wisdom worth heeding?

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Passed along in email:

1. As I let go of my feelings of guilt, I am in touch with my inner sociopath.

2. I have the power to channel my imagination into ever-soaring levels of suspicion and paranoia.

3. I assume full responsibility for my actions, except the ones that are someone else's fault.

4. I no longer need to punish, deceive, or compromise myself, unless I want to stay employed.

5. In some cultures, what I do would be considered normal.

6. Having control over myself is almost as good as having control over others.

7. My intuition nearly makes up for my lack of self-judgment.

8. I honor my personality flaws, for without them I would have no personality at all.

9. Joan of Arc heard voices, too.

10. I am grateful that I am not as judgmental as all those censorious, self-righteous people around me.

11. I need not suffer in silence while I can still moan, whimper, and complain.

12. As I learn the innermost secrets of people around me, they reward me in many ways to keep me quiet.

13. When someone hurts me, I know that forgiveness is cheaper than a lawsuit, but not nearly as gratifying.

14. The first step is to say nice things about myself. The second, to do nice things for myself. The third, to find someone to buy me nice things.

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news -- live and learn

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-- "If you can't get laid, get drunk" seems to be one of the sub rosa suggestions of a fruit fly study that says sex-deprived flies had a greater tendency to consume alcohol. Similar tendencies have been noted in mice. Bar owners may have cause to rejoice and addicts find a new 'explanation' for their behavior... though of course scientists will disavow any absolute if-then conclusion.

-- In the endlessly numbing and nationally embarrassing race for the Republican presidential nomination, former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum has been quoted as telling Puerto Ricans that if they really want statehood, they will have to make English their native tongue. A "race to the bottom" is too kindly as a description of the wrangling miring the national political tableau these days. Serious discourse in a time of high unemployment, a war footing in the Middle East, and a skyrocketing growth of U.S. mediocrity on the world stage is simply not possible.

-- Whatever "pink slime" is called, still it has made its way into beef products in a way that must delight beef-makers but leaves consumers in the dark. When is ground chuck not exactly ground chuck? "Pink slime" is in fact beef, but is composed of leftover beef parts ... the stuff producers cannot sell as readily. So ground chuck is still beef, but where that beef comes from on the cow is anyone's guess. One thing's for sure -- the prices seldom drop. It's tiring, getting flim-flammed and tiring as well to hear the flim-flammers utter cries of surprise when someone sticks a revolutionary gun in their faces and says, "Cut the crap!" Good intentions are such a lame excuse.
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"eye candy" mind

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"Eye candy" is a wonderful term to describe the seductive attractiveness of an Internet web site. Yum! Yum! Yum! Who, in his right mind, does not love candy? Beautiful houses on lush lots ... call Joe, the construction guy. Beckoning, snow-capped peaks beyond the veldt ... join our African safari. Buffed to a mirror sheen ... buy a Jeep.

Eye candy is the sweetness that draws people in, opens them up to the possibilities of whatever more-serious and less-frivolous candy the site-meister hopes to impart.

Those with a solemn and superior bent may finger-point with scorn at the 'superficial' nature of eye candy. But I am too old to disdain lies as I used to. Doesn't everyone have an eye-candy function woven into their DNA? Don't I? And you bet I do: For most of my life, I have been ass-over-appetite in love with stories, almost any stories as long as they were good stories. Lying is not so much the problem. It's telling a good lie that requires some doing. And lord knows I have tried to tell good stories, offer seductive eye-candy, whether to myself or to others.

Lying is not really the problem, however much the religions and philosophies of the world may demur. Eye candy or mind candy is part of the human terrain. The problem lies in the determined willingness to ask, "Of what truth is this lie a function?" Religions and philosophies are caught between a rock and a hard place: There is no recourse but to lie when pointing out the deeper truth they hope to impart. Eye-candy specialists may use the word "paradox" to describe this phenomenon. But whatever it is called does not change the fact.

When they were little, I would sometimes read fairy tales to my kids. One of those tales (not well remembered) had to do with a family in which there were two little girls -- a Cinderella-esque child who was belittled and demeaned and made to do all the dirty chores and a spoiled-brat daughter who was cosseted and praised and nourished in her own conceited nature. A wicked-stepmother figure oversaw the family. One day, the abused girl was sent to get water from a well or spring of some sort. It was a hard trek. When the girl reached the watering hole, a raggedy old woman appeared and said she was thirsty. The girl offered her some water. Naturally, the old woman was some aspect of God or Magical Goodness or something and when the girl reached home, every time she opened her mouth to speak, jewels and gems would fall from her lips. The wicked-stepmother figure was delighted, and wanted more and more. She sent her self-involved daughter to the same watering hole. Predictably, the old woman showed up again and said she was thirsty. The egotistical girl spurned the old woman with uppity scorn. And when the girl reached home, every time she opened her mouth, spiders and snakes and other icky creatures appeared. I forget how the story came to an end, but there was some happily-ever-after punch line. The moral to the tale, I guess, was something like "don't judge a book by its cover" or "be kind to everyone, irrespective of appearances."

Jewels and gems. Snakes and spiders. Eye candy aplenty... inviting, repulsive, uplifting, demeaning ... the aspects are endless and as magical as a raggedy old woman. Is it true? Is it false? Is there a greater truth hidden within ... and if so, why is that truth not simply another version of falsehood ... or vice versa? Isn't it tiring in the end, parsing this, dissecting that, all in the eye-candy effort to find the truth of things? Wouldn't it be easier to relax? Lies are lies, it's true. Truth is true -- how's that for a lie? Moral relativism is as lazy as the various absolutes that proffer their eye-candy blandishments.

Relax. Things aren't so complicated. Of what truth is this a lie? Of what lie is this the truth?

I like good stories. Stories are like music that opens the mind's locked doors and let the spring breezes in.

Whoosh.
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African proverb

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Read this today and thought it worth saving:

The day you tell the truth, be sure your horse is saddled!
                                                        -- African proverb

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talk about the illusory nature of things!

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Try this on for size.
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the iconoclast

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Like any hormone-plagued teenager who is simultaneously raging and yet uncertain about how to escape the strictures of the adult environment that rule his roost, I fell deeply in love with the word "iconoclast" when I first heard it. An internet dictionary defines the word "iconoclast" as "someone who attacks the beliefs, customs, and opinions that most people in a society accept."

And when I was a teenager, that sounded spot on ... gimme some of that! ... I was an iconoclast and proud of it ... or anyway I found the notion deliciously, impishly appealing. If people wore neat haircuts, I would be unkempt. If others went to church, I would stay away in spades. If others did damn near anything in a mindless, agreeable group ... that was obviously horseshit. The kick-ass Jesus turning over the money tables or disparaging golden idols was my kind of guy. Being an iconoclast was right up my alley at a time when finding an alley to be up was pretty hard. And if I couldn't find an alley to live in, at least I could pin on a label that seemed to offer some peace of mind: I would be an "iconoclast."

OK, I guess everyone snickers ruefully when looking back at earlier times, but I have some sympathy for the ignoramus I was. Teenagers and adults are not so very different ... everyone pushes the envelope. Perhaps the only difference is that an adult -- with very good luck -- recognizes that the bars on this cell, the envelope in which s/he is stuck, is entirely homemade. It's a rude awakening, which is why some very good luck is required.

The rough cob of this rude awakening lies partly in the fact that only an idolator could be an iconoclast. A kick-ass Jesus overturning money tables and excoriating golden idols may be a very good lesson indeed, but it can also be the basis for a whole new idolatry ... looking elsewhere for an ethical or possibly moral system that is only as good as what a lucky adult might assume personal responsibility for. The logic and reality simply don't hold up: Jesus was an iconoclast; I like Jesus; therefore I am an iconoclast too.

A rough cob: Ethics are what we see in public. Morality is what we perform when no one is looking. The rambunctious teenager in all of us -- the one longing to escape the envelope and break out of jail -- must first examine the constricting confines of a very-well-mortared and utterly personal idolatry. Railing at the heavens or assuming the mantle of "iconoclast" doesn't really make the night less lonely.

Examining the envelope or the jail cell is not for sissies. Why and how did I build this maximum-security institution? Why do I long to leave and yet am scared to go? Maybe I could just blow the whole thing to smithereens with some shazzam breakthrough of understanding ... oh goody -- enlightenment, kensho, satori ... the Tooth Fairy cometh.

This is not to make light of things. It's a pretty rough cob.

But bit by attentive bit, the dime may drop. There is no need to change anything. Things break (or change) all by themselves. Idolatry and iconoclasm are both extras that refer to me, not to the things themselves ... the things that change (or break) all by themselves. I may long to be in control or, equally, imagine that I have no control, but this is just kaffee klatsch gossip when confronting what initially may seem to be the  rough-cob facts.

Bit by attentive bit, idolatry and iconoclasm, like anything else, melt away. It's just what happens. This is no land for hymn-singing idolators or kick-ass iconoclasts.

It is just cool water on a hot summer day.

A wood fire in the sub-zero storms.

It is just home.

PS. In keeping with full disclosure, I have to admit that the impetus for the above probably came from an essay entitled "Buddha: The Perpetual Iconoclast" by Alfred Bloom. The essay was called to my attention earlier on this blog.
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our pseudo-capitalist ways

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Even when it comes from within the institution or policy concerned, a countervailing persuasion finds few serious listeners. In this way, mediocrity and corruption flourish.

An executive with Goldman Sachs, sometimes thought of as the Yankees of investment banking, has excoriated the company for disregarding the welfare of its clients in preference to its own interests. The company dismissed Greg Smith's complaints in a New York Times oped piece as piffle and said its clients were at the heart of all it does. It did not say in what way those clients were at the heart of their policies.

On the Bill Moyers TV show, former Republican Budget Director David Stockman voices his dismay at the crony capitalism that badly needs revision at the roots and is unlikely to get it as long as greed is the guiding principle of democracy. He notes in passing that the American electorate is deeply pessimistic, with something less than 15% seeing a brighter tomorrow in store for the U.S. Stockman says he does not think the electorate is wrong. In fact, he thinks they have it approximately right and deserve to feel pessimistic. If the U.S. were a capitalist country, its institutions would have suffered the reverses in 2008 and thereafter that their speculations so richly deserved. Instead, their political cronies helped them out and ... it's back to the same old bubble building.

Stockman never does utter the word "revolution" in his analysis. But he comes pretty damned close.
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sidestepping responsibility

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I don't do much these days, but when I say I am going to do something, I either do my best to do it promptly and thoroughly or I try to take real responsibility for not doing it.

Things work better that way.

But that's what every stupid man says.
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teacher

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After I asked him, "who is the teacher?" my Zen teacher said to me, "Except for me, everything is the teacher." At the time, it struck me as an ornately humble response. But, as usual, I was wrong.

What brought this to mind and chafed anew like a burr under my saddle, was a quick check-in with Zen Forum, a Buddhist bulletin board that includes a thread entitled "Ask a Teacher." Every time I see that title, I am uncomfortable ... if not downright pissed.

To the extent that Zen Buddhism is based in the willingness to examine our lives and correct our mistakes, it is understandable that some may have more common-sensical tools, more experience, than others. And from that premise, it is equally understandable, in conversation-speak, that those with more experience should be called "teacher." Leaving aside those who delight and wallow in the accolades, students are comforted by the notion that there is some light at the end of what may seem to be a very long and very dark tunnel. If there is a teacher, there is hope for me yet.

Ramakrishna used to say that if you got a thorn in your finger, it was acceptable to use another thorn to pick it out. But once the offending thorn was dislodged, no one in their right mind would keep either thorn one or thorn two. So the pain and confusion of this life might understandably be attacked with another thorn or confusion. Sometimes it takes a lie to illuminate the truth. Go ahead, stick in a 'teacher' thorn ... then find the 'teacher' thorn to get it out.

But as I look back, sometimes I think those who were called "teacher" spent a great deal of time trying to disabuse students of their teacher status. (Not the money-makers and charlatans, of course -- they knew a gravy train when they found it.) Those who entered the light knew that the sun did not discriminate between wealth and poverty, spiritual clarity and spiritual ignorance. Just because 'students' did not yet feel the sun's warmth was no excuse for playing the Sun King.

Oh well ... I suppose I am pissing into the wind again. It's just that I hope those making some spiritual effort will keep in mind what once I could not keep in my own.

Obaku wasn't just whistling Dixie when he stood before his assembled monks and said, "There is no such thing as a Zen teacher." A monk stood up and challenged him: "But master, how can you say such a thing when it's obvious you are standing before us, teaching?" And Obaku replied, "I said there was no such thing as a Zen teacher. I did not say there was no such thing as Zen."

Some may take this tale as some 'spiritual' teaching, some quirky, paradoxical, woo-hoo of a story ... a veritable teaching from on high. No, no, no. It's just a fact ... in the same way that a daisy is a fact. And the sooner anyone squares his life away according to facts, the happier he will be. No need to be an asshole any longer than necessary.
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ignorance

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Historically, Christianity is based on charity and love ... or anyway that's how I understand it: Help those in need, lift up the down-trodden, feed the hungry ... altruism writ large and with a "God" component.

Eeeee-haw morality

-- Alabama and Mississippi held political primaries yesterday for those who want to become the Republican nominee to run against current president and Democrat Barack Obama in November. Mississippi is the nation's poorest state. And I read somewhere that something more than 50% in one state and something slightly less than 50% in the other believe that Barack Obama is a Muslim. No where in the Republican campaign, each of whose candidates hopes to woo a South woven with "Christianity" and "morality," did I hear anyone propose an educational system for those so poorly informed... even just a quick-hit course on the Bible, the book most praised by putative Christians. Those trapped in poverty have a long tradition of turning to what is 'free' -- sex and religion. Those trapped in politics have a long tradition of wily and sometimes unkind manipulation. Former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, and former Georgia Senator Newt Gingrich -- all of them laying claim to one sort of morality or another -- won in that order. Putting morality in a politician's hands is like handing a .357 Magnum to a five-year-old... idiotic at best; fatal at worst... there is a severe conflict of interest, not to mention an eradication of common sense. And it's not as if Christianity were alone in such machinations.

-- Bowing to the winds of change, Encyclopedia Britannica, once a towering go-to source of reliable information, will no longer employ printed books. Instead, since 85% of their revenue comes from online offerings, Britannica will rely on the electricity without which the Internet would collapse. Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia with very dubious credentials (anyone can contribute information), has speed, if not reliability, on its side ... and the more people rely on Wikipedia, the less reliable they become. It's not always as bad as imagining that Barack Obama is a Muslim, and it is fast, but Wikipedia provides reliable and well-vetted information at about the same level that Facebook provides honest "social connection."

-- Sometimes I wonder if becoming a curmudgeon is just a function of aging. Given the amount of trouble that my own ignorance has gotten me into, I hope others will not be so conveniently convinced ... and when I look at the facts, it seems to me that convenient conventions are in evidence ... and I get crabby. Who died and left me in charge? Pick your ignorance ... I guess that's more like a generalization worth heeding.
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"turd burglar"

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I read the phrase this morning and would give a lot to have coined it myself:

"Turd burglar."

The phrase rolls off the tongue like pure ghee.

Where it came from, I haven't got a clue. But as a summing up of what it's like when people utter other people's wisdom -- and try to improve their own station ... wowsers! "Turd burglar" at work!

In spiritual endeavor, it is invariably turds from the get-go. Now some dimwit is stealing turds.

Poor old turd burglar.
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importance and seriousness

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Some people are content to call spiritual endeavor "important." But outside the importance of inciting to bloodshed, I think this is thin tea.

To my mind, importance is not important.

Seriousness is.
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the horror of success

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My friend told me the story of a man, now in his 60's, whose wife would occasionally find him, in the middle of the night, standing on the bed and fighting with the men who had come to attack him. Some 50 years earlier, he had been beaten and sexually abused by Catholic brothers who ran the school he went to.

The tale was heart-rending in so many ways: The ghosts and goblins of the past are so powerful that it seems almost a sacrilege to render them in words. Soul-shredding, truly tragic, and confounding in the helplessness that began in some distant realm and yet reaches like icy and potent slime into the present. A man who by every yardstick -- family, profession, etc. -- is a success, suddenly is rendered helpless and forlorn once more. And such goblins know when to attack ... in the night when anyone might let down his guard ... rest ... sleep ... and be undefended. A place of helpless screaming.

Who has not suffered a tragedy -- some something, little or large, that reaches out and nourishes a host of defenses built up over time? The descriptions and prescriptions ... ah, fuck 'em all! It is easy to cope with someone else's demons. Psychologists and philosophers and religious balm-makers may rise up in professional delight ... but in the middle of the night, while standing on the bed, fuck 'em all!

Who has not suffered a tragedy? And who has not learned ways to cope ... from intellectual savvy to a pint of Ben & Jerry's ice cream? What cannot yet be set aside -- what reeks of a potent failure -- must be borne. And so the habit is instilled ... to live with the tragedy that follows everywhere like a shadow, whispering, "helplessness." Where the can-do spirit basks in its successes, the can't-do spirit basks in its failures.

I may not be describing it all well, but I think such night-sweats, such past-becomes-presents, such freightings of the present are all too real, little and large. It may not be so searing and technicolor as the man standing on the bed, but still... And it makes me think:

People who avail themselves of the psychoanalyst's couch do so in hopes of making things less troublesome. Whatever the ouch, there is the hope that the ouch may be assuaged, eased, and (if wishes were horses, beggars would ride) eradicated. The goal is to find some more healthy, less throttling perspective. Failure and helplessness are too painful. Make it better, please! And, with patience and luck, the psychoanalytic setting may do just that. Failures do not weigh so much and success really is an option. The world of psychology deals with what hurts, what fails, what is helpless and screaming.

But -- and I really don't have the experience to say this for sure -- psychology does not cope with the horror of success. All those years of worry and fear and helplessness ... the idea or actuality of simply releasing such ingrained habits is truly horrifying. Or perhaps I'm wrong. Perhaps psychology does deal with the truly frightening notion of releasing old friends because becoming capable in place of helplessness is to bring horror and joy into the intimate embrace they already share.

To be helpless and fail ... a deep tragedy.

To be capable and succeed ... a frightening prospect.

A Hindu swami once commented to me that "if the screw took sixteen turns to put in, it will take sixteen turns to get out." Initially, the habit of a defensive horror, aims a surcease and relief. But having been relieved of old habits, there is still the habit of habits ... the desire to make a steady-state out of capability and success. Building new muscles of capability and replacing the helplessness and failure requires the same patience partakes of the same difficulty inherent in the years and years of treasured horror.

Patience. Bit by bit. Success takes practice ... after which the habit of success, like the habit of failure -- the habit of capability like the habit of helplessness -- needs to be addressed and, with luck, released. There's no pushing the river on this one. There is only an attentive life.

All the psychology and spiritual bullshit in the world doesn't interest me much. But where a man or woman is wracked or even just nudged by the horrific needling of their own jealously-guarded horrors ... well, it's as touching as it is terrifying.

Step by truly difficult step ... seeking relief.

Step by truly difficult step ... finding relief.

Step by truly difficult step ... releasing relief.

Step by step ...

It is enough.
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writer's joke

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Not sure why, but I really liked the "writer's joke" email passed along by a friend:

THE PAST, THE PRESENT
AND THE FUTURE
WALK INTO A BAR.
IT WAS TENSE.

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kumquat

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Sunshine and clear skies ... very much May when it is only March.

It's Monday and, as is increasingly the case, I got caught up in writing and almost missed the mundane responsibility of getting the trash out for pick-up.

My younger son is at school, my wife is at work, and my older son, free for some kind of spring break, is busy sleeping.

Unexpectedly, the word "kumquat" comes to mind. Not that I like them especially, but I do enjoy the word ... a tasty little surprise.

Hoping everyone has a kumquat day.
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I am the coin

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As usual, I have taken a quick look at the news sites this morning. I skipped like some flat rock thrown from a 10-year-old's hand out across the flat lake ... skip, skip, skip ... with occasional brief stops in the water before rising again and moving on and then finally, invariably, sinking out of sight.

Some of the news lingers, but instead of today's news, it is yesterday's short video sent along by a friend that catches my attention, that lingers, that has meaning and resonance. Yes, today there is the slaughter in Syria. Yes, today there is some dumb-and-dumber story about the Republican race for the presidential nomination. Yes, today there is follow-up to the American soldier who slaughtered 16 or 17 innocent Afghans. But what sticks with me is the voices collected on the small clip ... voices out of Mississippi, the poorest state in the nation ... voices that claim to love God, hate Obama, and revere families that seem to lack access to adequate dentistry. They are assured voices, the the kind of voices that assured, much-cosseted liberals love to despair of. Really, these voices are deeply uninformed ... and yet deeply assured.

Anyone can be assured. It is reassuring to be assured. Smart, dumb, wise, ignorant, tall, short, man, woman, black, white, rich, poor ... anyone can be assured and that assurance is reassuring. But what is it that needs reassurance, that seems to demand it? Perhaps it is the DNA-deep longing to be an accepted and perhaps beloved member of a group. But mostly, I suspect, I would like to reassure myself that I am who I claim to be ... hey! I've got a name and an address and a collection of beliefs and a profession and a family and a car and ... well, you know ... I belong and I know and I can prove it ... over and over and over and over again. I can prove it.

But if you could prove it, why would anyone need to keep proving it? Doesn't this ongoing insistence on adducing examples that underscore who I am prove that somehow the matter is not quite settled ... ever?

As a freshman in college, I was delighted to take my first course in philosophy. For all my teen-aged smarts, I hadn't realized that there was a whole discipline devoted to thinking about the stuff that I had previously thought only I thought about. I was like a pig at the trough.

One of our first assignments was to prepare for a debate. Half the class was assigned to take one side of the argument (I can't remember the topic) and the other half would buttress the opposing view. I studied for several hours, marshaling the arguments I would use if called upon. But just as I was about to conclude my arguments, just as I was pretty much satisfied with what I had gathered, a needle of doubt inserted itself and refused to withdraw: In order to know what the fuck I was talking about and in order to make it credible, wouldn't I have to know with a similar loving certainty what my opponent was going to say? There was no avoiding it, however cranky it made me.

Grudgingly, I went back to square one and concocted all the arguments for the other side. Another couple of hours down the drain. As I studied, I learned to love the other side of the coin as much as I loved my own. Really, there were some salient points -- laudable, credible, solid. And by the time I finished and began to mix and match my side with the other side ... suddenly I realized that two sides didn't make much sense. Yes, the mind could choose to say there were two sides and then argue the hell out of it, but that didn't make the construct true-to-life. It might be elevating or comforting to go to war, but elevation and comfort did not square up with life. In the early-morning hours as I ran out of study-steam, I realized I was going to make a choice and choices were OK ... but that didn't make them true in any abiding sense.

In the movie 1970 movie "Patton", the famed American tank commander of World War II (George S. Patton) was depicted at one of his great victories at the Kasserine Pass in North Africa. Patton's forces faced off against Afrika Corps troops shaped by the famed German tank commander, Erwin Rommel. The battle in 1943 was one of the first in which greenhorn and ineffective American troops finally got their feet under them. And in the movie, actor George C. Scott, playing Patton, is shown exulting to no one in particular after the victory: "Rommel, you magnificent bastard! I read your book!" Maybe Patton actually said that ... I don't know. But it was a great line.

Patton read Rommel's book. I studied up on my classmates' counter-arguments. It is intellectually sane to get some sense of opinions and judgments that are not your own. But learning the other side of the coin is never quite enough: No matter how many sides of the coin anyone might become familiar with, no matter how many aspects are intellectually ingested, still there is another side of the coin. Recognizing this is enough to make anyone want to move to Mississippi. So most of us choose our beliefs and conclusions and, roughly, say "fuck it!" As long as I can find people who agree with me, I will not be lonely and I can be more or less comforted and assured and reassured.

But "more or less," besides being lazy, is also never quite as peaceful as finding that which is fershur... some 100% answer that is not a pretext for reassurance. More or less is only more or less, which is a sure recipe for endless, fruitless seeking. The rabbit hole of intellectual refinement goes deeper and deeper and deeper ... and never finds bottom. Knowing two sides or ten sides or one hundred sides to the coin may qualify someone as a genius in the eyes of others, but is what others say ever enough?

Agreement and disagreement can provide wonderful condiments in an otherwise bland day. Finding the other side of the coin is useful and intellectually sensible. No point in being any dumber than you have to be.

But the really important part is some recognition and acceptance of the fact that, however much I may wish to win an acceptable place in a wider community, it is not agreeing with others that assures peace. It is agreeing with myself. And this is not some intellectual or emotional agreement ... any nitwit or Ph.D. can do that.

It may be hard to learn such responsibilities, but what other choice is there?

I am the coin.
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nice photo

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Passed along in email ... it looks better when clicked on and enlarged:

The short caption (accompanied by a longer one) reads: "A monk prays for a dead man in the station hall of the Shanxi Taiyuan Train Station in Shanxi, November 25, 2011. A monk who was waiting for the train performed a religious ceremony for the man, who was found dead, Xinhua News Agency reported. Picture taken November 25, 2011. REUTERS/Asianewsphot"
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job application

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I am out of the job stream these days, and I realize that in hard times job applicants may be more job supplicants, but as I look back at those invariable interviews that went with job applications, I think a good question for the applicant to put on the table might be,

"To what extent do you think that the managers and policy-makers of this company are willing to take personal responsibility for their policies and actions?"

The degree of spin that is put on the response may tell something about why an individual might or might not want to work for that company or institution.
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The Tantrum Room

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Among all the partitions the mind can perfect, perhaps there is none more important than a space in which caterwauling can be given room to roam.

"Caterwauling." I like that word.

Shrieks of anguish and desire....

Given room to roam.

Of course some have already constructed such elaborate and much-gilded environments and are positively insistent that everyone else should enjoy the realm as much as they do ... endless whining.

But for those who haven't, I think it would be kind to get to work. Maybe we could call it The Tantrum Room. No need to exercise the caterwauling capacity for the benefit of friends and neighbors. But it would be kind to create some breathing space ... much as a kindly grandmother might.

"Yes, dear. I understand. Take the second door on the right. It's The Tantrum Room. I'm sure you'll find it comfortable."

A place to shriek until the shrieks run out.

And if the shrieks don't run out?

That's the kindness of The Tantrum Room.
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darkness and light ... really?

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One of my favorite movies, a movie I am too much of a sissy to watch any more, is "Apocalypse Now." The movie comes as close as anything I have ever seen to capturing the amorphous, searing quality of a nightmare... a realm in which laughter and screams are locked in an intimate, dizzying embrace.

"Apocalypse Now" takes its template from author Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" and places that template around the Vietnam War. In the movie, a CIA agent is sent out to kill an American colonel who has disappeared deep into the jungle, formed his own indigenous fighting force, and carried the policies of war to extremes that his American handlers consider to be off-the-reservation ... extreme, "crazy" and beyond the pale of the war scenario those handlers created in the first place. In their minds, there is such a thing as a 'good war,' a war bounded by visions of civility and justice and a societal decency. As the movie makes plain, who, precisely, is crazy remains a very real question.

Today, I am thinking that going to extremes has its very real and sometimes imperative uses, but when it involves harming others, it has met its maker and deserves to be restrained. In spiritual endeavor, there is something to be said to going the whole hog ... really digging in; getting down and dirty; going the distance in an effort to winkle out the true truth of things. But this is a personal matter and when it begins to spill over onto others ... then it becomes a nightmare obscenity and completely antithetical to the goal that inspired the effort. As I say, I am just thinking....

In the news, an American soldier has become a focal point because, sometime after 3 a.m. today, he walked off base and killed 10 or perhaps as many as 17 Afghan civilians before turning himself over to American authorities. Men, women and children ... at random, apparently. Speculation suggests he had a nervous breakdown. But whatever happened, it is clear that his actions have horrified his superiors and probably the country he represents. Over the line, beyond the pale, off the reservation... and he is called "crazy." No doubt the court of public opinion will convict this man without a backward glance at the men and women wearing American flag lapel pins ... the ones who, in their sanity, shaped and initiated the war this soldier was sent to fight. He was sent to kill people. He killed people. But... oops ... we didn't mean those people. Killing those people is not what we meant. Honest.

In pursuit of goals touted as sane, we created a world of insanity and darkness ... all in the pursuit of light. And when our instructions are followed to their logical, insane ends, we balk at our own complicity. We find reasons and excuses for how and why we had no hand in such a nightmare. The need to maintain our lofty dreams will sacrifice this American who went "nuts."

Conservative shock-jock Rush Limbaugh, a legend in his own mind, 'went too far' recently when he called a young woman a "slut" after she testified before Congress about the need for insurance coverage for women's contraceptives. People like shock-jocks. They are bad boys. They say things publicly that others may confine to private conversation or perhaps just to their own minds. It's a relief and delight when someone says aloud what I do not dare to say. It helps me to believe I am not alone and not crazy. And yet the nature of shock-jocks is to say increasingly-shocking things ... more and more and more shocking until, as with Rush Limbaugh, the listening constituency says he has gone too far, he has stepped over the line, he has gone off the reservation, he is nuts. It is easier to blame Rush Limbaugh, a self-serving twit from the get-go, than it is to examine the lapel pins of approval that many wore before his misstep.

A rabbi suggests that Zionism, the Jewish nationalism that asserts the rights of Israel, is "against the will of the Almighty" and "is not what it means to be a Jew." Jews have historically suffered many outrages and it is perhaps understandable that their handlers might therefore make a profession out of defending themselves against real or perceived future threats, weaving a philosophy that is conveniently political or religious as circumstances demand. Zionism is pedal-to-the-metal. Understandable ... and, to the extent it hurts others, plainly nuts. Or, more accurately, as in all such situations, "righteous and true" or "plainly insane."

A Zen teacher was once asked what "the Middle Way" meant. He answered succinctly, "It means the extremes." And this speaks, in my mind, to the heart of things. It is important, for those who take their spiritual endeavor seriously, to enter into the heart of darkness, the heart of light. Under cover of some lofty aspiration, it is natural to uncover the shit-strewn nightmares that anyone might dream. Pedal to the metal, balls-out, go-the-distance ... purity uncovers slime, virtue reveals noxiousness, God actualizes Satan ... in no uncertain terms. It is not enough to praise the light and damn the darkness. It is only enough to surrender both light and darkness, stand on these two good feet ... and try not to spill your shit on anyone else's shoes.

Handlers like philosophy and religion and politics are simply not the point. Caterwauling and eulogizing simply cannot set a peaceful table.
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Frances Crowe

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With Frances Crowe 3/10/12

Frances Crowe, who turns 93 on March 15, consented to having her picture taken with me on the peace picket line today so that I could send it along to my stepmother, who turned 89 on Feb. 29. Makes me feel like a puppy, having turned a mere 72 on March 9.

We're all, I imagine, members of that inexorable club whose motto is, "I won't mention your wrinkles if you won't mention mine."

The thumb-sized Crowe, besides being a friend of my step-mother's, is a long- long- long- long-time peace activist. Cheerful as a kitten and tough as rhino hide. A good woman to whom many owe their thanks ... whether they know it or not.
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"the fickle finger of fate"

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The moving finger writes and having writ
Moves on; nor all your piety nor wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a line,
Nor all your tears blot out a word of it.

-- From The Rubaiyat of Omar Kayyam 

This, I imagine, is the source and inspiration for the malaprop, yet 

perfectly descriptive, "fickle finger of fate."

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jailed in garlic scam

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An agile entrepreneur in the UK has been sentenced to six years in jail for evading import duties (over 200%) on over 1,000 tons of Chinese garlic. Given the man's track record for generosity and contributing to the economy, the judge was reluctant to bring down the legal hammer. But he did.

It does make me wonder about the law and how/why American banker and stock-broker scofflaws can avoid even a six-year sentence. Maybe it's because there simply is no law for the significantly lawless.
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yak meat for my birthday

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For the first time in my life, I had yak meat for dinner. It was a birthday present to myself yesterday. Who knows if it was yak meat or not, but I was delighted to do something I had never done before. At my age, first's are pretty rare in the ordinary sense.

The meat was chewy and undistinguished by flavor. Nothing as distinct as lamb or venison. I like to think it was yak -- it was billed that way -- but the plain fact is it might well have been a lesser cut of beef or moose... or even the left rear leg of Champ, the aging golden retriever that lives around the corner. The meat was cooked with zucchini, red peppers, mushrooms and a bit of ginger ... all served in the white-bread way that restaurants in this town which is sometimes praised for its restaurants make their money. I had hoped for something to really love or hate -- a really unusual taste that made me yum or puke -- but I was happy to settle for a first.

Yak meat. Imagine that. After I finished some of what the Tibetan restaurant gave me, I was a bit sorry to have contributed to the death of a hapless yak. Not sorry enough to raise some meatless banner, but sorry nonetheless. I was grateful for sustenance but, well, I could easily have had some spaghetti and foregone this I-have-eaten-yak-meat medal on my chest.

At the Zen monastery I once flunked out of, the diet was vegetarian. And on the first run I made to town for supplies with another resident, both of us wolfed down deliciously greasy hamburgers washed down with sinfully sweet chocolate mild shakes. Talk about Nirvana! Tibetan Buddhists always struck me as more level-headed ... eating meat when meat was offered, eating vegetables when that was provided.

Eat, pay attention, be grateful ... that sounds about right to me.

Sometimes I think my entire interest in spiritual life is best summed up by the old joke about the nun who, while hammering a nail in order to hang a picture, whacked her thumb. "Damn!" she exploded. And then ruefully, "Shit! I just said 'damn'!" "Oh hell! I just said 'shit'!" "Jesus Christ! I just said 'hell'!" And finally, "What the fuck -- I never wanted to be a nun anyway!"
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wounds in the heart

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Of all the trip-wires in spiritual endeavor, I think of the intellect and belief are two of the most abrasive, confounding and painful. I suppose my upbringing has something to do with it ... I grew up smart and smart people are often true believers.

I thought of this the other day when a woman rabbi called up here to find out about doing some zazen. Jews have a traditional reverence for the intellect. Not that they're alone, just that the tradition is there. And there was a part of me that felt sad for this woman. How painful to be nourished and applauded and convinced ... only to find out that something is missing and that what is missing represents a suppurating wound in the heart.

But you can't tell anyone this stuff ... the stuff that will cauterize the wound. They have to recognize it themselves and then heal themselves. Swami Vivekananda said, "The mind [he meant intellect] is a good servant and a poor master." When the intellect hears such words, it sets out, bright-eyed-and-bushy-tailed, to 'understand.' Understand intellectually that the intellect cannot heal wounds ... how sad is that? Vivekananda was trying to tell people what cannot be told in any way that will do the job that needs to be done.

The intellect is a tool. No one is a tool. But anyone might put a tool to good use, when necessary. No one is a belief. But anyone might find a springboard for action in belief ... when necessary.

I don't know. It just made me sad, somehow. Intellect and belief -- mirage after mirage on some vast, unwatered desert.
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signs of the times

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-- In Detroit, people are so distressed in one way or another that they are giving up their pets and dogs are roaming the streets, untended to. This has led to a proposal to create a shelter in which no animal will be put to death -- a proposition the ASPCA has not been able to actualize, but some new group thinks it can. Wild dogs in a major city ... what does that say about our economic times?

-- Fearful that their island archipelago may be wiped out by rising, globally-warmed seas, Kiribati is considering a back-up plan -- buying $9.6 million worth of Fiji as a point for future refuge.

-- Coca-Cola and Pepsi, neither of whom wish to affix what could be a mandated cancer label, are changing the formula of their soft-drink offerings. Basically, it's just a change in coloration, but still ... Coke and Pepsi changing the winning formulas?

-- In the United Kingdom,

The move to ban public prayers in tiny Bideford — and potentially across all of England and Wales — has erupted into a national proxy fight over the question of whether Christianity should still hold a privileged place in a modern, diverse and now highly secular society.

Christianity, a once blase axiom, has become an assumption to question.

-- And in the United States, the protected realm of religious institutions has come under fire by lenders unwilling to shoulder unpaid church debt. They are foreclosing at record levels. It's a dog-eat-dog world -- and not just in Detroit. The maxim these days seems to be, "let the big dog eat!"
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brand new birthday

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Who knows if it's true or what it actually means, but I once heard that the cells in anyone's body become utterly revised or new every twelve years. A complete overhaul. And if that were true, today I would be six years old. Happy birthday!

But as I think about the twelve-year hypothesis, I get confused. It's not as if anyone went to bed one night and then got up in the morning and put on new underwear. It's not a shazzam-you're-completely-different matter. Over a period of 12 years, old parts are replaced here and there. Oil filter, spark plugs, alternator, brakes ... things get changed as one cell runs out of steam and another arises to fill in the gap. So at what point does anything become brand new ... or become old for that matter either.

The matter -- even if it's not true -- throws the whole "new" business into question. What new thing is there that is truly new ... ever? Or not-new either? Things seem to be different even as they are the same. Or the same even as they are different. Does anything ever 'stop' in a way that will satisfy the mind's demand to call things "new?" New job, new friends, new cars, new cell structure, new discovery, new philosophy, new religion, new tooth brush, new sunrise....

I could fit this all into a Buddhist template and prattle on about the 'interconnectedness of all things' or 'dependent co-arising,' but that strikes me as more hindrance than help. When something actually does happen and when it's right in front of your nose or rattling around in your mind's heart, well ... isn't that the important part?

I suppose there are people wise enough not to concern themselves with such things, but I'm not one of them. I'm only 6.

PS. Here's an apposite -- and, I think, hilarious -- clip offered in a comment below:


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starlight

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Strange to think:

Everyone is a star.

But no one can become a star.
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'improving' economy

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A bright-eyed-and-bushy-tailed news story about an improving economy includes the observation,

Economists expect home prices to fall even further this year. Banks are expected to resume millions of foreclosures now that they have settled with state and federal officials over questionable lending practices.

Stocks are going up (is that possibly because people have nowhere else to put what money they have?), people are starting to borrow ... and no one has done piss-in-a-snow-bank to reform the rules that nourished the 2008 Depression.

Joseph Goebbels, stand up and take a bow!
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Harada Roshi gives zazen instruction

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Taigen Shodo Harada Roshi offers instructions on how to do zazen. The subtitles are activated by going to the up arrow at the lower right and clicking on CC.


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