highest-paid public employees

Passed along in email:

When a country places more importance on sports than on academic achievement, its decline is inevitable. 

"who wrote Shakespeare?"

At 15, I read a number of books about codes and ciphers, specifically the codes and ciphers alleged to be embedded in the works of William Shakespeare. The object of these books was to winkle out who, precisely, wrote the plays and poems of "The Bard."

My willingness to read these books and immerse myself in their arguments probably rested in part on the fact that my father taught Shakespeare at Smith College and I wanted to find a way to be nearer to him. But also, I suspect, I was just a teenager, and what teenager isn't desperately in search of answers, any answers? Codes and ciphers, however intricate, have answers -- concrete solutions in which jumbles of words and numbers can step out of the shadows and reveal themselves as comprehensible and meaningful and no longer a shape-shifting, incoherent mess ... the kind of mess the bedevils teenagers and other adults.

The occasion for remembering a time so long ago arrived yesterday in the person of a 2011 movie, "Anonymous," which a friend had enthusiastically recommended. "Anonymous" is scrumptious in its sets and costumes and muddied in plot and character development. The Guardian newspaper described "Anonymous" as "ridiculous," but there were plenty of other more-positive reactions.

The movie itself posits, as the books on codes and ciphers also suggested on occasion, that Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford, had penned Shakespeare's plays and poems and wanted, for a variety of reasons, to remain anonymous. Shakespeare himself is depicted in this celluloid tale as a man who literally could not write. As I say, the movie struck me as scrumptious by visual presentation and muddy by tale-telling substance.

At 15, it never occurred to me to ask, "Would the plays and poems of Shakespeare be changed by so much as a single comma if anyone knew who wrote them?" What I knew was that seeking the answer was an adult pursuit, something serious and meaningful ... and I wanted my life to have that sort of substance and coherence. I wanted to be a grown-up ... you know, the people who know what they're doing and seem so assured in doing it. Instead, as a teenager, I was wracked by adamantine koans like, "If everyone is urging me to act like an adult, why do I have to take out the garbage that adults never seem to take out?"

How much like other aspects of life is scurrying down the academic rabbit hole of "who wrote Shakespeare?" Searching for meaning and coherence, breaking one code or cipher after another, positing one heart-felt hypothesis after another ... when all the time "Hamlet" or "Romeo and Juliet" lies open in your lap? If the answer to anyone's most compelling question were answered fershur, would it honestly be the answer that was sought? In Zen Buddhism, for example, there is the cautionary tale of the warrior who has been shot by an arrow ... and the best the wounded man can muster is to ask the identity of the shooter.

But I don't think anyone needs Buddhism to point out the misdirected energy that can go into the codes and ciphers of life. Who, Buddhist or otherwise, has not felt the lash of trying to deconstruct or solve or explain or believe ... only to come up feeling strangely bereft ... an acceptable adult, perhaps, but somehow still riven by teenage angst?

My father taught Shakespeare in college, a place known in my teenage years as a "seat of learning" or something equally august. And within that framework, Shakespeare was "literature" and, because it was taught in college, it was elevated in ways I could not exactly fathom. Literature was important and I stood somewhere between fear and awe of it. Awe because it seemed so distant and adult, but fear because its elevated status did not touch my heart. As a teenager, I learned to steer clear of "literature" and its smooth and perfected and icy heights. I hated reading Shakespeare in high school.

But in my early 20's, my mother dragged me to a Shakespeare play. It was summertime and the play was presented in a grassy bowl of a theater. "Shakespeare!" I thought derisively as my veins constricted.  And then the play began and a bit at a time, I was sucked in. Never mind that everyone was talking funny -- in the singsong of iambic pentameter ... suddenly that literary conceit fell away; suddenly "literature" fell away and ... holy shit! Shakespeare was just a dressed-up version of a soap opera! Love, jealousy, power, compassion, greed, friendship and enmity ... there really wasn't a hair's-breadth worth of difference. It was miles beyond any code or cipher. Miles beyond "literature." Miles beyond deconstruction and explication and term-paper meaning. It was delicious because it was human ... and because I was human too.


Not that this epiphany led me to run out an read all of Shakespeare's works. I had been trained too well in school to distrust artistic pinnacles and their adult adherents. But I was, for my own purposes, more at ease, less afraid. What need is there for an answer when you already have one? What need for codes and ciphers and a furrowed and adoring brow?

The epiphany did not leave me feeling somehow righteously right or blessedly redeemed ... it did not make me feel that I had to check my appreciation with some applauding throng. It was just that, in the absence of that applauding throng against which I had previously assessed my own fitness, I was at ease. Others might say and believe very fine things about racing down the rabbit holes of cipher and code. For all I knew, there was a more compelling ease than my own. I was willing to be corrected. But since I felt at ease ... well, why not be at ease?

Who knows -- maybe one day I will read William Shakespeare.

for women with refined sensibilities

Poo-pourri -- passed along in email:

Maybe it would work for men as well...

countdown to death

Passed along in email:

A watch that calculates the precise second of your death?

'The occurrence of death is no surprise to anyone, but in our modern society we rarely talk about it. I think that if we were more aware of our own expiration I’m sure we’d make better choices while we are alive.'

educated Americans ... not

WASHINGTON (AP) - It's long been known that America's school kids haven't measured well compared with international peers. Now, there's a new twist: Adults don't either.
In math, reading and problem-solving using technology - all skills considered critical for global competitiveness and economic strength - American adults scored below the international average on a global test, according to results released Tuesday....

As the American economy sputters along and many people live paycheck-to-paycheck, economists say a highly-skilled workforce is key to economic recovery. The median hourly wage of workers scoring on the highest level in literacy on the test is more than 60 percent higher than for workers scoring at the lowest level, and those with low literacy skills were more than twice as likely to be unemployed.

"It's not just the kids who require more and more preparation to get access to the economy, it's more and more the adults don't have the skills to stay in it," said Anthony Carnevale, director of the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce.

interview with Krista Tippett

I don't generally like using others as a springboard, but this morning I read an interview with Krista Tippett, a radio journalist who seems to be speaking out of an evangelical Christian background, and

found myself pleased by what she had to say. She seems to be attacking the problem of what happens when spiritual adventure hits the brick wall of day-to-day life.

A few snippets:

-- [In an earlier time] you could have a Reinhold Niebuhr. You could be this authoritative voice on the cover of Time magazine.

That era is over. There are authoritative voices, but they don't have the sweeping command of attention. The old forms have stopped working, but we still don't yet know what's going to come in their place....

-- There can't be any more Niebuhrs. I don't even know if we could have a Martin Luther King now. The change makers are dispersed and plural; they're in local communities, and they're not all white Protestant guys.

--  I like to say that I'm tracing the intersection between big ideas and human experience, between theology and real life. It's not such a radical concept, but it hadn't been done much before.... The human story was really sidelined. The New York Times, I think, is still really primitive about this. It's like some of the traditionally best places are the last to get it. But there are a lot of good people coming up, and a lot of great stuff going on online.

The public face of formatted spiritual questing is so often big and wonderful and assured and dig-my-halo. This leaves hungering individuals starving in the dust: "How come I don't feel big and wonderful and assured? What's the matter with me?" And of course formatted spiritual institutions make a good living based on this uncertainty. The unkindness of such manipulation too often gets a "pass." But this doesn't undo the unkindness.

Perhaps it's just a matter of ipso facto: Create an institution and the goal for which it was created goes begging by definition. Perhaps spiritual adventure amounts to cracking the barriers erected by the institutions which claim to have no barriers.

Whatever the case, in spiritual adventure, I am touched by the effort and laughter and tears of any who take up the challenge. It is as human and rich as it is sometimes inhumane and impoverished.

Human ... that's what bangs my chimes.

Sure, there are big ideas ...

Now ...

Get a life.

upscale roach

In the post-banquet darkness
Below a hectare-sized, re-oiled table,
A single plop of imperial caviar
Lies crushed and camouflaged on the Kerman rug,
More delicious than anything Tolstoy wrote.

Dark as the darkness itself,
The roach approaches, sure of foot,
To consume with relish
What others relished in the light.
And people say roaches lack class!

women/men creators

Not that I would want to make a hard-and-fast rule about it or get into some effete bout of fisticuffs over it, but I wonder if, based on presentation, a distinction could be found between fictional creations of women and those by men.

Caroline Proust/Capt. Berthaud

I have been watching with something akin to addiction the French TV serial "Spiral." The characters are credible both in their strengths and weaknesses. Infrequently does the police-procedural story line leap conveniently beyond the substance ... doing so in some hurry-up effort to wrap up an episode before the allotted time is reached.

The central -- or one of the central -- characters is a woman police-captain. She is one of those wan, wounded and intense women who have become something of a staple among better police dramas. As it is hard not to credit or like or hate the other characters, so she is likeable and credible, if a bit opaque. I wonder sometimes if the author is reluctant to deconstruct Captain Berthaud for the audience, as if Berthaud's persona were too close to home for the creator ... whom I imagine to be a woman.

One of the very small aspects of "Spiral" that I appreciate is the treatment of sexual intercourse. The treatment is direct -- it happens, it's human and it is exercised out of a variety of human needs. It is part of the human story. It is A Human Possibility rather than, as too often in the prurient United States, The Human Possibility. Is that a woman's touch or is it the fact that Europeans are generally less twisted on the topic?

On a similar frequency, when they're any good, I seem to prefer women comedians to men. Women go for the human jugular with more regularity -- the fractures and soft spots and foibles in human nature. They go for the jugular not as a means of surprising anyone, but rather as a means of pointing to what is important and life-giving. And it's as if they are with us ... and aren't we a pretty damned funny lot? Even when they point an accusing finger, it's a means of depicting the object at which anyone might similarly point. Women don't stir the pot, they seem to jump in and feel the heat. In humor and in police fiction, it's a richer stew.

Men, if I were to make more of this than I actually feel, go for the power and the overview and the distance. We are invited to see things from a safe perspective: There, there -- everything is under control... no need to immerse yourself or be dragged from the comfort of the sofa. This is about "them" and you are safe.

All of this suspecting speculation about women and men creators lingers in my mind like the downwind scent of warm apple pie. I don't mind much one way or the other if it's true or false. A good story is a good story. But I wonder.

decorated elephant

A decorated elephant stands at the Nandankanan Zoological park on the outskirts of the eastern Indian city of Bhubaneswar. BBC

breath

For just a second...
No kidding or spiritual fiddle-faddle for a moment...
Setting relief and improvement aside (gently, very gently)...
And without any hope for the universal solvent or perfect peace...
Where alpha and omega cannot enter...

Just for a serious second...
Clearer than distilled water...
Where bliss and despair find no footing...
And the case is closed...

Enter the breath
And the universe is born
Depart with the expiration
Gone forever.

What fear could be relevant
Or rejoicing make sense.
No one cares about the breath --
They breathe or they don't.

And yet just for a serious second...
There it was...
All the time...
No confusion at all...
Nor livening joy...

The universe is born on this breath
And dies as well...
What else is possible?
Let things be...
Join the dance...
And breathe without a backward glance.

on strike

     I wrote this column and submitted it to the paper last week, when it was relevant. The strike  alluded to has been settled, so I can't imagine the paper will run it. So I'll file it away here:

ON STRIKE? WHAT'S A STRIKE?

It is probably a testament to the Republican success story that my jaw dropped when reading (Gazette, 9/28/13) that the International Union of Operating Engineers Local 98 had gone out on strike.

I grew up in the 1940's and 1950's, an era that remembered earlier bloody labor battles --  the Pullman strike of 1894; the 1922 slaughter of 36 people in a Herrin, Ill., coal mine action; and the 1930 arrest of over 100 during an attempt to organize California farm workers. In each of these and dozens of other confrontations, both before and after, workers took a stand against an industrial might that had the cops and the military on its side. They won some and lost some and, mostly, they kept on coming, despite the spilled blood that was mostly theirs.

Not that, as a kid, I actually had such actions in mind, but my mother had a bunch of old 78 rpm records of Pete Seeger and the Almanac Singers -- a group designated as "socialists" or "reds" by detractors. They fought the labor fight with music. I imbibed and hummed along to "Talking Union" and "Which Side are You On?"

The blood shed during those early confrontations provided me and mine with, among other things, a 40-hour-work-week, a minimum wage and an acknowledgment that labor and management would negotiate rather than spill blood -- the literal blood spilled in the past.

But time passed and some unions got pretty autocratic in their own right. A little at a time, workers began to buy into the Republican/management story that unions were something that would clog the wheels of  a prosperity from which they too benefited. Management's underlying message -- a message workers began and continue to swallow  -- is, "You're lucky to have a job and if you organize, our mutual prosperity will be diminished if not erased. Keep your head down and be grateful for what you get."

The Republican/management argument was so successful that by 2010, 11.4 percent of all American workers were members of any sort of labor union. Simultaneously, the dime began to drop: "Mutual prosperity" is defined differently by different people and a little at a time, it became apparent that a rising tide of prosperity does not raise all boats equally or even equitably. The blood of the past had been slowly washed away until the current mindset was more in line with what the prosperous might prefer it to be.

So successful was the story-telling of the prosperous that my jaw dropped when reading the Gazette story.

I was somehow flabbergasted to read that the International Union of Operating Engineers Local 98 had gone on strike. There are about 100 of them, according to the Gazette. These are the guys and gals who run the heavy equipment necessary for road, bridge and other construction projects. The strike has some no-joke fallout because of various bridge and roadway projects underway in the western Massachusetts area where I live -- an area that might be too-generally described as simpering and vaguely effete with its convocations about climate change, peace, nuclear power plants and the like. The engineers, with their cranes, bulldozers and other heavy equipment, are here-and-now, meat-and-potato folks.

I cannot pretend to know or be able to evaluate the issues involved in Local 98's strike. I am trying to get my head around a strike in hard economic times and with a Republican/management agenda in the social catbird seat. I am trying to get my head around re-fighting the battles that were fought so long ago. I am trying not to feel joy on the one hand and sorrow on the other: Occupy Wall Street had no real handles to grasp -- it was a good expression of widespread malaise and anger -- but Local 98 is concrete, a battle that may be won or lost, but in any event is worth fighting. That's the hot-damn part.

The sorrow part are the varying kinds and amounts of blood that are bound to be spilled ... again.

Vonnegut quote

Passed along in email:

a metal that remembers

A new shape-changing metal crystal is reported in the journal Nature, by scientists at University of Minnesota.

It is the prototype of a new family of smart materials that could be used in applications ranging from space vehicles to electronics to jet engines.
Called a "martensite", the crystal has two different arrangements of atoms, switching seamlessly between them.

Afghanistan

The war in Afghanistan is 12 years old. Four U.S. soldiers died there today. Someone's gotta die -- that's the nature of war, a part of its crooning satisfaction camouflaged by tears. The U.S. tallies its dead with care. The U.S. isn't worried about brown people.

What would the U.S. do without a war ... some war ... any war? What would it do if waging peace were job-one? If the "best and the brightest" can do no better than war, do they any longer deserve the moniker "best and brightest?"

When was the last time anyone caught a bully actually building something?

Isn't war a reasonable marker of a Third World nation ... a Third World mind?

Not to worry: The U.S. drawdown in Afghanistan, while depressing for some, can find glimmers of hope ... as from the U.S. commando raid in Africa.

smiling

Smiling is nice ... and then ...

There is the capacity to smile because the courage not to smile is lacking.

On the other hand, there is also the affected affectlessness of the one unwilling to smile.

What a pity to waste a smile in these ways.

saving all those leftovers

In the darkness, the day promises to be misty, moisty, dribbly and grey. At least two people have expressed an interest in Sunday sitting, so I am up early, preparing ... straightening out the daily aches and pains, giving the morning meds a chance to settle themselves, wanting to meet properly the obligations I don't especially want to meet ... a small-time Scarlet O'Hara primping in front of a full-length glass.

Wouldn't it be nice if spiritual adventure were one-and-done? Sort of like fixing a flat tire ... let's get this sucker back on the road! Nobody worries about the car when things are running properly, but then ... oh well, it's a flat or the brakes or the alternator or some computer glitch.

Spiritual adventurers nod with an annoying sagacity -- yup, there's always a fly in the ointment. But still ... wouldn't it be nice if it were one-and-done -- if spiritual adventure could be set aside like dolls or cap pistols ... yes, they were fun in their time, but isn't it time to grow up?

Two men are coming this morning. It's my own damned fault. I built the zendo. I sat there. I wished others might come; I invited them; and was pleased when they did come. I tussled with being a 'teacher' -- or whatever you call the inescapable ramrod of a particular gathering. It was all, at differing levels, important -- a very small operation, perhaps, but still ... important. Important and "Buddhist."

But this morning, I wish I could give each of these men a spanking-new set of Tupperware bowls and send them on their way. One-and-done ... no more carelessly-kept leftovers in the kitchen.

Naturally, things don't work that way. It's your life, you own it. There's nothing saying you can't dream of some one-and-done answer, but that doesn't mean you can't laugh as well. One-and-done or "Buddhism" -- c'mon! Grow up!

The two men -- my two instructors for the day -- are coming to practice or learn about Zen Buddhism. Even if the air has largely left this old balloon, I can play a bit of that game. It's not a biggy.

What remains important in my memory banks and what I cannot blithely set aside is the discomfort or uncertainty -- the purely human stuff -- that these men bring with them. No one ever snooped the edges of or dove deep into Buddhism because they were so damned happy. I used to want to put a Buddhism cookie cutter around such dis-ease: It really is a pretty good discipline. But now all that's left is the people and their discomfort and if Buddhism will alleviate discomfort, fine, let's do that.

But wouldn't Tupperware be nice?

I believe in sangha -- the community. But I never was much good at a "Buddhist" community: Ever notice how everyone smiles? ever notice how glibly and inaccurately the word "compassion" trips off the lips? ever get sick of earnestness ... even your own? ever notice the meetings -- the adventure any sane man might want to avoid. It's all OK, but it's tiring and reminds me of the old colonial bit of etiquette: "If you must spit, spit in the corner."

If people hurt, as there is ample evidence they do, then any life preserver is a good life preserver, even one marked "USS Buddhism."

But wouldn't Tupperware be nice?

One-and-done.

No more waste. No more floundering. Just take the plastic bowls and put them to good use and ... I wonder what football games are on the TV today.

  

Pope Francis' encouragement

Given the closetful of cassocks the Vatican has amassed over the centuries, it seems unlikely that Pope Francis' encouragement to shun "vanity, arrogance and pride" will attain an actualized liftoff within the ranks of the power-prone hierarchy of the church.

But it is pleasant to hear some reference to the people among whom Jesus once traveled. "A church that is poor and for the poor" may not solve the systemic separations and depredations the church has instigated or taken part in, but it is pleasant, if not always wise, to hope.

PS. I found it a small measure of concrete encouragement that "Francis spoke impromptu after putting aside prepared versions of two speeches, clearly moved by the sick and the poor people present in the room." (Emphasis added).

"destiny"

Perhaps "destiny" is just not my destiny.

Without disrespect to any, "destiny" -- in all its subtle and gross formats, in all its cause-and-effects, in all its karma -- simply doesn't bang my chimes. In the end, "destiny" strikes me as a bolt hole that is not safe enough. I can imagine why others might embrace it and I can imagine they might be willing to lay it at my doorstep as well, but I don't seem to be able to get with the program.

"Destiny" is too limiting and limited. As an Internet friend once suggested in passing, "There are no causes. There are only effects."

Perhaps it's the arrogance of age, but I feel about "destiny" the way I feel about grilled-cheese sandwiches: I can concede there is nourishment, but if there is something else on the menu, I'll take that. Saying "no" or "yes" to destiny amounts to expending energy I haven't got, although it crosses my mind idly this morning.

A bolt hole that is not safe enough -- maybe that's as good a way as any to describe my appreciation... or, if you prefer, my destiny.

if you want to be God ...

                                         DON'T WAIT!

cowardice

I guess, perhaps, I am destined for membership in the Tea Party, that simplistic faction of U.S. politics which has segued into a metaphor for the kind of loud obstructionism that has lately shut down the American government. I too am a coward.

A coward.

And cowards piss me off.

They don't piss me off in the usual, easy-peasy contrast they may provide to a much-applauded courage... heroes, yay! cowards, boo! ... that sort of nonsense. Cowards piss me off because they hurt other people with their simpering unwillingness and egregious explanations that bolster their reasons for failing to enter a particular fray. Let others bear the burden... even unto death.

Last night, my younger son told me that his monthly National Guard training had been called off because of the government shutdown which has furloughed thousands, closed national parks, trimmed early-childhood schooling and cut back on a lot of, though not all, other programs.

I'm not a big fan of my son's military choice, but it is his choice and I honor it. And if anyone is going to make such a choice -- if, implicitly, someone offers to lay his or her life on the line -- then, to my way of thinking, they deserve the absolute best training possible. Death is called "the ultimate sacrifice" by flag-wavers. It is cowardice not to honor the principle you espouse. I suppose the Tea Party that shut down the government might agree. They're the kind of nitwits who wave the banners of "patriotism" and "heroism" from behind mahogany desks. And I dislike anyone who treats my son's life lightly.

Any paramecium-brained idiot can make a war. It's an easier and more self-serving way to live this life. It takes some serious courage to wage peace. But since the human capacity for cowardice and war is popular, I would just as soon my son were given the best skills available. And that means training.

Oh well, I am just expressing a very simple and no doubt simplistic paternal crankiness. And if anyone asks me to think it through -- to see all the ramifications -- I am inclined to tell them to go suck an egg. I don't care what the explanations are. I care about my son.

Color me a Tea Party coward.

I can live with that. I may not like it, but I can live with it.

thank you

I have no means of thanking the individuals who have sent donations I requested, but that doesn't mean I am not truly grateful.

Thank you.

being a fool

When the time comes and there is no one left to look up to ...

When the time comes and there is nothing but grass on the lawn ...

Then, in small moments, let us hope there are a few puffs of satisfaction in recalling what a ring-tailed fool strode through this life.

Yes, be a fool for something.

Anything.

I mean it: A pedal-to-the-metal, consumed-by-fire fool. Love, lust, anger, greed ... hell, even moderation or kindness. Don't be a jackass! Be a fool.

My mother once said that sins of commission were better than sins of omission. Sins of commission put meat -- however painful -- on the bone. No one, it is suggested, wants to sin, but that is a crock of shit -- virtue is just a thin-tea invitation to be a sinner and a fool.

A fool is someone who is or was lost. Utterly lost. Excuses and explanations don't compute in the world of the fool. A fool has erased himself in the world of foolishness. There is only a foolishness that will leave scars.

The kind of scars that tickle up gently between to the toes of the one standing idly on a grassy lawn.

donation

Anyone with a penny jar gathering dust on the shelf ... well, I sure could use a couple of donations right about now.

A fixed income has its drawbacks... not the least of which is mentioning or asking for donations.

a little shame, please

When it comes to spiritual adventures, there is something seriously instructive about the tale of a Centerton, Ark., man who got so angry at a couple of door-knocking Jehovah's Witnesses that he loosed 19 rounds from his 9 mm pistol at their retreating car.

John L. Baldwin admitted in a Sept. 30 police affidavit that he told the two women to "get your fucking ass off my property, I moved out here to get away from people like you." He then instructed his wife to "get me my 9."

Baldwin is obviously in a peck of social/legal trouble. But I would say that his actions, while extreme, point to a pretty extreme problem among the spiritually-inclined -- a lack of much-needed shame. Baldwin's towering anger reminds me a bit of a Christian friend who once told me that there was a perfectly legitimate Christian prayer that went, "Dear Lord, please give him/her/them a swift kick in the ass!" And in that sense, Baldwin was doing little more than acting as God's right-hand man.

Uninvited, door-knocking missionaries can be pretty annoying. There you were, engaged in some daily activity that needed attending to and someone selling their particular belief feels it is acceptable to interrupt ... that you should listen ... that you should agree ... that whatever they are doing or selling is, unasked, more compellingly important than what you are doing.

And if you think I am picking on Jehovah's Witnesses or Christians, I am not. The same stuff goes on in other, better-camouflaged spiritual venues as well. Buddhists, Hindus, Sikhs, Muslims, Jews and whoever all else can be equally worthy of a few rounds from Baldwin's 9. Why? Because the shame that deserves to attend on their footsteps and their words is woefully lacking. Just because someone says "we're not missionaries" doesn't mean they aren't proselytizing missionaries of the first water.

The shame I am referring to is not based on some socio-ethical rule book or tablet handed down from heaven. It is not based on hitting the dog with a rolled-up newspaper because it peed on the living room carpet. It is based, rather, in the very message of the missionary subterfuge.

Is there anything more yappy and annoying than someone who tells you something is true when it already is true? If God with all his/her/its attributes exists, what need is there to keep nagging others with what is already a fact? And if the need to nag is compelling, about whom does this say more -- the one being nagged or the nagger? Sure, there are a peck of benevolent reasons brought to bear, but seriously, if something is already true, what is the point in being a noodge?

It is one thing to be kind and compassionate. But it is a short step from being kind and compassionate to imagining you were kind and compassionate. And from there, it is a short step again to codifying and trying to enforce kindness and compassion. As the steps progress further and further, it makes you wonder what ever happened to being kind and compassionate.

Similarly, if God exists -- if enlightenment and emptiness and true nature are an actualized fact -- wouldn't anyone feel a bit ashamed of themselves for employing trivial tactics to enforce something that was already in force? Yes, yes ... I know ... it's all a matter of compassion and caring for others ... but is it really? Isn't some modicum of shame warranted when telling others the 'good news' that is nothing more exciting than a fact? Can't others be forgiven and even praised for asking a friend to "get me the 9" or telling the imaginative compassionate interlocutors to "stick it where the sun don't shine?"

In times long forgotten, a Zen teacher (Ta Hui maybe) once advised a student: "In order to do this practice, you must feel shame." I wonder if he was ashamed of himself.

I think a little shame is warranted.

I also think I'd better button up my Kevlar vest.

exploring a huge Chinese cave

Adventurers have stumbled across a cave so enormous that it has its own weather system, complete with wispy clouds and lingering fog inside vast caverns.

 

I can't figure out where the light is coming from ... the light that would be necessary to plant growth. If a cave is open, is it any longer a cave? Whatever ... it's mind-boggling.

the updrafts of spiritual life

In the kitchen during a sesshin or Zen retreat, I remember whispering with another student. Sesshins are supposed to be arenas of silence, but what are rules if not to be broken? Anyway, we were whispering surreptitiously when he said to me in a language that is perhaps more understandable to anyone who has been to sesshin....

"It takes everything!" His face was wracked with a horrified anguish.

"It can't take everything! It's got to leave you something!"

From a distance and with the subtly-smug calmness of not-being-there, his cries might be soothed and smoothed with spiritual nostrums. "There, there," the diploma-ed analyst and savvy Zen practitioner might croon, "let me give you another wise and well-lubricated explanation. Ego...attachment...compassion ... blah-blah-blah. Hakuin says and Dogen says and Rinzai says and Gautama says ... blah-blah-blah."

But what do Hakuin and Dogen and Rinzai and Gautama know?! In the midst of this compelling anguish, this right-now wracking of the soul ... fuck them! This scarier-than-shit is purely scarier than shit.

"It takes everything!"

Like some gannet floating on sustaining updrafts, spiritual life has times of warming ease -- restful, peaceful, supportive. And then ... and then ... it can seem to turn around and betray you: In order to eat, in order to be nourished, in order to live, the warming updrafts are not enough and the visceral imperative asserts itself: Dive! Dive! Dive!

"It takes everything!" and in this dive, all else is forsaken -- a death before what may be death. Who knows what lies beneath the waves? Sustenance perhaps, but likewise, also, a profound danger. There is life beneath the waves. But also there is death ... no bird can live forever underwater.

Who in their right mind wouldn't be scared? Scared and scared witless? Maybe that visceral understanding is precisely what gives longevity to restful, peaceful and supportive arenas in which spiritual life moves smoothly on the updrafts of belief.

"It takes everything!"

Without hitting the panic button just yet, I think it is possible to consider how much effort and care has gone into constructing this life. Really, it's a hell of an effort ... from tying shoelaces, to understanding Kant, to speaking another language or even just the mother tongue ... what a lot of stuff has been ingested and shaped and used. For all its lumps and bumps -- what a masterful fabrication and construction.

And when someone or something suggests that things need to be deconstructed or defabricated -- even just by observation -- well, it's pretty scary for anyone who actually gives it a try. From the moment of birth up until the present moment, brick by brick, incident by incident, understanding by understanding this life grew.

And now you're telling me -- or I'm telling me -- that it needs to be deconstructed, the mortar needs to be dissolved .... On the face of it, this spells collapse, dissolution, helplessness ... it goes against everything I have learned ... everything that holds me together. The prospect is truly fearful: I don't want to die: "It's got to leave you something!"

Bit by bit and day by day and year by year, practices like sesshin continue... a time to look, a time to see, a time to dive, a time to float. Sometimes it's smooth as an updraft. Some times it's bumpy as a high wind. Bit by bit by bit by bit ... the mortar comes loose. And the strange thing is, nothing falls down. Nothing gets deconstructed. There are bricks galore. Building or constructing is a possibility that is no better or worse than not building. Dig my brick pile! Dig my minarets! I am possible just like you ... how about them apples?

And asking "who knows this?" or "who makes these bricks?" ... it's just more bricks, right? Why mess with a perfect picture?

Don't ask, don't tell. It is possible to dive ... so dive. It is possible to float ... so float. Where I am possible, anything is possible ... just like you.

If you live life solely in the updrafts, you're going to starve to death.

Around here, it's time for breakfast.

"the most delicious fruit"

A perfectly-manicured crescent moon hung in the predawn sky this morning, reminding me for reasons I don't quite know of a poem my younger son wrote when he was nine:

THE VERY BIG TREES

The very big trees
Are in my backyard.
I visit them every day
So they won't get lonely.
They give me shade
And keep me dry from rain.
I can climb them
And get delicious fruit --
The most delicious fruit.                 -- Ives Fisher

holding on and letting go

In Zen Buddhism, there is an ill-remembered tale of a teacher who was once encouraging a student.

Perhaps referring to mind, the teacher advised, "Put it down."

When the student indicated he could not, the teacher advised, "Well, if you cannot put it down, pick it up."

In Buddhism, there are numerous encouragements that run along the lines of "letting go" or "surrender" or "drop it." Each has a wonderful ring to it. And each is easier said than done.

But less deference, if I am not mistaken, is accorded to the corollary -- the same statement in different words: Hold on tight, don't let go, never surrender! Love, sorrow, anger, compassion ... hold on with all your might!

In point of practical fact, is there a difference between holding on and letting go?

I doubt it, but I imagine it's worth checking out.

function and dysfunction

-- Taking a place next to Nelson Mandela and Aung San Suu Kyi, an American 'traitor' has received favorable consideration:

Edward Snowden, the fugitive American former intelligence worker, has made the shortlist of three for the Sakharov prize, Europe's top human rights award.

 -- Reminding me a bit of the 1968 My Lai Massacre (347-504 civilians slaughtered) during the Vietnam War ("It became necessary to destroy the village in order to save it") ... the U.S. Congress, largely at the hands of a Republican minority, sent America into a partial government shutdown today:

WASHINGTON (AP) - Congress plunged the nation into a partial government shutdown Tuesday as a long-running dispute over President Barack Obama's health care law stalled a temporary funding bill, forcing about 800,000 federal workers off the job and suspending most non-essential federal programs and services.

-- And in Rome, Pope Francis and his advisers are considering ways to reconfigure and revitalize a teetering 'Vatican-centric' establishment:

VATICAN CITY (AP) - Pope Francis opened a landmark meeting Tuesday on reforming the Catholic Church, saying he wants a missionary church with a modern spirit that gives hope to the poor, the young and the elderly like his namesake St. Francis did.

Was there ever a more self-defeating ingredient than the word "missionary?"

the direct method

Yesterday, I was talking on the phone with a friend who was telling me about a Sikh acquaintance whose spiritual self-involvement my friend could not stand. "I've set up my email so that his righteous crap is automatically deleted," he told me.

Not that my friend, like me, had not gone through a similar phase of being up to his armpits in spiritual adventure and effort, and not that either of us wouldn't lend anyone a hand if we were asked or could, but at our age, patience runs thin: You want to do it? Do it. You don't want to do it? Don't. But in the meantime, be a good sport and keep the mewling encomiums and self-serving exhortations off my front lawn.

Today, for example, a young man interested in Buddhism will stop by for a cup of coffee. He wants to pick my brain or what's left of it. But I half imagine we will come to the meeting with different points of view: He wants to get a sense of whether Buddhism has any heft in his life ... whether it has the capacity to ease uncertainty, whether, in the person of another, he can somehow trust it. And I am sympathetic and willing to do what I can ... not especially as a "Buddhist," but rather as a human being who sympathizes with other, honestly-uncertain human beings. If he wants to put a Buddhist cookie cutter around it, well, I can play that game. Perhaps it will work ... and perhaps it won't. It's the searching humanity of it all that lights my lamp. Whatever the event, I suspect the young man will come and the young man will go and that will be that.

Fortunately or unfortunately, there is no way to set up a life that will automatically send the icky stuff to the spam folder or delete it before it attains liftoff. How could I possibly know what was icky if I hadn't -- probably worse than most -- indulged? But that doesn't mean I have to return to those sainted and anointing realms. These days it feels too much like lowering myself into a bathtub full of warm snot. And today this crabbiness made me remember with a delighted laugh the airport fight scene in the old movie, "Airplane!" The direct method speaks for itself: