the 'last' of winter

In a page-1 offering, the local paper trumpets, "Winter set/ to sound/ its last blast" and sure enough there is snow on the ground and more falling, though not with much gusto. The news story itself makes it clear how in the hell anyone could assert that this was the 'last:' "Spring" officially arrives tomorrow.

Strange how a collective fantasy -- in this case something called "winter" -- can create a collective reality. True, a lot of people, me included, may be sick to death of the troglodyte existence imposed by dark skies and cold winds and accumulating snow, but putting parameters on the weather seems egregiously self-centered and wildly inaccurate to me.

It ain't over till the fat lady sings, but chilly times are hardly marked by some closing aria.

I wonder how many other things are like that ... true because lots of people applaud but highly suspicious when examined with any care.

scientific 'research'

It's not that I don't appreciate the scientific research reported occasionally in the news, it's just that sometimes it sounds a bit unhinged in my mind ... something along the lines of...

-- In a three-year, double-blind experiment, researchers at the University of Nottingham have discovered that menopausal women were more easily satisfied by men from Iowa. The conclusions were expected to have wide-ranging implications in the lives of laboratory rats....

-- Using infrared technology, scientists at the University of Missouri have discovered that cockroaches foraging in darkened kitchens were unlikely to flee when subjected to the strains of Bela Bartok. The John F. Kennedy Middle School in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, is already testing the scientific outcomes by turning out the lights during lessons in classical music.

-- A new study shows that alligators in Florida's Everglades National Park were far more gregarious after having eaten small children. Elated but somewhat confused by the findings, researchers are hoping to apply their conclusions to the sometimes-testy and occasionally anti-social grey whales in the Gulf of California.

Of course real scientific studies are not so silly ... I hope.

a bit of gratitude

In 1975, I flunked out of a Zen Buddhist monastery.

I say "flunked out" partly as a means of bringing a little zip to the preceding sentence and partly as a means of describing how I felt at the time. I felt like a failure -- signed on for six months and left after two. How could I ever hope to attain whatever it was that Zen Buddhism had to offer without getting my ticket punched, without, well, you know, doing all the things that marked a 'serious' Zen student ... going to a monastery, getting my head shaved maybe, passing koans, learning a foreign language, and being designated by increasingly-important names like "sensei" or "priest" or "osho" or -- the big banger -- "roshi?" How would anyone know that I was a Zen Buddhist in good standing ... or, preferably, advanced standing?

None of this thinking was out-front and honest. It kind of lurked behind the scenes. But it was there and no doubt about it. I knew it was there by the utterly-deflated sense of failure I felt when I returned to my home in New York City: "flunked out," "mediocre student," "not someone to take seriously," "a dilettante," "a poseur," "a believer" "an unenlightened yokel" ... yup, I felt like shit. Those who stayed on and went the course were ... well, they were better than I was and I was in no mood to be anything but "the best." Which I clearly wasn't.

I remember all this not so much as a means of suggesting anyone should relinquish a dream of going to a monastery or of staying or of becoming a monk/nun, or of taking whatever other course seems appropriate to their lives. I just remember it today after reading a heartfelt expression on a Buddhist Internet bulletin board ... to go to a monastery. I read it and sympathized and felt a great wash of gratitude for my own experience ... the failure, the flunk-out and the person whose life was lucky enough to find some spiritual meat on the Zen Buddhist bone. Others may stroke their Buddhist beards in 'compassionate' understanding of a wider and more glorious world ... poor soul, he just doesn't get it. And perhaps they're right ... but the point is, I no longer care if they're right.

I flunked out ... and that was one of the best spiritual-life building blocks I ever came across. Spiritual life really does have some meaning ... but it's not the meaning the wise and wizened and the well-dressed cloak it in... or mine either.

It just seems to me that every person is his or her own monastery. Literally. And the sooner anyone finds that out, the sooner they can stop living on spiritual popcorn. Don't get me wrong -- I like popcorn as well as the next fellow; I like Zen Buddhism as well as the next fellow. But after a while ... well after a while, how about sinking your teeth into a Big Mac?

As Emily Litella was wont to say, "Oh ... well ... never mind!"

Just lolling around feeling a sense of gratitude.

ahhhhh ... Shangri-La

In 1933, a time when people still read books, James Hilton's "Lost Horizon" captured a wide attention with its depiction of the mythical Shangri-La, a harmonious, Buddhist-tinged valley deep in the Himalayas. The book was powerful and popular enough so that even today "Shangri-La" remains a touchstone word -- an evocation of what life might be like if it were not so riven with strife and ego-tripping and ... well, all the shit that anyone might face when getting up in the morning.

It is interesting that the popularity of the book and the embracing of "Shangri-La" seemed unconcerned with any Buddhist trappings or overtones. Spiritual nit-pickers were left in the dust. Anyone could envision such a gem because they already had had such a vision, however wispy or wistful: Shangri-La was part and parcel of the human dream of getting-out-from-under or being-home-at-last. Buddhist, Christian, garbage-collector or school teacher ... Shangri-La went beyond all those piffling matters. Shangri-La was the ahhhhhh of things and who needs spiritual or monetary or any other sort of trappings in order to know an ahhhhhhh when it arrives?

A part of the mind rebels where Shangri-La enters: This is utopian, idealist, unrealistic childishness; I'm an adult, after all; I've been around the block enough times to know ... well, all the scarred and bruised and empirical stuff I know ... so don't run your fairy-dust bullshit on me! But of course the more the empirical, controlling and worldly-wise information asserts itself, the more Shangri-La whispers and beckons: It is as if knowing were the very soil from which the unknown sprang up ... the ahhhhh that anyone might know in a sneeze or kiss ... the place and time where, at last, a person might "lay my burden down" (and not drop dead in order to do it).

I think many people might view a mirage with some disdain. A mirage is the hallucinatory oasis in a hot desert, a vision of something that isn't there and yet is compelling in its unreal reality. A mirage is a fantasy and no one wants to lead this life based on a fantasy, right?

But I think disdain is not the right approach. To disdain something is to give it substance and credibility, so in order to disdain a fantasy, in order to bring Shangri-La to heel, you must, of necessity, accede to the Shangri-La you disdain. It's sort of like Buddhists who mistakenly run around trumpeting that "there is no ego." This really is the dog chasing its tail.

Better than disdain, I think, might be to imagine a Shangri-La as if it were a beloved pony. Give it a paddock to run around in. Give it breathing room. Let it gambol and frolic and eat from your hand. Watch and admire and love it. God, what a beautiful creature! The stately head, the muscled flanks ... God, what a wondrous creation! Let its warm and warming presence fill every corner, every cell of this being ... Shangri-La!

But watch this pony with all the gimlet attention a mother might bring to her babe. Watch and love and watch some more. No need to chase and plead ... just watch. What beautiful flanks, what wondrous speed, what astounding grandeur! What...a...fucking... miracle! Just watch. Be patient and watch.

And the strange fact is that in this watching, there is no need for hiding Shangri-La in the distant hills. There is no need to track this elusive ahhhhhh. No wily traps need to be set, nor tears shed, nor longings watered, nor bliss pacified with sacrifices.

In this watching, the Shangri-La anyone might desperately seek no longer requires hunting. The Shangri-La that was sought will simply come to you. Distances are unnecessary. Home comes home.

It's no big deal.

It's just ahhhhh.

And it's way warmer than the Himalayas.

sunny Sunday

A bright and brilliant day, one on which I got out of bed at the wildly-improbable hour of 9. It has been a l-o-n-g time since I did that. With no particular agenda for the day outside a little zazen, there's no reason not to loll about, but still....

Received in the mail a second-hand copy of "Charlie Wilson's War" that I bought for $5 ... and watched it yesterday ... and was glad I had treated myself to it. As a depiction of covert U.S. operations in Afghanistan during the Soviet invasion in the 1980's, it was miles better in its way than the recent Iran-focused, Oscar-winner "Argo" was in its. "Charlie Wilson's War" was deft and light. "Argo" was listless and solemn.

And it crossed my mind in hazy array ... maybe it's true ...

Students come to spiritual instructors with the mostly-buried notion that such instructors are attempting to win them over to some particular point of view or conviction ... you know, the bright and shining point of view, the one true view, the peace infused with a perfect conviction. The student imagines that the instructor has such capacities, knows best ... and is doing what s/he can to win the student over through one ritual or another, one framework or another, one true-view or another.

Meanwhile, if the teacher is any good, his or her effort is pointed towards bringing the student to the student's point of view, the student's conviction, the student's peace. The subject matter of the student's point of view or conviction matters very little. It's just a question of finding the strength and understanding to stand on the student's own two feet. Buddhist, Baptist, car mechanic or poker player ... none of that matters so much. Agreement is not the point. Group hugs are not the point. Safety and relief are not the point. Sangha is real, but that reality does not rest on some sissified agreement.

Talk about ships passing in the night!

What a miracle that on occasion something good comes of it all.

Wowsers! A daisy is a daisy.

pedophilia as a "psychological condition"

It may be tedious, but it needs to be called out...

The Archbishop of Durban, Wilfrid Fix Napier, has suggested that pedophilia, a Vatican-sponsored activity that has cost the Vatican millions, is a psychological "illness, not a criminal condition."

[Anyone who bridles at the assertion that the Vatican has been complicit for hundreds of years in the business of priests screwing small children needs to do a little homework among, for example, the selected Vatican documents that date back to 309 AD.]

In an interview with the BBC, the South African cardinal who most recently helped to elect Pope Francis referred to two priests who had themselves been abused as children:

Now don't tell me that those people are criminally responsible like somebody who chooses to do something like that. I don't think you can really take the position and say that person deserves to be punished. He was himself damaged.

The argument is as cunning and specious as it is self-serving. As a shrink friend of mine, an ex-Jesuit, once put it, "If a man punches you in the stomach, you don't ask if he lives in a rat-infested apartment."

Placing himself beneath an umbrella of apparent kindness and wider understanding, Napier is hardly new in his approach. His Catholic kith and kin have used the same argument in the past is they wriggled and squirmed on the hook that pedophilia has placed in their sides... wriggled and squirmed and tried to preserve the institution they credited ... the same institution that put bread and butter and prestige on their table.

Well, it won't wash.

Napier, like his kith and kin, neglects to mention that if these perpetrators are psychologically damaged goods, yes, they may need help ... but there are prisons for those adjudged criminally insane. He neglects to mention the victims who suffered at the hands of such damaged goods. He neglects to mention the wider society that finds screwing small children heinous and is willing to punish such actions ... irrespective of the rats in anyone's apartment. Is such judgment and such punishment too harsh? Is a request that people assume responsibility for their actions too extreme? Is it all too unkind and uncompassionate? Did "the devil make me do it?" Very well, there are hospital prisons for the criminally insane.

Napier's implicit allegation is that everyone is worthy of forgiveness. And, whether or not anyone is trying to defend a much-beloved institution, perhaps this is true. It's nice to be nice. It's nice to have a wider vision, even if it is just an end-run around culpability. But the social fact is that everyone has suffered a tragedy -- everyone has lived in a rat-infested apartment -- and, by the grace of god, perhaps, has learned to live with and take responsibility for it. I'm not suggesting this is always easy. I am suggesting that -- tough titty! -- that is the way life is. And if you want to claim a place at the social table, then it is best to deal with your own rats ... not lay them off on someone else.

The church of necessity claims a place at the social table. Without that place, the church would dissolve. But you can't have it both ways -- claiming a place at the social table while simultaneously claiming to be above that table.

It's horseshit ... which is not to say that horseshit is somehow in short supply at the social table.

radar-screen lifestyle

Today, with an ever-so-delicate dusting of snow on the cars in the street and the sun bright and the air crisp, the house is empty. My wife and older son went to New Jersey to hook up with my daughter yesterday and ... there's no one around and it makes me wonder idly: When no one is there is there any there there? The question is dusted, like the cars in the street, with loneliness, but it is not a loneliness that finds much purchase.

It made me think of radar.

How much of anyone's life is employed in being aware, in assessing and reassessing circumstances and environment, in scouting for delight and danger, in fabricating defense and offense, in ... well ... just being aware?

A parent, for example, becomes a finely-tuned radar after the baby arrives. Every cough and sniffle and cry shows up in a nanosecond on the radar screen. A soldier in combat is keenly aware of every twig-snap or change in the shadows "out there."

But setting aside such obvious and compelling instances, isn't the rest of anyone's life pretty much the same? Less intensely, perhaps, but still the habit is enormous ... keeping an eye on things without a second thought. Life-threatening or life-improving ... keeping an eye on things. Maybe being aware in a radar-like sense is just one definition of what it means to be alive.

But then, suddenly, my wife and son have left for New Jersey and the objects that had been on my radar screen are no longer there. The work of the radar screen is no longer necessary or even makes much sense. There is a certain restfulness on the one hand. The facts are just the facts and scanning or manipulating them as if there were some Rubik's cube to align ... well, the cube is just the cube.

Naturally an ingrown, lifelong habit is not about to roll over and play dead just because there is one small bit of recognition or perspective or whatever it is. If something goes missing on the radar screen, the radar screen searches out other points of contact. That's what radar screens do, after all. That's what habits do and calling it foolish or ill-conceived or untrue or unwise ... that's just radar-screen talk.

With the absence of my wife and son, I did wonder for a moment if the radar screen could possibly be turned off -- if, when finding a chink in its lifelong armor, the armor itself were proven somehow unworthy and mistaken. But then I thought that that was just another of those fatuous, inept and ersatz-spiritual conclusions.

In a practical sense, people would starve to death without radar. They would give themselves over to the mental and physical incontinence of an old-age home. It would be like sending the kids out to play in traffic. They would be unhappy in the same way they might be when crediting their radar. Lifelong habits may be confounding and painful -- or clarifying and full of delight -- but they're just habits ... fix 'em when necessary and otherwise leave 'em alone.

Habits ... OK. But the trick is ...

No one says you have to believe them.

And there's no reason not to enjoy them.

My wife and son went to New Jersey. The house is tinged with their absence.

It's on my radar screen.

spiritual life ... for WHAT?

"Sure, God is serious ... what's for lunch?"

I guess everyone brings his or her own level of intensity and yearning to spiritual life. For some it is rote ... just be good and you'll get a gold star. For others it may be a blessing or a relief agency. And for still others it can be like one of those splinters that hurts like hell -- is front and center in every move you make -- and yet trying to get it out yields no results... infuriating, insistent, uplifting, depressing, smoldering, endlessly confounding.

Second-guessing anyone's intensity is a fool's errand in my book. From baubles and bangles to profound wisdom to nut-job dancing in the streets... OK, whatever floats your spiritual boat. Better and worse do not apply to a man who gets up in the morning to take a leak.

But whatever the way in and whatever the intensity, still I wonder if others wonder as I do ... what is it precisely that you're after? This is a question I surely wouldn't presume to answer for anyone else, but I get to ask it, same as you. All that effort, all that dress-up, all that intense dedication, all that time, all that money, all that accumulated knowledge, all that ... stuff ... for what? I don't mean the inadequate things like "peace" or "bliss" or "joy" or "enlightenment" or "emptiness" or "Nirvana" or even a "trip to Disneyland."

For ...

WHAT?

Anybody else's answer will always be inadequate. But the sneaky part is that even my answers will always be inadequate. How can anyone answer when no one can answer? I'm not trying to be sexy or 'Zen' here ... just seriously....

For ...

WHAT?

Sitting at the kitchen table sipping tea and talking amiably, my Zen teacher once said "maybe it's like the pointless point." He didn't say "maybe" like some academic trying to protect his credentialed flanks. He said it with the kind of wistful tone of a man who could never do what he was speaking of doing, never know what he was speaking of knowing, never capture what he was capturing with words ... because if he could do it, how could it possibly be true?

Like incense smoke, the words make me happy tonight -- "the pointless point." Maybe all that spiritual stuff is just spiritual stuff and while you were busy doing it, the pointless-point cat snuck in the back door, purring and unnoticed. Warm and wily, easy-going and assured. Go ahead and say there's a "cat." Go ahead and run a spiritual number proclaiming there is "no cat." The cat doesn't mind and s/he is also polite enough not to laugh.

Pointless point cat.

Maybe.

parenthood

Read this elsewhere and thought it was too good not to steal:

Parenthood is inherited. If your parents never had children, chances are, you won't either.

if at first you don't succeed....

Little or large, it is utterly human and yet ...

Sometimes I think the encouragement "If at first you don't succeed, try, try again" should be rewritten to read, "If at first you don't succeed, find another way to fuck things up."

Case in point, as reported by Reuters:

Egypt's ruling Muslim Brotherhood warns that a U.N. declaration on women's rights could destroy society by allowing a woman to travel, work and use contraception without her husband's approval and letting her control family spending.

Declarations invariably lead to imperfect results, but when the depredations that preceded those declarations become too apparent and too overwhelming, then the time for a less-imperfect imperfection seems warranted ... a matter of common sense and common decency.

If Muslim women had an equal share of power and control in the society they help to bind, would that society be more or less out of synch with the facts on the ground? Would things be any more or less fucked up? As far as I can see, women are people too and as such are as subject to fuck-ups as men.

Is there some reason -- among Muslims or any other group -- not to share this wealth and the responsibility that goes with it?

hope pope

He has only been pope for two days, but Pope Francis has suggested that hope for the Catholic Church may have some basis. Of course hope and a couple of bucks will get you a bus ride, but it's pleasant as a starting point.

A BBC report quotes Francis as telling his power-structure cardinals at Mass in the Sistine Chapel:

"I would like all of us ... to have the courage to walk in the presence of God."

"The courage" -- that's hopeful.

Likely? Who knows? But hopeful at the moment.

And further:

"If we do not confess to Christ, what would we be?"

Like the ad for Miller Lite beer -- "Tastes great. Less filling" -- any statement made in a corporate or political setting can be revised later to conform to self-serving, conniving and unfulfilled ends, but in the meantime....

I suppose that if such pronouncements catch the eye of a non-Catholic like me, it suggests how far I (and others) imagine the church has strayed from any honest message it may actually have.

"The Paperless Future"

Passed along in email:

Eido Shimano didn't do it

It's not as if it weren't expected, but now it's in black-and-court-docket-white: Eido Shimano did not engage in "inappropriate sexual relations with anyone."

Shimano and his wife Yasuko sued Zen Studies Society on Jan. 3, 2013 for $2 million in pursuit of retirement payments they alleged they were due and had not received. The suit seeks a jury trial in the Supreme Court of the state of New York. Zen Studies Society responded that Shimano had breached a "faithful servant" understanding by initiating inappropriate sexual conduct with various Zen students ... among other allegations... and is likewise seeking $2 million from Shimano and his wife.

Now, in a response to the ZSS response, comes the court-filed document denying "inappropriate sexual relations with anyone." The document is dated March 11, 2013.

OK ... what else did you expect?

What is interesting is the use of the word "inappropriate." It seems to suggest that there may have been "appropriate" (i.e. consensual) sexual liaisons, but, hey, what the hell ... screwing is not against the law. More important, however, the word relegates the whole argument into a he-said-she-said context in which each party may have a point of view and discerning which view is correct is impossible since there were no witnesses to corroborate.

The only fly in this ointment may be seen in the centuries-long denials and cover-ups used in the Roman Catholic Church when it comes to priest sexual abuse. No one believed the victims ... whether church or civil authorities ... or, if they did believe it, they were willing to sweep the matter under the rug in a variety of ways. But of late, the circumstantial evidence has become so great and the similarity between allegations so heinously obvious that the church can no longer hide behind an elevated status and civil authorities have brought down the hammer of judgment. The church is hemorrhaging money in an attempt to quell the clamorous cries.

Similarly, the desire to quell the complaints against Shimano has lost its oomph in the face of numerous witnesses retailing similar stories ... and documented in the 6,000 pages of the Shimano Archive 
and elsewhere. For decades, Shimano used the he-said-she-said defense in a variety of ways. He, like the Catholic Church, was well-dressed and granted a good deal of humble latitude. Since he had done 'good things,' the 'bad things' were inconsequential. These were the plots of the jealous and the misinformed. In the end, it was just a matter of he-said-she-said and what Shimano said was given a pass.

But now the matter is in court, a place that tries to winkle out facts rather than devotions. And the social environment seems ready to listen more attentively to the she-said's of the world. There is a critical mass to the accusations that once went unheeded.

Will the matter ever reach a courtroom? I wish it would, but I sincerely doubt it will. Shimano, like the Vatican, cannot be expected to willingly square off against the great unwashed who assured his rise to the position he assumes he has. It would be 'beneath' him ... not to mention a vast embarrassment.

argo pope yourself!

At about the same time yesterday that cardinals at the Vatican were busy naming a new Roman Catholic pope, my older son and I were two of four people seated in a movie theater watching "Argo," the 2013 Academy Award winner for best picture of the year.

Ben Affleck with Oscar

The movie, which never bothered to tell the joke on whose punchline ("Argo fuck yourself!") the title was based, concerned the CIA's wily and successful attempt to secure freedom for six Americans caught up in the 1979 "hostage crisis" in Iran. Fifty-two hostages were held for 444 days in the wake of American maneuverings and interference in a country that could aptly wear the historical title of "the cradle of civilization." History, of course, was not on American minds at the time: Iran, that backwards, raucous, revolutionized nation, was holding our countrymen. Fifty-two were held. Six escaped.


My son and I managed to sit through the movie whose impact rested at least in part on America's wary and sometimes hostile feelings about the "Middle East' and its brown inhabitants who seem to be willing to send American interlopers home in body bags. 'They' of course were responsible for the (never adequately defined) terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 ... so a depiction of them strikes a chord in the American heart.

But the movie itself was mediocre. There was a good building of tension ... would these six escape or would they be eaten alive by the mobs in the streets? The mobs were credible, but the actors in the escape scenario were listless and cardboard. Anyone could recognize, viscerally, the mindlessness of a group determined in some common cause. As LaRochefoucauld observed, "The intelligence of the mass is inversely proportionate to its number." The mobs were scary.

But the movie did not linger on any of its central characters long enough to allow the audience to identify with them. There was "no there there" when it came to character development. The mission and its dangers were apparent. The flesh and bone of the people involved was left to the audience to fill in. It was a cheap date. Ben Affleck, who picked up the best-picture Oscar for "Argo," had been responsible for "The Town," a 2010 crime drama about Boston's Charlestown ... a much better, though not perfect, attempt to depict the people it portrayed.

People, in my mind, are what tell any good story. The more credible and identifiable the people, the better the story. Not that I'm against books or movies that are long on action or technology and short on character ... they can be a lot of fun. But they don't move or convince me to the same degree... and I don't call them "the best" with the same conviction I bring to 'people' movies.

Pope Francis with cross

In St. Peter's Square, after my son and I returned from "Argo," another sort of throng was shown on TV. At the Vatican, the cardinals had chosen a new pope in lickety-split time. Dressed in papal white, seventy-six-year-old Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio of Argentina appeared on the balcony over the square, having donned the name, "Pope Francis." He blessed the throng below -- a throng that appeared jubilant, sometimes to the point of tears. Those faces -- the faces of the people -- were filled with a wonder and delight that might be compared to the faces of family members after the safe and successful birth of a baby. A baby could hardly be construed as unusual, and yet the birth is marvelous ... who could or would want to deny that sort of jubilation and joy? I love to be happy and I love to see it when others are happy. It would be churlish and mean-spirited and untrue, somehow, to do otherwise. It's so flat-out human ... joy! This is The Story ... people.

People with a new baby ... joy.
People with a new pope ... joy.
People with a compelling political agenda ... joy.

And then, and then ....

In spiritual realms -- let's call it, roughly, religion -- there is a truism that strikes me as unavoidable: Religion posits a revolutionary agenda that relies, organizationally, on a sometimes viciously conservative agenda. For religion to flourish, there needs to be a certain stability, a certain peace in the lands where it is to flourish. This isn't a criticism ... it's just an observation.

Whether the land in which it flourishes is called a dictatorship or a democracy does not matter. Religion as an institution needs to do what it can to secure and nourish a stable environment. It has to, in short, become cozy with the powers that be. The revolutionary message of religion depends, organizationally, on the static certainty of ... the static certainty of whoever rules the roost. No amount of revolutionary caterwauling can change this fact as far as I can see. No amount of crying out on behalf of the poor and marginalized people who may flock to religion's organized ranks can sidestep or change the anti-revolutionary stasis required for religion's flourishing.

So, for example, the joy-unto-tears in St. Peter's Square may find a home in the revolutionary wonders of a new baby or a new pope -- hope springs eternal -- but then there are the rock-solid assertions of a religion that requires stasis. Gay marriage, women in the priesthood, financial machinations in the Vatican, and the cesspool of priest sexual abuse ... all of them rising up like piranha around some hapless calf fording a river. "Hush, hush," the stasis commands. "These are small matters when compared with the good (revolutionary) news we bring." But there is blood in the water ... people's blood.

Pope Francis' collusion with the dictatorial Argentinian regimes of the past, like the collusions of any stasis-prone organization, are likely to be overlooked as the Catholic Church moves forward. Everyone's got blood on their hands one way or another, so ... let's forgetaboutit. But the yin-yang of revolution and stasis cannot be eradicated, whether in politics or in the human heart.

Where walls protect, walls likewise entrap. In Buddhism, Gautama came out from behind the protective palatial walls his father had constructed for him. It was not so much an act of rebellion or revolution as it was an act of necessity. He had to leave because ....

Because he was human and the human heart cannot be constrained ... even in the name of safety or agreement or joy. People -- the good stuff that makes good stories -- are alive and life simply cannot be gift-wrapped, however enticing the gift.

It is as if, without anyone's bidding, the human heart will always proclaim, "Argo pope yourself!"

'study' among women

Received in email and, whether it displays my capacity for insensitivity or not, still, it made me laugh:

extraordinary stuff

Is there any ordinary thing -- literally anything at all -- that was not at one time or another extraordinary?

And if this is so, doesn't it suggest that what is considered extraordinary deserves some reconsideration?

amazing grace ... really?

Amazing grace finds no foundation without first making a friend of astounding sorrow. The news agency Reuters offers a slideshow of Arlington Memorial Cemetery photos that barely scratches the surface of that observation.

Lesleigh Coyer, 25, of Saginaw, Michigan, lies down in front of the grave of her brother, Ryan Coyer, who served with the U.S. Army in both Iraq and Afghanistan, at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia March 11, 2013. Coyer died of complications from an injury sustained in Afghanistan.
REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

 

 

 

Kristin Kenny of Edison New Jersey clutches the grave stone of her boyfriend Dennis Flanagan at Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia May 25, 2006. Flanagan was killed in Iraq on January 21, 2006 by an improvised explosive device.
REUTERS/Joshua Roberts

Paula Davis, mother of fallen U.S. Army Private Justin Ray Davis, sits alone at his grave in Arlington National Cemetery June 25, 2011, as she marks the fifth anniversary of the 19-year-old's death in Afghanistan. He had vowed to his mom he'd never forget his childhood memories of September 11 and enlisted in the U.S. Army one week after graduating from high school.
REUTERS/Jason Reed

In such realms, what fool would blaspheme with words like "hero?"

black smoke at the Vatican

There was black smoke over the Vatican again today -- smoke signaling that the voting cardinals within had reached no agreement on who the next pope might be.

Like corporations everywhere these days, the Vatican is sitting on untold wealth. But also like any corporation these days, there is some question whether the stockholders will put up with the endless hemorrhaging of financial assets -- a hemorrhaging that betokens not just a loss of wealth, but a loss of credibility as well.

In Los Angeles, the archdiocese is set to pay out a further $10 million as a means of concluding four cases related to priest sexual abuse. $10 million may be chump change on Vatican ledgers, but, as U.S. Senator Everett Dirksen was once incorrectly alleged to have said about the American economy, "A billion here and a billion there and pretty soon you're talking about real money."

How many "aberrations" and "anomalies" of failure will stockholders put up with before they decide their faith might better be placed elsewhere? Will Africa and Central America shore up the Vatican bastions in times to come? That seems to be the hope these days, but stockholders are stockholders and would like to see some positive payback for their faith and fortune.

Is black smoke such a bad thing?

to the ends of the earth

Sometimes it feels like that -- alone in the great no-where. No more compass points. No more handholds. No more kinship or loneliness. And after a while, even the alone-ness loses its meaning.

Sometimes going to the ends of the earth is the only way to become friends with the earth beneath your feet.

In Alaska, Mitch Seavey described his 1,000-mile victory as being "for all the gentlemen of a certain age" when he became, at 53, the oldest man ever to win the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race. One thousand miles with ten dogs ... finishing in nine days, seven hours and 39 minutes.

I too applaud the very-visible accomplishment and yet how could I know what Seavey actually accomplished? The dark nights, the hallucinations, the uncertainty, the yearning, the endlessness that seemed never to end ... how could I possibly know? I applaud as if I knew, but the fact is that I don't know.

And yet too, although it may not be the Iditarod, I think there are those who, in their own lives and without press coverage, take up some similar challenge, a challenge that might well kill them, and yet a challenge that must be met. There is nothing to do but set out and so ... they set out. There is no knowing if the adventure will last nine days or nine years or nine centuries or just fifteen minutes. There is no knowing: To set out is just -- of necessity -- to set out.

The dogs of determination rise up and run and never look back.

They already know the earth beneath their feet.

And they wag their tails.

Pfc. Bradley Manning's court speech

As reported on "Frontline," here is a leaked tape of Pfc. Bradley Manning's statement in a pre-court-martial hearing before a court assessing his culpability in the leaking of classified U.S.documents. It is the first time since his incarceration in May, 2012, that the public has heard his 25-year-old voice.

Although the court hearing Monday was "open," the recording violates the court rules.

There is a short introductory commentary followed by a full, if sometimes- hard-to-understand Manning.

I don't know if Manning is innocent or guilty. But the rule of law in the United States as I understand it is "innocent until proven guilty." It is, to my mind, one of the great principles of any credible judicial system. It is, in short, a part of anything that might be construed as making the United States "great." Is the rule perfectly observed? No. But should the attempt be made? I think the answer is yes.

But this principle is being challenged in the Manning case. Those bringing the charges have yet to demonstrate publicly that Manning broke the law. Worse, however, they are unlikely to do so, choosing rather to cite "national security" concerns. Manning is likely to be judged in the ersatz-judicial shadows, the places where the full facts will not be aired.

Who creates "national security?" Is a democracy entitled to input on the topic? Is a democracy to believe every well-dressed bureaucrat who, as in the case of the lackadaisical use of the word "terror" or "terrorism," simply decides, whether for political or other motives, that one thing or another should not be made public? I have yet to hear a point by point depiction of the harm done by Manning's or anyone else's leaks.

Is it wise to jettison the rule of law -- innocent until proven guilty -- where the case for that jettisoning is not made openly?

I would prefer to trust my government. But in the matter of trust, there is generally some courtesy paid ... an argument or set of actions that addresses my question, "Why should I?"

"enlightenment" questions

I put this on a Buddhist bulletin board and thought I would put it here too:

If it's not too far off topic, I have several questions. I do not mean these questions as a way of elevating myself or putting anyone else down. They are, as I say, questions.
How could anyone know what "enlightenment" was without being enlightened?
How could anyone know what "enlightenment" wasn't without being enlightened?
I mean "know" in the same sense anyone might say they "know" what tea tastes like after having tasted it.
I use the word "know" as distinct from simply believing. If Buddhism relied solely on belief, then what value would it have, considering the fact that belief relies on doubt and Buddhism is said to eradicate doubt. If Buddhism relied on belief, how could it differ from the popular appreciations of Christianity, Judaism, Islam, etc?
If it's not too far off topic, I would be interested in others' views.

mom and the Mother Church

There's mom and then there's the Mother Church.

Austrian Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn is said to be one of the favorites as Cardinals at the Vatican debate who will become the next pope.

But his 92-year-old mother says he is much too good-natured to deal with "the nastiness at the Vatican. He has enough to do dealing with the intrigues in Vienna."

Not unexpectedly, the cardinal told family members, "I'll surely never become pope."

But if the Mother Church calls? Could his mom ever forgive him?

hard and easy

There is a certain relieved satisfaction that can spring up with the line, "Your life is so difficult that it has never been tried before."

Is there a similar satisfaction in the line, "Your life is so easy that it has never been tried before?"

I guess easy and hard are not so easy ... maybe.

revisiting Buddhist dreams

In my early to mid-thirties, I was in the midst of a pedal-to-the-metal interest in Zen Buddhist practice ... 20 to 40 hours a week of seated meditation while I painted apartments in New York for a living. No one ever took up a spiritual practice because they were so damned happy and I guess I wasn't much different. "Enlightenment" sounded pretty good, even if, like others who use the word, I really didn't know what it was. Still, even without knowing, "enlightenment" was somehow better, and better was better than whatever I had, so ... go for it!

This go-for-the-gold frame of mind included a very intense sense that if I wanted gold, I was going to have to dig ... sacrifice anything and everything. And somehow this brought me to the notion that I should go to a shrink ... use any tool and any means to straighten out my life, replace uneasiness with relaxation and joy ... and, of course, "enlightenment," whatever the fuck that was.

Jack was a big man, an ex-Jesuit who lounged comfortably as we sat facing each other once a week for seven or so years. I picked him (I thought) because his gimlet-Catholic background would allow him to understand my interest in Zen or spiritual matters. That was terribly important in my mind at the time ... even if it was hardly important at all. I had some fear that going to see a shrink might somehow eviscerate or nullify my interest in Buddhism, but would calm my fears with "Even if it means giving up Buddhism, still, I want to get things straightened out." Which, of course, is what Buddhism is all about in the first place.

Naturally, I wasn't about the let psychology become a shifty fill-in for Buddhism ... the kind of stuff you see on the open Buddhist market these days. But simultaneously, since I was going to a shrink, I was not about to dismiss or shirk the disciplines of that realm.

Jack only offered me one suggestion as our relationship shaped itself: "Remember your dreams. Write them down when you wake up." It was hard homework for me: I rarely if ever remembered my dreams, though it became easier with practice. But also, I marvel at the craftiness of the suggestion: Jack knew that I (like him before me) was a smart person ... one of those people who work tooth and nail to explain and control and paper over the discomforts that bring them to Zen or shrinkery in the first place: If you can explain and analyze it, then things feel better ... NOT.

Dreams don't bend a knee to explanations and analyses. Dreams frolic and skip and are full of humor and horror ... dreams are whatever takes their fancy. They are loose as a goose ... the antithesis of the explaining, analyzing, understanding mind that can't figure out why explaining, analyzing and understanding doesn't nail things down. Dreams are like some colt in an open field, running and leaping and stopping short and running some more because ... because ... because being alive is so damned much fun. Tight-assed explanations can go suck a pipe ... this is life, for Christ's sake! Jack, you were a wily bastard!

Sometimes the dreams we discussed would be light and feathery. Sometimes their revelations would leave me lying on my living room couch for the rest of the day ... exhausted, depleted, wrung out, horrified. Sometimes there were no dreams to discuss so we would just talk.

And through it all, I kept going to the Zen center, going to retreats, sitting in front of the wall and focusing the mind to the best of my ability. No-fuckin'-around Zen practice. No-fuckin'-around shrink practice. Go for the gold.

And all of this came back softly this morning when I awoke remembering a dream. I hesitate to mention it because people can get pretty squirrely about dreams, their deeeep import, their mystical implications... especially if the subject matter is 'spiritual.' But I liked the dream in retrospect so....

I was sitting at a table I had built back in the 1970's -- a rip-off Shaker design in which the top flips up when the table is not in use and becomes a chair to sit on. With me at the table were Soen Nakagawa Roshi and his student Eido Shimano (sort-of roshi). It was Shimano who ran the Zen center at which I had once spent so much pedal-to-the-metal time. Soen sat to my left, sort of at the head of the table, and Shimano sat to Soen's left. It was as if Soen were instructing the two of us, though he was mostly addressing Shimano.

Woven into this scene, somehow, was a white rabbit's foot -- an item with magical or quasi-magical attributes that had gotten lost or misplaced. Shimano and I were both concerned about it. Soen was talking to Shimano, going over how things should be in the Zen center, how visitors should be treated. It wasn't a heavy lecture, just a bit of pointing-out. Shimano was listening with that sort of disciplined irritation a child might exhibit when receiving parental instruction ... I know that, but there's no escaping parental instruction, so just keep your mouth shut.

Since Soen didn't seem to be paying attention to me, I fished around under the table and found the white rabbit's foot resting on the shelf that acted as the chair seat. I brought it out and displayed it with some satisfaction: I had found the talisman ... pretty kool, hunh?

Soen stopped talking to Shimano, looked at me and either said or transmitted with his look a kind of avuncular reproof ... "Stop fooling around!" And then he went back to talking about how visitors to the Zen center needed to be treated. I didn't feel as if I had been slapped down. Rather, Soen's transmission just felt like a piece of information that brought magical stuff into perspective. Magical stuff wasn't bad ... it just wasn't very relevant: Knock off the grab-ass!

I awoke from this dream feeling a certain pleasantness.

It was a pleasantness that observed, "Whose table were you sitting at, anyway?"

My table, my life, my rabbit's foot, my instruction, my company.

Poof!

No big deal ... but pleasant enough.

bits of news

In the news ...

-- Any collusive role Standard & Poors may have played in the economic implosion of 2008 is likely to sink beneath the waves of collective forgetfulness. The government's legal attempt to hold S&P's feet to the fire of responsibility is rated as weak at best.

"It is a crappy case. It's a hammer to get a settlement and all of the settlements we have seen so far have been a mere slap on the wrist," said Janet Tavakoli, a derivatives and structured finance consultant....

--  The trial of dead lawyer and whistleblower Sergei Magnitsky has been delayed until March 22.

He was arrested after testifying that interior ministry officials had used the UK-based firm to embezzle $230m by filing false corporate tax returns.
It is said to be the first posthumous prosecution in Russian legal history.

 --  The battle may be far from home, but CIA analysts studying real-time combat tapes are feeling stresses of their own ... helplessness, regret, remorse. A chaplain and a psychologist have been added to the goings-on behind closed doors.

-- At the same time that the U.S. government has honored an increased number of Freedom of Information Act requests ... it has likewise rejected an increased number of those requests. Given the human tendency to try to avoid responsibility and to cloak that evasion with something as grand as "national security," I for one am glad if men like Julian Assange (Wikileaks) and Bradley Manning are still in the mix. I have yet to read any demonstrable evidence showing that what Assange or Manning did caused significant harm... whereas secrecy (think "Weapons of Mass Destruction," for example) seems to depict an often-dismal track record.

my "Buddhism" schtick

The other day, I received notification that someone had bought a copy of my book. As always, there was a slight jolt of surprise A. that there was a book and B. that anyone would be interested enough to lay out good money for something so far in my mental past: 2007 ... who reads that stuff any more?

But the notification made me aware of a slight sense of guilt. Once upon a time, I could take any topic under the sun and relate it back to something called "Buddhism." I was perfectly at ease in 2007 dispensing what I saw as the broad highways and byways that encompassed ... well, everything. Hot damn! Everything fit, one way or another, into this well-tailored and wise satchel I might readily have called "Buddhism."

The guilt comes from not seeing things that way so much any more. On occasion I can feel guilty for letting my Buddhist chums down. I feel as if I ought to make up for this by saying something like ....

Buddhism
Buddhism
Buddhism
Buddhism
Buddhism...

Way kool! Buddhism!

And don't get me wrong -- I do think the practice of Buddhism is a pretty good thing.

But these days "Buddhism" reminds me of the old expression, "trying to fit ten pounds of shit in a five-pound bag."

I don't mean that as some sort of insult: It's the practical application that interests me. Trying to stuff everything into Buddhism is possible and I have done it. But since it simply doesn't work very well, why bother? Do it when it seems appropriate, but otherwise ... bagging and tagging doesn't pan out very well.

And I don't mean to convince anyone else. It's just how I felt after receiving notification that someone had bought my book.

"I don't care"

Is there anything more tedious than listening to someone chatter on and on about something to which your general reaction is, "I don't care?"

The door-knocking Christian appears on your stoop. The scientist rattles on an on about the mysteries of some ciliated protozoan. The baseball aficionado remembers statistics from 1931. The patriot or activist weaves intricate and endless tapestries of how things have fallen short.

And yet I suspect the tediousness does not arise from the topic itself. For all I know, ciliated protozoa are indeed worthy of fascination. There's weird and wonderful stuff out there and I like the weird and wonderful.

What is tedious is the request or demand that I somehow agree with the point of view of the dispenser of information. In this tedium, there seems to be an unstated social contract: If I agree with you, then you are better off, more assured, less uncertain. You are improved. If I pat you on the back, then you deserve a pat on the back and what looks back at you in the bathroom mirror can be well-pleased. The contract states that if I do this for you and you do this for me ... well, everyone goes home happy.

Or do they?

The Bible is interesting enough. Ciliated protozoans are interesting enough. Baseball is interesting enough. And the topic of politics is a plate filled high. Does either of us require the other to somehow sell the product or give it additional meaning?

Sure, it's human and social and all the rest.

But seriously?

"familiarity breeds contempt"

At first, they were delivered from authoritative heights to those less experienced. They summed up and explained and provided a 3x5 index card for a mind that had been shaken in some way. They offered control in a situation that had stepped beyond the boundaries of control....

The little, off-the-cuff sayings handed down from grandmothers and grandfathers and mothers and fathers and wise men and wise women ....

"A stitch in time saves nine."

"There's a top for every pot."

"Measure twice, cut once."

"Don't cry over spilt milk."

"God is great."

And a hundred others in a hundred other languages. Children heard them from adults who had likewise heard them as children ... sayings from on high ... not yet tested, but soothing in their brief summations. Authoritative because ... well, because they came from credited authorities. Their appropriate accuracies were there for all to see and made sense and were worth handing down to another generation -- small bits of certainty in a sometimes uncertain life.

The one that crossed my bow this morning was, "Familiarity breeds contempt." It may be a bit more intricate than spilled milk, but then, perhaps not: Having an imagined handle on life comes in all sorts of packaging. Pick your poison.

On the face of it, from a child's-eye point of view, "familiarity breeds contempt" suggests casting a wary eye on pedal-to-the-metal enthusiasms. Every up has a down. Employment, marriage, outdoor sports, love of God, stamp-collecting ... pick an enthusiasm, pick a subject that purely begs for intimacy or closeness or deeper understanding or a longing to embrace. Become deeply familiar, not as a matter of authority, but rather as a matter of experience ... deeper and deeper and deeper into familiarity ... until, ipso facto, the praise that once cloaked the scene turns some strange corner and suddenly what was ahhhhh becomes eeeeuuuuuw!

From delight to doldrum to despair: What ever happened to the bright aliveness of affection and attention and applause? Like the low-testosterone ads on television, there can be a desperate desire to recapture and reclaim a bright (and less familiar) past. But there is no escaping it: Familiarity may not breed contempt, exactly, but it's no where near as lively and fun as the point from which familiarity began its trek. This is the dark side of the moon and -- goddammit! -- it's no longer bright.

It is worth noting that the same progression that attends on the 'good' stuff, the 'yummy' stuff and the 'exciting' stuff likewise attends on the long-admired habits of sorrow and depression ... familiarity breeds contempt and the compelling nature of a blackened world can likewise run out of steam ... it just isn't that compelling any more. Familiarity -- the stuff that requires attention -- lets the air out of gloomy as well as glorious balloons. "I'm ugly" or "I'm dumb" or "I'm poor" or "I have no friends"  ... once it was as well-nourished and lively as a plump Labrador puppy, but now ... well, now what? How long can anyone pick that scab? And the answer is, possibly for a lifetime.

Running away is one possibility. Gimme those testosterone pills! Take me back to the bright lights of some well-remembered midway! The alternative is too grey and numbing and mediocre and unhappy. Take me back to the bright side of the moon!

But I think there is another possibility -- the possibility of becoming familiar with this new-found 'contempt,' this new-found darkness, this new-found inability where ability once held sway. The dark side of the moon is, after all, still the moon and that moon remains unaffected by light and dark.  "Unaffected" is not intellectual and it's not emotional ... it's just unaffected ... and whole and it's pretty kool, this moon that is bright as a penny or dark as a dungeon. Familiarity with the moon breeds ... familiarity with the moon.

The moon doesn't mind.

'Minding' is my business.

And I'm familiar with that.

old dog, new day

Sitting in the zendo this morning, I looked around.

It's a good little space, one that I built 15 years ago at the age of 58.

Fifty-eight -- an age when a lot of professionals have hit their stride, found their place, or surrendered to some professional fate...and I had built "Black Moon Zendo" -- 16x12 feet and a number of scars remaining today from the adventure. At 58 I might have had a terrific stamp collection or been fabulously wealthy or an expert at darts... something more, uhh, tangible or in the swim or something.

This morning it all seemed a bit peculiar. Pleasant, but peculiar.

And now it is time to close up shop... a time when the zendo will no longer be a zendo. The vim and vigor of something called Buddhism -- something I admired and practiced with whatever ability I had -- well, there is plenty of vim and vigor elsewhere... let them run and leap and fetch and sit up and roll over. The past is the past and this morning it asserted itself like an old dog, lovingly putting its head in my lap. I suppose I might have felt sad, but instead, it simply seemed a bit peculiar. What an odd thing to do, sweating my ass off to raise these rafters that wagged their tails out of the past.

Good dog. Still affectionate but slower. The past....

This afternoon, and very much in the present, I got an email from someone who was clearly not happy with something I wrote last year ... just a little reflection on Stephen Batchelor ... written at a time when the vim and vigor of Buddhism and its missteps had my attention. The past came back to visit like another old dog:

You are a misguided person who are not practicing Buddhism and trying to influence other people away from practice the right Dharma. You are a demon dressed in "Buddhist" robes sitting on cushions...

Lord, to be a demon!

Demons have vim and vigor ... they are w-i-c-k-e-d!!!!!!!

Sometimes, they are positively e-v-i-l!!!!!!

Man, what I wouldn't give to be in company like that ... really accomplished ... a really first-class naughty person!

But I never made the grade as a demon any more than I ever made the grade with "trying to influence other people." I sit on a cushion from time to time but lack the energy to put on Buddhist robes. That takes more vim and vigor than I've got. The wishful-thinking demon puts its head in my lap ... I pat him with an honest but idle affection.

And as I thought about all this today in the zendo, it occurred to me that I had never been much good at being good and never had been much good at being bad. Here it was 15 years later in the zendo and 40-some in spiritual adventure and I was pretty mediocre, pretty plain, pretty pedestrian ... and pedestrian was OK with me. Demons and saints seem a little like poor old Tour de France champ Lance Armstrong ... a winner until the steroids are revealed.

Mediocre's more my style.

What a good ol' dog.

drone strikes deleted

(Reuters) - With debate intensifying in the United States over the use of drone aircraft, the U.S. military said on Sunday that it had removed data about air strikes carried out by unmanned planes in Afghanistan from its monthly air power summaries.
U.S. Central Command, which oversees the Afghanistan war, said in a statement the data had been removed because it was "disproportionately focused" on the use of weapons by the remotely piloted aircraft as it was published only when strikes were carried out - which happened during only 3 percent of sorties. Most missions were for reconnaissance, it said.

So much for President Barack Obama's pledge of "transparency" when it comes to using the unmanned planes to prosecute various kinds of war.

It is hard to imagine that the principle asserted by Central Command will not come in handy in future, whether at home or abroad.