bless the bozo conspiracy

Whatever the benefits or horrors, I was brought up to think. Not that I was ever a perfected specimen of the realm, but the habit was instilled ... to make some effort to set aside the screaming desire to be "right" and consider the aspects and possibilities, to follow the Yellow Brick Road, even when it turned out to be a dead end, to collect evidence and add things up irrespective of ... well, irrespective of my own leanings or what the applause-o-meter or sages said.

To focus on the faceted topic at hand and turn it this way and that in the light. Why? Not in order to lord the results over others, but rather to make some effort to reduce my capacity to be a bozo.

Did this instilled capacity work? Don't be ridiculous. Bozos R Us. It's not a question of whether, it's just a question of to what degree ... and that's a question that can never be answered ... except of course by unrepentant bozos.

Yes, I'd like to think that I can think, that I can and am willing consider the aspects and plumb the in's and out's ... and then I realize there are some things are too huge or too offensive or too exhausting and I fall back in the La-Z-Boy of conclusion and explanation and agreement and belief ... even when the facts and facets twinkle and shine right in front of my thinking-capacity's nose.

Maybe all this applies to spiritual endeavor as well, but yesterday it was brought to my attention again when, for reasons I don't really know, I re-watched a part of a movie called "9/11 Mysteries." (Apologies, but I can't find a version that does not contain Scandinavian subtitles. The English voiceover is perfectly clear and the subtitles are a small annoyance but all English-only versions seem to be inaccessible).

OK, I hear the groans in the peanut gallery. "Another conspiracy theory," "another conspiracy nut," "another looney-tunes wing-nut." But I was taught to think and the movie is a perfectly good example of thoughtful thinking. It doesn't ask you to agree ... it asks you to consider, or, in other words, just to think.

So much of our latter-day thinking is premised in or founded on the events of September 11, 2001, when, among other things, the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York were struck by two passenger jets and subsequently collapsed. "Terrorism" has become part and parcel of the language of political life, whether in America or elsewhere. Like "love," "terrorism" is never carefully defined because ... well, because "everyone knows what it means." The Department of Homeland Security spends millions in an effort to fend off similar crazy-guy attacks. The facets and aspects of a horrific event that claimed some 3,000 lives twinkle and glimmer to this day. 911 has become an assumption of the mind. In this, it is not much different from other painful and pleasant aspects of history: "The colonists beat the British ... want another beer?" No one is morally obligated to think, but where thinking is a possibility ....

The reason I only watched a part of "9/11 Mysteries" was not that I was offended by "conspiracy-theory-wing-nut" arguments ... which, in general, I find too self-serving. The reason seemed to lie in the recognition that where I was trained to think, the movie provided too much to think about. The movie provided science -- the buildings, according to its architects, were built to withstand an airplane strike; steel cannot be set afire by jet fuel and yet burning steel was found three weeks after the attack; eye witness after eye witness reported hearing or being knocked down by explosions in the basements that were 10's of stories below where the planes hit; an $8 billion insurance payout on buildings with a serious asbestos problem .... All this and more like it was the kind of evidence a thinking person would normally weigh.

And weigh I did, for as long as I could stand it. Every thinking bone in my body was tuned in, weighing the evidence, not with an eye to being right, but with an eye to being something less than my glowing capacity for bozo-dom. What was offered might be considered "best evidence" i.e. evidence from the scene, evidence from mature scientific understanding ... best evidence. Believing it and not believing it were not so much the point. Facts were the point ... the kind of inescapable stuff that thinking gathers and collates and ....

And this was the point I lacked the courage to address. If the horrific tragedy had been so horrific as to allow itself to be easily explained by government or media, if the scientific and other best evidence had been set aside in favor of relief and closure and assumptions yet to be made ... what then?

The thinking mind likes to think it thinks, but this thinking extends to answers -- the means of collecting all the facts and making them coherent when related to a given event. But as the "best evidence" heaped up in my mind, I realized that the alternatives to a La-Z-Boy understanding and explanation were more horrific than the actual tragedy. The implications were beyond heinous. They were grotesque and filthy ... and I really, really didn't want to go there. They would require a kind of determined thinking whose outcome was bound to be profoundly dirty ... the kind of dirty I did not want to get. "Evil" is too kind a word.

I turned the movie off. I did not want to know. I did not want to think. I wanted to think I was thoughtful but please don't ask me to do the thinking.

"9/11 Mysteries" was not a perfectly-rounded, conspiracy nut's wet dream of a movie. Its observations made no La-Z-Boy assertions. It just observed and adduced ... as any thinking mind might. It asked ... as any thinking mind might. It turned the faceted gem of horror this way and that in the light. It was a bit like journalism before journalism was bought off. It did not lay claim to "best evidence," but rather gave what evidence it thought a thinking mind might find relevant ... or at any rate curious.

Well, it's all history now ... morphed into conclusions that find ready agreement in public expenditure and peace of mind.

Maybe, when there is enough leisure time, some thinking mind will examine this bit of history and iron its wrinkles in some more credible fashion. True, it's not easy and it's huge-huge-r-huge-st, but who knows, maybe bushy-tailed thinker will take a shot at it.

Me, I'm too lazy and afraid to get out of my La-Z-Boy.

never lost

However daunting the effort,
Surrendering stuff is
Only half the trip.

Surrender too must slip away
If there is to be any hope
Of walking among friends
Who were never lost.

the music of the breath

Choir singers not only harmonise their voices, they also synchronise their heartbeats, a study suggests....

They found that the more structured the work, the more the singers' heart rates increased or decreased together.

Slow chants, for example, produced the most synchrony.

alligators of the mind

... Another viscous day in the making, the kind of day on which it might be somehow fitting if an alligator waddled up the street outside my house. It's the Louisiana bayou ... again.

... The French writer Albert Camus once observed (approximately and with the tucked-in smugness of someone who knows his observation is apt), "Some people climb onto the cross in order to be seen from a greater distance."

And who in the audience would not murmur a fervent "amen?"

But it's a bit of a quandary: I know that I too have taken spiritual life with the kind of seriousness that flat-out could not understand why others were not equally serious ... or, more accurately, solemn. This ... is ... serious and given even half a chance, I will talk your ear off about it. In some spiritual persuasions this sense of insistent solemnity is even codified: Convert the benighted heathen who, without this wise counsel, are doomed to a technicolor hell that even Dante might have a hard time imagining.

This aspect boils down to "if I take this seriously, you must too. How else can I know that this is serious?" This -- spiritual adventure or whatever -- is important because I am important... even when I assert that there is a greater Something-or-Other that is more important that I am. And if I agree and you agree ... well then ... spiritual life can be seen from a greater distance.

This importance aspect can go on for a whole lifetime.

But then another aspect may raise its head. At some juncture, being seen from a greater distance can lose its savor: Spiritual life is still important, but selling it to either self or others is like drinking just-turned milk: Sure, it tastes like milk, but it is tinged with a sour flavor that is not quite right. And at this point, the serious/solemn person may withdraw into a codified humility, a kind of good-taste correctness. There was a reason your mother told you never to discuss politics or religion at the dinner table: So since talking about it solves nothing, don't talk about it at all. Good taste dictates a sort of lock-down demureness ... the kind which knows with assurance which of three forks to use for the salad. Being seen from a greater distance is not the point, ergo not being seen at all is the point. Spiritual life is private, so I will climb on to the cross of diffidence ... yoo-hoo, you in the back row, can you see me all right?!

I once went to dinner with a woman I had not seen in some years. I was pedal-to-the-metal involved with Zen Buddhism at the time, but I did not mention it at dinner. Instead, we chatted amiably about the years when we had not seen each other. But when I walked her back to her apartment, I somehow mentioned an interest in Buddhism and she picked up on it immediately. And she cussed me out with the seriousness of a non-critical friend: How the fuck could we have sat all the way through a very pleasant dinner without my mentioning something that was important to me?! It was a gentle, if serious, tongue-lashing: What the hell was the matter with me?! My diffidence might be correct, but it was also seriously fucked up. When has correctness ever solved serious matters?

She was right -- whether on the cross of salesmanship or on the cross of restraint ... well, there is a time to serious up in spiritual endeavor. Seeking applause from others or seeking applause from self ... you have to ask yourself, how well does applause or technicolor crucifixions actually work?

It takes time and attention and patience. But ...

This morning I will have oatmeal and raisins and peanuts and brown sugar and a bit of banana for breakfast. It's about what I always eat. Later I will go out into the Louisiana bayou and do some food shopping.

I'll keep my eyes skinned for the alligators.

when is a coup not a coup?

The U.S. scrambled its Jesuitical jets Monday in an effort not to call last week's ouster of of Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi a coup.

The legal review being led by State Department lawyers has not been completed, but under U.S. law, a coup determination would require a suspension of all non-humanitarian aid to Egypt, including $1.3 billion that directly supports the Egyptian military.

The military arms agreement with Egypt requires that around 50% of the money will be used to purchase arms manufactured in the United States, if I am not mistaken. So it's not just a matter of democracy or freedom or high moral purpose ... there's a good deal of what I imagine is Republican income hanging in the balance.

cussing out the congregation

Immanuel Baptist Church in Skiatook, Okla.:

if you could levitate...

A friend sent along this YouTube debunking of the yogic capacity to levitate:



The intellectually well-heeled may snicker at so flimsy a trick and at the credulity it can inspire but the problem the scene posits is hardly a cheap date.

Walking on water, turning water into wine, levitating ...

About levitating, my mother once read over an advertisement for classes in which students, for a fee,  might learn to levitate. Whether it was true or whether it was false didn't interest her much. Her question was, "if you could do it, well, then what?"

How many things are akin to this -- activities or wonders in which believers beg piteously between the lines, "Please, please, please don't pop my bubble!" Disbelievers, of course, can exhibit a smug delight in debunking well-blown bubbles.

Take away the smug insistence of a disbeliever and I think the purpose of spiritual life is to pop bubbles. Religion may blow the bubbles, but practice invariably pops them one by one ... when it's any good.

What a rug-burn of a paradox ... following a persuasion (intellectual, emotional, spiritual) that posits one bubble after another, one belief after another, one meaning after another, one explanation after another, only to find, when some seriousness is brought to bear, that the question remains adamantly unanswered:

"Then what?"

laughter ... not for the first time

I am far from knowing the endless nooks and crannies of spiritual life as portrayed in text and scripture. And it is within that pool of ignorance that I assume what I probably should not ... but do anyway, like a dog gnawing on a bone:

Buddha, Mohammed, Jesus, Zoroaster, Moses or any of the other expositors whose names I have forgotten or do not know...

Each is portrayed by faithful biographers or inventive stenographers or institutionally loyal followers as loving, caring, weeping, righteous, indignant, wise, compassionate, and possessed of healing or magical abilities that left others agog. Their capacities were praise-worthy and huge... and far from the madding, supplicant crowd.

And yet, not for the first time, I wonder that there may be no text or tale that portrays these men as laughing. The dearth of laughter, if dearth it be, strikes me as hugely strange. Perhaps it is merely indicative of those who later told the scriptural tales ... a group for whom, perhaps, there was so much difficulty and sorrow in life that laughter might have appeared insulting or, worse yet, utterly unattainable.

Laughter lets go, but religion and its supplicants hold on. So perhaps laughter would be too much like offering a drowning man a much-need life boat that was riddled with obvious, snickering holes.

How inspiring to match my kindness or clarity or sorrow or abracadabra against a greater yardstick, the yardstick of a wondrous seer or teacher. How short I fall! How far I have to go! This...is...serious.

But what supplicant, when awash in a world of uncertainty or sorrow, might not imagine wistfully a world in which laughter claimed the scene ... an amen world that wasn't quite so goddamned well-pressed and pristine? Sure, serenity and peace and even-tempered appreciations and profound insight might be nice, but where's the laughter?

True, laughter sometimes resides in contrast and cruelty, two characteristics that might be 'beneath' the over-arching serenity of the anointed. But whatever the fuse that lights the firecracker of laughter ... having entered, there is no longer compare or contrast, cruelty or kindness. There is laughter and ... well... hot damn!

I'm not sure that I can put much faith in a (wo)man who does not laugh ... or whose biographers and re-inventors neglect the capacity and wonder of laughter. Something's missing in my book. But then my book is laughably short on understanding.

"Laughably short" and it's OK with me. "Laughably short" is still laughable and there is something trustworthy about laughter. There is no place to hide and not-hiding is more realistic.

When I asked my Zen teacher to compare how his practice was in the beginning with how it was later on, he said, "In the beginning, it was very hard. Now, it is laughing all the time."

Can I pretend like some latter-day re-inventor of wise tales to know precisely and serenely and pussy-perfectly what he meant?

Certainly not.

But I can laugh.

long-deceased proverbs

... And, among the patriarchal proverbs no longer in vogue, there is this, whose roots seem to lie in the 16th century:

A woman, a dog, and a walnut tree,
The more you beat them the better they be.

tiger, tiger....

Five Indonesian men apparently remain trapped up a tree today after the men accidentally killed a

Sumatran tiger cub Thursday and a group of tigers attacked the men, killing one. The five escaped up a tree and remained trapped as the tigers circled below. The men used cell phones to call for help, which may not arrive for two or three days due to the density of the jungle.

Villagers had tried to rescue the men on Thursday but retreated when they saw at least four large Sumatran tigers circling around the base of the tree.

 PS. Men rescued on Monday, July 8.

air conditioning

Across the street this morning, my Christian neighbors Joe and Pat came out of the house all scrubbed and clean and nicely dressed. They climbed into their red, air conditioned Honda and headed off I don't know where ... don't know where, but imagined it was to their church, which, I further imagine, is air conditioned.

I was jealous. Later, I will go out to the zendo and do a bit of zazen. The zendo is not air conditioned and I am too old to be much impressed with those who did or do their Zen practice through all sorts of extreme heat and cold.

If testing the harsh realities of climate or posture or mind were sine qua non's of spiritual endeavor, how could anyone expect to make a bit of progress? I can enunciate the spiffy answers and demurrers, but the best I can come up with is the old encouragement:

The hard stuff is easy. It's the easy stuff that's hard.

fragments again

-- I have made hundreds and hundreds of mistakes in my life, but this breath is not one of them.

-- If anyone actually did try to sell ice to Eskimos, could there be a better come-on than "Ego te absolvo?"

Absolution -- that time or place or sense that is smooth and enfolding and forgiving as a well-worn pair of blue jeans ... soft in ways that life can be hard, restful at last where sweat once pored down, washed clean in some ineffably gentle you're-OK. Who has not prayed for such a time and who has not, when knowing of that prayer, sold ice to Eskimos? "Ego te absolvo."

Beckoning, beckoning, beckoning ... absolution. Leave aside the salesmen and still there is the beckoning. But being OK seems to require some effort, the kind of effort that salesmen might offer to ease. It doesn't work in any grounded sense, but beggars can't be choosers and there will always be some poor Eskimo willing to shell out for ice.

Hard work. If there is no one who can absolve and no one to be absolved -- if, using language, only you can absolve you -- does that then mean that the yearning and beckoning are all for naught? I don't think so, but what I do mean is probably just selling ice to Eskimos.

Look, see, breathe, absolve ... and never sidestep the responsibility or quiet joy.

-- I wonder if the Internet, like Gutenberg's press, will help the gimme religions to grow up ... or at least cast wider and more absolving nets. One thing's for sure, I won't be alive to see it.

-- In Brazil, a soccer referee expelled a player last weekend, then got into an argument with him, and fatally stabbed him. After the stabbing, a horde of angry fans stormed the field, stoned the referee to death, 'eviscerated' him, decapitated him and put his head on a stick on the field. A grisly reconstruction of the body seems to confirm most of the facts. I cannot find any photo of a head on a stick, which seems odd in an Internet era.



-- A man or woman who keeps secrets from you does not have your best interests at heart ... and that includes the secretive soul in the bathroom mirror.

Daniel Somers' suicide letter

Just for a moment, let's not just forget and move on. Just for a moment, let's set aside the excuses and explanations. Just for a moment let's remember that just because a man is crazed does not necessarily mean that he is crazy. And just for a moment, let's shoulder the responsibility that goes with living in and supporting a government that creates the conditions it would prefer not to shoulder, and hides instead behind words like "hero" and "terrorism."

Daniel Somers was a veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom. He was part of Task Force Lightning, an intelligence unit. In 2004-2005, he was mainly assigned to a Tactical Human-Intelligence Team (THT) in Baghdad, Iraq, where he ran more than 400 combat missions as a machine gunner in the turret of a Humvee, interviewed countless Iraqis ranging from concerned citizens to community leaders and and government officials, and interrogated dozens of insurgents and terrorist suspects. In 2006-2007, Daniel worked with Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) through his former unit in Mosul where he ran the Northern Iraq Intelligence Center. His official role was as a senior analyst for the Levant (Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Israel, and part of Turkey). Daniel suffered greatly from PTSD and had been diagnosed with traumatic brain injury and several other war-related conditions. On June 10, 2013, Daniel wrote the following letter to his family before taking his life. Daniel was 30 years old. His wife and family have given permission to publish it.

I am sorry that it has come to this.

The fact is, for as long as I can remember my motivation for getting up every day has been so that you would not have to bury me. As things have continued to get worse, it has become clear that this alone is not a sufficient reason to carry on. The fact is, I am not getting better, I am not going to get better, and I will most certainly deteriorate further as time goes on. From a logical standpoint, it is better to simply end things quickly and let any repercussions from that play out in the short term than to drag things out into the long term.

You will perhaps be sad for a time, but over time you will forget and begin to carry on. Far better that than to inflict my growing misery upon you for years and decades to come, dragging you down with me. It is because I love you that I can not do this to you. You will come to see that it is a far better thing as one day after another passes during which you do not have to worry about me or even give me a second thought. You will find that your world is better without me in it.

I really have been trying to hang on, for more than a decade now. Each day has been a testament to the extent to which I cared, suffering unspeakable horror as quietly as possible so that you could feel as though I was still here for you. In truth, I was nothing more than a prop, filling space so that my absence would not be noted. In truth, I have already been absent for a long, long time.

My body has become nothing but a cage, a source of pain and constant problems. The illness I have has caused me pain that not even the strongest medicines could dull, and there is no cure. All day, every day a screaming agony in every nerve ending in my body. It is nothing short of torture. My mind is a wasteland, filled with visions of incredible horror, unceasing depression, and crippling anxiety, even with all of the medications the doctors dare give. Simple things that everyone else takes for granted are nearly impossible for me. I can not laugh or cry. I can barely leave the house. I derive no pleasure from any activity. Everything simply comes down to passing time until I can sleep again. Now, to sleep forever seems to be the most merciful thing.

You must not blame yourself. The simple truth is this: During my first deployment, I was made to participate in things, the enormity of which is hard to describe. War crimes, crimes against humanity. Though I did not participate willingly, and made what I thought was my best effort to stop these events, there are some things that a person simply can not come back from. I take some pride in that, actually, as to move on in life after being part of such a thing would be the mark of a sociopath in my mind. These things go far beyond what most are even aware of.

To force me to do these things and then participate in the ensuing coverup is more than any government has the right to demand. Then, the same government has turned around and abandoned me. They offer no help, and actively block the pursuit of gaining outside help via their corrupt agents at the DEA. Any blame rests with them.

Beyond that, there are the host of physical illnesses that have struck me down again and again, for which they also offer no help. There might be some progress by now if they had not spent nearly twenty years denying the illness that I and so many others were exposed to. Further complicating matters is the repeated and severe brain injuries to which I was subjected, which they also seem to be expending no effort into understanding. What is known is that each of these should have been cause enough for immediate medical attention, which was not rendered.

Lastly, the DEA enters the picture again as they have now managed to create such a culture of fear in the medical community that doctors are too scared to even take the necessary steps to control the symptoms. All under the guise of a completely manufactured “overprescribing epidemic,” which stands in stark relief to all of the legitimate research, which shows the opposite to be true. Perhaps, with the right medication at the right doses, I could have bought a couple of decent years, but even that is too much to ask from a regime built upon the idea that suffering is noble and relief is just for the weak.

However, when the challenges facing a person are already so great that all but the weakest would give up, these extra factors are enough to push a person over the edge.

Is it any wonder then that the latest figures show 22 veterans killing themselves each day? That is more veterans than children killed at Sandy Hook, every single day. Where are the huge policy initiatives? Why isn’t the president standing with those families at the state of the union? Perhaps because we were not killed by a single lunatic, but rather by his own system of dehumanization, neglect, and indifference.

It leaves us to where all we have to look forward to is constant pain, misery, poverty, and dishonor. I assure you that, when the numbers do finally drop, it will merely be because those who were pushed the farthest are all already dead.

And for what? Bush’s religious lunacy? Cheney’s ever growing fortune and that of his corporate friends? Is this what we destroy lives for?

Since then, I have tried everything to fill the void. I tried to move into a position of greater power and influence to try and right some of the wrongs. I deployed again, where I put a huge emphasis on saving lives. The fact of the matter, though, is that any new lives saved do not replace those who were murdered. It is an exercise in futility.

Then, I pursued replacing destruction with creation. For a time this provided a distraction, but it could not last. The fact is that any kind of ordinary life is an insult to those who died at my hand. How can I possibly go around like everyone else while the widows and orphans I created continue to struggle? If they could see me sitting here in suburbia, in my comfortable home working on some music project they would be outraged, and rightfully so.

I thought perhaps I could make some headway with this film project, maybe even directly appealing to those I had wronged and exposing a greater truth, but that is also now being taken away from me. I fear that, just as with everything else that requires the involvement of people who can not understand by virtue of never having been there, it is going to fall apart as careers get in the way.

The last thought that has occurred to me is one of some kind of final mission. It is true that I have found that I am capable of finding some kind of reprieve by doing things that are worthwhile on the scale of life and death. While it is a nice thought to consider doing some good with my skills, experience, and killer instinct, the truth is that it isn’t realistic. First, there are the logistics of financing and equipping my own operation, then there is the near certainty of a grisly death, international incidents, and being branded a terrorist in the media that would follow. What is really stopping me, though, is that I simply am too sick to be effective in the field anymore. That, too, has been taken from me.

Thus, I am left with basically nothing. Too trapped in a war to be at peace, too damaged to be at war. Abandoned by those who would take the easy route, and a liability to those who stick it out—and thus deserve better. So you see, not only am I better off dead, but the world is better without me in it

This is what brought me to my actual final mission. Not suicide, but a mercy killing. I know how to kill, and I know how to do it so that there is no pain whatsoever. It was quick, and I did not suffer. And above all, now I am free. I feel no more pain. I have no more nightmares or flashbacks or hallucinations. I am no longer constantly depressed or afraid or worried.

I am free.

I ask that you be happy for me for that. It is perhaps the best break I could have hoped for. Please accept this and be glad for me.

Daniel Somers

(Source)

choosing friends

When choosing friends, do not choose the one who imagines s/he could help or is widely praised for a helpful nature.

Choose the one who takes responsibility for his or her actions.

It is hard to find helpful friends.

Do it anyway.

heat, heat, heat

Yet another day -- with more promised -- of temperatures scheduled to top 90 (32C). Together with the mold, which is reported to be high and to which I seem to remember I am allergic, there is a sense of being pushed back into a corner of inability and inactivity.

Sometimes circumstances win and there is no whining or violin-playing that will tame them. Advice collectors may be as right as they like ("when it's hot, sweat; when it's cold, shiver"), but where circumstances honestly claim the day, well, you can take your advice and stick it where the sun don't shine.

The heat here is as nothing compared to temperatures out west, where readings have touched and exceeded the 120 (48.9C), but where circumstances claim the day, "elsewhere" dissolves together with the "compassion" it might otherwise inspire. This...is...it.

As a bit of relief, a friend sent along a link to a story about police who were 911-called to what a neighbor worried was a serious domestic dispute. A woman was heard crying out, "Stop! No!" There were also occasional "loud noise(s)." It turned out that the man was farting and the woman wanted him to stop.

Which is more confounding -- hot air from one end or hot air from the other ... farting or talking? Either way, circumstances seem to claim the day and all beseeching can go suck an egg.

administrators and commanders

In one of his series of books entitled "The Brotherhood of War," author W.E.B. Griffin depicts a scene in which a general gets white-hot angry after a colonel tells him that what the general wants to do is "against regulations."

The general tells the colonel with an icy fury that he cannot quite understand how the colonel should have risen to his rank without learning the fact that "regulations are for the guidance of the commanding officer" ... which is a far cry from simply administering a command. "Colonel," the general hisses approximately, "I command this unit!"

How many institutions are not top-heavy with executives who can administer the rules and yet haven't the courage to command ... however much they might want to sit in the executive suite? And how many of the rest of us follow the rules and regulations (even as we bemoan them) because to do otherwise would be beyond the pale of the current unit's mission? Contravening regulations might be bad or naughty (think spiritual life), but most of all, it would be unsafe and risky.

Administrators and commanders.

Spiritual regulations are for the guidance of the commander, no matter how many administrators may buck and shuffle. Regulations are not without their uses, but simply toe-ing the mark, simply inching up the administrative ladder, eviscerates the whole purpose and direction of the exercise.

So maybe, when engaged in spiritual endeavors, it's a good idea to look in the bathroom mirror and, whatever the doubts, let the words appear ... as assured as the breath on which they rest: "I command this unit!"

Or, as the Zen teacher Rinzai once put it to his monks, "Your whole problem is that you do not trust yourselves enough."

"normal saint-making procedures"

Am I wrong, or does everyone want and need and even demand a saint or two?

True, each may adore or decry the saints of others, but where full-frontal honesty obtains, where the heart relaxes its sometimes self-important grip, isn't there a saint or two in residence? Vast or venial

makes no difference ... still, there is a person or place or time or mind-set that is blessed and somehow beyond ... an ahh and at-last relief? Nirvana or NASCAR ... a sainted ground.

And where saints seem to be in short supply ... well, a little creativity never hurt.

In Rome, the Roman Catholic pope, Francis, cleared the way today for the canonization not just of former pope John Paul II, but also for another former pope, John XXIII. In the case of John Paul II, Francis gave his stamp of approval to a miracle attributed to John Paul. Approved miracles are generally a yardstick against which sainthood is measured.

But it wasn't miracles that put John XXIII on the fast track to canonization:

The Vatican said Francis had the power to "dispense" with the normal saint-making procedures to canonize him on his own merit, without a miracle.

In this, it seems to me that Francis and even the Roman Catholic Church reveals itself as a "man of the people."

Which one of us has not exercised the power to dispense with normal saint-making procedures -- the proofs that might otherwise be required -- as a means of enshrining some beloved person or realm? The yardstick strikes me as utterly human: "I love you, therefore you are a saint" or, perhaps more pointedly, "I love me, therefore you are a saint."

Nirvana or NASCAR, vast or venial ... not good, not bad ... just utterly human and worth keeping an eye on.

"God Made a Dog"

Passed along in email:

eat your spam, dear

Each morning, the email inbox here contains several earnest entreaties, answers to questions I have little or no interest in asking ... how fulfilled I would be if I simply heeded one spiritual lesson or another; how happy, by implication, I would be if I accepted $27 million from Nigeria; or how joyful I might be with a larger and more resourceful tallywacker.

The fact that I punch the appropriate computer keys and erase such entreaties in no way implies I do not generally wake up with a new crop of my own spamming salesmen. As for example, I wonder what it might be like to wake up without any of my encouraging, gnawing, ameliorating or oh-so-meaningful spam. This morning....

-- If anyone crossed the frontier of joylessness, would they then feel bereft and joyless?

-- If, as implied with the ruthless politesse of a Saturday-morning door-knocker, anyone might be screwed without god, how screwed might they be with him? It would be empirically unwise to underestimate the enormous popularity of Being Screwed.

-- If the Answer Function simply ceased to operate -- would the questions be lonely or would they simply find a more productive use of their time?

And most insistent, somehow, this morning,

-- If an aardvark could tap-dance ... ?

If an aardvark could tap-dance, I imagine my tallywacker would in fact become larger and more resourceful and the morning email would probably be clogged with compassionate concern about when and whether I had "an erection that lasted for more than four hours."

Spam missives, spam mind ... maybe it's like the old male chauvinist observation about women: "Can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em."

bits of news

In the news ...

-- Doug Englebart, inventor of the computer mouse and a lot of other way-ahead-of-their-time creations, died Tuesday at 88.

Sometimes it is hard to recall that there was a time when someone had to invent it, whatever 'it' might be. Religious fundamentalists may use this as an exhausted realm in which to posit a god, but that just begs the question.

Someone had to invent it, be it mouse or god.

Who and why?

-- In what everyone seems to be careful not to call a "coup," the democratically-elected president of Egypt, Mohammed Morsi, was ousted Wednesday by the army and replaced 'temporarily' by a judge. The ouster came after days and days of popular and populous demonstrations. The ouster seems to be considered a better demonstration of democracy than the democracy that elevated Morsi about a year ago.

The U.S. likes to be seen as a supporter of democracy. But Egypt is a ticklish matter for the State Department, I imagine. On the one hand, "democracy" sounds nifty. But in 2010, the U.S. pumped about $1.5 billion in aid into Egypt. $1.3 billion was in military aid and, if I am not mistaken, about one half of that amount is given under the proviso that Egypt buy its weaponry from the United States. That's a lot of money for a lot of American defense contractors. So perhaps it is a delicate matter, deciding how much 'democracy' the U.S. will support and how much its economic well-being may be conflated with 'democracy.'

-- And in Peru, a 4,000-year-old pyramid has been destroyed by developers who were, perhaps, in search of the same buck American defense contractors have targeted.

-- British babies fortunate enough to be born on the same day as the child expected in mid-July by the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge will each receive a commemorative silver penny from the government. The  Royal Mint announced today that it had minted 2,013 such coins. What I want to know is who decided on that very specific number and how they reached their decision. Was there a hushed-but-intense debate between those favoring 2,013 and 2,014? What happens to No. 2014? In 2007, births per day averaged out to 1,890 in the UK. In which case, what happens to the extra coins?

fragments du jour

-- Another slurpy, viscous day, one of several in a row that have underscored the wonders of air conditioning. Independence Day and I wonder when it is or what it is that inspires people to seek out their independence. If only "oppression" were the answer. Tonight, perhaps, my son will set off the sky-rocket I bought him a while back. BOOM-OOOOOHHHH ... what a lot of fun.

-- Yesterday, I read -- or kind of read -- a bit of writing on "How to Prepare a Zen Dharma Talk: Thirteen Points." The points were written by Peter Shireson and passed along in his blog by James Ishmael Ford, both men who are part of the Zen Buddhist tapestry in America.

There are a hundred good reasons, caring reasons, important reasons, deft and exculpatory reasons that can be adduced for such a piece. Good-hearted, caring, teaching ... that stuff. But there was something in me that balked ... really petty, perhaps ... small-minded and not part of the teaching tapestry that hangs so handsome on the wall.

I can see giving pointers about public speaking in general -- how not to be boring, how to stay on topic, how to overcome the fears, etc. And I can imagine preparing a talk around "the wonder of spark plugs" or "how to build and IED" or "how to raise a yak."

But "how to prepare a Zen Dharma talk?" It felt like rug burn on my brain -- faithless, somehow, and mediocre. It felt as if someone had written an essay that would fit nicely on the bookshelf, right next to something like, "Buddhism is Your Buddy" or "Compassion Made Easy" or "Better Metta in 10 Days" or "Unexcelled Clarity and You."

I'm just chewing my cud here. I guess the nut of what slowed me down was the old joke:

Q. What's the best way to catch a rabbit?
A. Hide behind a tree and make a noise like a carrot.

In my mind, there were people reading thirteen points and seriously imagining that they could hide behind a tree and make a noise like a Dharma carrot. That the right words, lovingly organized and delivered with conviction, might somehow tame and contain the Dharma ... and coincidentally rain down glory on the expositor.

But that's probably just an indicator of my own mediocrity and faithlessness.

-- Yesterday, I was batting emails back and forth with Janet Asimov. We were talking about reading and the old days when books could be exceedingly long and occasionally delicious in their languorous proceedings from page to page. In passing, I mentioned the book I had considered as a follow-up to "Answer Your Love Letters: Footnotes to a Zen Practice." It was a book I would never write, I said, but Janet liked (as I did and do) the title: "That Was Zen, This Is Now." She encouraged me to write it. I demurred -- money for self-publishing and energy were not all they might be. But, having mentioned it, it now niggles and jiggles at my mind once more: What happens when what was once a beloved endeavor slips softly away? Cap pistols and spiritual life ... Gawd they were important in their time ... sorta like getting laid after you first got the hang of it!

When I started out on what might qualify as a spiritual path, I went after it with a vengeance: 1. I wanted to know if it were bullshit or not ... not according to anyone else; just according to me. And 2. If it turned out that spiritual endeavor found its foundation in nothing more than books or temples, I wanted nothing whatsoever to do with it. If spiritual life weren't apparent and dancing in a barroom brawl ... well, fuck that! It was with these two yardsticks that I set out. I was s-e-r-i-o-u-s.... or, more likely, solemn, but everyone has to get through their solemnities.

And now it's 40-45 years later, so to speak, and, like cap pistols, spiritual endeavor just seems to slip away. It's nothing as slick as forsaking the raft that took anyone across the rushing waters. What's to forsake? There's nothing deliberate or meaningful in it ... it just slips away and the best I can say of spiritual life is not that it is good or bad, sensible or senseless, elevated or foolish, wise or ignorant... the best I can say is that, for my purposes, I don't feel that I wasted my time.

No more barroom brawls.

It's a good thing I don't drink, I suppose.

"shitstorm" and "cluster fuck"

Europeans, being a little less linguistically prurient than their American counterparts, have noted Germany's dictionary adoption of the English word "shitstorm."

Duden, the equivalent of the Oxford English Dictionary in the UK, said it was reflecting the common use of the word "shitstorm" among Germans.
The word, which is used in German to denote a public outcry, seems to have caught on during the eurozone crisis.

While the word has somewhat wider implications in the U.S., still it is a wonderful addition to any dictionary ... apt, pointed, smelly, higglety-pigglety ... "shit storm" is one of the good ones for my money.

And the popularity-based inclusion of "shit storm" holds out promise for another utterly appropriate, if vaguely eyebrow-raising, description: "Cluster fuck."

Somehow I imagine that if "cluster fuck" came up for discussion among the creators of dictionaries, it would feel the full weight of political disapproval. Everyone likes to think that his or her profession contains a little dignity and prefers not to be called out based on accomplishment.

Politicians are no different.

where the roof falls in

One of the things I have liked about zazen, the seated meditation practice of Zen Buddhism, is the opportunity to address gut-level issues, among them, "no one understands" and/or "no one cares."

I stress the word "opportunity." "No one understands/cares" is not a realm for philosophers or sages and Zen Buddhism, as an -ism, is an equal opportunity employer: The very practice that can assist in nourishing, real-time understandings is equally capable of creating a world in which people run around out-compassioning or out-profounding one another ... a cozy haven in which nourishment goes begging, everyone is dreadfully sincere, and the gathering provides a sense of safety-and-truth-in-numbers.

And then ... and then ... the roof falls in.

When the roof falls in, it is no consolation that someone else's roof may have likewise fallen in. This is my roof and my moment and my unbounded confusion ... it wasn't supposed to be like this, was it?! Where is the succor that reaches down and resolves and dissolves and saves me from this roof that has fallen in? Hugs and kisses are always welcome, but, but ... there is no un-dropping the dime that has dropped, this crap in my lap.

None of this has to come like a cataclysm, though of course sometimes it does. It may just as easily whisper in day to day events. For example, who has not heard the line, "sharing is caring." It has a ring to it and maybe it even has a certain validity, but, where the rubber hits the road, no one can "share" experience... and this recognition may quietly enhance a nagging sense that "no one understands" or "no one cares."

I hesitate to put this description forward. I distrust and dislike spiritual adventures that use bad news as a cheap-date bit of leverage for why anyone ought to go spiritual. I feel the same about spiritual adventures that hawk what is proclaimed as good news... talk about ooooey-goooey and off the mark! Yes, there is bad news. Yes, there is good news. But between the two lies a land of opportunity and, for my purposes, zazen is a pretty good tool for addressing the gut-level-ness of "no one understands" and/or "no one cares." I can't speak for anyone else: Gut-level is no place for "we" or "one" ... it's my fucking roof that, on occasion, falls in. And calling it "ego-tripping" is just more psychological and philosophical gimcrack.

I like zazen as a tool because it provides a formalized circumstance in which to address that which may, under other circumstances, be fled like the plague ... and yet cannot be outrun. If something cannot be outrun, cannot be papered over, cannot be soothed and smoothed then, well, the only option I can see is to turn around and, with gentle patience, face it.

In a larger setting, a group of people all sit down, shut up, straighten their spines and ... well ... sit. They sit together. Together alone. Not exactly together and not exactly alone. Anyone who has tried this knows that when the right knee screams with pain, "no one understands" and, perhaps, "no one cares." And that same right knee -- or wash of potent emotion -- could give a shit about "enlightenment" or "healing all sentient beings" or "meaning." This, after all, is this. The wreckage of the roof is in my lap ... and no one else knows or cares or, no matter how much they might want to, could do a damned thing about it.

Day after day, week after week, year after year of zazen ... of this opportunity to come clean and square things away ... this opportunity not to run and not to hide and not to solve and not to resolve.

I wouldn't for a moment suggest that the opportunity I find in zazen is somehow unavailable in other practices or other situations. It's just that seizing an opportunity can sometimes seem so daunting, especially when it comes to gut-level stuff. Opportunities abound ... I just like zazen. The alternative to seizing the opportunity is to remain rooted in the incomplete realms of philosophers and sages, of hoping against hope that somehow the roof will not fall in, of contenting this life with adventures and beliefs and emotions that never quite reach somehow.

What is it like when "no one understands" or "no one cares" or "experience cannot be shared?" It may be a scary question, but life seems to ask it. Asking the question does not mean there is no kindness or love or generosity or goodness. It does not mean that anyone needs to wander around in a solemn blue funk, growling and yowling and seeking endlessly for relief. It just means taking a little time to address what so often goes unaddressed. Gently, patiently ... how about it? Isn't the opportunity worth seizing, wherever it may be?

What about that right knee?
What about the roof that falls in?
What about the experience that cannot be shared?

Just now and then, as in the practice of zazen, isn't it an opportunity worth seizing? If the dime cannot be un-dropped, isn't there some usefulness to the dropped dime?

the man who would be president

Passed along in email:

being a Buddha

Am I a Buddha?
Only if you are.

Are you a Buddha?
Only if I am.

Haven't we both got something better to do than to worry about matters like this?

the woo-hoo's

With an appointment at 10, there is not so much room to exercise my usual morning blither. But old habits die hard and there is a little time ....

Today I think that in spiritual endeavor (or any other for that matter), it is a good idea to be wary of the woo-hoo's. Not look down like some gently smirking adult, not suggest that anyone could outgrow or get smarter than the woo-hoo's, not pretend that woo-hoo's were an estate of lesser attainment ... just keep a gentle eye on the woo-hoo's.

Woo-hoo enlightenment! Woo-hoo perfection! Woo-hoo peace! Woo-hoo ordination! Woo-hoo an understanding that brooks no doubt! Subtle or gross -- the woo-hoo factor.

Woo-hoo's can and do inspire action, perhaps, but they also carry with them the very doubt that woo-hoo enthusiasms may seek to allay. This isn't good or bad, juvenile or adult, lesser or greater ... it just strikes me as a tendency worth attending to. Cruisin' and brusin' are a package deal that turning into a serene and holy zombie cannot cure.

Yesterday, on a Buddhist bulletin board, I read a question about why anyone should consider ordination a necessity ... or even hold it up as a reasonable, heart-felt desire. And without really thinking about it, I wrote:

For those inclined to Buddhism, the lay person tries to learn what the monk already knows even as the monk strives to learn what the lay person already knows. We distinguish these two by station, but what is already known is indistinguishable.

Is this true or is it more facile mind woo-hoo? I don't really know. I guess, like anyone else who might be inclined, I'll just have to check it out.

On the dining room table, there is a fat Independence Day rocket I bought my younger son for his birthday. Though such pyrotechnics are illegal in this state, well, what the hell -- July 4 is coming and we plan to set it off whatever the fallout.

I await with glee the woo-hoo I fully expect it will inspire.

A brilliant BOOM is really kool.

sniffing the Vatican air

It's only $57 million dollars -- peanuts for the biggest corporation in the world -- but the question of

Cardinal Timothy Dolan

why then-archbishop and now-cardinal Timothy Dolan asked the Vatican if it would be OK to transfer cemetery funds to a trust fund lingers in the air.

Under the weight of dozens of claims of priest sexual abuse, the Archdiocese of Milwaukee, which Dolan ran, was preparing to file for bankruptcy when Dolan contacted the Vatican in 2007.

In his June 4, 2007, letter to the Vatican, Dolan said the cemetery fund money would still have to be used to care for cemeteries if placed in a trust. But, he added: "By transferring these assets to the Trust, I foresee an improved protection of these funds from any legal claim and liability."
Church law requires bishops to seek Vatican approval for any property sale or asset transfer in the millions of dollars. The bankruptcy judge will ultimately decide whether any transfer amounts to fraud.

Dolan, who is currently the most powerful Roman Catholic in America and is president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, has denied any desire to shield the funds as the archdiocese declared itself destitute. Plaintiffs seeking reimbursement for the abuses they suffered with the collusion of hierarchy (and Vatican) see the financial maneuver as a fraud.

I am so glad there are younger, more energetic and determined, men and women who are willing to see this travesty through its bitter twists and turns. Malfeasance in spiritual life is so fucking exhausting, so demanding ... and yet not meeting those demands (which the Vatican might dearly like) is beyond cowardly.

Sometimes I feel like a coward when in fact I suspect I may simply be exhausted. I feel like a cop-out cheering for those who have taken up cudgels, but it's about all I've got these days when it comes to Vatican or other spiritual corruptions.

What a bunch of vain, vile assholes!

fat-rain

It is fat-raining today. Fat-rain through a plump and sweaty humidity. Fat-rain so fat that it "plops" even after it goes through my T-shirt. Fat-rain.

With a now-gone winter that delivered little by way of snow, it is nice to think the reservoirs will be recharged and animals will not have to walk so far to the water cooler.

news items

Bits of news --

-- In France, President Francois Hollande suggested today that U.S. spying and eavesdropping on European Union diplomats could "derail free trade negotiations worth billions."

Europe's outage was triggered by a Sunday report by German news weekly Der Spiegel that the U.S. National Security Agency bugged diplomats from friendly nations - such as the EU offices in Washington, New York and Brussels. The report was partly based on an ongoing series of revelations of U.S. eavesdropping leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

Interesting that complaints leveled against Snowden -- whom the U.S. would like to nail to the wall for "treason" because the 29-year-old released classified documents -- have yet to receive any factual description of the military or quasi-military operations he is alleged to have betrayed. They're secret, dontcha know... you have to trust us that he has been a naughty, naughty boy ... and unpatriotic into the bargain. Instead of adducing hard evidence of treasonous behavior, Snowden's betrayal or treason take shape because he has messed with the economic pipeline. Build a case for bad behavior, but neglect to mention why that behavior was actually bad. God bless America.

-- China's weibo -- their version of Twitter -- is awash in derision of a new Chinese law that states grown children must visit their aging parents. The "Elderly Rights Law" addresses the loneliness and fragility of the aging, whose numbers of those above 60 stood at something over 178 million in 2010 and are expected to double by 2030. Internet commentary included:

We all know to cherish our elderly parents, but sometimes we are just too busy trying to make a living and the pressure is too much.

and

It's fine that no-one is paying for us to visit our parents, but is there someone who can give us time off to do it?

Everyone wants to make money but the question is how to put a good and moral face on it.

in earlier times

In earlier times -- times uninformed by television, air conditioning and silicone implants -- there were books and the word "literature" slipped off anointed tongues with the careless assurance of a pig wallowing in a sumptuous mud.

These were books of the past, books by writers 'now' esteemed as great or good or in some way worthy of latter-day digestion. These books were force-fed to a new generation. Class by class, term paper by term paper ... eat your spinach, dear. It's good for you.

The spinach-y novelists that spring to mind this morning include Proust and Austen and Galsworthy and Henry James and probably a bunch of others I have forgotten. And what I remember of them this morning -- aside from the fact that I could hate the homework they entailed -- is that all of the major works of these authors arrived in my lap by the pound. The books were literally, physically, heavy because, of course, they were long. 500, 600, 700 and sometimes 1,000 pages long. Long and viscous and top-heavy with enough detail to choke a famished horse. Shakespeare may have preceded these writers by a number of years, but the bard's observation that "brevity is the soul of wit" seemed to have escaped their notice. On the other hand, no doubt they were not striving for wit with the pages in my lap that refused to stop turning.

As a newspaper reporter, it took me a number of years to digest the appropriateness of the encouragement "Stand up. Speak up. And shut up." By the time I left news reporting, I had come to the whispered conclusion that anyone who insisted on interminable length was more than likely unfamiliar with his or her subject matter. And that included me ... if I had written something looonnnng, it was a good bet I didn't know what the fuck I was talking about ... it was just the adult version of the excited child who had not yet organized his thought and so was reduced to exploding breathlessly, "and then...and then ... and then." 500, 600, 700 and sometimes 1,000 pages ... "and then." It was just a whispered conclusion: Length was no substitute for understanding and was a poor stand-in for substance.

In earlier times ....

Nowadays, I can catch myself out being crabby about Internet entities like Facebook and Twitter, vacuous and vapid media through which people pretend to convey substance with a relative brevity. It is as if they had turned Shakespeare around and assumed that because they were brief, they were therefore witty or conveying some worthy and much-investigated substance. What they generally convey seems to be -- briefly put -- "me." And this "me" is accompanied by the unspoken and ill-founded assumption that this "me" is interesting or worthy of others' attention. And if enough people engage in the same behavior, exercising the same assumption, well then ... there you go ... it must be true: I am, as I somehow doubted I was, as interesting and well-grounded as I thought I was... endlessly.

Like others of advancing age, I too can feel the keen lash of loneliness and the longing to be among those who knew from personal experience who Proust and Austen and Galsworthy and Henry James were ... and had the good grace not to discuss that experience. Closer to the present, I would sometimes prefer not to be surrounded by those who are not exactly sure -- refresh my memory! -- whether the Vietnam War preceded the Korean War or vice versa. Yes, I have my moments of wanting things my way -- the way things were... better informed by substance, as I imagine it, and capable of a brevity that has a compelling back story and experience.

But was there ever a time or generation that did not contain those of an advancing age who felt the same loneliness and wistfulness and, yes, crabbiness? Seriously ... was there ever? I'm not seeking consolation in numbers -- that's just more vapid Tweeting -- but just asking: Was there ever? I doubt it.

What usefulness -- personal, experiential usefulness -- is there to the memories that stack up like cord wood, that shape and direct and provide a resting place? Are they merely insistent piranha which nibble and nip and tear bloody chunks from the present? Do they have some function beyond providing a wobbly and saddened support system to an increasingly wobbly soul? Is there some lesson from which anyone might make a meal of consequence, something enjoyable and well-muscled and sporting a witty smile upon its lips?

In earlier times ....

Yes, I think there is a lesson and I think it is full of a laughter worth sharing.

And that lesson is ...

Stated briefly ...

Life is more interesting than I am.

Thank goodness.