lingering scents

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I stayed up past my bedtime last night and woke up feeling a bit foggy and glum. As I skimmed the news, I found myself looking for something that made me laugh or delight -- some sugar to put on my morning-mood cereal. But news, as CBS journalist icon Walter Cronkite once observed, "is not about how many cats did not get up on the garage roof."

There was jubilation in Egypt because, after a couple of weeks of massive street demonstrations, the president, Hosni Mubarak, had left his post ... and the demonstrators were confronted with the question of what to do now that their dream had come true. There was a 6.8 earthquake in Chile; a maize crop in Mexico struck by freezing weather; and one-time movie beauty Elizabeth Taylor was being treated for congestive heart failure. The cats that did not get up on the garage roof were no where in evidence.

About the best pick-me-up came from an old friend to whom I had forwarded some silly poems about farts. Jonathan teaches English and writes poetry at a college in Boston and I was happy that he got a smile out of things like:

A fart is a pleasant thing,
It gives the belly ease,
It warms the bed in winter,
And suffocates the fleas.

 It's nice to run into light topics -- things anyone might be forgiven for forgetting in a nanosecond. But on the world stage as in life, things seem to linger and cloy. If I were a Zen Buddhist, all of this would be moot, I suppose ... but, well, I never was much good at that.

The reason I stayed up beyond my bedtime was that a thread I had started on this blog -- Eido Tai Shimano -- had run out of comment room. Five thousand posts was all the blog seemed willing to allow. A friend sent me an email saying no more comments were allowed. Since I was the one who started the thread as a way of allowing people to have their say about the sexual and fiduciary manipulations of this longtime Zen teacher, I felt bound to keeping the space available. So I created a new thread ... but not with much gusto. Like the demonstrators in Cairo, perhaps, I kind of hoped everything would turn out well and the struggle would be as easily forgotten as a poem about a fart. But however it turned out, it was my responsibility and ... OK, but I wasn't entirely happy about it.

Simultaneously, in the midst of this beyond-my-bedtime activity, it occurred to me to present the whole matter to a chum who had been a Los Angeles Times reporter. The New York Times had done a soft-soapy report on Mr. Shimano's sexual predations, but here was a chance to get some added coverage perhaps. So I wrote a letter to Elizabeth and added appropriate useful links. It took some time and the hope that it would result in much was pretty dim ... but still, don't point the pistol if you can't pull the trigger: It was my responsibility. Bleah.

The past, like some lingering fart, comes up and reasserts itself. One thing leads to the next and simply forgetting about the farts you have laid is not really an option. But that doesn't mean you can't hope it would be an option. About the most consoling line I can think of as the threads of one activity or another linger and insist and take on new roles is this: "In a hundred years, who'd know?"

Or, more blithely stated:

A fart can occur
In a number of places,
And leave everyone there,
With strange looks on their faces .
From wide-open prairie,
To small elevators,
A fart will find all of
Us sooner or later.

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Eido Tai Shimano (continued)

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This is a continuation of the first Eido Tai Shimano thread which, after 5,000 posts, refuses to accept new ones. I am also posting the original introduction to that thread.
______________________________________________

Thursday, November 12, 2009
letter to Eido Tai Shimano
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What follows is a letter I wrote in 1982 to Eido Tai Shimano, the chief executive of Zen Studies Society in New York and Dai Bosatsu Monastery in upstate New York. Mr. Shimano is a Zen teacher.

The reason for posting a letter of so many years ago is not to open the old wounds that bled freely in their time. Nor is it to deny that Zen Buddhism in America has made great strides when it comes to the sexual and financial abuses that it has faced and continues to face from time to time. Nor is it to suggest that I have not been a hypocrite. Nor is it to elevate my own status as a rebel or nay-sayer or promoter of some one true virtue. I too love Zen Buddhism both in its directions and in its experiential truth.

I am posting it as a reminder that the past is or can be very much the present and further that the 'scandals' that have occurred involved very real and particular people and that those people suffered in ways that are contrary to Zen Buddhist teaching. Not for nothing did the teachers of the past make upsetting the sangha a no-no. Not for nothing did they encourage repentance when it was warranted. And not for nothing were they aware that in the human sphere, however elevated and adored, the room for error was and remains a very real possibility.


November 1, 1982

The Rev. Eido Tai Shimano
New York Zendo
223 East 67th St.
New York, NY 11021

Dear Mr. Shimano:

Thank you for your creative letter of Oct. 19, 1982 with its equally masterful enclosure of Oct. 21 to Mr. George (Jochi) Zournas. I must say that as I began to read your work I felt some vestigial hope that you might in fact clear the air, turn some metaphorical corner and clarify what, over the years, has become murky with the stuff that Soen Roshi has learned to call your “lies.” By the time I finished reading your words, I was, of course, disappointed if not surprised.

“So much sitting, so many sesshins, so many dokusans…” and still Soen Roshi calls you a liar. Could you tell me why? Is this perhaps another encouragement to “bravely march on?” Coming as Soen Roshi does out of a society that takes pride in indirection, still he uses this most direct word, “liar.” Why? Coming as he does out of a discipline that enjoins confession and straight-forwardness, he calls you a liar. Why? Among the monks at Dai Bosatsu last summer you managed to plant the idea that Soen Roshi was an alcoholic and/or senile. But why would a senile alcoholic even bother to call you a liar? Politics, you say? – because Soen Roshi wants Dai Bosatsu, to become king of the some American Zen castle? If Soen Roshi actually did want Dai Bosatsu, why not give it to him? Do you not owe him a great debt for his teaching, perhaps as Torei felt he owed Hakuin? As a ‘true man without rank,’ with so many sesshins, so much sitting, and so many dokusans behind you, surely you recognize that the toys of Zen Buddhism – the robes and monasteries and power – are only dreams. Could you, a ‘Zen Master,’ be fooled by a dream?

But this, of course, is not your understanding. Your understanding seems to be that They are all out to get you – you who are blameless in administration, honest in the dokusan room, pure and “fair” and deserving of respect from those who support and make possible your meaning as a person of rank. It is the questioners who are “insane” or full of “intense personal hatred” or want Your zendo or want Your monastery or hate you because you have money and they have not or don’t understand the ‘Japanese’ group and you…you bear it all so remarkably well, so staunch and patient. You are really very good at it: masterful, if not the master.

Besides those Jochi George Zournas mentioned in his letter (those Others who were out to get you), I would like to take this opportunity to recollect some others, perhaps not quite so august, who have left our own sangha. I am not now referring to those who left because they moved or to those who made an easy personal choice, but rather to those who left after some discovery in that beautiful zendo where there is room for our lifelong practice. True, some left in anger or confusion, but what was it they really discovered? Is it possible they discovered what Soen Roshi called your “lies?” I really don’t know, but I recollect them now and express my sorrow at their leaving: Daishin Peter Gamby, Maishin Mike Sopko, Reimon Ray Crivello, Genmyo Elihu Smith, Sojun George Seraganian, Bunyu David Bogart, Roca Lorca Morello (all of whom were residents as Sho Bo Ji with your blessings),Kanzan Bruce Rickenbacker (your monk who memorized the whole of the Diamond Sutra), Daiko Charles Carpenter (another of your monks), Shoro Lou Nordstrom (another of your monks), Kozen Peter Kaufman (another of your monks), Jonen Sheila Carmen (pseudonym), Wendy Megerman, Nennen Merry White, Toni Snow, Reishu Jim Gordon, Shinso Merete Galesi, Ishin Peter Mathiessen, Jean Day, Carol Binswanger, Jochi George Zournas, Wado Vicki Gerdy, Rinko Peggy Crawford and Mushin Frank LoCicero. You will recall, or course, that, over the years, the list has grown much, much, much longer and is filled with people who did not show sufficient “skepticism about rumors,” as you so quaintly put it.

How many of them came to you directly in 1975 and 1979 (when what were humorously referred to as the “Fuck Follies I” and the ”Fuck Follies II” were unveiled)? How many? Was it 10 or perhaps 20? Without any exception I know of, each of those who came to you directly came in a spirit of admiration and love, in hopes of clarifying a delicate matter without public exposure. The situation: your manipulation of the dokusan setting for your own periodic sexual satisfaction (seducing women); treating lovers taken from within the sangha with contempt once you had finished with them; and taking no candid responsibility for your own behavior but rather answering direct, honest and caring queries with, in one form or another, the line you used in a jam-packed zendo in 1975: “It’s none of your business.”

The line of people outside your door is long, very, very long. In my mind, they wait silently – the They and Them whom you so easily accuse of insanity or intense personal hatred. A long line of crazy people outside your door. What brought them there? Even crazy people have their reasons, don’t you agree?

Look! There’s Merry White. Remember her? She was the one who sent a letter to the Board of Trustees in 1979 outlining without rancor your sexual blackmail. It was she who wrote: “Personally, I found his (your) seductions very distracting and jarring during the first Kessei…I wonder now if I would not have been a better student in the long run without it. ... And last year (1978) during my second stay at Dai Bosatsu, it hurt me that he treated me very distantly for quite a while. When he warmed up, it became sexual again. That kind of either/or situation made it very difficult for me (or, I would think, any woman) to be his student. You want his attention and his help, and that, I think, is how it begins. He takes this emotional opening-up, which is normal and right in a spiritual student-teacher relationship, as a sign of sexual readiness.” Clearly the Board of Trustees, your Board of Trustees, took the only possible sane action by never fully discussing the matter and by issuing a letter, signed by Korin Sylvan Busch stating, “we affirm our confidence in Eido Roshi and his leadership of our sangha.”

And there’s Jane Smith (pseudonym)! Remember her? December 24, 1977, Room 1100A at the Statler Hilton after dinner at Mama Leone’s. Remember how the board of Trustees covered that one when Jochi and Korin, at whose instigation I can only guess, spread lies and rumors about Jane – how she was only dreaming of an affair with you? And how even Jane was drawn into the lies and told them on herself because she believed the truth would be harmful to you and to Zen practice in America? She was the same one who commented later in front of witnesses that “he (you) never even said thank you.”

And Carmen!… But of course you will recall this and much, much more.

On and on and on it goes down that long, long line. Person after person, Bodhisattva after crazy Bodhisattva, each of them willing their suspicions to silence. How is it possible they were so willing, so stupid? Perhaps it was because many people begin their spiritual practice with the understanding that the ascendancy they have previously granted to their emotions and intellect is the source of much suffering. Because of that pain, they were willing to set aside their own emotions and intellect (to the extent possible), and to be as faithful and obedient as possible. Perhaps they counseled themselves that intellect and emotion are more delusion. And perhaps they trusted that your emotions and thoughts were not based in delusion. This trust, however misguided, was surely human and understandable. Unfortunately, it was and is open to manipulation and deceit. There are many I know, myself among them, who practiced with you and were grateful to you, until, a little at a time, they began to wonder. In their wondering, they came to you in their twos and threes and tens, not even caring very much that you took lovers on the side, but curious about a wider pattern of contempt and manipulation. No doubt you saw them as insane people out to take your toys. Well, they didn’t get them, did they?

To some you said your Japanese heritage and samurai code of honor kept you from understanding or responding to these puritanical “barbarians.” Isn’t it odd for a so-called Zen Master who has lived in America for 20 years to claim he understands neither his students nor his environment? Isn’t such a person in the wrong line of work? No doubt it is equally insane to suggest that a real Japanese man would know something of discretion and that a true samurai would not exhibit contempt and dishonesty towards those in his own circle of honorable endeavor.

Of course it was more difficult to use this line on Dr. Tadao Ogura, the psychiatrist who offered to act as arbitrator in the present upheaval. He was the one who suggested taking three “impartial” observers from the sangha with him when he listened to the direct testimony of those involved. The group would then have reported to the Board of Trustees, your own Board of Trustees. Perhaps he too was one of the insane ones, the ones who had to be stopped. And stopped he was when Korin Sylvan Busch, at whose instigation I can only guess, let it be known that three “impartial” sangha members could not be found.

The long line outside your door does not say these things. They are silent. They are gone. It is I who say them, I, Kigen. I take responsibility for saying what I have said and doing what I have done. I have company, but I take responsibility for myself. I am one of Them, those Others whose fault it all is, one of the ones who supported you well, offered you gratitude, did his best to practice the Zen Buddhism of the Patriarchs, lied or remained silent for you on numbers of occasions, lied or remained silent to myself about you, endured and perpetuated your deceits, and, finally...went...”insane.”

It is out of that insanity that I also offer you my most sincere and honest thanks. I offer thanks without irony or sarcasm. You have taught me well and I am grateful. Besides the mechanics of Zen Buddhism, you have also taught me what a Zen Master is not – a teaching worthy of a true Zen Master. Although your teaching lacked the creative clarity, the nurturing of the Buddha Dharma, and the straight-forwardness of a truly enlightened man, still I say your teaching was fine. As I value my life, my Zen practice, so I value this teaching.

This is a time for potential new beginnings – yours, mine, the sangha’s. Always new beginnings. I pray now and will continue to pray that each of us may one day face death with strong, even breaths and perhaps a small smile of true understanding.

Thank you and goodbye.


Adam Fisher


It was during that same time period that I heard perhaps the sharpest rebuke I have ever heard in my life. At one point, Soen Roshi was talking face to face with Mr. Shimano and discussing the reported disharmony Mr. Shimano played a role in. Mr. Shimano offered his responses. And Soen Roshi reportedly said sadly, "Now it comes -- dead rock!"

Russia in color 100 years ago

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A pretty evocative collection of color photos taken 100 years ago. The collection looks bigger and better than what is allowed here ... for example:

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what works

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It's such a pleasure to find something that works -- something that does not require anyone to say it works. It just does work.

I was cleaning the bathroom this morning. I took about a half a cup of ammonia, added a quart-plus of warm water and ... voila! I couldn't immediately find the old-fashioned mop that might have lasted for years and likewise worked, so I got down on my hands and knees with an old dish towel for a swab.

Ammonia works. No, it does not smell like some angel's armpit, but paying for all that perfume in other products adds up and the cleaning power rates from medium to poor. One mop and a two-quart container of ammonia would probably cost something less than $10 and last for ... hell, I don't know how long, but a lot longer than sprays marked Windex, Chlorox, etc.

How nice the bathroom is clean.

Ammonia works, irrespective of what anyone says.

Buddhism is like that too.

I like things that work.
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water power

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Let's revisit the issue in three years and see who has co-opted the technology and how fortunate the consumer turns out to be.


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listening

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I woke up this morning remembering and somehow simultaneously being grouchy about remembering. Memory is such a whore house -- lacking in intimacy of the present but full of inaccurate, fantasized delight -- and yet the delights of the present, the wows, dwindle into a kind of second-hand staleness as well ... all the news is old news ... the wars, the politics, the marriages, the accomplishments ... very been-there-done-that, seemingly second-hand in the very moment when they are first-hand. I guess it's a function -- a koan -- of age and yet memory grabs the attention now and then. It seems as worthwhile -- if flimsy -- as anything in the present.

This morning I woke up remembering an upbringing in which listening was a part of the landscape. There was no internet and there were no television sets. There was the radio with its afternoon soap operas and evening adventures ("The Lone Ranger," "The Green Hornet," "The Shadow" "Gang Busters" "Mystery Theater" and some spooky sci-fi shows). There was my mother reading to me before bedtime (she read me the whole of Mary Shelley's 800-900-page "Frankenstein" in addition to fairy tales and things she herself had written). And there were 78-rpm records ... the music of folk singer Pete Seeger in his socialist days with the Almanac Singers, the waltzes of Johann Strauss, and even the spoken tale of Robin Hood -- a tale in which the bandit of legend was fatally poisoned in the end by his love-interest, Maid Marian.

Listening meant attention. It meant the listener was required to paint the picture, to become involved in the creation of the story. At the time, it was nothing special ... listening, painting, imagining, becoming a part of something that was rich. It took you away and yet it required you to take yourself away ... through the tall trees of Sherwood Forest, out onto the ice when tracking Dr. Frankenstein's monster (in the book, the doctor was clearly the villain), swept up in the lilting melodies of a waltz, or scared witless by some grisly, imaginative radio show.

Listening. It was richer and more intimate than the Saturday-afternoon matinee movies precisely because there were no pictures to distract and limit the mind. The prowess or defeat of the tale were entirely up to the listener. Colors were the colors of the mind. The laughter and tears were my laughter and tears. And if by chance the tale described a man in a green hat, still, the height and strength and look of the man were up to the listener as was the color of the hat ... what shade of green was it precisely?

Listening seemed somehow important to me this morning as I basked, inattentive, in memory. I felt fortunate to have been instructed in that way. Listening speaks to limitlessness and a lightness of being and I like the woo-hoo of soaring, however inaccurate it may be. Like every other kid, I imagine, I would lie in bed at night and wonder (of the stars in the sky, perhaps), "What's beyond that? And what's beyond that? And what's beyond that?" until eventually I would fall asleep, questions unanswered and yet delicious in the asking.

Memory is never exactly accurate. It is a past colored by an ungraspable present and thus is suspect from the get-go. It is stale in one sense and fresh as a daisy in another. Wallowing in the past is like trying to wallow in the present ... a fiction, however delightful. Stale fictions.

But there is listening.
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Brad Warner's take

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Genpo

For most, I suppose, it's a tempest in an overrated Buddhist teapot, but Genpo Roshi's announcement that he would disrobe as a Soto monk and yet continue with his "Big Mind" business model for enlightenment has aroused any number of reactions. I haven't read them all, but one of Genpo's biggest detractors, Brad Warner, another Soto monk, offered a pretty cogent and sometimes touching analysis of Genpo's activities that ended with:

Some people think it's a violation of the Buddhist precepts to point out garbage like this for what it is. Genpo and his buddies count on this mistaken interpretation of the precepts to intimidate those who ought to speak out against what so many of us can see clearly is abusive and harmful. I don't agree with that interpretation. This is some very nasty shit. And all of us who teach Zen are implicated in it by association. Our silence allows it to continue.

Fuck you Genpo Roshi.

The first comment below that fiery ending was this:

Genpo Roshi said...

I'll fight you any day of the week, Warner. Any day, any time. Name the place and let's do it.

So much for Buddhist serenity as it is generally conceived.

And here is Brad's take on Genpo's announcement that he would disrobe.

As near as I can get it, Brad's quarrel with Genpo is a little like the quarrel I have in my mind with a Catholic

Brad

church that abhors abortion: If you urge those who are pregnant to bear the baby and offer few if any support mechanisms that will care for mother and child postpartum, then how healthy can the mandate or the one mandating it be? Genpo has a thriving business that promises a just-add-water time frame in which to achieve what is commonly called "enlightenment," but provides little if any support to those who have managed to strip away their delusions in the course of experiencing that "enlightenment." On the face of it, it is a cruelty masquerading as a kindness and as such is manipulative ... if remunerative.

Brad, as far as I can see it, has manufactured a quasi-bad-boy persona along the Zen Buddhist circuit, but his public persona strikes me as masking an honest thoughtfulness. He is not just some nitwit railing against the hypocrisies that humanity can nourish. He is talking about flesh-and-blood people who honestly long for some more stable and peaceful way. And of course they are vulnerable and sometimes foolish. But that's no reason to take advantage of their vulnerabilities. Brad speaks out for what I consider a common decency that deserves even more attention in a world of spiritual endeavor.

Mind you, I never met Brad and for all I know he is the neighborhood child molester, but his written words strike me as thoughtful and honest ... even when he gets a hard-on as in the case of Genpo.

As with the Eido Tai Shimano thread on this blog (which celebrated a first birthday today with close to 5,000 comments), so much anguish and anger and confusion is woven into the manipulations of so-called spiritual teachers that it is hard not to think it is just part of the territory. It all reminds me of the old insult that went "He's so dumb he could fuck up a wet dream!" Why and how the desire arises to fuck up this wet dream or that, I don't honestly know. But in spiritual life, it seems somehow especially heinous and deserving of reproof.

"Caveat emptor!" is too simple and too dismissive in the world of spiritual endeavor. It just indicates how anyone might rightly desire to elude the thorny particulars of a teacher's misconduct and the student's longing to trust. Teachers need to hold themselves to a more benevolent and clear-headed standard. I don't honestly say it will happen, but the imperative is there. It goes with the territory ... even it the territory is littered with those who decline to acknowledge that imperative in subtle and gross ways. As U.S. President Harry S. Truman once said, "if you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen."


"Our silence allows it to continue." How sad and how true.

 Brad Warner's arguments, both in particular and in general, have my ear ... up to and including a resounding, "fuck you!"
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if-then

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My younger son (16) had it figured out: He would continue to take care of his body with exercise and nutrition and then he would die at 82. "And I'll be able to say I called it at 16," he concluded half-lightly as we sat chatting on the couch.

It sometimes amazes me what people think about beyond the easy-come-easy-go daily expositions. For daily public consumption, there is a more or less sophisticated TV-show persona that paints a confident picture. But inside there are wispy wonderings, questions and scenarios that can't be settled with bright banter or even gloomy analysis... how can I die when I am so full of life? will it hurt? what happens after that? where do things go when they die? where do they come from when they are born? if I was sad yesterday and am glad today, well, how does that work? And the answers to such wispy wonderings cannot come from books ... books are part of the more or less sophisticated TV persona that paints a confident picture.


For my money, there is nothing wrong with if-then suppositions. If I exercise and eat right, then I will live until I am 82. If I bang my thumb with a hammer, then it will hurt. If I go to the supermarket, then I can buy food. If-then ... cause and effect. It's an ancient habit, isn't it? -- something exercised in every moment of every day. There is a certain solace and stability in it ... things that happened yesterday will happen, given similar circumstances and intent, today. And sometimes they do...sort of.

But sometimes they don't. And that's where the wispy wonderings gain sway. All that exercise and nutrition and perhaps a person will not die until s/he is 102 ... or perhaps s/he will die getting out of today's shower. Maybe the supermarket will be closed. Maybe hitting my thumb with a hammer will not hurt all that badly ... or perhaps it will be worse.

Nothing wrong with if-then except for the insistence ... the expectation that comes between "if" and "then." When expectation is absent, well, anything can happen. But if anything can happen, my importance is diminished ... things happening without reference to my TV persona if's. It's scary. The expectation is so profound that losing the expectation ... well, it's enough to push a (wo)man into despair or determinism or annihilationism ... womb-gloom-tomb... more TV persona stuff.

If-then -- what a close friend and yet what a sponsor of wispy-wondering doubt. The only remedy I can think of that stands half a chance is to pay attention. Yes there is an "if," some proposition. But isn't such a proposition followed by ... anything at all? Anything...at...all?

Crouching in fear does no good. The only option I can see is to put heart and soul into our if's -- hold nothing back -- and then ... see what happens. It's kind of nifty.
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domino effect

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"It's a lousy way to start the day," my younger son observed this morning.

He was referring to the fact that the car in which he generally drove to school was idling in the driveway with the keys locked inside and no way to find the extra key that was kicking around the house somewhere. His mother generally starts the car as a means of warming the interior before she heads to work in her own car. My son heads out five or ten minutes later. But not today.

The fact that his car was stuck in the driveway until the tow service arrived meant that my car, parked in front of his, was likewise immobilized and I had to miss a medical appointment. And my daughter's car was also blocked ... everyone lined up like dominoes in the icy driveway. All for lack of an extra key. All for lack of the forethought that would have simply left my son's car unlocked ....

Shit happens and some days getting out of bed is more pleasant than others.

In South Carolina, workers saved a newborn boy from freezing to death in a sports arena portable toilet. The mother had given birth and then left the child to die, but the cleaning crew saved the boy and the woman is now in custody. All eyes are fixed on the potential death of the child, the imagined hard-heartedness of the mother ... the judgments that arise from the incident.

But stories never tell the whole story. The story of the infant saved from the piss and shit does not say anything about the circumstances of the mother ... how and why she might have felt driven to do what she did. I'm not trying to sketch some white-whine, find-an-excuse, argument. I'm just interested in how every story has a story and each of those stories has a story. No one can tell "the story." They can only tell "a story."

My wife had her reasons for starting my son's car and then locking the car as it ran. My son had his reactions to a day on which his usual schedule was upended. I felt the fallout as well and called to medical office to inform them of my dilemma. That office no doubt had to rethink its scheduling. The car-towing service got some business. The woman in South Carolina sits behind bars and her newborn recovers in the hospital. And here I sit writing about dominoes ... which some poor fool will then read ... or not.

The "interconnectedness" of all things is kool to talk about and suck on like a lollipop.

And then there is the interconnectedness for real. Story heaped on story. Story intersecting with and infusing stories. Call it oneness and run the very real -- and warranted -- risk of someone's calling you an asshole. Call it different and run precisely the same risk.

But it is interesting, I think.
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technological challenge

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Watching a "Frontline" TV show about technology and how it is changing the ways in which people live, I found myself tensing up. Tense about the fact that fewer people read as technology advances; tense about the fact that soldiers in Colorado could use joy sticks to kill people a half a world away and be home for dinner with their families on that same day ... a fact that stressed them out as well; tense about the fact that fewer and fewer people could use written communication to transmit any but shorter bursts of thought ....

I was tensing up because, I suppose, change was in the wind. What, I wondered tartly, would all these people do when the electricity was not available? Would they be able to find their ass with both hands? And if, as many of those interviewed admitted, they spent gobs of time in a virtual reality, when would they ever get laid?

I could feel the tension. It was nothing I couldn't cope with, but I could feel myself being highly skeptical.

Highly skeptical right up until the moment when one analyst, a quiet-spoken woman who seemed to have her head screwed on the right way noticed aloud, approximately, "technology challenges us to express our human values. But before we express them, we have to know what they are. And it's not easy."

And with those words, the tension was wiped out as surely as air can be let out of a balloon. The important stuff was not being erased -- it was just being challenged from another direction. There might be new and improved ways to ignore what was important but the immemorial potential to discover what was important remained unscathed.

Don't get me wrong -- I'm not about to go out and get a hundred new gadgets or learn how to kill people in Pakistan or Afghanistan, but I do feel somewhat more relaxed about the distances and intimacies that simply require a newly-configured effort.
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iPhone confessional

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BBC

8 February 2011

The Catholic Church has approved an iPhone app that helps guide worshippers through confession.

The Confession program has gone on sale through iTunes for £1.19 ($1.99).
Described as "the perfect aid for every penitent", it offers users tips and guidelines to help them with the sacrament. Complete story.

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Hitler's lost singing videos

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An email and subsequent search revealed a thriving cottage industry in over-dubbed Hitler footage. Who knew?

Eg.:

Hitler Sings I Saw Her Standing There - watch more funny videos

and


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and

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

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taxing the witches

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Feb 8, 10:13 AM (ET)

By ALISON MUTLER
BUCHAREST, Romania (AP) - There's more bad news in the cards for Romania's beleaguered witches.
A month after Romanian authorities began taxing them for their trade, the country's soothsayers and fortune tellers are cursing a new bill that threatens fines or even prison if their predictions don't come true.
Superstition is a serious matter in the land of Dracula, and officials have turned to witches to help the recession-hit country collect more money and crack down on tax evasion. Complete story.

No word on whether there will be a similar penalty for religious persuasions whose predictions don't come true.

reflection

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Wrote this elsewhere, but thought I would save it here:

I rate reflection as a good thing. Pronouncements don't solve much. Reflections meander and sniff like some cautious alley cat. Reflections test and dismiss the limitations of definition and meaning -- the stuff that invariably turns stale and confining. Reflection is like a smorgasbord that cannot be limited to the Swedish meatballs ... reflection ambles and segues and leads us all by the hand.

And every now and then, reflection poses a possibility that wants some deeper and more determined investigation -- no more lounge-lizard sallies, but a get-to-the-bottom-of-it suggestion. Each chooses his or her possibility to get down with. One such might be Swami Vivekananda's observation, "The mind (he meant intellect) is a good servant and a poor master."

Or not.

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good news and bad

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I don't mean to ruffle any feathers and I don't mean that Buddhism is devoid of its Pollyanna expositors, but I wondered just now if it were true...

Christianity (to pick one religious example) offers up some good news to its adherents, something glowing and pleasant and a change from whatever aches and pains may exist.

Buddhism, by comparison, and at its best, does not offer good news or bad. Buddhism sticks with the facts and for that reason holds out a more convincing promise.
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complaining

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In the wake of yesterday's micro-thaw, the roads and driveways are icy and slick. There is an 80% chance of snow tomorrow, according to the forecast, but at least it is not snowing today. The whiteness is stacked up to porch railings on our street and I can envision a flooded basement once the stuff starts to thaw in earnest. So ... if I'm not complaining about the snow, I can look forward to complaining about the thaw. After which I will segue into complaining about the heat. My repository of complaints seems to be endless.


Imagine all the free time I'd have if I weren't complaining. Complaining, worrying ... and reassuring myself that my place in the universe had meaning and importance.

What would I do with all that free time?

Perhaps I would enjoy myself. :)
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let's assume....

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Yesterday on the peace picket line, I was casually chatting with Andy and for some reason I made some reference to what I considered to be a fact -- that Israel has a canny tendency to mix religion and politics ... if they cannot convince you with one approach, they will dissolve into the other in order to prove a point. There are plenty of other countries that do the same thing, so I didn't feel I was being unfair or biased.

But a woman standing nearby upbraided me, saying the what I suggested was dangerously close to "anti-Semitism," Her comment brought me up short. I'm not against Arabs, Jews and others in the Middle East, I thought. But then the dime dropped: Anti-Semitism, in her lexicon, meant anti-Jewish, the common, cultural usage of the word.

An etymological description of the word "Semite" includes this:

 In recent use often with the specific sense "Jewish," but not historically so limited.

So there the two of us were, working with different assumptions. She seemed to feel that to speak skeptically of Israel (and therefore mostly Jews) was anti-Semitic. It's a common enough and much-promoted presumption in this country. My bias, on the other hand, was that human beings, wherever they come from, have the capacity to be idiotic and self-serving and that there is no reason why it shouldn't be duly noted.

The woman seemed offended that I did not agree to a commonly-held bias. And perhaps I was offended that she didn't see what struck me as axiomatically true...in the realm of self-serving idiocy, human beings seem to have no equal.

It was just a small moment and did not devolve into a shouting match. She did manage to play the Holocaust card before the conversational exchange evaporated, but since by that time I had a better handle on where she was coming from, I didn't bite.

But it was interesting -- my assumptions, her assumptions ... everyone making assumptions. Maybe that's a habit to look into.

I am willing to apologize to any Arabs or Jews who might somehow be offended, but I have a much harder time apologizing to idiots.
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free from virtue

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There is something to be said for instituting a virtuous or meritorious endeavor. It takes determination and patience and it often pays off in a sense of ease or contentment. Some even turn virtue and merit into a full-bore occupation -- encouraging or threatening others with a metaphorical big stick ... be virtuous or get screwed in one way or another... accumulating merit is the way to go.

But when it comes to what is called virtue, I think I think that virtue is only as good as the willingness and ability to set it aside, to let it go utterly. If you can't let it go, how could you ever discover what you were holding in the first place?
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the fix is in

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In the world of U.S. sports, performance-enhancing drugs are met with horror and derision. Hero after hero is called into question or fined or revealed to be, in some way, a faker. The purity of athletic competition is sullied.

On Wall Street, the use of insider information and other manipulations that benefit the few receive catcalls and occasional lawsuits. It ain't right, right?

And now, in Japan, the sumo wrestling championships have been called off because a number of top-flight behemoths are accused of fixing matches.

The only time I ever returned from the track with more money than I came with was a long time ago when I went to the races with a fellow reporter and a firefighter from a nearby community. The firefighter knew people and, a few minutes before each race, he would drift into the crowd and then return and say something laconic like, "I believe I'd bet on the number six horse."

The fix is in.

Is there anything in life so good that it cannot be corrupted? I doubt it. Cynics may delight in this information, thinking themselves more hip or with-it or realistic than the rubes who trust and believe. Belief is delicious, trust feels wonderful ... but then there is cold, hard, realistic cash. Politicians, philosophers and religious adherents are no more or less immune -- a sweeping vision that attracts followers and ... well, what is beautiful and inspiring carries with it what is ugly and unkind.

Believers and cynics don't interest me much. Each camp has something to say for itself within the social forum. What does interest me is the individual's capacity to put in the fix when it comes to his or her own lofty or inspired visions ... finding short-cuts and excuses and manipulative explanations that will produce a result that on the surface is grand and fulfilling, but underneath is pitted with corruption.

This capacity is worthy of more than lofty insults. It is worth looking at and being aware of.

If there is nothing that cannot be 'fixed,' well, who is doing the fixing? Is it worth it? These are not trick questions for which there are right and wrong answers. There are elements of pure trust and soaring belief. There are elements of savvy manipulation and irresponsible cruelty. Who owns this stuff? Trying to write off trust and belief isn't quite it and trying to call corruption into question isn't quite right. So ... what is quite right?
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ban on farting?

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As if there were not enough difficulties to go around, Malawi is busy debating whether a new law prohibits farting in public. There doesn't seem to be any discussion yet about whether mufflers or fart-catchers will be mandated and it is hard not to pity the poor police chiefs who might be assigned to enforce the would-be law.

Do SBD's (silent but deadlies) count?
What happens to the poor man or woman who is wrongly accused simply because s/he was in proximity to Mr. King Kong Fart?
What means are suggested for quelling this public nuisance?
What constitutes courtroom proof?

It's only envisioned as a misdemeanor, but even that seems a bit much.
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credentials

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There is power in numbers, but there is also weakness.

Twice in the last day or so I have been reminded of this ... the tendency of individuals to band together in agreement with a stated purpose. In one instance, an individual was denied inclusion in a particular Zen Buddhist organization because he failed to fill out an endless and intrusive application to the satisfaction of the organization. His actions were not sufficient proof of his worthiness to be included.

I'm not saying that the 'credentials' approach to jobs or memberships is necessarily off base. A college degree, for example, may indeed tell an employer something about the applicant. But if that were the only yardstick, how many truly useful candidates would be excluded? If a mediocre middle (perfect credentials) were the best any organization could ask for, how could an organization hope to actualize its best intentions? On the other hand, you don't hire a pig farmer to fix a computer.

I'm not so interested in ranting against organizations and their yardsticks. What I am interested in is the willingness of individuals to assume that credentials are enough when assessing others.

When I got out of the army, I had about a year to go before I completed my college courses. But I had little or no interest in going back to college. I wanted to work. My mother got me an interview with her editor at Doubleday, a book publisher at the time. Lee was a crusty senior editor who had been around the block and was not afraid to be wrong. We talked for about half an hour before he asked me bluntly, "So, do you want a job?" And after I said I did, he seemed satisfied: "OK," he said, "let me call personnel and get this college crap out of the way." I worked at Doubleday for five years and did a pretty good job because, college or no college, I knew what I was doing. Lee took a risk and trusted his own judgment rather than the judgment that might be found in the 'credentials' his company might rely on. I didn't let him down.

Relying on others -- relying on credentials -- has its uses, perhaps, but it also has its dangers and I think it is worth knowing where you stand irrespective of what others say and how comfortable it might be to agree with others.

As LaRochefoucauld, damn him!, observed: "The intelligence of the mass is inversely proportionate to its number." The cozy protectiveness of agreement may be appealing, but there is only one person looking back at you in the bathroom mirror. Being in agreement with that one is pretty much the only agreement worth making if you want a little peace, a little excellence, in this life. That mirror is the first place to look if what you want is more than a mediocre agreement.
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honest Abe

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Attributed to U.S. President Abraham Lincoln:

You can fool all of the people some of the time and some of the people all of the time but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.

 Not a bad yardstick for the next time any of us open our big mouths.
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surprise! surprise!

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What the hell is a surprise, anyway? I'm asking literally, not trying to say I know or claim some superior ground when it comes to surprises.

On the one hand, surprises can be utterly delightful. On the other, they can stop you dead in your sorrowful tracks. In either case, life seems to take an unexpected turn. When it's a pleasant turn (the punch line on a good joke, finding out, contrary to expectations, that someone you like likes you, etc.), it's a delight that seems to make everything fresh. When it's an unpleasant turn (a friend dies, the car gets a flat at the beginning of a long-anticipated vacation, etc.), there is some wish that things might be otherwise.

There can be a longing for pleasant surprises and an aversion to unpleasant ones. Winning the lottery or receiving a friendly note ... ahhhh. Breaking a leg or being chastised for behavior you thought was appropriate ... ouch.

Life takes a turn you didn't expect and somehow that foiling of expectation is more true than taking the turns you did expect or hope for or hoped to evade. Man proposes, God disposes ... or, perhaps, life is what happens while you were busy making other plans.

Buddhists and their ilk can wax lyrical about every moment's being a surprise of sorts. Of course, it's true and 'wise' and all of that -- every moment is fresh. But the observation itself is a bit stale and could use a surprise or two to freshen it up.

And with age, it's a bit surprising how unsurprising things can become. War, kindness, egotism, love, clarity and confusion ... how surprising is any of that? Of course there are endless permutations and contexts, but really, how surprising is that? As it was, so it is ... I'd rather smell a rose.

I can't really get any got-it-solved, religio-philosophical handle on surprises, but I remain curious.
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melting like wax

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Funny how one thing leads to the next or, somehow becomes the same but different ...

I was watching the tail end of "Moonstruck," a light, literate and somewhat edgy family drama, and in one of the scenes, Nicholas Cage and Cher are at the opera listening and falling in love, when I realized the bits of music were taking me up-up-and-away from the movie itself. It was just a bit of music -- romantic and Romantic and I wanted the music as it existed away from the movie.

And it was available:



The same thing happened when I watched the classic jailbreak movie, "The Shawshank Redemption" -- opera music (of which I am not a huge fan) that just got me into an hammerlock of inchoate melting.



Yes, I have a wide streak of sap and sucker. Moving from straight-forward drama to some kind of deliciousness I cannot flee...a world that requires no agreement and is so wide that my arms cannot reach.

Melting like wax: I guess everyone has something like that in their lives. And if they don't, I wish it for them, no matter how others might tease.

In the end, I am not sure which I prefer more -- the music spliced into a drama I like or the music all by itself. The former is like having chocolate mousse for dessert, with several good courses surrounding it. The latter is like having chocolate mousse as the main course.

I guess there's no reason why I can't enjoy both.
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things I don't know

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WalMart, a source for staples around the house, was closed today, perhaps the victim of snows that damaged many roofs in the region. One of the things that has never been explained to me in a way I can understand is why large industrial buildings located in temperate climates use flat roofs. I can understand that flat may be cheaper than peaked, but how much cheaper can it be when those flat roofs collapse beneath a load of snow or spring leaks in heavy rain?

That's one thing I suspect I will never know.

Another is some explanation as to why the Chinese and others settled on chop sticks as eating implements. By the time Europe began using forks (in France, the personal fork didn't gain sway until the 17th century), the Chinese had been using chopsticks for centuries. Although the exact origins are open to speculation, there are records of use during the Shang Dynasty (1766 BC - 1122 BC). Some suggest that the style of Chinese cooking (small bits of food) contributed to the use. And then there was a sense of delicacy and distance from the slaughterhouse. But what wonders me is that knives and fingers seem much more logical ... and who knows, maybe that is how it all began. I don't know.

And I will probably never know.

I once asked the prolific science writer Isaac Asimov what he thought the greatest unknown was. In less than a nanosecond, he responded with assurance, "The mind."

How marvelous it is to know whatever it is we know -- each person stuffed like a Christmas turkey with gobs and gobs of information, each bit intersecting and enlivening the next ... it's pretty humongous. But however humongous it may be and however assured and reassured we may be by our collections, still, what we don't know is always humongous-er. I'm not suggesting that everyone run out and get an advanced degree, but rather that an occasional reflection on what is unknown is probably a good idea ... humbling and inclining people to a greater social kindness.

More than that, there are some profound idiocies we all indulge in. We are, for example, convinced by and attached to things that we assume are concrete and enduring but are in fact ephemeral. "Me" is a pretty good example, but there are others as well. Having conceded our own arrogance does not mean we have to then wallow in our ignorance and idiocy. It does mean that any sensible person might want to check in with and check out the things that are honestly not know.

A little curiosity and a little investigation never hurt anyone.
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Big Mac Buddha

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Once, when he was giving the intellectual community yet another well-deserved kick in the pants, George Orwell observed more or less, "There is no such thing as philosophy on an empty stomach." Ruminations, however astute, have their requirements, even if it's just Twinkies.

The accuracy of the observation is sometimes lost in the haste to bring negative or positive observations to bear. Where a certain humility might be well-deserved, instead the tongue rolls out endless ribbons of wisdom pro or con. Fulminations, hosannas, and pretzeled intellectual gyrations go to the top of The Important Heap without ever a backward glance: Where would all this be without the blessings of a Big Mac?

I've got nothing against fulminations, hosannas and pretzeled intellectual gyrations (what the hell, it's more fun than laugh-tracked television shows), but there is also something absurd about making these assertions without acknowledging the god who makes them possible. Confronted by such an observation, the mind recoils at the utter simplicity of it all: "I'm more important than that!" "This is seeerious!" "Let's not elevate the life of a simpleton!" "Let's not reduce everything to the lowest common denominator!" "I know all that ... now listen to this!"

"I know!"

"I understand!"

OK ... it's fun.

But how can anyone assure a bit of peace when the best they can do is have fun?
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stormy times

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The second onslaught of snow is making itself felt this morning. My wife, who works in a medical office, got a call early ... the place would be closed. No word on where patients were expected to go or how they might get there. Under the street lamp, the flakes eddy and swirl. The cars look like blurred and patient buffalo shouldering  lashes of whipped cream.

Complaints do not improve the scene, but it is hard not to make comparisons. If we think we've got it bad, consider the cyclone-wracked parts of Australia:

"There's no crying, no hysterics," said Alcorn, 42. "It's going to be loud, it's going to be scary. But we've got each other."

The first of Cyclone Yasi's winds began howling throughout Cairns as night fell Wednesday, with the storm expected to make landfall sometime between 10 p.m. and midnight. Winds at the center of the storm were gusting up to 186 mph (300 kph), and the front was about 300 miles (500 kilometers) across. The worst winds were expected to last up to four hours, though blustery conditions and heavy rain could last for 24 hours.  -- Complete story.

One hundred eighty-six miles per hour, "but we've got each other." It is humane and touching and yet it is hard not to notice that when the winds get fierce enough, even "each other" is blown away. And when there is no "each other," isn't this the very time in which to actualize an honest friendship?
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snow

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It's a proper snow, as promised. Since early morning it has been coming down ... and coming and coming and coming. Smallish flakes and lots of them piling up so that now, near noon, there are perhaps five or six inches. The forecast says it will continue into tomorrow with accumulations of 20 inches more or less. Who knows where we will put it, given the piles already surrounding the house. White and clean and implacable. Who can run?
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leave religion to the young

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I guess there was a time when I thought religion was the natural preserve of the elderly. They were nearer to death, had been sufficiently wounded and needed an imaginative hand up. My bias seemed to be confirmed by the number of blue-haired ladies I would occasionally see entering one place of worship or another. Who, at that age, did not need a rock, a support, a succor, a warming tale, a god?

But it occurred to me today that religion in all of its various descriptions is more likely a young (wo)man's pastime. The young have energy and are more open to feeling righteous. They are strong in their emotions and intellect and simultaneously, when touched, more capable of crediting something or someone else. Their tastes and distastes flourish. And most of all, they are attached to (or, in another version, disdain) life as they know it.

The elderly have been around the block more than once. They have experienced what the young may only yearn for. They have seen the gods come and go. It's enough to have a good cup of coffee in the morning. Death is not so horrific as once imagined, so the need for warming tales has waned. They have outgrown, with luck, enough things to realize that religion is something else they don't really need to hold tight ... and holding tight takes the energy of the young. Who's got that kind of energy after a while?

True, there is the social warmth of a Saturday or Sunday morning get-together and there is a recognition that whatever anyone knows is never quite enough and if, by a certain age, a (wo)man were to find her- or himself in a religious profession, what the hell, it can't be helped and it's something to do.

But, using the too-broad brush I am using here, I imagine the elderly would long since have outgrown the energies necessary to the fireworks of religion. Let the young seek wisdom and praise whatever god they find useful. It's not a criticism. It's just the experience of having been attached and no longer finding, or even wanting, the energy it requires.

A nice game of dominoes might be nice.
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apologies to a porcupine

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I woke up this morning as prickly as a porcupine. I looked forward to a day I did not look forward to...and I wanted something pleasant to look forward to. Everything seemed to be covered in a cranky sheen.

Laundry? Fuck that! Aches and pains -- fuck that! Cleaning up behind others who could not put their dishes in the dishwasher? Fuck that! Fix the lamp that had (again!) showed itself as needing fixing? Fuck that! Cooking? Fuck that! Shovel the snow the weatherman promised? Fuck that! Be good-natured? Fuck that!

Chore after chore presented itself as a stupid revision of something that had not been done right in the first place. Everything was stale and offered no novelty or delight. Stale and stupid ... and don't try to talk me out of it with some feel-good spiritual bullshit, some serene analysis, some hallowed and haloed hope. I wanted something fresh and creative and bright -- something that brought with it a renewed sense of purpose and delight ... and not just be sweeping up behind the delights that had presented themselves in the past.

All of this hung in my mind like some silent-but-deadly fart under the covers. I wanted someone to tell me a good dirty joke. I wanted to win some unnamed lottery, to be surprised, to be free from ... whatever it was I was mired in. Stale and stupid, stale and stupid, stale and stupid.

And then, as I began to write this entry, I looked around for a picture of a porcupine that would depict my prickly, pissed-off mood and found the picture above. And before I could help myself, I smiled and felt a little guilty. No porcupine deserves to be burdened with my crabby shit. Porcupines are just porcupines and they are pretty nifty-looking critters. They go about their waddling business. I suppose they must get pissed off now and then, but generally speaking they are prickly just because they are prickly. It's the nature of the beast. They don't make anything out of it, I imagine.

So why do I?

My apologies to the porcupine.
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