fervor

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By MITCH STACY
GAINESVILLE, Fla. (AP) - The leader of a small Florida church that espouses anti-Islam philosophy said he was still praying about whether go through with his plan to burn copies of the Q'ran on Sept. 11, which the White House, religious leaders and others are pressuring him to call off. Complete article

Fervor is such a strange commodity. It lights up the distant horizon like the Blitzkrieg, and yet, come dawn, its wonders are somehow changed ... not necessarily diminished, but less colorful, perhaps, in the dawn's early light.

The fervor of others can be pretty spooky, but my own fervors seldom make a similar spotlight. They are my fervors, of course, and don't carry the same elements of crazy I can invest the fervors of others with. Burn the Q'ran? That's nuts in a hundred ways. It pisses people off without doing much more than pissing them off. It doesn't change any minds. Its self-congratulation would be funny if it weren't so dangerous.

Burn the Q'ran.
Burn the Bible.
Burn the Tripitaka.
Burn the Upanishads.
Burn the Vedas.
Butn the Torah.
Burn Beavis and Butt-Head.

And then ... and then ... don't think of a purple cow.

In the basement here are the complete and molding works of Swami Vivekanada. There are a pair of cufflinks (real gold, not the chintzy latter-day kind) that belonged to my father and might be passed to my son. And there is s first-class sheep-skin coat, three-quarter length that may be heavy but would keep out the most bitter of prairie winds.

The all have meant something to me in the fervent times and yet now ... I'm barely sure of where they are, even if I did want to root out an old fervor. Vivekananda's in a box, I think; the sheepskin is in a trunk, I think; and woven in with Vivekanada is some recognition that religion and spiritual life was a fervent concern that is now spilled carelessly somewhere or other in my life...not at all the neatly-packaged Q'ran burning of the past.

Can fervor stand alone ... without any company to applaud or hiss? I sort of doubt it: Even where there is no one else around, still there are the scenarios of the mind, cheering and chiding. Fervor pushes actions along, but after a while its high octane seems to dissipate: Whatever anyone is fervent about turns into a simple aspect or facet of this life.

You like God? OK, no need to get your tail in a twist. The edges just soften over time like some small wave in the bay ... rolling along and sometimes singing. Sharing it in any real sense never did make much sense.
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spending for ....

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Spending for House and Senate seats has risen to a record $1.2 billion and a report shows that the U.S. expects to spend about $6 billion annually in Afghanistan even after the U.S. troops withdraw.

What a lot of money. I wonder what sort of bang we can expect for the buck ... positive bang. It's hard to see and hard not to think:






A lot of people are unemployed and cannot feed their families.
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the comfort of discomfort

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Somewhere, George Orwell mentioned more or less that there was no such thing as a philosopher without a full stomach. I imagine what he had in mind was to point out the disparity between rich and poor -- the rich have the comfort and luxury where the poor have more mundane matters to attend to: Food, drink, shelter, etc.

Does it take a certain level of comfort to make it possible to consider the discomforts of this life? I think it does and I think that comfort is manifested, for example, in the go-along-to-get-along conformity institutionalized churches/temples exhibit. It takes some peace and quiet -- and a full stomach -- to consider what Buddhists sometimes call unsatisfactoriness or uncertainty. And who better to provide that peace and quiet than a well-armed state? Philosophy and religion may be smooth as dish soap to the touch but there is payment to be made for that dish soap.

As true as any of the above may be sociologically -- and I'm not claiming it's a perfect analysis -- what interests me is how this plays out in individuals who may be seeking some peace of mind: Gotta have some comfort in order to assess discomfort. Or, as my buddy John once put it, "How many people do you know who claim poverty and still drink bottled water?"

I just think it's something to keep an eye on: Who is this one who assesses and wrestles with judgment and bias and attachment and all the other aspects of human existence that convene towards unhappiness? Is that one judgmental, biased and attached?

Have a Big Mac and think about it.
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good and evil

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On television, The History Channel tends to be top-heavy with clips of World War II and thin-tea approaches to Nostradamus/Apocalypse/Revelations/Anti-Christ/Doom-'n'-Gloom.

But yesterday, during a channel-flip, something caught my ear on The History Channel. I probably got it wrong, but how wrong, I'm not sure.

What I heard was that up until the Zoroastrians, Christians and Jews started promulgating their faiths, the notions of good and evil were joined at the hip so to speak -- kin whose separation was impossible. This accords with anyone's common sense and yet the dream/belief/hope that there might be some light without darkness was so compelling that common sense was swept aside in a bolt of pure light ... or pure darkness, I suppose.

Pure goodness surrounded by imaginative tales of how evil entered the picture. No longer kin. No longer brother and sister. No longer fruit of the same loins.

And to the extent that I got this notion right, all I could think was, "No wonder things got so fucked up." Not that it's not human and understandable, but rather what a good pointer to return to a common sense that points more assuredly to understanding a peace.

Anyway, what I found interesting in what I only half-heard and perhaps heard badly was the delicious public relations to be found in good and evil. It's so damned attractive that it takes some real courage to get beyond Disneyland -- courage and patience and doubt.

What would man's good be without man's evil? And what would man's evil be without man's good? It is fertile ground for the weaving of tales (tales I have woven and so perhaps have you), but for the serious student, it is also idiotic and half-baked, a stumbling block made particularly dangerous by the vast social agreement it can invite.

If so-called good and so-called evil are separated, isn't this the same as taking the wetness from water? How good could a man possibly hope to be good without the capacity to purify evil? How good could he be if all he could do was to point out evil as distinct from good? How could God be God if God were not God?

It's not tricky of philosophical or religious. It requires no books and no hierarchy and no convincing. It just requires common sense and a willingness to pay attention.

Still ... what a great p.r. gimmick: Good and evil, separate and distinct. If you have any doubts about great p.r., just check out the size and membership of some of the megachurches in the Midwest.

If only it assured peace.

If only it worked.

PS. As a footnote, someone posted this oldie-but-goodie elsewhere:

A teacher asked the children to draw a picture. Checking on their progress the teacher asked one little girl: "what are you drawing?" the girl answered: "a picture of god". The teacher pointed out that no one knows what god looks like.
"They will in a minute," replied the little girl.

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goodness

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Virtue that is not put to the test can hardly be called virtue at all. Purity of motive and heart cannot be created on the tip of the tongue.

And so we test our spiritual endeavors again and again by putting them on the line -- possibly to be lost forever -- and embracing the fear we may feel at the idea of straying from or losing our virtues.

Courage is tested. Honesty is tested. Responsibility is tested. Attention is tested. And there is no book or institution that can assure the outcome. Only we can to that.

Let's be good.

But not too good.
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distress

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It is traditional to hang out the flag on Labor Day, the first Monday of each September -- a holiday born out of strife between the haves and the have-nots. First celebrated in 1882 in the U.S., the holiday is generally a time that also marks the end of summer vacations and provides an opportunity to fire up the barbecue one last time before cold weather sets in.

To hang a flag upside down is not a mark of disrespect. It is a mark of distress, an SOS for those in difficulty. It has nothing to do with the patriotism of those hanging it. Others whose love of country goes no further than an American-flag lapel pin may see things differently.

Since there is trouble in my country with something like 16-plus million either unemployed or underemployed, dismay seems appropriate. 9.6% unemployment is not much to write about in, say, Zimbabwe (94% in 2009), but many Americans do not imagine themselves as living in Zimbabwe.

Third-world status creeps in slowly. It's a dirty little secret: If we don't mention it, it's not true. "Mildred! Where is my American-flag lapel pin?!" The greatness of American principles is belied by its haves and its have-nots.

I will try to figure out how to hang my flag upside down.
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a confession

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Following what I admit is more or less a nightly ritual, I watched first the BBC news tonight and then changed the TV channel to something called "The Nightly Business Report" on America's National Public Radio.

It's not that I am conversant with economics of any kind, but I feel it's important to know something of the day's financial concerns when so many are feeling the economic pinch. But tonight as I watched the business report, I realized what was missing from the 30 minute program: A laugh track.

Everyone involved on the program was at pains to put a positive spin on stock, bond jobless and other financial movements. There was not one word of negativity ... except, for example, to pooh-pooh such things as a "double-dip recession," i.e., moving from the recession we are currently in to an even deeper recession.

Those producing the show and, I guess, watching the show, wanted to hear that they could still make money and the rest of us should trust that things were, in fact, getting better. The program, like the government in a hundred different ways, has asked that the public trust the very banks and other institutions that put them in the soup in the first place.

I confess I was wrong about laugh tracks. There is a place for them.

When the banks got in trouble and the real estate bubble burst, public money was poured into their coffers to assure that they would not fail. Meanwhile, the public coffers -- the people whose money makes banking and Wall Street operate -- were left to fend pretty much for themselves. Take apart the smooth talk from the president on down and ... well, the only thing missing is a laugh track.

I hate laugh tracks almost as much as I hate malls, but in this case I really think a laugh track is warranted ... contrived laughter to balance out the contrived optimism and applause.

Is it any wonder that under-educated people like Glenn Beck can magnetize the disenfranchised, even with patent idiocies. Washington can't lead, Wall Street can't lead ... so we're stuck with Glenn Beck or Sarah Palin or some other half-baked demagogue. However bitter and saddening it may be for what once was a great country, we deserve a little time to laugh.

However un-funny things may be.

Bleah.

End of rant.
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driver's license

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My younger son got his driver's license yesterday.

The result was that there were a hundred places he needed to go -- shopping at WalMart, blowing up the tires, picking up milk for dinner, putting gas in the tank ... all told, I wouldn't be surprised if he put 75 miles on my car.

And each outing was followed by a blow-by-blow description of the experience. Connecticut drivers were the pits ... and he had an example to prove it. The gas pump didn't seem to work, so he went back into the convenience store to get the clerk to reset the mechanism.

He was a peacock and I was enjoying it.

Who doesn't like to be a peacock from time to time?

If he wants to drive me around, that's more than OK with me as well.

Who doesn't want a chauffeur from time to time?
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compassion

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One of the things I suspect about serious spiritual life is this:

A realized man or woman is by nature compassionate. This compassion is not the stuff that self-help books refer to -- a kind of super-duper altruism that contrasts so nicely with the rough-and-tumble and sometimes horrific ways of the world. It is not something to praise.

Rather, I suspect, a realized man or woman simply has no other choice. Things cannot be correctly understood or enacted without compassion and this has fuck-all to do with virtue. There simply is no other choice.

It can't be helped.

Outsiders may judge those deemed 'realized' by the fact that they simply cannot act out egotistical formats. They can not. If they can, that's not realized...it's just another greedy, sex-crazed, ignorant nitwit like the rest of us. Such nitwits may praise compassion or tie it in self-serving knots or Jesuitical explanations, but compassion is not a choice or a possession in the world of realization.

It can't be helped ... that's all.

Or that's my hunch.
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waking up

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2 a.m. seems to be the time to wake up lately. Not yet near enough to dawn to consider getting out of bed and yet difficult to find that cliff we all drop off when finding actual sleep.

Maybe it's needing to take a piss, though that hasn't really pushed my buttons. Or maybe it's the fact that I am yet another voodoo doll for doctors and pharmacological money-makers to stick their bottled pins into.

Whatever it is, 2 a.m. seems to be about the time to wake up and think thoughts that pass the time without any particular excitement ... the relative merits of baloney and liverwurst; a B movie I enjoyed; and then a night or two ago was a longish segment it's hard to describe:

Whatever thought I thought, in the moment when the thought was through, another thought would come along posing exactly the opposite of what had preceded it. What was ugly became beautiful; what was tall became short; what was simple became complex and vice versa. The opposites came along naturally on the heels of whatever initial proposition there had been. It was all smooth as water connected to wave.

And the interesting part was not so much this rag-tag army of odds-and-ends thoughts, but the fact that any aspect had precisely the same importance as the one preceding it. I seemed incapable of elevating one thing over another. It wasn't frightening or delightful or freighted with "Buddhism" ... it was just what happened, over and over again. No particular emotion, but not lacking emotion either. It's odd to write, but it wasn't odd at the time ... more quasi-boring, as if someone were saying "d'oh!" and you agreed with them.

All things considered, I'd rather sleep from 2 to 4 or 5, but that simply hasn't been in the cards lately.
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shark

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My older son has been in college a little over a week and already he and some buddies are planning to buy a shark which he describes as "a vegetarian, for safety purposes."

I wrote back asking him not to tickle its chin or flush it down the toilet when he gets tired of it.

A shark ... the mind boggles.
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senior moments

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Something for the seniors

PS. Sorry, I don't know how to do the picture thingie.
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driver's license

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Today, my younger son gets his driver's license. There is a small test and then, voila!, he can do his own damned driving here and there.

On the one hand, I am happy for him -- a milestone, a marker.

On another hand, I am happy for me -- no more money paid to a driving school mandated by the state ... when I already know he can drive well because I taught him.

On still another hand, it is a time between yesterday and tomorrow -- a growing-up and grown-up time, when, in my mind, he still fits -- even at 6'2" and 200-plus pounds -- in the crook of my arm.

Who can do better than Dylan Thomas? "Time passes. Listen! Time passes."
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sinners and winners

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My mother once commented that between sins of omission and sins of commission, she would choose sins of commission every time.

The implication was that when you make a mistake by acting, its lessons sink in as surely as barbed wire.

But when you make a mistake by failing to act, the parameters of that failure are blurred and uncertain.

I don't think this is a vastly-important point since exceptions can be found at every turn, but it has a broad-brush fitness in my mind...even in the face of beard-stroking observations that action and no-action amount to action.

With attention, any sort of action comes up a winner, but if you're as dumb as I am, sometimes a sharp kick in the pants helps.
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into the military

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Yesterday, I picked my younger son up from a friend's house. The two of them had been to a meeting of Best Buddies and discussed with others what activities they should all undertake during the upcoming school year with the impaired students each had been paired off with. I asked my son if their decision was pretty much to do the same as previous years -- bowling, movies, skating, etc. -- and he said yes. He'll be a high school junior this year -- getting his driver's license and all.

The conversation meandered around until he came out with, "If I decided to join the military, would you forbid me?" A bunch of acquaintances were doing it, he said, and he had "been thinking about it for a long time."

As questions go, well, talk about where the rubber hits the road!

For a moment, I wished I could be a lock-step pacifist with a hard and fast argument why he shouldn't. Alternatively, I wished I could be a self-satisfied patriot sporting am American-flag lapel pin. But I was neither of these things: I was just a collection of whatever experiences and thoughts I had and many of those thoughts and experiences pointed down conflicting roads.

The thoughts came helter skelter, some popping out of my mouth:

-- This was my son and I will take a back seat to no national or nationalistic policy when it came to trying to sort out what might be best for him.

-- The military is an organization founded on killing others and killing others invariably kills the one doing the killing. This is not some bullshit, religious joke.

-- There is a delicious camaraderie to a group of young people learning and living the same lifestyle. It is regimented and feels safe ... everyone agrees even though they bitch and moan volubly. It's grown-up at a time when a young man or young woman is probably uncertain about what being a "grown-up" means.

-- Military or non-military, every young person finds a way to make mistakes. How can they learn any serious lessons without the mistakes? (When I went into the army, I had to have five letters of recommendation in order to join the group I was to be assigned to. One came from a minister, who sent me a glowing bit of praise but included a separate note with it -- something for my eyes only: Don't do it, Adam! You're too much of an individualist! They'll eat you for breakfast! I joined anyway. It was not a mistake in one sense.)

And then we segued into basic training and leaning how to march and make beds and shoot guns and all the other minutiae. My son had been watching TV shows about Rangers and Recon Units and Special Forces and ... well, he had been thinking about it for a long time. Wondering if he could do it, wondering if he wanted to do it, wishing he could visit some of these people and ask them how it was ... I could feel his mind's curiosity since I had felt it too.

Rising up in the background, of course, were the United States' latest two wars -- one in Iraq and one in Afghanistan. And there was the one yet to come, with Iran. None of them was based on anything imperative other than oil and greed. Any physical threats were not met with negotiation ... these were just old men with old agendas and they were the people who were willing to kill my son. Red, white and blue bullshit ... no one had yet landed a flotilla on our beaches; their acts of violence had been met a hundred times over with the deaths of women and children who were largely brown and poor and in some cases rabid.

No, I did not have the hard-and-fast answers. It was like spiritual life -- you can't tell anyone what they don't know yet, you can only suggest and hope that their mistakes are not too costly. So I will continue to talk to my son ... it is all I can think of. But I sure hate not having The Answer.
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foggy and irked

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Today I think I will listen to a little Mozart and do a little zazen. These seem sensible activities for someone who feels pervasively cranky -- tired of posturing, sick of doctors and their pills, irked by the infirmities of the body, less willing to think and act on the behalf of others.

In the movie "Brazil," a wonderful and depressing view of the future from the Monte Python crowd, there is a scene in which a rebel -- someone who acts outside the lock-step norm -- is being chased through a mall. A wind comes up and with it, hundreds of feet of computer paper. The paper, like a spiderweb, ensnares and enfolds the rebel until there is nothing left to see but a pile of computer paper.

When a friend, with whom the rebel was trying to escape the forces of conformity and mediocrity, turns back to help the rebel, he frantically searches through the paper, ripping it aside in an effort to save this life. Deeper and deeper he digs into the paper until, in the end, he reaches the floor of the mall: The rebel has disappeared altogether, as if the whole world had turned into some South American dictatorship in which people are simply "disappeared," and the vice-like grip of mediocrity has won ... again.

Zen students will have sage advice for this straitjacket world and how to unravel its wiles, but now and then there are peels of self-centered disgust and dismay. Sick of doctors who cannot distinguish between "being alive" and "life;" sick of pills; sick of kindnesses once expected and exercised; sick of spiritual and political efforts swathed in pomp and little substance; let someone else cook and plan and take care and think for a change ....

Someone like Mozart is probably sensible.
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"The 14th Dalai Lama" in comics

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I love surprises -- things that seem to have no particular bearing on what went before or came after -- but I have to say that receiving a pre-publication verson of "The 14th Dalai Lama: A Manga Biography" by Tetsu Saiwai was pretty much off my charts.

The volume is a comic-book version of the Dalai Lama's life. Its unnumbered pages seem to be about 200 and its publisher -- a publisher I used to take seriously -- is Penguin Books. The retail price is set at $15. It's in English.

Its mediocrity of intent and execution leave me asking myself, "What's the matter with me?" "What cultural wave has passed me by while I was busy doing something else?" and "To whom would such a book be useful or informative?" "What would make a publisher gamble the time, energy and money on a 200-page comic?"

No matter how I twist the matter, I just can't figure it out. Would someone interested in the Dalai Lama want a 200-page comic? A kid? An adult? High-falutin' propaganda? Is someone at the publishing house sleeping with someone else?

Very peculiar in my mind and the more I concede the peculiarity, the more I struggle to see what I must have overlooked -- some segment of the human race that sees things in a wholly different light.

Well, it was a surprise all right. The only difference with other surprise moments is that I imagine I have an explanation and meaning that I can ascribe to them and thus put them out of my mind ... "I know that!"

Between knowing and not knowing, my guess is that knowing is more dangerous.
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cave-in

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Towards darkness, a small group of us trudged up a rise near the school and prepared to settle down for the night in the snow tunnels we had dug during the day. There was a snow fence at the crest that raised the drifts to six or eight feet and we had had a good time creating all sorts of byways within ... and finally got school permission to sleep out in them. We were in the sixth or seventh grade and sleeping out on weekend hikes and the like was part of our world.

As night descended, each of us chose a tunnel, laid out our sleeping bags and prepared to sleep as we talked back and forth. "Everyone OK?" came one voice. "OK over hear," came another.

The temperature outside the tunnels was probably 10 or 20 below zero F, but inside the tunnels there was no wind and it was perhaps 30-40. After a while, the chatter died down as first one and then another of us drifted towards sleep.

But not me. In the silence, all I could think was that our body heat was likely to melt the snow around us and we would wake up fatally buried in the tunnels we had constructed. No one else seemed to worry about it, but I did, and finally I got worried enough to move my sleeping bag right up to the lip of the entrance hole in my particular tunnel. I wanted some form of escape route from the protective walls I had chosen. It was colder in the 'doorway,' but it calmed my frazzled nerves.

Funny how we choose some protective garb or situation as a means of warding off the cold dangers that are available ... only to find that our protections themselves shape new and subtler threats. Education, profession, marital status, travel ... each holds out a protective and in some cases delicious talisman, one that will keep other difficulties at bay.

But once having achieved the safety net, the silence sets in and the no-escape potentials begin to hum like bees ... at which point another bit of safer ground is sought out or erected.

Where is the safer ground, the ground on which the feet are firm and the heart is at ease? Hang around long enough and it becomes clear that there is no guaranteed safety hatch. Circumstances arise and there is no place to run, no 'other' way out.

Mostly, I guess, people cope with this recognition by ignoring it or pretending there is no cave-in in the offing. "Never trouble trouble till trouble troubles you" seems to be the common-sensical approach. Where projection doesn't work and reflection doesn't work, what does work if we are to become safe and at ease?

Circumstances arise. Circumstances fall away.

Who says so?
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off to college

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Today, my older son is off to begin his freshman year at college. It will be his first extended time away from home and, although he was dead-anxious to go, still there were uncertainties in his silences.

I was sent away to boarding school in the 4th grade. I cried like a baby then. Nowadays, the confusions and tears are internalized. On the one hand, it's all normal and a progression of life. I do want my son to test his wings. On the other hand there is an utterly irrational whisper insisting that my son belongs at home with me.

Buddhists will note appropriately that there is attachment in all of this -- the very stuff that nourishes the soil of suffering. True. And also true is the fact that I will make no effort to turn away from or dissect or somehow dissolve that soil ... that's how deep the attachment is.

The older I get, the more convinced I become that peace has to do with greeting what comes with open arms ... even if it hurts.
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wonderful-er

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The Guggenheim Museum in New York City is largely round. Round architecture is curiously inviting and wasteful since human beings lead lives surrounded by linear stuff -- tables, chairs, windows, etc. A round building bespeaks an imaginative 'waste' of space.

The inside of the main gallery spirals from top to bottom with art displayed against the walls. Thus, a visitor can take an elevator to the topmost point of the spiral and, in some cases, follow the historical route taken by the artist -- from oldest to youngest. Perhaps s/he began with realistic depictions and colors, then segued into more abstract representations, then went cubist, and then, perhaps dropped off the edge of the earth in some search for the essences of painting and art. In the end, the viewer may be left no longer looking at ladies in hoop skirts and gentlemen with starched shirt-fronts, but simply a few lines ... or just a plop of color.

Were the onlooker to begin at the end of his or her downward spiral, the art might seem to convey nothing at all. A blob of color and ... that's it. But what is it? Only a person who gets paid to sound informed could say for sure and that certainty would not necessarily mean a hell of a lot to someone who was not paid to talk up an artistic storm: It's just a blob, after all, or a couple of lines of color ... and there might be some irritation that the viewer paid good money to come and see this, this, this ... whatever the hell it is.

But starting at the top of the spiral, with all the ladies and gents depicted, you can sort of follow the mind that seeks the essence of things and hopes to portray them. Deeper and deeper the artist descends into simplicity until ... until ... until well, until there's a blank canvas. No one wants to pay 10-15 bucks to see a blank canvas and so, faut de mieux, there is 'art.'

I used to love the machinations of telling tales with a spiritual twist -- ordinary stuff that seemed to hum or pulse with mysteriousness ... with something not seen but sensed; something anyone might see and yet is not readily seen. Stories are neat that way, chugging along from here to there like some trans-continental railroad and yet it's not just the linear trip, the intent, the importance of the travel ... there are also all those magical sights to be seen. Yes, you are getting where you want to go, but on the way, the subtext stories and beauty spring up like dandelions.

Tales and stories are terrific. They are the ladies in hoop skirts and the gents in starched shirt-fronts. There they are along the river's edge, picnicking or lounging in a sun that is kept in check by demure and colorful parasols. There's Jesus as a carpenter and Buddha beneath the bo tree and the Bal Shem Tov waxing wise and the sufis dancing. The train chugs along, taking passengers on their determined routes and the stories oil the wheels, which nonetheless go clickety-clack, clickety-clack.

But little by little the tales run out of steam ... or seem to invite steamlessness. Look! There's a towering hemlock or some mica glistening on a cliff-face rock or a rattlesnake briefly seen whisper-slithering under a protective log. Isn't it all enough all by itself? Tales are wonderful, but the things themselves become somehow wonderful-er. Things don't have stories or meanings. They have 'is' or something quite a lot like it.

Japanese calligraphy elevates this observation to an art form, but as an art form, it is forced, like any artist, to recognize that calling it art or pretending it is actually a story, is too much.

And so we are left with a plop-blob on the canvas ... a not-terribly informative tale offering a smooth spiral into easy silence. Wonderful-er. Stories lose their savor where things are wonderful-er. Of course you can always find some twit who will ignite a story about how wonderful-er is implicitly more wonderful than something else and since there is no something else ... blah, blah, blah.

Tale-telling. I have loved it and still do to some extent. And I find plop-blob paintings as uninteresting as the next fellow. But somehow the stories and their usefulness dwindle and the way things are says it all. If you see it that way, fine. If you don't see it that way, fine. But elevations require more energy than I seem to have lately. Let others tell the stories. I like the breeze.
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the "terror" business

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It seems to me that if I had the energy I could probably document to a fare-thee-well the grand entrance (circa 2001) of the word "terror" on the national and even world stage.

It's such a convenient word for politicians and others hoping to convince a nation or a world of the need for action. That convenience has seeped down to the American public. "Terror" and "terrorism" are now as well-worn as an old pair of sneakers...which is to say they don't mean much more than "the people you don't like."

A history of the Department of Homeland Security says:

Eleven days after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks (on New York's World Trade Center towers among others), President George W. Bush announced that he would create an Office of Homeland Security in the White House and appoint Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge as the director. The office would oversee and coordinate a comprehensive national strategy to safeguard the country against terrorism, and respond to any future attacks.

On Feb. 1, 2010, the Washington Post reported:

The Department of Homeland Security received a nearly 3 percent boost in discretionary funding, to $43.6 billion, in President Obama's 2011 budget request.

The money includes $200 million to pay state and local costs of securing terrorism-related trials; a 10 percent increase, to $950 million, for Federal Air Marshals; and $734 million to deploy up to 1,000 whole-body-imaging scanners at airports that use radio or X-rays to detect objects hidden beneath clothing.

These quotes are high-profile examples of the avalanche of terror-steeped linguistics that have dripped into our times. But the words "terror" and "terrorism" and "terrorist" reach into every barroom and civics class in the country. Few, if any employ the old journalistic saw, who-what-when-where-why-and-how, when it comes to the tendrils of terror.

I hated the words when the politicians began to sell them and I still hate the words today.

One simple word and suddenly someone is asking for $43.6 billion dollars. Wave the "terror" wand and people pony up ... what the hell, they're scared, just as intended. Americans use the word to describe their foes, real and imagined; Israelis use the word against Palestinians; Palestinians use the word to describe Israeli actions ... but with less effect in America: Israel, after all, is our friend so Palestinian terror is more terrifying than Israeli terror. Germans, Brits, French ... everyone wants a slice of the terror pie. And people have heart-felt reasons why the use of the word(s) is acceptable and appropriate.

But what gets lost in the shuffle is the dumbing down of discourse and understanding. Why anyone might feel pushed to the point of becoming a suicide bomber gets lost in the after-shock reports ... the blood, the destruction, the truly scary and inhumane aftermath... the kind of "terror" that news outlets can get their sound-bite, dividend-driven heads around.

An internet dictionary defines a "terrorist" as:

▸ noun: a radical who employs terror as a political weapon; usually organizes with other terrorists in small cells; often uses religion as a cover for terrorist activities
▸ adjective: characteristic of someone who employs terrorism (especially as a political weapon) ("Terrorist activity")

And no one in their right mind would deny that terrorism is real and horrific. But the notion that anyone could fend off the mind of a person bent on terrifying actions is thoughtless and facile and carries with it its own sort of ignoramus terrorism.

$43.6 billion to stop terrorism?

Stop terrorism?

Can anyone really halt minds that -- legitimately or connivingly -- envision such bloody tactics to achieve their ends? $43.6 billion ... and wait till next year: The terrorism wand is a conjurer of money.

But is anyone wondering what impetus lies behind such acts of terror? Sure, there are power hungry people with personal agendas everywhere in the world. And yes, some people don't understand your peaceful point of view unless you kill them.

But what about the people who are simply hungry or watch their family members die on account of someone's definition of "terrorism?" Facile definitions are obscene where people go hungry or unattended or must act as servants in a household not of their making.

2001 marked the launch of a great new world, a world in which terrorism was the excuse and the explanation and the expense account and finally, the old pair of sneakers -- not even worth investigating because (right?) it's just so damned obvious.

End of poorly-constructed rant.
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noodling

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The newspaper was delivered at 4:45 a.m. Sitting on the porch, I can see the lady's lights when she swings onto the block each morning, makes a couple of stops and finally slips the paper under my door. No one else is around. She does her job. Somehow, I am impressed: No one else is looking; do it anyway.

.....

I wonder if it's true ... maybe sometimes, but not always: People who have suffered more are more honestly kind to those around them. I was remembering the kindness of Dokai Fukui, a man who, before he became a monk, had been captured by the Chinese during World War II and spent some time as a badly-treated slave building a railway. He returned to Japan with a number of physical ailments, became a monk, and yet, when he encouraged me to practice zazen or to see things in another light, he was the soul of kindness ... firm but ever willing to lend a hand.

Yesterday, I read an interview with a woman who had considerable contact with the world of Buddhism. She had tried Zen but switched to Tibetan "because they are happier." I too love the Tibetan smiles, but it is too late for me: Smiles and frowns each carry their wisdoms and their idiocies and my job, like anyone else's, is to winkle out which is which.

Yesterday as well, I reminded the woman who came to sit with me that there was a mythological swan in Hinduism -- a swan which, while floating on a vast body of water, is capable of sipping the one drop of milk hiding in its vastness. Even those who have precisely zero interest in spiritual endeavor do the same, I imagine: Sip the pure milk from the murky water; find the truth among the fabrications. It's a hell of an effort and some get no further than text and ritual ... the ability to parrot the wisdom and kindness of others; the ability to read and regurgitate instructions; the ability to gather up and husband the cozy, if uncertain, contentments of belief.

What does it take to be a swan? Sometimes I think it just takes a courageous curiosity ... but maybe that's wrong. A swan is a just a swan -- what need for curiosity? Drink your milk.

Just noodling.
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barking dogs

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Did you ever see a dog standing at the edge of the bay, barking seriously at each wavelet the broke and slurped up the sand? Not all dogs do this, but some do and it's a bit peculiar.

How easily we slip through our own fingers in this life. Over and over and over again we bark -- come up with new and improved explanations and meanings and understandings -- "I know that!" -- that might still the waves and provide a smooth peace in a life edged with uncertainty and choppy hope.

Intellectually, we "understand" and we "know" that barking at the waves -- that continuing with the same old habits -- just doesn't work very well and yet, in the last instant before we surrender to what we "know" so well, we try just one last bark, one last understanding, one last wish that we could control and be the master of the seas that surround us.

None of the other barks has worked, but, who knows ... maybe this one last bark, the one last explanation, this one last understanding will bring life to heel and I won't have to surrender anything. Maybe this time I can come up a winner... cool as a cucumber and exciting the applause of others.

And one last bark turns into another last bark, and then of course there's just one more, just one more, just one more ... and our lives slip through our fingers as we try to keep life from slipping through our fingers.

Such a habit: "I know" and "I understand." "The meaning is...." Woof! Woof! Woof! Sometimes it is quite desperate and touching -- where IS peace and ease that whispers and insists? I've worked so hard! Don't I get some reward, some understanding, some relief?

Sometimes life just slips through our fingers while we were busy woof-ing.
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on a positive note

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After getting my tail in gear for a short walk this morning, I stopped to talk with my neighbor Joe about his recent two-week trip to Kenya. He had gone as part of a church effort to lend a hand to people who had less.

It blew him away. Before he returned home, he gave all the clothes in his suitcase away. He helped build mud huts. He helped set up a water tank that had piping to the nearest source, some half-mile away. He received what food these poor people offered. He told stories to children.

Joe is nearing retirement and had spoken before about wanting to help others in some way. The trip to Kenya put his wishes squarely in his face. Standing outside his middle-class home across the street from mine, he seemed newly-embarrassed by all the stuff he had ... all the stuff that was nice enough but not really necessary. He wasn't about to pull some Walden runaway, but he was clearly moved, clearly touched, and clearly somewhat confused: What was his next move? He tried to define and enclose the topic (God came into it, for example), but it didn't really work. His happiness was ... well, confusing.

How nice to hear someone feeling positive about doing something positive.
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flotsam and jetsam

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Like some successful depth-charging of an enemy submarine during a WWII movie, now and then chunks and hunks of what once was come floating to the surface.

Yesterday, the New York Times ran a longish, even-tempered piece about how Buddhism deals with its sexual upheavals. More specifically, it focused on Eido Tai Shimano, my former teacher and a man given to using and discarding American paramours. This has been going on for some 40-plus years without ever floating to the kind of surface the New York Times might provide.

For anyone who was and remains concerned not only by the wounds inflicted and the dubious financial activities of Mr. Shimano, the article (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/21/us/21beliefs.html?_r=3) great hunks of information out and perhaps the pivotal line of the article was, "Mr. Shimano did not return several phone calls." The refusal to take responsibility for his actions or respond to the long list of women who felt wounded by their liaisons has been a 40-plus-year constant.

So in one sense, nothing has changed. But in another sense, those of us who remember a time before the internet, when circulating information and bringing its force to bear were all but impossible, the New York Times piece at least opened a small door. A chunk of the submarine floated on the swells. Will it correct what has for so long gone uncorrected? Probably not. Mr. Shimano's twisted sense of "noble silence" is as effective as it is corrupt.

So many years have passed. Maybe it should all just be forgotten: After all, there are crooks in every walk of life. But there is a small voice that whispers in my ear -- rightly or wrongly: Zen Buddhism deserves better than lip-service.

But that's just my bias.
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take care of it

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About two blocks from the apartment I once lived in in New York, there was a second-hand store. This was at a time before anyone used the term "pre-owned." It was just used stuff and I loved nosing around in its dusty nooks and crannies.

Like some guy in a hardware store ("I never met a tool I didn't need"), I usually found myself hooked on one thing or another -- a lamp, a small statue, a plate ... it was as if I hated the idea of going home empty-handed.

After a while, the guy who ran the place knew my face and we would exchange pleasantries as I poked and prodded. Usually, I would pay the asking price for whatever I found, but on at least two occasions, I found something I really liked and simply could not afford at the asking price. In both instances, the owner told me he would lower the price, but only if I promised to take care of the item.

It was an odd and wonderful request, somehow. It may have been a come-on, but I had a sense that he meant what he said ... if you love it, then honor it and take care of it. Don't treat it as if it were just another thing among all the other things you owned.

One of the things was a small bedside lamp stained in a mahogany color (and perhaps mahogany wood) with a chip out of its dish-like base. Forty years later, it still stands on a small table to the left of the bed, making book pages visible.

The other was the four-inch-high, rusted-iron(?) head of a Buddha or bodhisattva. Like the chip in the lamp, the head had a piece broken out of the back. It was a nice but unremarkable head, but its three-inch wooden stand had clearly been hand made with a great deal of care. Even today, when I see it sitting on top of the refrigerator with its water and incense bowls, I'm not sure if it was the base or the head that got my attention in the first place.

One day, these things will be someone else's bric-a-brac or perhaps just be consigned to a large, black garbage bag, but in the meantime I am somehow pleased with their tales: If you love it, then honor it and take care of it. That way they will always be bright.
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lying in hard times

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In hard times, as usual, there are people who are not suffering hard times. My mother told me once that as a teenager, the only way she knew there was a Great Depression was that her family lost an upstairs maid.

I guess it has always been that way. Some suffer, some don't, and some don't know.

But listening to the radio as I drove back from the dump just now, the news was making noises about "the last American combat brigade" exiting from Iraq "ahead of schedule." Seven-plus years, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis killed and over 4,000 American service men and women lost. It was and remains a divisive war, but whatever side a person takes ....

It seems extra hard to get lied to in hard times. Eg. 50,000 American troops remain in Iraq and one reporter had the decency to say that the public should get ready for more American losses. Eg. 15-30 million people are without work in the U.S. depending on who you listen to and yet both government and stock market speak in optimistic tones ... about stocks, about the economy, about a trust that is growing in the land. It's hard not to wonder what planet these self-serving 'leaders' are living on. It's harder somehow to get lied to in hard times.

General Motors, an American auto maker that was bailed out by the government several years ago, is planning an initial public offering of stock a couple of months from now. The government will be partially reimbursed for its (meaning yours and my) earlier largess. Because of GM's connections to other industries, some investors will be forced to buy in. But what commodity is General Motors prepared to offer the average investor? Cars that rival Toyota and Honda for reliability? Or will they sell primarily overseas in places that will not benefit the American workers suffering from hard times?

It will be interesting to see, but it does, associatively, remind me of the old saying, "If someone tells you it's free, grab your wallet!"
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finding excuses

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Last night's BBC map showed vast areas of Pakistan affected by an enormous flood. Huge. Debilitating. Outside words even as words like "cholera" or "starving" or "helpless" were voiced over the scene.

In China, clips showed cities and towns inundated, though on a smaller scale ... but still huge to those swept away or simply disappeared like woodsmoke on the evening breeze.

And somewhere in the past -- a month was it? or two? or three? -- was an earthquake that literally decimated Haiti.

Elsewhere in the world, men and women prosecuted one war or another -- shot, hacked, maimed, imprisoned, tortured, bombed, won, lost ....

On a comedy channel, a very funny woman once did a riff on situations that individuals got themselves into and yet clearly deserved the question, "What the fuck is the matter with you!?"

I don't care what flag you're flying ... what the fuck is the matter with you?!

Sure, we can all be dickheads, but do we need to institutionalize/find excellent excuses for the condition?

What the fuck is the matter with you?!
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political realities

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Barney shipped this along today:

You, who worry about democrats versus republicans--relax, here is the real problem:

True Story!!!!!!
In a Purdue University classroom, they were discussing the qualifications to be President of the United States . It was pretty simple the candidate must be a natural born citizen of at least 35 years of age.

However, one girl in the class immediately started in on how unfair was the requirement to be a natural born citizen. In short, her opinion was that this requirement prevented many capable individuals from becoming president.

The class was taking it in and letting her rant, and many jaws hit the floor when she wrapped up her argument by stating:

"What makes a natural born citizen any more qualified to lead this country than one born by C-section?"

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imperial/blue collar Zen

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I sort of know what they mean -- or anyway I imagine I do: "Imperial Zen" and "blue-collar Zen."

Imperial Zen is full of cultured brocade and the next cookie is delicious in the same way the one before it was. Imperial Zen follows a path that is sometimes said to be "2,500 years old." As in a scavenger hunt, it digs up bits of treasure marked upon ancient maps.

Blue collar Zen is as homey as folk art -- lovingly created and chiseled and yet not quite smooth around the edges. Blue collar Zen's simplicity is obvious and its beauty is mysterious. Sometimes blue collar Zen means Zen for Americans, something that reaches beyond "a bunch of smart white guys." It is for everyone.

As I say, I sort of know what these bits of terminology mean, what they're pointing at, what dangers and delights are implied.

But outside a little social conversation, I don't like either one of them. Something inside just cringes -- seriously cringes. It's not as if imperial Zen or blue-collar Zen were wrong.

They're just wrong.

Someone else will probably have a more nuanced and educated point of view.
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