Episode Seventy-Three: The Byte - Kourtney Andar
Kourtney preaches change through non-violent means. In this episode, hear how his Buddhism informs his way in the world, how angels and demons might exist, how his mother survived a harrowing brain injury, and how ALL THIS is a miracle to him.
Transcript
Welcome to episode 73 of Bite-Sized Blessings.
In this episode,
I get to interview my very good friend,
Courtney Ondar.
As with all humans,
It is very,
Very difficult to summarize someone in just a sentence or two,
So I'm going to take a couple sentences from the Santa Fe Art Institute's website.
As an activist,
Social justice educator,
And former infantry service member in the National Guard,
Courtney has trained hundreds of men and women on violence prevention,
Pro-feminism,
And environmental justice.
At the University of Missouri Columbia,
Courtney co-advised a male ally program and sexual violence prevention student organization,
And assisted with implementing a comprehensive bystander intervention program.
He's the former board vice president of the international peace organization Veterans for Peace.
He's worked as an office administrator for the Center for Social Justice,
And he led the People of Color Caucus with the Fertile Ground Institute.
And of course,
He's done many,
Many other amazing things.
He's all of these things,
And also my good friend.
And so,
It was really wonderful to have this conversation,
To just sit down and talk,
Hear more about his story,
More about his childhood,
More about what has shaped and formed him into the person he is now.
I think you'll find our conversation interesting and hopefully inspiring.
And now,
Episode 73 of Bite-Sized Blessings.
One of the first things I always think of is my mom,
You know,
I was,
I think I was like 10 or 11 years old.
I was closer to 11 when my younger brother,
Shug,
Was born.
And my mom,
Very soon after,
Had a brain aneurysm following the birth.
I can't remember how much longer.
I think it might have been like,
I don't know,
Like two or three weeks after the birth.
The birth went fine,
And you know,
Shug's a huge kid.
I mean,
He's enormous.
He's,
You know,
He's always been bigger than me,
Starting at like age,
You know,
I don't know,
13 or something,
Was bigger than all of us.
But then,
My mom got sick,
And she ended up having an aneurysm,
Bursting a blood vessel.
A brain aneurysm can be deadly.
I mean,
You can die.
A lot of people die,
Probably most people die from brain aneurysms.
But at the time,
You know,
In like the late 90s,
That,
You know,
That was like,
That seemed like a miracle to us.
What are the versions of magic or miracles that have occurred in my life?
And,
You know,
There's a mix of thinking,
Because generally speaking,
I wouldn't call anything that's happened to me magic or a miracle.
What I would say is,
I've noticed the power of people coming together to make something happen.
And so,
For instance,
One of the first things I always think of is my mom.
You know,
I was,
I think I was like 10 or 11 years old.
I was closer to 11 when my younger brother,
Shug,
Was born.
Shug is the last of us to be born.
He was born in 98,
January 98.
And my mom,
Very soon after,
Had a brain aneurysm following the birth.
I can't remember how much longer.
I think it might have been like,
I don't know,
Like two or three weeks after the birth.
The birth went fine.
And,
You know,
Shug's a huge kid.
I mean,
He's enormous.
He's,
You know,
He's always been bigger than me.
And starting at like age,
You know,
I don't know,
13 or something was bigger than all of us.
But then my mom got sick and she ended up having an aneurysm,
Bursting a blood vessel.
And going to the hospital was extremely painful.
Of course,
We saw our mom in excruciating pain.
You know,
We had to witness her suffering.
A brain aneurysm can be deadly.
I mean,
You can die.
A lot of people die.
Probably most people die from brain aneurysms.
People do survive.
There is,
You know,
Science that has allowed treatment,
Quick,
Fast treatment to help people survive.
And there are more stories like that,
Luckily.
But at the time,
You know,
In like the late 90s,
That,
You know,
That was like,
That seemed like a miracle to us.
She wasn't an old person.
You know,
She was still fairly young,
Even though she,
You know,
By that time she had had four kids.
It was really rough.
She was in the hospital for a certain amount of time.
And,
You know,
There was a moment we were really afraid that she was going to die.
We were,
We always felt like that was like divine intervention for my mom to survive that and to walk out of the hospital of her own accord.
She wasn't in a wheelchair.
You know,
She wasn't paralyzed.
She wasn't,
She didn't have to relearn how to do things,
You know,
Things like that.
There was a short time of treatment that she had to be helped with with certain things.
But like for the most part,
She came through that like a champ.
It was amazing.
You know,
I always feel like it's magical when protest movements yield positive results.
Like I thought it pretty magical when the police officers who killed George Floyd were convicted.
You know,
I find things like that to be pretty rare.
You know,
I mean,
That's,
That's pretty amazing for,
For the mobilization to yield the victory.
And then,
Of course,
There have been more recent examples of success as well in that regard.
I find those things miraculous,
You know,
Because it's so hard to get people to agree on anything.
It's so hard to mobilize.
It's so hard to find resources.
It's so hard to get people on the same page to achieve results like that.
You know,
I grew up with a with a strong religious belief in magic and miracles.
You know,
We believed in good and evil.
We believe that there were evil forces.
We believed in demons and angels.
We thought they were real.
We we thought we had stories where we had seen them.
You know,
When I was eight or nine,
I probably would tell you,
Yeah,
I've seen it goes.
Yeah,
I've seen an angel.
Or,
Yeah,
I've seen a demon.
It was scary.
You know,
I probably believed that when I was a kid.
I think I'll say I don't believe that anymore.
Now,
I don't discount my own family's experiences or anyone else's experience,
For that matter.
That's not something I'll debate with anyone is whether or not they saw an angel or they saw a demon or they saw magic or they saw a miracle.
I absolutely will not debate anybody on their own experience in that regard.
I will say that for me,
In my experience,
I think it's just been more enriching to observe phenomena that we can all agree on.
And I also think it's important to hold on to a process where we can all arrive at a similar belief and result.
And that is actually what I'm afraid of.
And that's part of what makes me nervous about the idea of magic and miracles is that it kind of gives,
You know,
In a way,
It gives individuals license to talk about phenomena and material reality from a subjective experience.
But we need a world that works objectively.
So even though in my mind,
Like in Buddhist,
We have our angels,
We call them bodhisattvas,
Right?
In Buddhism,
We have the Buddhas who are celestial beings in some sense,
But maybe they went beyond celestial beings.
I don't know.
You know,
You kind of have to look at it a different way.
But like we have our demons,
You know,
You can go to the hell realm in Buddhism.
There's hell realms.
There's more than one hell realm,
You know,
There's more than one heavenly realm.
Right.
And then there's nirvana.
There's the whole pantheon in Buddhism as well.
And I am a Buddhist.
I meditate.
I go I go to the Zendo,
You know,
Before the lockdown anyway.
I was going to the Zendo.
I did the bows.
I would pray to the bodhisattvas.
You know,
We did all of that.
We did all of that.
And still the Buddhist teachings bring us back to the present moment,
The here and the now.
So you can have a belief in the bodhisattvas and the Buddhas and the demons and the devils.
You know,
We call them the protectors,
The prajakas,
You know,
The hungry ghosts.
You can believe in them,
The hell realms.
But the Buddha said,
You still have to come back to the present moment.
You still have to observe your breath,
Meditate and sit and observe your breathing.
You know,
You still have to practice loving kindness,
Generosity,
Equanimity and sympathetic joy,
Which are the four Brahma vahara,
The four heavenly abodes.
He said,
When you exist in loving kindness,
Equanimity,
Sympathetic joy and compassion,
You are in heaven.
In this life right now,
You are in heaven.
That's heaven.
The four divine abodes in the here and now.
And so even though there is this whole pantheon,
The Buddha always says,
Come back to this present moment.
That's what's most important.
Heaven is not even the end.
You can go to heaven and then come right back to earth and then go to hell in the very next life.
You know,
Like you can have all this past karma come and then determine your you know,
It's like this whole thing.
So the Buddha's like,
Don't get stuck in heaven.
Don't get stuck in hell.
Don't get stuck in any realm that will end in itself.
Try to find the endless what doesn't end,
Which is Nirvana,
Which is the bliss of enlightenment.
You know,
The Buddha would turn down a request to show miracles and magic.
He would sometimes he would do it and sometimes he wouldn't.
He'd just be like,
No,
I'm not going to perform a miracle.
What we're going to do is as in we're going to do size in right now.
This present moment is the miracle.
This present moment is is the magic.
Actually,
Interestingly enough,
Just read an article.
They said,
You know,
Some scientists,
Philosophers,
Scientific philosophers have decided that there is no such thing as objective reality and it's impossible for that to exist.
And so I think I read that and I was like,
Good God.
I mean,
What does this mean?
It's like,
Oh my God.
But I think I mean,
That's right.
That's the challenge.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So we will see if humanity can overcome it in next week's episode of does subjective.
No.
Does objective reality exist?
That's that's one hell of a cliffhanger,
Isn't it?
It is.
Yes.
And that's it.
Episode 73 of Bite-Sized Blessings.
I need to thank my inspiring and articulate guest,
Courtney Andar,
For agreeing to appear on the show.
I also need to thank the creators of the music used.
Alex Productions,
Tyga Sound Productions,
Winnie the Moog,
Sasha End,
Frank Schroeder and Brian Holt's music.
For complete attribution,
Please see the Bite-Sized Blessings Web site at bite-sized blessings dot com.
I'd like to take a moment here to ask all those who like the show to consider leaving a rating and a review.
Ratings and reviews help others find us.
Also,
Don't forget to share the podcast with your friends.
And don't forget to subscribe.
Thank you for listening.
And here's my one request.
Be like Courtney.
Live in the present moment.
And then the next present moment and the next.
Hopefully in that present moment,
You'll find the peace and the bliss you're looking for.
