Soto Zen Buddhist Association 2012

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It wasn't so much the picture and comment posted by James Ford on his blog that caught my eye, though it was interesting to see so many gathered at what I took to be a recent meeting of the Soto Zen Buddhist Association 2012.

Rather it was the the sole comment that followed the entry: "Such an inspiring and encouraging image."

The comment swept me back to a mindset of another time -- a mindset that agreed and yearned and was touched and believed and was equally hopeful: "Yes indeed! What an inspiring and encouraging image!" I too have been deliciously in love and even today I would not disdain or pooh-pooh that deliciousness. I'm an old fart, but I'm not that cranky.

"Yes! Yes!" some voice agrees. Fall deeply in love! Be convinced! Be assured and reassured! Feel the warmth and taste the sweetness! Damn! It's better than chocolate, cozier than a down quilt. I'm being serious here. Where the light seems to shine, do not ignore it... Zen practice, mountain climbing, stamp collecting, NASCAR driving, nursing, politics, family, extreme Frisbee, money, travel ... where the light seems to shine, do not ignore it.

But in the quiet times, the times when no one is looking, the times when the applause is still, take time as well to answer the question that whispers ...

The question that only you can answer properly...

"Inspiring and encouraging ..."

For what?
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cover your ass

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How much energy is expended on "covering your ass?"

I don't know, but I imagine that if I took all the time I had spent covering my ass in one way or another and put it to other uses, I might have accomplished quite a lot.

And if you multiply my own experience by all those who have similarly exercised the CYA option ... wowsers. The situations in which to exercise this option are endless ... endless ... endless.

Think about it: All those people running around covering their asses when all the time what they were covering were just asses ...

And everybody's got one.

Is there some need for being one as well?
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Standard & Poor's ruling

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At last!

An Australian court has done what the American justice system seems incapable of doing -- ruled that the credit-ratings agency Standard & Poor's misled investors prior to the 2008 global economic collapse. The court ordered the agency to compensate those investors.

S&P plans to appeal, of course, and investors may never see a nickel, but the ruling comes as close as anything I've read about to holding accountable those who might reasonably be called accountable.
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music break

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For no reason I can find, various bits of music float around in my brain today ... same ol' same ol':








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the danger of friends and enemies

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Sometimes the wit and wisdom obscures what I consider a serious fact.

As in:

 I wouldn't want to belong to any club that would have me as a member (Groucho Marx)

Certainly that qualifies as a witticism anyone might wish s/he had uttered.

But more seriously, I think...

Which is more dangerous -- a life among enemies or a life among friends?

I would say, a life among friends.

Enemies have the good grace to tell me I am full of shit.

Friends have the capacity to tell me I am not.

At which point I may snuggle down and actually start believing them.

At which point, I really am full of shit.
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Election Day

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Like a child sitting in the back seat of the family car as it passes through Nebraska or some other farm state (nothing but alfalfa and corn, corn and alfalfa), I greet this Election Day with a plaintive, "Are we there yet?!"

Is it over?

Is it safe to come out?

The obscene amounts of money have been spent ... not on the nation, but on unimaginative and artful competitors who hope no one will notice that the emperor spent his treasure on clothes no one can see. Obscene! Almost 2 billion dollars between the two presidential candidates, not to speak of hundreds of millions provided without a record. Think schools, think hunger, think hurricane relief, think ... well, think of what good that money might have done.

The voting for president and others is today. Barack Obama and Mitt Romney. With luck, by tomorrow, we will know which man will give us the same ol' same ol' for the next four years.

Are we there yet?!

PS. I went and voted. The day was sunny and crisp. Afterwards, I went outside the Senior Center where the voting was held and sat on a bench in the sunshine. I had parked the car at some distance from the center so as to avoid the traffic jam and, since my hip was raising hell, decided to sit and watch.

It was very nice to see the people come in their one's and two's and three's. There were old people with walkers, there were young people with pierced noses, there were guys in suits and guys in woolen mackinaws, there were ... lots and lots of different people, all of them with a vote to cast. One (wo)man, one vote. Very pleasing somehow. There are people in the world who would kill to do what we were all doing so casually.

I decided to give my hip a rest on the bench until the first black person passed. My hip was grateful for the long sit in the bright sun. Everyone was pink or pretty close to it. Finally, a black guy in a security guard's uniform passed, gave me a fleeting smile and was gone. My hip groaned, but I did not. Even one black face was better than none. I got up and walked back to the car.
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blood and character

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Is blood type an indicator of character?

The Japanese seem to think so.
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passing thoughts on Zen

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Yesterday, when I returned from Walmart, there was a woman parked across the street from my house and as I was about to unload some supplies, she opened her car door and asked me if this was the right place for some sort of "Dharma" gathering she was looking for.

She was a neatly dressed woman driving a Passat that was equally well-kept. Her face was pleasant, if a bit diffident. She seemed to be in her late 40's or early 50's. I asked her what it was specifically that she was looking for and she said there was supposed to be a beginner's class that she wanted to attend. "I want to find out about Zen Buddhism."

Without grinding any serious axes, my mind skimmed over the possibilities of why: Death, disease, drugs, divorce and delight were the alliterative quickies that jumped to mind. Nothing unusual in any of that so I didn't pay much attention to the thought. I was in a good mood and the sun was shining.

We talked a little about the group she was looking for: Could she call them? No, she just got an answering machine. Well, I said, I had done my own zazen for the day, but if she wanted, I could teach her the basics. She looked dubious, as if a guy unloading groceries was hardly the format or setting she had in mind. A guy with groceries -- how serious could that be? And of course anyone wanting to take the leap into Zen practice wants to make sure that they are in some authentic Zen setting, something read about, perhaps, or something in a serene and well-polished place. Something reassuringly institutional ... you know, the serious kind of Zen, not just some pick-up, out-of-the-blue casual invitation. This was a big step, after all and ... well ... it deserved a serious setting.

The woman said thanks, closed her car door and drove off. I unloaded the groceries and only later thought ....

Once upon a time, there was a popular book in Zen called "Three Pillars of Zen" by Philip Kapleau. It was about Zen and practice and enlightenment ... the usual fare and pretty well written. But at the end of the book came the stuff that really impressed me as a relative new-comer: Several adventures written by actual-factual practitioners ... the kind of stuff that I could connect with on a personal and persuadable level. Wow ... there were actually people who did this stuff and I could connect with their views. Nothing fancy ... just people. It really banged my chimes.

And yesterday, one thought that crossed my mind was that I am now looking from the other end of the telescope -- telling my story and perhaps encouraging -- or, equally possible, dissuading -- people who were circling the Zen fire hydrant looking for a place to take a leak. Imagine that ... how weird ... how did that happen? From this end of the telescope, I no longer need the kind of reassurance I once delighted in at the end of Kapleau's book. I've met enough fellow students to be interested and respectful, rueful and delighted or whatever all else. But I no longer look up as once I did. They're fellow students. It's nice. End of topic.

Except it seemed odd, yesterday. What happened to all that whiz and wow? I don't know. I don't begrudge the loss, but I am vaguely curious as to where it all went. I'm sympathetic to it since I've done it too ... but it's not really on my radar screen when the groceries need unloading.

And the other thing I thought about was the willingness to 'teach.' I know any number of anal-retentive Zen Buddhists whose position is to 'uphold the Dharma' with stern or paradoxical words or absolutely gorgeous clothes and accoutrements. They are hip-deep in the profession and persona and woe betide anyone who strays outside the 'authentic' parameters.

It's OK, I suppose, and it certainly impresses the rubes... the kind of rubes who remind me of myself ... uncertain ... looking for serious surroundings that seemed to take my own serious hopes and fears seriously. Teach me a foreign language; give me an impossible chore to perform; hold things at a rarified and purified and paradoxical distance ... tease me with the carrot of real Zen training.

When it's not corrupt, it's all OK. Seriously, it's OK.

Hug the sky. Let it hug you back. Pretty neat, right?

But these days I have a stubborn, stubborn streak. I am miles too strict and yet can see no honest way not to be strict. I am friendly... and therein lies the rub. I will respect you ... and therein lies the rub. I will learn from you ... and therein lies the rub. I will not pretend that there is something wrong with you ... and therein lies the rub. I will not agree that your enlightenment lies beyond some distant hill or over some rainbow of blood-sweat-and-tears practice ... and therein lies the rub. I will not play the aggrandize or debase game ... and therein lies the rub. I will be honest ... and therein lies the rub.

It's all too strict by half -- just doing what's ordinary; just screwing up as usual; just getting together with whoever shows up and practicing zazen. It's too hard, being plain and conversational, but I can't manage much else. Shiiieeet! If I were visiting me, I'd have headed for the hills. Laughter and sorrow are too much like ordinary life and Zen ... well, Zen is not supposed to be ordinary. It's supposed to be wonderfully, deliciously hard while all the time someone whispers how fucking easy it is and tantalizing people still further.

There is a part of me that refuses -- big time! -- to play games I am not equipped to play. False, falser, falsest! Mind you, I could say "compassion" and "enlightenment" and "emptiness," and play ring around the koan Rosie ... and I'm not bad at it ... but it tastes like bullshit in my mouth. So I don't ... and, with the help of some stubborn ox within, I purely won't.

But I recognize it's all too strict. How much easier -- how much more 'compassionate' -- to play the compassionate role. But as the old tuna fish ad used to say, "Sorry, Charlie!" You want transference? See a shrink.

One of my favorite Zen stories concerns a teacher who realized his own strictness and then moved to correct it by offering a koan to replace his own strict and stingy teaching.

A wise and kindly man. A lot wiser and more kindly than I.

My own teacher, when I asked him about the students who came to him for training said simply, "They come and I teach them for zazen." Just zazen ... just their own lives in their own ways. You want to put zazen on your life's menu, that's fine. In fact, I would call it sensible.

But I wouldn't be surprised if you shut the car door and drove off either. As the refrigerator magnet suggests, "Your life is so difficult that it has never been tried before."

How good could Zen Buddhism be if the best it could manage was to run around trying to convince someone who was already convinced?

Just some passing thoughts. I'm too old a dog to learn new (and of course 'improved') tricks.
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Roman Catholic sexual abuses depicted

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Passed along this morning was an outstanding document by an Australian lawyer and addressed to a parliamentary committee investigating the world of Roman Catholic priest sexual abuses.

I don't believe I have read anywhere a document that depicts so directly and clearly the machinations and malfeasances involved.

Also, it's in English ... not so much lawyer-speak.
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good guys

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Jack, a man whose ideologies lie somewhere to the right of a Confederate battle flag, called up unexpectedly yesterday.

It took a couple of minutes for me to know who he was or whether I actually knew him, but eventually the dime dropped: This was the good-natured, neatly-kept, peppery and ill-informed 80-year-old who would stop by the Saturday morning peace picket line I used to stand on. There, he would rag another picket, Bill, and me, with his confused conservative claptrap before moving on to breakfast at  Jake's, a nearby restaurant where it used to be possible to buy a couple of old-time greasy fried eggs for a price that wasn't as undeservedly-precious as those found in the other tourist-beckoning eateries on Main Street.

When I finally realized who Jack was and where I knew him from, the next question was, why had he called me up? I had always liked Jack when I saw him on Saturday mornings, but it was not a friendliness I would have expected to inspire a phone call.

Jack started off by joking that he was calling to urge me to vote for the "right candidate" on Tuesday, which is Election Day here in the United States. I knew he meant Mitt Romney and he knew I would never vote for such a man, so we kidded around a little about how his vote would cancel out mine. But that still didn't explain why Jack had called.

Finally, spliced almost diffidently into the conversation, the reason emerged. Several months ago, Jack had gone into the hospital for an operation on his prostate. Before he went, he and Bill and I had done the old farts' organ recital, swapping tales of one medical bump in the road or another ... trying to buck Jack up. A week or two after the operation, I stopped into Jack's shoe store on Main Street to find out how things had gone. He really did feel much better and we had gabbed for perhaps half an hour.

"How many guys would do that?" he asked rhetorically yesterday. "Not many. You really are a good guy."

So ... it was a thank-you call. And I was touched. I hadn't thought anything of the visit, but Jack obviously felt moved enough to make the effort to get my phone number from other peace pickets and then call.

And somehow Jack's assertion that I was a good guy summed up the small relationship that had been nourished in the little meetings and banterings on Main Street: If Jack and I were locked in a room together, we would probably piss each other off enormously; but the important part between us was a sense of good-guy-dom that went beyond ideology or perhaps came before it. I wouldn't hesitate to call him an asshole and he would no doubt do the same for me ... but assholes are the way of the world -- no biggie -- and good guys are not.

After Jack got out the reason for his call, the two of us segued back to our superficial banter. Obama, he said, was a Muslim and during every visit to the Middle East, Obama had not stood four-square for the United States. Moreover (and this was uttered in conspiratorial tones), if Obama won the election on Tuesday and if he were subsequently assassinated, then Jack was prepared to feel relieved: "The anti-Christ" would have been dispatched. When I told him I planned to vote not just for Obama but also for the "Death With Dignity Act" ballot issue, Jack bridled: "A religious person could not do that," he said flatly. Only God has the right to take a life. "You mean a Catholic could not do that," I corrected. Jack is a Catholic. That caused him to pause before saying with some merit, "Well, a lot of religions feel that way." Jack has an attention span required for fear-centered conservative claptrap ... it's no good trying to engage in longer, more considered conversation. But Jack is also old enough to know ... good guys come first.

And after a while, the banter petered out. We had done on the telephone what we had previously done on Main Street ... a little banter in which there was an understanding that a person's most fervent beliefs, political or religious, were OK as far as they went, but they could not be allowed to touch or override the important stuff ... the good guys of the world.

You help me. I help you. What comes in between is just icing on the cake.

As my then-young son wrote on a hand-made birthday card he once gave me, "We luv etchuther."
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religion and politics

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on not-learning the precepts

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Looking back, I can say that one of the parts of Zen Buddhist training I am most grateful for is this: In all of the years when I was busy being 'determined' about practice, I cannot remember a single time that anyone mentioned the precepts in a formal setting. Not once. And if there was any mention of "enlightenment," I don't remember that either.

The precepts in Zen Buddhism are pretty much what the Ten Commandments are in Christianity: Don't kill, don't steal, don't lie, don't abuse sexual relationships, etc. There are more and fewer precepts for monks and laymen respectively, but basically they boil down to the ethical behavior that might be encouraged outside a spiritual setting.

As I look around me today, I can see/hear people encouraging their children or others to act ethically, perhaps in a Christian mode. Ethics are better than a lack of ethics, so the encouragement is warranted in a social sense.

But no one ever said that to me in Zen Buddhism and I am grateful.

Why? Because with attentive practice, the precepts grow up without any assistance or insistence whatsoever. It turns out that ethical behavior is not encouraged because it is 'good,' but rather because it simply works better and is more conducive to a peaceful life... or anyway, that's my take.

I'm grateful no one ever told me that.
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dad's war, daughter's demons

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A nice article about a little girl who grew up afraid of her father and finally made some peace.
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plucking the Zen Buddhist chicken

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When I was a kid, I went to a boarding school that had its own farm operation. Students from the fourth through the eighth grade would be assigned on a rotating basis to take care of horses or pigs or chickens or cows. The school dining room purely resonated with the smell of horse shit ... a smell I came to love, but parental visitors were sometimes appalled at.

A farm operation meant just that. It did not mean Walt Disney. Farm animals were for work and play and eating. And it was in this last category that periodically there would be a school-wide effort to kill and gut and pluck the chickens that would later appear on the dining room table.

Squeamish students could opt out of chopping off the chicken's head (a teacher would do it in their stead), but no one escaped the gutting and plucking. Inside the chicken were liver and stomach and gizzard and heart and we all learned how to set aside the edible parts when cleaning out the cavity. It was a slippery business.

But by comparison to gutting, it was plucking the chicken that was a real pain in the ass. Each feathered carcass would be dipped in a vat of boiling paraffin and water and then the student would retire to some stool or overturned pail and sit pluck-pluck-plucking the feathers, a slow and meticulous business.  Chickens have a lot of feathers and...Jeee-sus! Would it never end?!

This morning, I had an email from a friend who wrote in part, "I am so sickened by "institutional Zen" here in America... " My friend knows that I and others who received the same email will understand his disgust. There is more than enough evidence to be found ... mountains of wrong-headed and sometimes harmful bullshit.

And not for the first time, I thought how lucky I was to have found the bullshit in the much-beloved... the down-and-dirty pluck-pluck-plucking of what will end up on the supper table and nourish a hungry (wo)man.

How greedily I had once gobbled the honey cakes of Zen Buddhism. How I sweated and laughed and swore and cried in an effort to bring to life the happy and golden outlines of an eased and improved life. Bit by bit I became "a Buddhist," whatever that meant. The format of the institution and its rituals lured and wooed me and was beautiful and inspiring. The honey cakes were so delicious and "right" and pure and, from time to time, fulfilling. I could praise it to any and all who might listen, most especially myself. This practice took courage and patience and doubt and was ... well, it was good.

And then, like an audience at a sing-along concert that applauds wildly when the song is done, I realized that may applause was basically applause for myself ... and the "myself" were the very "self" that Buddhism describes as lacking an abiding nature.

And suddenly I was eating honey cakes that tasted like sawdust in the mouth. The institution that had nurtured my early delights and efforts now hung like an albatross around the neck. Where once there were golden lights around every corner, now the sheer fantasy of it all produced a leaden darkness. I listened with new ears to the instructors and book writers who would sell their wares in a world of "we" and "us" and "one" as if they had some handle on the "compassion" or "emptiness" of the realm. Some of them were old and grey and you might think they would know better ... but the fact was that they knew what they knew and sold what they sold and no doubt they could somehow bend their minds to believe that institutional exercises were "true."

For some time I was dismayed by my own gullibility. How could I have been such an asshole? This was unmitigated bullshit being spread around by unmitigated bullshitters. As I once choked and sputtered on the wonders before me, now I choked and sputtered on the self-same bullshit... people running around in robes and spouting "compassion" and doing little more than leaving belief-strewn wreckage in their wake. Believers can always find believers who will believe them ... what an utter CROCK! I entered the world of bullshit kicking and screaming.

But as time passed, my own particular dime started to drop. A mistake is only as good as the person who is unwilling to commit that mistake. Does a mistake deserve to be called out? Sure. But calling it out and imagining it might be arm-wrestled into correctness are not the same thing. Any institutionalized format contains -- ipso facto -- its own bullshit. It is, in the end, nothing but bullshit. And it is important to enter this world or bullshit, be it spiritual or any other. Failing to do so relegates those who might benefit from spiritual endeavor (or any other) to a world of cozy, warming, bullshit belief. Of course bullshit makes the flowers grow, but is that any excuse for hunkering down in a temple of bullshit?

So .... what's the punch line?

I can't speak for anyone else. I can't say "we are" or "we think" or "we believe" or "we should." That's too full of shit for me... too much the institutionalized Zen about which my friend was sickened and I find sickening too.

The punch line for me seems to be something along the lines of: If you don't want to be smothered in bullshit, stop bullshitting. Or, as Rinzai put it, "grasp and use, but never name."

Pluck that chicken.

Enjoy your dinner.
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time

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Two days ago, my right hip did not ache and the fourth toe on my left foot went unnoticed. Today is a different story, with sharp pain in the hip and a toe that feels broken, though I don't know how.

Here in the U.S., the clocks were set back one hour early this morning and so what was 7:38 a.m. yesterday is 6:38 today. Nothing has changed and yet things have changed: The dawn's light is the same as it might have been yesterday, but the time is different.

Buddhists may prattle about how "we" need to notice that everything changes, but how could anyone notice that when everything really does change?

This morning the Big Dipper was clear and crisp in the blackness of the predawn skies. Now, in the later light, it has disappeared.

Or has it?
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the will of God

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In an effort to express "the will of God," three names were placed in a crystal bowl in Cairo today and a blindfolded altar boy drew out the name of the newest Coptic Christian pope: Bishop Tawadros.

The will of God

The intellectual mind may sniff and snicker and the devout mind may bow its head in reverence, but somehow I doubt that there is a mind anywhere that does not yearn in little and large ways to be at peace with some instrument wider than itself.

If the rituals of the intellect can't reach and the rituals of the church can't reach ... wouldn't it be wonderful to be on the same peaceful page as a past that cannot be grasped, a future whose particulars can never be known to perfection, and a present which, when viewed carefully, slips away like quicksilver?

The intellectual mind reaches out with its rituals of logical and scientific thought. It accedes hopefully but without peaceful success to the gods of right and wrong, true and false... the known world.

The devout mind reaches out with its rituals of crystal bowl and blindfolded altar boy. It accedes hopefully but without peaceful success to the gods of some unnameable-yet-named essence ... the unknown world.

Does it matter much that the world is known or the world is unknown? I don't think so. Each yearning heart stands and equally good chance of asserting a peace that was never missing. And similarly, each yearning heart stands and equally good chance of asserting some awful horrors.

I think it was former Yankees baseball general manager Casey Stengel who once said, "If people won't come out to the ballpark, you can't stop them." If the intellectual mind won't come, you can't stop it. If the devout mind won't come, you can't stop it.

The bat, ball, glove and uniform of peace are not somewhere else.

And the ballpark of an assured peace is not just ballpark peace.
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IRS fails to challenge churches

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The Internal Revenue Service, which has oversight of tax-exempt organizations, has for the last three years pretty much skirted investigation of churches that cross into political territory and endorse one candidate or another.

On the one hand, freedom of expression and religion.
On the other, separation of church and state.

No one could envy the IRS the task of trying to parse what is legitimate and what is not. On the other hand, when the hot potato is in your hands, it's not much good pretending that someone else is holding it.
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ecology

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"Ecology" is defined in part by an Internet dictionary as

the study of the environment and the way that plants, animals, and humans live together and affect each other

Strange how the interconnectedness and dependency of plants, animals and humans can be accepted and understood without a second thought and yet is not equally acceptable when it comes to the walking-around facts in the human mind.

Love, war, money, shoe laces, anxiety, joy, pancakes, hatred, movies, mountains, thirst, sneezing, intellect, drive-by shootings, spiritual wisdom, etc. etc.: Such things are separated and distinguished, 'opposites' are detected, and preferences are imposed as if this made any actual-factual sense.

How does this compute?
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news notes

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News notes ...

Lines at gasoline stations indicate only some of the reasons people are growing cranky in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy that clocked New York and New Jersey early in this week. Syria's bloodbath continues unabated with an attack by rebels on a airbase from which jets fly and bomb their under-armed troops. The U.S. presidential election is winding down towards Election Day on Tuesday ... a vast sigh of relief after hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent to reshape and prop up a governmental system that is hard to praise. And how long has it been -- I really don't know ... six months? a year? -- since the Associated Press started running a daily story headlined "Ten thing to know for today" ... as if acknowledging that reading the news were either beneath the dignity or beyond the capacities of an Internet-overloaded life?

There's more, of course, but my capacity for noting it is all but drained. I guess that, like others, I am grateful when there is chicken for dinner and the armed revolution is not yet a reality.
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forget about it

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Sometimes I wonder if anyone's most fervent wish -- the wish that might lay all confusions and uncertainties and sorrows to rest -- isn't just the capacity to "forget about it!"

This morning, for example, I realized that two small matters had been resolved and I could forget about them. One was a letter to the editor I sent to the local paper and wanted to see published. It was. The other was a rewrite of a bio that had been posted on the Internet site, "Sweeping Zen." Aside from its typos, I wanted to rewrite the sentiments. I did and, with a small nudge, Adam Tebbe, the proprietor of Sweeping Zen, was good enough to replace the earlier version with a later one ... and I could forget about it.

These two small matters hardly matched the worries I could bring to bear when it came to finding the money to pay the mortgage or worrying about my aging mother's circumstances, but they added some small weight to a knapsack that could feel pretty heavy at times.

Who would I be without my worries? Those worries may be hellish at times, but the prospect of being without them -- of being free and clear of all worries -- is pretty frightening on closer inspection.

"Forget about it" may suggest sensibly that worrying about what can't currently be addressed is pretty silly, but not worrying...? Not-worrying would be ... uhhhh ... uhhhh... eek! The Boy Scouts may trumpet the virtues of being "prepared," but being prepared for the future is not perfectly possible. It's almost as idiotic as business drones who believe in "multi-tasking."

Forget about it?

Forget about it!
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it ain't Photoshop

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No, it's not Jesus or Mary in a grilled-cheese sandwich, but it was passed along today and is fun:

Buddha-shaped pears grow on the trees at an orchard in Weixian county, north China's Hebei province. Hao Xianzhang, a local fruit farmer, spent six years to perfect the process by growing the pears inside molds.

(Other weird photos available.)
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the comforts of a flat earth

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Setting aside the comforting smirks of a latter-day intelligence, I wonder today about the mind that once saw the world as flat. All sorts of cultures adopted the credo in a time now dubbed "pre-scientific." A flat earth.

My latter-day mind wonders in astonishment as I try to enter such a world. If you lived in a world where 'everyone' believed the world was flat, wouldn't you want to know? An assumption as far-reaching as that -- wouldn't you, at some point, want to find out if it were true?

At the edge of a flat earth (1888)

And of course people did come along to wonder just that and, eventually, to lay a flat earth to rest. But in the meantime, while living in a flat-earth world ... wouldn't anyone want to check out and affirm his or her own assumptions? My latter-day intelligence is smugly astounded.

And then I start thinking of all the cares people have in their lives -- the need to feed and protect their families, the need to build a passable shelter, the need to sustain and preserve their very existence ... the important stuff that takes so much time and so much energy ... the actual-factual, on-the-ground stuff in front of their noses. From that point of view, believing that the earth was flat would be a luxury item -- something extra. It would be a social convention that assured comfort and warmth within a social setting. If you say the world is flat and I do too, then, perhaps, we can be boon companions, friends and the need for society would be supported and advanced.

The comforts of a flat earth: Who cares if it is true or not as long as we can offer each other some social warmth? So ... let's believe in a flat earth. Let's believe in heaven and hell. Let's believe in enlightenment and compassion. Let's believe there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq that warranted an invasion in 2003. Let's believe that Democrats or Republicans provide a better or worse agenda. Let's believe ... well, let's believe whatever we believe and find others who believe likewise because then we can be boon companions and say, "everyone knows that" ... everyone knows the earth is flat.

Intellectually, all of this makes some rough sense, I imagine. As part of some interior flat earth -- flat earth intellect, flat earth emotion -- there are edges to the universe and assumptions and friends to prove it. And each creates his or her own universe until ... until ... until at last the background whisper will no longer be stilled: Wouldn't you like to know? Wouldn't you like to find out for yourself if something were good or bad or elevated or debased or wide or narrow or true or false? Beyond all the comforts of "everyone knows," wouldn't you like to know?

Challenging the flat earth that anyone else might espouse is a popular intellectual pastime. If I can convince others of their skewed views, then they will agree with me and once more there will be the comfort of "everyone knows." The only trouble with this socially-comforting activity is that it brings no peace: The earth is still flat. What others say simply has no capacity to assure peace ... or, perhaps better, the peace that it assures stands on very wobbly, if socially-comforting feet.

My guess is that each is stuck with his or her flat earth. It may be very genuine and generous, but it is still a personally-constructed flat earth. And it is from within that framework that individuals choose which part of "everyone knows" they are willing to investigate. This is not a group activity. It is simply a journey to the edge of the flat earth at hand and then an effort to stick the head into the firmament pictured above. Which of your very own, very personal axioms and assumptions will you choose to find out about? I have no clue.

There is no moral imperative in any of this ... it's just an attempt to bring peace where there is uncertainty. Telling others not to believe in a flat earth is child's play. But gathering the willingness to examine within ... well, it strikes me as the only sensible option for anyone who discovers that "everyone knows" simply cannot assure what is sought ... a bit of peace.

Is the journey to the edge of the known earth worth it? Is it worth the sense of alone-ness and fear and ... "eek ... what if I fall off?!"

Is it worth it?

I don't know.

You tell me.
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animal speak

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First it was whales and now, according to a research paper, there is an elephant that mimics human speech.

If animals learn to use Facebook and Twitter, just imagine the infusion of population ... if not substance.
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touchstones

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Old farts have memories that hang around like well-broken-in loafers -- slipping onto the feet of the present with a comforting and comfortable warmth. One of mine (again) is this:

Once upon a time in Berlin, I went to a concert given by the flamenco guitarist Carlos Montoya. He would have been in his late 50's at the time. The house was packed. Montoya took his seat on stage with the air of a favorite uncle who had stopped by for a glass of wine and a bit of company -- just an old friend being friendly. Nothing elevated or expert about him. And for a couple of hours, he played.

Carlos Montoya

The music reached out, inviting the heart to savor and chew. It soared or grew soft. It was fiery and refined. It was not "Montoya." It was just music. And when at last he finished, the theater exploded in applause and cheers. He walked off stage and the audience called him back. Again and again and again, they called him back. Again and again and again, he agreed to play just one more melody. Again and again and again until ....

He walked on stage just one last time and said in English because he spoke no German, "I am tired. I will play you some scales." And he did just that -- hammering-on scales using only his left hand along the neck of the guitar. Scales ... the building blocks of all the beauty and fire that had come before or would come later. Just scales. And when he had finished, when the last note drifted away ... if possible, the audience roared even louder. There was delight and there was a kind of desperation in it ... this soaring heart was the way life was supposed to be and everyone knew it and yet without Montoya, without the expert's touch, how could my heart continue to soar?! It was a blessing to have found this wondrous place ... please, please, please don't go!

Just scales. Just the building blocks. Just the touchstones of mighty skyscrapers.

Nothing fancy is both the sine qua non of what is fancy and the place to which fancy returns after an energetic run.

In memory, this old fart's heart is warmed and yet, because it is not yet dead, shifts gears to another somehow-linked metaphor ... the skipping of stones. The flattened stone leaves the thrower's hand and reaches out along the smooth water, skipping one, two, three, four, five ... times.

The stone soars out of the water only to touch down again, lift again, touch down again, lift again ... each time returning to the scales-plain foundation of the water. The soarings are fiery or refined or magnificent or something. So assertive. So important to the adventure of skipping stones. But shorter and shorter the soarings become until at last 'soaring' comes to rest and sinks quietly to the bottom of the pond.

Yet each touchdown and lift-off implies and reflects a body of experience that may have been long and arduous and full of pitfalls or delight.

This morning I am reminded of some touchdowns that are now only expressed in brief bits of witticism or wisdom ... a few reminders of efforts once made or reminders of wrong turnings not to repeat. Each is brief and yet carries with it a host of meaning that there is no longer the energy or willingness to reassert. Skipping along with touchdowns I do not attribute but rather find useful from time to time ...

-- Love and charity towards all beings
Contentment under all circumstances
Control of the senses and passions....

-- Whores do well for money what others do poorly for free.

--  I am not a Buddha. I'm just and ordinary fellow who understands things.

-- Grasp and use, but never name.

-- There are three kinds of men. The one that learns by reading. The few who learn by observation. The rest of them have to pee on the electric fence for themselves.
-- Man without God is like a fish without a bicycle.
-- Just because you are indispensable to the universe does not mean the universe needs your help.
-- It can't be helped.
-- The sole usefulness of any observed mistake lies in my willingness not to indulge in it.
-- Belief and hope live in the past. People live in the present.
-- We luv etchuther.

And that is not the whole of the laundry list, nor would I expect anyone to embrace my skip-skip-skippings as their own. Everyone makes a personal list of small reminders that may be based on powerful and fiery experiences and yet like those long-hand experiences, slowly, slowly, slowly loses its own necessity and oomph.

What need to be reminded?

Isn't this good enough?

Isn't this music?

And of course -- like it or lump it -- it is.
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"Brazil"

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"Brazil," a 1985 black satire of a world laden with bureaucracy, apparently was well received when it came out in Europe but got a less-enthusiastic reception here in the U.S. Not surprising ... there is a baseline of intelligence required.

But also not surprising, I thought as I rewatched it today, because the helplessness-in-the-face-of-mediocrity is pretty damned close to the bone. "Brazil" gores a lot of trendy oxen, whatever its sci-fi/fantasy tintings. I guess there are people who deliberately go to the movies to be deliciously depressed, but I can't imagine that audience constituting a significant revenue stream for director and former Monty Python regular, Terry Gilliam.

"Brazil" is honestly a classic and I don't imagine I will ever watch it again. I prefer the quiet walk of the elephant to the inescapable and utterly warranted sweep of the cheetah's claws.
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keeping the children happy

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The Chinese, whose anal-retentive principle of "harmony" has both created one of the world's great economies and mindlessly crushed the creativity that would advance that economy, are between a rock and a hard place.

Internet cafe in China

Weibo, the Internet version of Twitter that China's leaders had hoped to remain in command of, has ways of outflanking the limited objectives its would-be handlers desired.

"How are they going to deal with a wired, globally connected, urban middle class that is probably less likely over time to be treated like children?"

As far as I can see, the United States has coped with the same problem by creating story lines that will assure income while keeping the peasants content ... largely through the imaginative ministrations of the Republican party.
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walls to breach

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A BBC story notes that drug smugglers tried and failed to scale a California fence in an apparent effort to bring a load of marijuana into the United States from Mexico. Their car got stuck and they retreated.

What impresses me about the picture above is not so much the foiled-caper aspect as it is the size and height of the 14-foot fence.

The United States seems to be devolving into Israel.
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shame

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The stereotyped Jewish mom may wish her son would become a doctor or a lawyer or a well-heeled stock broker, but in Athens, a sign in one hospital reads, "The doctors on duty have been unpaid since May. Please respect their work."

Interesting how what once seemed to assure stature in life -- money -- falls short when things get serious. Doctors and lawyers and stock brokers and bankers may not be trained to understand shame -- they've got theirs, after all, and the stereotyped Jewish moms applauded -- but the economic woes of the world throw their insouciant arrogance into relief.

A Zen Buddhist teacher once told a student, "In order to do this practice, you must feel shame." Shame, of course, can be as self-serving and arrogant as any other capacity, but I am wary of those who lack the capacity and do what I can to stay out of their path.

Something else for me to be ashamed of, perhaps.
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something-or-other

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A shrink friend once remarked to me in that affect-less tone that shrinks adopt, "You have a young mind."

It was an off-hand remark, but at the time, it left me quite pleased. I was happy to think I had a young mind ... something perky and peppy and not wallowing in its collections of experience that drew convenient, La-Z-Boy conclusions.

Young.

Is there anyone who does not recognize within some peppy and unencumbered something-or-other -- a something-or-other that dances irrespective of the daily weights and freights? Age or experience may bear down like a steamroller, but this something-or-other simply cannot be steamrolled. It cannot adequately be named and those who try to name it really are a pain in the ass in the end.

Young ... full of untameable sass and flow.

But young as well in the sense of "callow" ... inexperienced because, somehow, this something-or-other simply will not bend a humble knee to anything as fleeting as experience. Enjoy it? Sure. But hold it close as if holding it close could define and reap applause? "Don't be silly," this something-or-other smiles.

The ponderous pronouncements of wisdom or long experience or apparent personality or time cannot tame or enclose this something-or-other that can leap tall buildings at a single bound ... that can be "here" and "there" in a timeless instant. It is alive and makes no bones about it.

I am just being another pain in the ass marveling that something so clear in anyone's life could be so no-doubt-about-it assured and yet simultaneously impossible to assure.

Duck and cover! Here come the phalanxes of "spiritual life" -- of "soul" and "heaven" and "hell" and "enlightenment" and "compassion" and "emptiness" and ....

The something-or-other doesn't mind a bit. Knock yourself out.

Maybe, rather than expending all that heart-felt energy, it would be better to relax. Just because you don't know what it is doesn't mean you don't know what it is.
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It's too busy dancing.

weeping, then and now

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Along some ancient western wall,
Its lichens smoothing what was strife,
A happy traveler leaves his mark:
"You wept for death,
I weep for life."
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