The Temple Dog Soldiers

Hi! What’s going on there? I hope you are happy and healthy. I just went through three weeks of strep throat and a twisted knee, along with nicotine & hash withdrawals. Be thankful you weren’t here to see it. I wish I wasn’t. But everything is nearly better now, and here is something much more pleasant and interesting! The third book, now being written, will be called Temple Dog Soldier. That title was snatched from a piece by the same name that appeared in the second book, Reincarnation Through Common Sense. Once again, in consideration for my short attention span friends, it is presented here as a very short piece—less than 500 words! This chapter and that entire book is about my half year spent as a non-student, adopted lunatic being cared for in a very rural Buddhist forest temple in Thailand where no one else spoke English. The one official duty given me by the head monk there was “make yourself comfortable.” As is true of all my writing, everything except whole books goes out free of charge and all author profits from the sales of those whole books will be donated to help sponsor wisdom teachers and activities. Anyone that has ever read a newspaper knows that there is nothing, except perhaps love, that is more painfully and obviously lacking on Earth than wisdom.

Actually, wisdom and love are kind of the same thing, aren’t they? ***This post is number 45 of a 52-week SEO boosting program that was the brainchild of my good friend, occasional tech adviser, women’s rights champion, and all-around wonderful person Thinley Wangmo Lama, administrator of the Pema Boutique Hotel in the Boudha Stupa area of Kathmandu. As the year and the program wind down, I would like to deeply thank her for her help. I would also like to deeply thank all of you who have been clicking the back links. If you have been reading and clicking, please continue to do so for the next seven or eight weeks. If not, please do so now. Your very minimal effort can help bring great accomplishment as we head down the home stretch of this effort.Thank you for reading, and thank you for clicking. Be well. Love, Tenzin. Oh, hell, 400+ words is a ridiculously short post. I’ll add just 100 more words of companion poem at the end! ***p.s. As always, if you find these weekly bits bothersome, let me know and I’ll stop sending them to you. If you find the reading at all enjoyable, please—it literally takes only seconds—click one or more or all of the highlighted backlinks following this paragraph. This simple process is completely without risk, cost, or difficulty. All it does is bring you to the site that is highlighted. Each click is a big help in pushing Fearless Puppy up in the Google rankings. Whether you browse the sites or close the windows immediately, your help has been delivered when you click. Thank you! FEARLESS PUPPY WEBSITE BLOG FEARLESS PUPPY ON AMERICAN ROAD/AMAZON PAGE REINCARNATION THROUGH COMMON SENSE/AMAZON PAGE FEARLESS WEBSITE Temple Dog Soldiers I get along beautifully with the dogs at the temple, and the dogs at the temple get along beautifully with life. There are about thirty of them. These dogs get fed and cared for better than many humans get fed and cared for. Most of them also get along with each other better than humans do. I spend a lot of time with my canine brothers. They’re the only ones here who seem to understand English. But we have a lot more in common than just that. We all got the shit kicked out of us by life. Most of these dogs were abandoned on the mean streets of steaming downtown Asia and would likely be dead had benevolent passersby not brought them to the temple. Yes, it is likely we would all have left our bodies by now if not for the loving kindness and connections of someone who just knew that “this dog belongs in the temple.” I don’t know if dogs are actually capable of intellectually knowing much but if they are, here are a few things these dogs know: 1—They are the luckiest sons of bitches in the Universe. 2—One minute of petting is a lot more fun than years of getting kicked. 3—Mange, worms, tics, malnutrition, attack, and nonfatal injuries can all be classified as temporary setbacks.

They probably also think there is a God, or several of them. Like the cat that just ate the canary, we stroll the grounds and wag our tales. We are barely smart enough to realize that we have recently been given wings for no other reason than that we didn’t have a leg to stand on. We Temple Dogs inadvertently get to be a little bit like soldier-type creatures guarding the outer perimeters of the residents’ hearts. It works like this.
 No one expects us to do anything, much less do anything right. We snap at flies and mosquitoes, pee on palm trees, don’t speak the language, and are not physically able to do much work. Although we live in a temple, nothing is expected of us in the techno-spiritual sense. We don’t even know the words to the chants and prayers. Our happy hearts and healing bodies are pleasantly swollen with gratitude and good food—but these hearts and bodies are attached to very little in the way of a culturally functional brain. When we fug up, we don’t even know that we have fugged up—and everyone around us knows that we don’t know we’ve fugged up. That makes it easy for the folks here to practice forgiveness and compassion. This makes them better-hearted people. We get petted and smiled at. We often get petted and smiled at without even fugging up! It can happen just because someone here wants to give a little kindness and affection to anything within range. That is what the people we live with do. It is more than just their job description. It is who they are. And we are who we are—descendants of wild wolves that are still embodied quite by accident. We have come as close to losing our tails as anything that still breathes. I’m wagging mine. So are my dogs. Loving Kindness As I was approaching death, a magical etheric breath
 Flashed brightness into tragic night, rekindling my embittered sight
 A shadowed message in my brain awakened from within the pain So softly spoken without word, that message was so clearly heard Forgive, forget, just live and let… Recall your ancient wisdom
 It’s sleeping now but we know how to unify your schism
 Take heart and hope, untie your rope, and let your boat go sailing Your ship is tight! Just do it right. There’ll be no need for bailing We cannot go there for you as you must map your own path But we can help block broken roads and prevent aftermath! We’re there, we care, and are aware of trouble in your chest Please take our kindness to yourself, as if your mother’s breast And when I rediscover health and take my life back off the shelf
 They’ll say I did it all myself through fortitude and mental wealth
 They’ll leave love there until it clicks, rebuild my house from broken sticks Loving Kindness is the fix and temple folks know all the tricks Many thanks to our wonderful friends at Pema Boutique Hotel for their help and support. ***The books Fearless Puppy On American Road and Reincarnation Through Common Sense by this same author are also available through Amazon or the Fearless Puppy website, where there are sample chapters from those books. Entertaining TV/radio interviews with and newspaper articles about the author are also available there. There is no charge for anything but the complete books! All author profits from book sales will be donated to help sponsor an increase in the number of wisdom professionals on Earth, beginning with but certainly not limited to Buddhist monks and nuns. ***If you missed the Introduction to the new book that will be titled Temple Dog Soldier, or would like to see several chapters of it that are available for free online, go to the Puppy website Blog section. This is a book in progress. You will be reading it as it is being created! Just like you, I don’t know what the next chapter is going to be about until it is written. As the Intro will tell you, this is a totally true story—and probably the only book ever written by and about a corpse journeying completely around the world!