Evansville was the roosting nest of my mother’s side of the family. My father had essentially scored a Human Resources job through my mother’s father, who was VP of a local Indiana bank and had a lot of decent business connections. The job consisted of working for another manufacturing plant. I can’t remember what they manufactured, but it’s really not important.

I’ve been lucky enough to have gotten to meet and know all four of my grandparents, but my maternal grandpa Jack (the one who got my dad the job in Evansville) died when I was seven. Incredibly, at the time of writing this, the other three are still alive in their eighties. I wish I had gotten to know my grandpa Jack better than I did. Maybe I wouldn’t turn him into such a hero in my mind if I had known him better. Also, he essentially died of alcoholism (actually it was a rare cancer of the nose, but alcoholism was what really apparently did him in for the most part), his alcoholism being something that perhaps made him somewhat less of a hero in my mom’s eyes and my mom’s two brothers’ eyes (those of my uncles Walt and Bill).

I still think though, that my grandfather Jack was one of the greatest men I ever knew. He taught me the most valuable single thing I know about life, the world, and the people in it. He always loved hearing me play violin, and he used to brag about my talent as my playing developed so quickly between the ages of 5 and 7, exclaiming from his brown leather armchair in my grandparents’ living room, “I hope I live to see the day you play in Carnegie Hall!” I can never forget the pride and happiness in my grandfather’s face as he said that to me.

And so he proceeded to then, one day, teach me the most valuable thing I know. One day, when myself and my sister and mom and dad were all together visiting my maternal grandparents, grandpa Jack told me to come take a walk with him around the lake behind the condo. The lake was fairly small, but it made for a nice short, slow stroll, for instance after a meal. Grandpa Jack and his two sons, my uncles Bill and Walt, often liked to fish in the lake, and they had a sort of environmental concern for the health of the fish population in the lake, generally taking care to throw the fish back in the pond after catching them to keep the fish population thriving.

And grandpa liked to take me fishing next to the lake as well. Once, my cousin Clay had fallen into the lake when he was around four years old, and the lake was very muddy so my grandma Doris had to work a real number to get the boy clean. The lake had a real sense of magic and memories and family tradition imprinted in it, so that’s why grandpa Jack had asked me to come with him on a walk around the lake, to teach me the most important thing I know.

On this profound walk, he told me that he had made a decent amount of money in his life, and he was glad of that because money is able to keep a person comfortable for the most part, and is able to allow you to care for your loved ones responsibly and so forth. And he said in a very solemn tone that he might not be around for much longer, and so there’s something he wanted to tell me about his life that was deeply important, something he wanted me to know and carry with me always.

He said that whenever his friends were in trouble, or even if strangers were in trouble or in some serious kind of need–say if a friend had lost the roof over his head, or couldn’t put meals on his family’s plates, or whatever really–that whenever that happened and he was within his means to do something about it, that by God that’s what he would do. And he said that nothing else in life really matters; that when your help is needed by those less fortunate than yourself, and you’re in a position to give or help in some way, then that’s what you do!

I suppose one could say it was a simple lesson on the virtue of Christian charity, but the way it was told, the teary-eyed meaning in the old man’s time-worn face when he recounted the depth of bare-naked essential meaning that Compassion had had in his life, how it had meant so much more than any material acquisition he had experienced, or anything really–that it was the only important thing–something he wanted his grandson to know and live with and embrace the rest of his life more than anything, something he knew lived longer than he did, something he could feel shaking his soul beyond all time and space but which he knew he had to impart with a deep, careful reverence, so that I might grasp the transmission beyond any trace of the transmitter. It went so far beyond the man’s religion, really, and yet was the basis of all his religion. It’s amazing what that child was able to take in, and that child is still trying to remain as humble as his grandfather was that day.

I think Grandpa had told me this because he thought he knew what compassion I might be able to give the world and those around me with what he saw as God’s great gift to me of this incredible musical talent of violin playing; perfectly God-tooled for this divine purpose of giving and helping those in need. This is why Grandpa Jack wanted to see me play in Carnegie Hall.

By the time I was 7, shortly before my grandfather died, I had been led through nearly all of the 10 Suzuki method violin books by my mother, who was a great violin teacher. This was about the same time that I started writing love letters to the first girl I fell in love with in elementary school. I wrote her a lot of love letters too, and she liked my letters and liked being my “girlfriend.” I almost kissed her once on the playground, but couldn’t summon the courage. But I did excel in Suzuki.

Suzuki method was a method created by Sinichi Suzuki, and looking back on the fact that I am a product of Suzuki makes me realize that this was likely my first introduction to Japanese Zen Buddhism and mindfulness practice. Sinichi Suzuki was a Japanese man who made a great impact on the lives of Japanese children whose lives had been torn apart by World War II. He taught the central power of love and compassion in teaching music, and this was the aspect my mother treasured about his method more highly than any other aspect.

By the time I was 7 I had made it through all ten Suzuki books. I had begun to play when I was 5, two years earlier. Normally, this process would take many, many years to unfold for a beginner. But apparently, even in the first few hours of my playing the violin, it was apparent to my mother that I had a special gift for music. And, I do clearly remember that I loved it like nothing else. It was a somewhat strange memory of folks coming into see me practicing on occasion and actually being seemingly frightened by how fast I was advancing, as though it were unnatural, which strangely permeated the whole affair.

Looking back on it I realize that the conversations between my parents, revolving around the issue of my development as their child, must have been something along the lines of “oh God, what are we going to do?” “Well, we can’t make him quit” “Maybe he’ll get bullied at school for being so uncannily talented and want to quit” “well, let’s just make sure his math and science skills progress just as fast” “You realize Jane, this is going to set him apart from the whole world forever” “Well what do you want me to do about it Jim? HE’S the one who wanted to play it!”

And I do even remember that actually, I had been asking for a violin since I was old enough to speak. I couldn’t pronounce violin; all I could say was “va-van, va-van, mommy va-van” (some of my first spoken words aside for my attempts at securing access to my much-favored “creamed spinach”). My mother Jane was of the belief that it wasn’t wise to let a child have an instrument just too early, so she waited until I was five to give me one. Meanwhile, I was given a cereal box with a ruler and rubber bands to make a play-violin. And until then, I actually got the dose of musical expansion I desired through my dad, who played me many of his much-loved classical music LP’s, including Stravinsky’s Firebird, which he told a masterful made-up bedtime story to which I would demand he tell me over and over again to the Firebird.

When I was five years old, I was finally given a tiny violin. I loved it so much that apparently I would often practice three hours a day, often straight through, and I had to be encouraged to stop and go out and play with the other children. I have to admit, my mother found ways to match me in my precociousness.

For instance, I was developing a habit with my left hand which she referred to as “slumpy hand” which simply meant my hand was coming too far up into the fingerboard, whereas a good left wrist of a violinist needs to remain straight for better maneuvering of the fingers. One morning I awoke and went to open my violin case and there was a small, sharp tack taped onto the bottom of the fingerboard. My mother said I could not take the tack off and that now I would simply have to play without the ‘slumpy hand’ if I wanted to play at all. Furthermore, she explained that, sort of like Santa Claus, Sinichi Suzuki had come himself in the middle of the night to attach the tack to make sure I would behave better by not playing with the “slumpy hand.” Who knows, my mother may have saved my whole life as a violinist, HAH! That and she had perhaps shown me a first sort of Jungian glimpse into the sadomasochism present in Japanese Zen discipline.

Admittedly, my mother also sometimes bribed me to practice and advance even faster than I already was. Sometimes, this bribery was done with pocket change, which I would accumulate in a piggy bank and then spend all of at Toys R’ Us. And, my mother would hold competitions amongst all her students (including me) to see who could go the longest recorded number of days in a row practicing at least half an hour. 100 days in a row spent practicing would get a certificate, and then 200 days would get a trophy and 500 days would get a bigger trophy. I accumulated many trophies while everyone else in the studio eventually missed a day. And last but not least, I was promised that if I mastered both J.S. Bach Double Concerto at the end of Suzuki Book number five by Christmas, that Santa would bring me an 8-bit Nintendo. Santa brought the Nintendo and I got glued to Super Mario Brothers. Dad made sure I joined the T-ball team at school, so that I could get a T-ball trophy or two in addition to all the violin trophies.

When I was seven and a half I had played two Mozart violin concertos, Viotti Chaconne, and Kreisler’s Praeludium and Allegro, and I was getting to be a little too much for my mother, so my mother got me setup in the local University of Evansville preparatory department when I was seven and a half years old, with her friend Cathy Dowager, a professor of violin. Cathy was my first non-mother teacher, and a gorgeous lesbian at that–certainly not my last gorgeous lesbian teacher in life either I might add.

She taught me many valuable lessons, especially concerning the wrist and finger motions that needed to be present in my bow hand. Within a year however, my mother and Cathy decided that I needed yet another teacher, one who could guide me even further.

I had a friend named John as well, but I remember John always trying to get me into fights, which I didn’t like as I was a natural pacifist. I remember that one day John’s mother had come over to be my mom’s company (which was acceptable to John’s mother since she preferred to only have other Christians as company) and I was under the kitchen table crawling around, saying “fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck” over and over again. I had heard my dad say this word, but not often, so it interested me.

I remember seeing John’s mother seeing and hearing me and being totally aghast, just horrified. She became outraged and never visited us again and I remember how my parents discussed how she had forbade John from ever playing with me again since I had such a dirty mouth and since my mother had not been a good enough Christian to teach me better. My mom scolded dad for putting the word in my mind and after that he stopped swearing so much, just in case my mom found another Christian friend, I guess. I found John’s mother’s ethic about words quite ironic since John was always trying to engage me in physical fights. This may have been my first cognizant encounter with the absurd, teeming contradictions of Christian fundamentalism.

I vaguely remember my father going after his MBA degree during this time, mostly from home and in addition to his long work hours as human resources manager at a manufacturing plant (I can’t remember what the factory made, but it was something industrial and quite boring). I remember there was an unfinished room in that house in Bellingham and he would sit at this desk that was sort of like a drawing board and do math homework with what seemed then to be a very high tech calculator, with its little red LED lines-as-numbers. I would try to interrupt and he might entertain me as I desired, or he might tell me he didn’t have time to play since he was busy working. I got such a strong work ethic even from those very earliest imprinted memories of his putting in all those hours of perseverance to try to get ahead and stay ahead in the world, with education as guiding light.

My parents and I lived for the first five years of my life in Bellingham, Indiana, where we survived a few pretty serious hurricanes and many snowed-in winters with several feet of snow blocking entrances and windows. I remember my mother making us corn chowder and oysters and clams and other classic New England food while it was some inhuman version of deathly cold outside.

One winter, my mother walked outside in flip-flops on icy stairs while holding me, and fell down the stairs, inadvertently and with the kind of deep regret that only a mother can feel, causing me to break one leg (hairline fracture) when I was almost dropped. She felt so bad about her errant thinking already, and then even worse as the asshole doctor seemed to imply that maybe she was a child abuser when dad took us both to the hospital (even though she had hurt her back pretty badly when she slipped also, making it obvious that it was just a mindless mistake).

My mother was a Christian, although a pretty universalist-leaning and humanistic one. She taught me the Christian core spiritual values of love and forgiveness, redemption, atonement, the blessedness of the meek, and the Golden Rule of doing unto others as you would have them do unto you. She wasn’t a Bible thumper or a fundamentalist, and she didn’t hate gay people. She taught me to love all people, to try and turn the other cheek, and to try and see the good everywhere and in all people, regardless of their differences. She taught me to never judge people too quickly, and to always try to see things from their perspectives and try and stand in their shoes. She taught me to always treat other people with charity and kindness and dignity, and these were lessons I will never forget.

She had this board game that she would play with me. The game consisted of a square, rubber board with many holes for pegs in it. There were many pegs of many different colors (red, green, blue, orange, violet) that would fit in each peg. The game was meant as a kind of behavioral moral lesson to teach me the value of respecting each other despite perceived differences. The purple people would get mad at the green people but the green people would say “hey, I can’t help being green and you can’t help being purple! Why don’t we just all get along? Just because we’re different colors doesn’t mean we don’t love each other.”

My father was more of a secular humanist, although he certainly wasn’t ever able to conform to what he regarded as political correctness, and this got misconstrued when I was young as outright homophobism and racism, as he would sometimes mock the sound of a gay lisp as a caricature or spoke in jive, like the characters in the movie “Airplane.” He would also make up a verbal affectation of the mentally handicapped, which although totally politically incorrect was so funny that most mentally handicapped people definitely would have laughed at it–he also did a great Donald Duck impression that would make me laugh forever, which I would often try and fail at imitating.

He was very smart about the ways of the world, almost too much so for his own good, as he was constantly losing jobs throughout my upbringing for being a corporate whistleblower. He was a shrewdly ethical man, and he didn’t like to confuse his ethics with religion, although I do think he could always see where my mother was coming from with her more religious frame of reference. In a parallel universe, he was George Carlin maybe. He would have been much happier with his life as some kind of artist, for certain.

My mother’s spiritual perspective, along with my father’s almost academic and somewhat cynical-yet-humanistic business-keen perspective, helped me develop in a way which has always allowed me to go outside many boxes–to expand always and to take things to the very edge of possibilities, giving me something from the way I was raised that’s very grounded in pragmatism, yet truly transcendent at the same time. On the other hand, there were many things wrong with my upbringing (such as my parents’ Republican politics), but there is something wrong for everyone I suppose.

I could not have asked for two finer parents in the basic acceptance department, really. I tested them greatly throughout the coming chapters of this book, and time and time again they saw me as their beloved child, forever dear and lovable to them, no matter how much pain I brought them. They are true angels in that sense.

As is my sister, who was an interruption of my parent’s love for me (their firstborn). I was immediately very angry at her when she was born for taking all that attention away from me. And she was not a calm and peaceful infant, as I was. She was a SCREAMER. She would scream these manically piercing screams which would go straight through your skull and leave you wishing for the void. We later theorized that it was because she was having untreated minor Urinary Tract Infections which were causing blinding pain.

My sister loved and adored me so much, and even though I loved her, I despised her so much and so wrongly for taking my parent’s attention away. And I did this much like a prideful Leo would, without guilt or remorse, as if she was absolutely wrong for coming and stealing mommy and daddy’s attention away. She was very creative, and very sweet and adorable, and always so much kinder and gentler than I. And she was always better at not judging people. I have so much to learn from her natural presence as a person even to this day. She doesn’t seem to have to meditate or lower her ego much at all to be kind and humble, and that’s exactly how she came into the world (save the screaming of course).

I believe I remember my birth, or maybe I’m just making that up to make sense of things. But, I believe I remember pouring out of my mother’s womb into an operating room and into the immense loving pride and adoration of my mother and father, wet and gooshy with doctors and nurses in bluish-green frock coats in attendance. I remember the intense pain of being alive–of being alive “again,” and then again of the immense love and pride and reassurance of my parents.

I think I remember that I had gone very close to the Light awhile before that birth and had almost dissolved all my karma in it–that is, I think I remember being a soul between the last life and this one, as in the way the Tibetan Book of the Dead describes reincarnation or as the Hindus do–about passing through the “bardo” states between the last life and this one.

They describe it as the buddhi, or essence, leaving the body through the crown (there’s a good Alex Grey portrait that depicts this cataclysmic process), and the ego leaves straight towards the Light of Eternity, the Ocean of Pure Love-Light, only to realize before it dissolves completely in that Oneness that it still has karma and must therefore return to find a new body to inhabit, forced to play out the drama and ego of all its karma until it has been consumed into that God-light.

I think I got pretty close last time. I certainly came back in a little singed, or perhaps even a little scorched. Something tells me I did. Or then again, maybe I’ve been getting pretty close many times. The meaning of those memories would make a great deal more sense to me when almost 20 years later I would take bodhisattva vows in a zen training center in New York; “I vow to liberate all beings, returning always to liberate.” When I made these vows, I felt that I remembered taking them, many, many times before. I know I must keep coming back, so may I remain humble.