then one of the guys got out of his portable TV. Once again we're seeing events live as they happened. For a moment there was hope that it was a terrible accident, but then the second plane struck. Our company sent us home to be with our families. Fear was running high. What would the next target be? How close would they get to us? I sat on the couch holding my 3 month old son watching in horror and crying. The old feelings of fear, helplessness, and despair had returned, amplified by the desire to protect my little boy. Many people became angry and looked for anyone to blame. Some claimed that it was divine punishment for an immoral society. Others let their imaginations run wild and wove elaborate plots fueled by bad research conducted on a relatively young World Wide Web. For the next two decades, we stayed at war. Social media and smartphones ensured that the news was always with us, that anyone could capture and share whatever news they saw fit without any review. Today we're bombarded with information from every direction. Everything is recorded, broadcast and streamed to the point that content creation is now a career option. We're being told that everything is urgent, everything is outrageous. Violent crime is about half of what it was in the early 90s, but we're being told danger is everywhere. We express ourselves in the worst ways just to get a reaction or to get noticed while hiding in the anonymity online. We throw around the phrase dumpster fire a lot to describe the state of the world, but a real dumpster fire for all its chaos is at least contained. It's hot, it stinks, but it always stays in place until there's nothing left to burn. What we're dealing with isn't that. In our world of misinformation, the dumpster has been knocked over. The fire spilled out and caught on everything. Now the flames have reached high office, cross borders, and crept into our homes. How can we contain the flames without getting burned? How can we cut off the fuel to let the fires die out? One might think that the obvious solution is to abandon social media, pull the plug on our televisions, or just go off grid completely, but I disagree. In 2016 I left social media and stopped watching the news. It gave me some room to focus on other important things. It cut out some of the noise, but the rest of the world kept on burning. The burned out divides in our society grew. People continue to feed and connect the fires. Some of that time spent ignoring the blaze around me, I could have applied to trying to put it out. Better late than never I guess. Perhaps it's better than going in the other direction. Had I stayed to watch the burn, had I obsessed with the flames, I could have been easily consumed by them. We've all heard stories of people who didn't look away and were driven to extremes consumed by the media, Internet fantasies isolated from reality. The fire can't be avoided. The way forward is through the flames, but we can't enter unprotected and expect to come out the other side unscathed. We can protect ourselves. We can take refuge in the triple gem, also known as the three jewels or the three treasures, the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sega. In Buddhism, going for refuge is more than just a ritual. It's a declaration of intent that often marks the beginning of one's path as a Buddhist and frequently involves joining a community or enga. Reciting the three refuges, I take refuge in the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Tanga as a way of saying, I'm a Buddhist now. But the words alone aren't enough. Truly taking refuge means living it. It doesn't mean shutting the world out. It means relating to the world from a place of grounded understanding. It's not an escape hatch, it's a home base, a stable point from which we can respond instead of react. It means returning again and again to our chosen path, reflecting, realigning. And applying the teachings to as many aspects of our lives as we can. It means continuously practicing and improving, and that's not easy. It takes effort to keep turning back to the refuges, especially when we're tired, overwhelmed or angry, but it's precisely in those moments that the practice matters most. So what does practicing the refuges look like when everything we see in here suggests our doom? OK, maybe that's too severe. What does practicing the three refuges look like when the media feeds us just a little more than we can take? We returned to the Buddha. The Buddha reminds us that awakening is possible and each of us has the potential to awaken within. We look to the Buddha and see a reflection of ourselves, a human being subject to birth, aging, and death, facing the same problems of the human condition. Master Huang Po teaches us, if you want to see a Buddha, just look into your own heart. The Buddha also reminds us that everyone else is afflicted with the same condition. So when someone turns up on the news spouting something crazy, they have the same inherent nature that we have. Recognizing this goes a long way. Taking refuge in the Buddha gives us the capacity to see suffering of another person. We see ourselves in that person and we develop compassion for them. We look to the Buddha as an example of how we want to be. We want to conduct ourselves to varying degrees the way the Buddha conducted himself. Taking refuge in the Buddha doesn't mean idle worship. It means trusting that our own minds are capable of wisdom, that we too can see clearly and act compassionately, even when the world feels like it's burning down. On an everyday level, the dharma is the teachings of the Buddha and the teachings of others who dedicated their lives to learning the Buddha Dharma or dedicating their lives to sitting in meditation and penetrating the nature of existence. The teachings of the Buddha and his disciples, those people disciplined in the practice of the Buddha's teachings, help us navigate times of confusion. In the most basic way, the Buddha teaches to practice right speech. A Buddhist code of ethics with respect to speech is to speak only what one knows to be true, not to gossip or engage in idle chatter and to refrain from harsh speech. The Buddha reminds us in the Itivutaka, monks, three things are conducive to the arising of wisdom, association with good people, listening to the true Dhama and proper attention. This lines up beautifully with the triple gem. Good people are our sanga, the true Dhama is the teaching, and the proper attention is how we take refuge in the Buddha within ourselves. By the same token, if we are consuming false, idle, or harsh speech, we need to put it in check. Consider the source. Consider the suffering of the source. Consider the level of maturity of the source. Essentially compartmentalize and put this off to the side. There might be some value in the information, or at least in contemplating or investigating the information, but absorbing it fully, redistributing it, not so much. On another level, the dharma is the true nature of reality of existence. In this sense, the Dharma is not just something we study, it's something we recognize. The Dharma is not separate from our lives, it is our lives rightly seen. Bodhidharma said, The truth is outside of all fixed patterns or as Robert Aitken reminds us, when you're reading the newspaper or watching the news on television, remember that each person you see is a Buddha. Each one is trying to find their way just like you. And none of us walks the path alone. Finally, we take refuge in the Sega. Traditionally, a group of monks are lay practitioners. A congregation if you will, but really the Sega is our community, however we come to think of community, it could be just you and me or a few good friends. It's anyone who supports us in giving up the unwholesome for the wholesome. Anyone who supports our intention to be awake, anyone who provides nourishment when we're running dry. In the Upada Suha, the Buddha tells Ananda that admirable friendship isn't just a part of the path, it's the whole path. So we take refuge in that, in friends and teachers, and strangers, in voices online when they help us stay aligned with the truth, compassion, and sanity. When the noise gets too loud, the sanga reminds us we're not alone. It could be a local sitting group, a podcast like this one, or even just one person who hopes you see more clearly. It could be the writers and teachers whose work points you back to something true. Or maybe it's just a friend you text when the news is too much. Someone who doesn't try to fix but listens. That counts. That's Sango. In a world of misinformation, connection with others who value wisdom and compassion can be a lifeline. It's not about groupthink, it's about mutual encouragement. It's about helping each other carry the water when the fire gets too close. Sometimes that support is quiet, sometimes it's loud, but the key is we remind each other, don't add more fuel. He douse the flames. So, What do we do when the world feels like it's on fire? We stop, we breathe. We take refuge. We take refuge in the Buddha, not as an icon on an altar, but as a mirror of our own potential, a reminder that peace is possible even now. We take refuge in the Dharma. Not just as a collection of ancient teachings, but as the living truth of this moment. Guidance that helps us see clearly, act wisely, and speak with care. And we take refuges in the Sango, the people who help us remember what matters. Those who support our effort to stay awake, stay kind, and not get swept away. We're not here to put out every fire, but we don't have to feed them either. We can be fire breaks, not numb, not indifferent, just spacious, just steady, just humans. To Be Your Own Zen Master podcast was created, written, hosted and produced by me. Original lo fi music by me also. If something in this podcast helps you, pass it along to someone else. That's saying it in action. Or if you prefer, sit with it, let it settle, that's enough too. Until next time, keep walking, stay curious and try not to catch fire.