Four and a Half Billion Years...

... so science tells us, since the birth of our lovely planet.



Beautiful, no? Another two billion, give or take, before it dies--assuming that our troublesome species doesn't find some way to blow it to smithereens before then. Now, I'm no judge of the exactitude of the science, but I'll buy into the general premise. Those billions seem more credible to me than the few odd thousand allowed by the Bible literalist crowd, not to mention the scant few left before their purported Rapture. "Modern man" has been around for a mere 40,000 to 50,000 years, so far as I can tell--the blink of an eye in the history of the planet. It's only 2,500 since the Buddha walked the byways of India with his followers, and a handful more than 2,000 since Jesus did the same in the Holy Land. So much for the stories we tell ourselves to assure our significance in the grand scheme of things.

And our little planet in relation to the vast universe? A grain of sand is surely immense in comparison. Like everything else, it is born, it ages, and it dies.

All of which, on New Year's Eve, offers me a healthy serving of humble pie. I tuned in last night to the History Channel's How the Earth Was Made and was awed by this two-hour program about the story of the planet. What a perspective this science offers on those things that seem of the most lasting importance to us, and on the brevity of our little lives! How short the journey that we take, from our arrival on Earth to the time of our departure! With the reminder of those immeasurable reaches of time and space that surround us on all sides--and off into the past and future--how infinitesimal this right-now moment seems! And yet, how wonderful and vital, since it's all we have.

So, well, it's goodbye to 2007, just one more added to those four and a half billion! We do, I think, learn more about our species as we go. Our consciousness continues, amazingly, to expand. There's still time enough for us to fulfill the better aspects of the human potential, rather than the worse, and I certainly plan to continue my own efforts to be that better, wiser and more generous person in the coming year. I'm also comforted by knowing that there are many, many more like me, and that we are in conversation with each other in numerous ways.

Thanks for joining me. I'll see you all in 2008...! Happy New Year's Eve!

Here’s Pieter Brueghel…

… brought to life in modern, feminist garb in Antonia’s Line, the 1996 Dutch movie that won the Oscar for Best Foreign Film. We rented it a couple of nights ago and enjoyed immensely. Its setting is a small Dutch village in the period shortly following World War II and its hero the matriarch called Antonia, whose love embraces the entire village in its gentle reach.

Where does Brueghel come in? Well, first in the look of the film, its overall brownish tonalities with flashes, here and there, of brilliant color, and in its plain, coarse costumes in black and white and brown and grey; in the village itself, with its farms and barns, its cottages and its church, its dirt pathways and wooden fences, the winter mud and ice and snow, and the springtime greening of the fields and hedgerows.

And then in the cast of characters, a glorious spectrum of human woes and wonders, eccentricities and foibles: Antonia herself, big as life, stout of girth, filled with love and tenderness and broad humor—though rough and tough and pitiless when needed; her artist daughter who decides on a practical plan for pregnancy before settling for lobe-for-life with a Lsebian lover; her granddaughter, brilliant and aloof, who gifts her, via a violent rape, with the sweetest great-granddaughter a matriarch could wish for. This is the matrilineal line referred to in the title.

And then the motley, Brueghel-esque band of villagers: the Catholic spinster who bays at the full moon, and her Protestant would-be lover who live one above the other and look out over the same village square but who meet only in death; the village priest, a gawky sensualist, too full of life and libido for his robes of office; the lovable half-wit (sorry, correctness thrown to the winds in this report—as well as in the movie!) and his half-wit girlfriend; the village bully, the rapist who takes refuge in self-imposed exile and returns in military uniform to wreak further havoc—and meet a timely, satisfying end; the manic depressive village sage who quotes from Schopenhauer and Nietzsche and provides sanctuary and education for the precocious child…

Those who have ever heard the Dylan Thomas radio play, Under Milk Wood, will find themselves in familiar territory here. The “story” is the village itself, the lives and loves and deaths of its inhabitants, the teeming vitality of human survival amidst hardship and adversity. Judgments are few, and love is bountiful. Suffering is everywhere, but so is joy and celebration. “Antonia’s Line” invites us frequently to join in the communal banquet at the long wooden table in Antonia’s yard. The film itself is a feast, a roll in the mud, a roll in the hay, a roll in the whole tragi-comic mystery and physicality of human existence.

The Nursery Clock

Have I written before about the nursery clock? I may have done. It's a beautiful mantel clock, perhaps twelve inches high, quite elegant in shape, its oak wood body sweetly inlaid with other woods in a simple deco pattern. A plain white face, now slightly damaged, with numerals in black. It has a mellow, gentle strike on the half hour and the hour, and its sound reverberates pleasantly throughout the house. It's called the nursery clock because it stood on the mantelpiece in the room that my sister and I shared, as very small children, in the big old brick Victorian rectory at Aspley Guise, in Bedfordshire, where we spent our earliest years. From its perch on that shelf, it witnessed those yearly appearances of Santa Claus--in England at that time we called him "Father Christmas": I wonder if that has changed?--and many a squabble between us siblings.

The nursery clock comes to mind for a number of reasons. It has been temperamental in recent years. Despite significant expense and lengthy stays at our local clock expert, it refused for long months to work at all, sitting on the mantel in decorative silence. Then, a couple of months ago, after I had lit our first wood fire for the winter, it decided to come back to life and started up with its familiar tick-tock. We took that as a blessing, and rewarded it with a rewind that kept it going for a good few days. Then equally mysteriously it went back to sleep. And awoke again in time for a visit from our daughter, Sarah, who complained that its hourly and half-hourly strike was keeping her up at night. I reached around behind the clock and stopped its pendulum, to ensure a good night's sleep for everyone.

Obviously offended by my action, the clock refused to start again after Sarah left. It went, as it were, on strike. Or no-strike. It seemed to have returned to its former dormant state. I tried everything. I tickled the pendulum back into its swing, and the clock inched forward for a minute or two, then yawned to a stop. I resigned myself to the possibility that the nursery clock had finally given up the ghost.

But no. Just recently, for the Christmas season, perhaps, it re-awoke in response to a gentle nudge and, give or take a hiccup or two, has been working ever since. It made its presence known last night, when we stopped back home for a cup of tea after dinner at a restaurant with friends. The clock struck ten, and its sound drew appreciative comments from our guests. It drew my attention again this morning during meditation, when it dutifully struck six, and again its single strike at six-thirty to remind me it was time to get to work.

I'm wondering whether in some strange way the nursery clock remains sensitive to that old sibling relationship. I mention this because my sister and I have been mostly out of touch for years now, chiefly because of the vast geographical distance that separates us--she still lives in England. That distance set our relationship, recently, on a rocky course but it is showing signs of healing, thanks in part to my decision to make the trip to England in February to help celebrate her birthday. Does the clock's on-and-off performance reflect how things stand between us? An absurd notion, of course, but you can't help but wonder. There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy... quoth Hamlet, right?

Hands Across the Water...

(The following words were written and posted before I turned on the television and heard news of the assassination of Benazir Bhutto in Pakistan. Another dreadful event in the bloody history of our contemporary world, and one which only underscores our pressing need to expand the community of those dedicated to peace and goodwill.)

Heartfelt thanks to those who have sent greetings, online and off, in the past few days. The cockles of my heart--whatever they may be--have been duly warmed. People with their own strange agendas may find it convenient to argue amongst themselves about what festival or season it's appropriate to celebrate. I say, bring 'em on--though in a different context from that man who poses as our president.

I know that we have exchanged views, this past year, on the nature of this peculiar community the Internet affords us; and I share a bit of the skepticism of those who worry that it's too safe to hide behind our computers where we have only the illusion of being truly in touch with others. Rather than bringing us together, there is the danger that this medium can isolate us still further in this often alienating age.

But then I find readers--and read blogs--from the furthest reaches of the world, from London and Copenhagen, Singapore and Sydney, Australia, from Bangkok and New Delhi and Cape Town and Lima, Peru, and I imagine a meeting of minds that could occur in no other imaginable way. And at such moments I feel like I'm part of a groundswell of potential, of a growing community of human beings who are not satisfied with our lack of mutual understanding or with the greed that threatens to destroy our planet.

And it seems to me that the "spirit of Christmas," with its message of "peace and goodwill toward men"--that must have been in the days before women were invented!--is still alive and thriving at least in this one small corner of the vast blogosphere that I occupy, and likely too in many more. And I feel privileged to be a part of it, to know that my voice is heard and that its particular and individual sound can resonate with others, whose thoughts and feelings coincide with mine.

Perhaps, I find myself thinking at such moments, we are part of a vast and growing conspiracy of human beings--not left-wing nor right, not black or white, not gay or straight, not American or Indonesian or Chinese or Italian--whose collective thoughts and efforts may indeed conjoin and work together to heal this ailing planet through the collective power of our sanity, our struggle to adhere to a sound, mutually beneficial moral clarity, and our commitment, each to the truth of our individual experience.

I heard once that the Quichol Indians in Mexico, instead of giving their new babies a name, ask first of the newborn: "Tell me who you are." That. for me, is the lovely, fundamental practice of those whose blogs I value most: through what they write, they tell me who they are. Just as, through The Buddha Dairies, I discover (almost!) daily more of my own humanity and hope to share that human part of me with the world.

Happy Christmas....

... or, as they say here in America, Merry... I'm wondering, not for the first time, why it is that I was brought up, in England, saying Happy Christmas, while over this side of the pond it's invariably Merry Christmas. I checked this out with a fellow ex-pat yesterday at the gym and she confirmed that, yes, she too had been brought up saying Happy. More Dickens readers here, these days, I wonder? Or is the U.S. simply still stuck in the nineteenth century? Curious, the old habits one sticks with. I have never felt comfortable saying Merry Christmas--and it's not the Christmas part of it, as those who wage that noble war against the war on Christmas would have it. It's the Merry part. I can't quite get my mouth around to saying the word. It's like bath. I haven't yet learned to say it with that short, practical, American "a". I still say "baaarth." Though I don't use the thing much myself, anyway. I shower, American-style. But I do still use the word for George, the dog. He enjoys a weekly baaarth. Ah well. Happy Christmas, everyone!

The Butterfly

(cross-posted with Accidental Dharma)

Thanks to my wife, Ellie, who put this book into my hands--with the words "Accidental Dharma." It's very short, for reasons that will become obvious. I read it in a couple of hours... and she's right, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is the archetype of the "gift wrapped in shit." Jean-Dominique Bauby, its author, was at the prime of his creative and, yes, rather glamorous life as the editor of the French magazine Ellewhen he was struck, at the age of 43, by a massive stroke. (Ram Dass, remember, fondly calls it being "stroked.") Bauby was left totally debilitated, but for the ability to blink his left eye. The "diving bell" is the metaphor for the nightmare prison in which he finds himself isolated, and deprived of even the least of those things that had brought joy into his life: his family, his work, the physical activity of the body, food and wine...

The gift was the "butterfly," the life of the mind which becomes his last refuge ad solace. With it, he studies the inside of his diving bell with feelings ranging from despair, to inner rage, to bemused irony and gentle, self-directed humor. When self-pity rears its head, he nudges it away with wit or memory, reliving incidents of his past life with gratitude and pleasure. Or rides on the wings of his butterfly into the world of the imagination, inventing vistas of which he is physically incapable. All in all, Bauby takes us with him on an agonized--but also tender and delightful--voyage into the furthest reaches of the human mind.

How does he manage this, with his near-total disability? He blinks an eye. Working through the alphabet with the aid of an able and infinitely patient assistant, he stops her with that one good eye at the letter that he needs, and thus dictates the words, the sentences, the paragraphs that make up this short but powerfully eloquent little book. Reading it, we come to understand that human life stripped of everything but the barest of essentials can still be a life worth living, thanks to that invisible, intangible and infinitely mysterious of qualities, the mind and its ability to experience love.

Julian Schnabel has created a film version of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly which has already been honored with multiple awards and nominations. Schnabel, known first for his work as a painter, is also the creator of two earlier outstanding biographical films, Basquiat, about the ill-fated young African American graffiti artist, and Before Night Falls, about the Cuban poet Reinaldo Arenas, both men who faced great adversity in their lives and whose creative minds proved at once their burden and their triumph--either one, if you haven't seen them, a great rental.

Signing off here, for Christmas, with all good wishes to those generous to read my ramblings. May you and yours be blessed with peace and happiness in your lives.

Today, Please Go To...

.... Accidental Dharma, for two new entries by Khengsiong at Goodwill 101 and Gary at Forest Wisdom. Please note that I have left my own first entry at the top of this site, so that newcomers will get the idea. It will be there for another few days, then moved back down to a less prominent place. We have forty people coming to our tiny cottage tonight, so Ellie and I have to get cracking on the preparations. As a friend once wrote, Make it a great day...

Skinheads

Salomon Huerta, Untitled

Interesting, isn't it, that the shaved head should have come to be in such vogue as a statement about personal freedom and power? Back in the sixties, it was... hair. Remember? An abundance of it. A strange reversal, specific to our times, perhaps, because hair has been associated with power throughout the ages. Just think of Samson and Delilah. I'm waiting for the Broadway musical, "Bald." Interesting, too, that the shaved head should find practitioners at both ends of the social spectrum, the saints and the reprobates, the monks and the skinheads. Which begs the question as to whether its popularity is any way associated with the popularization of Buddhism. Clearly, in both cases, cutting off one's hair is an act of renunciation of material and social values, as well as a powerful visual statement about identity. For a monk, I suppose, it's a positive act of liberation; for skinheads, we tend to read the same statement as angry and aggressive.

We have talked before, in The Buddha Diaries, about the phenomenon of tattoos in this same context. The two come together in a gripping movie that we watched last night, "This Is England." It's about the bonding of young males, about bullying and fierce tenderness, about the grief and deprivation and despair that contribute to acts of violence and retribution. It's about the fears and fury of young men when their masculinity is threatened, about rivalry and racism. While it's set in contemporary England, it could just have well been set in the United States.

Shades of "A Clockwork Orange"--that terrible, compelling story about the adolescent male ego gone amok. But here the alienation is of a different, less glaringly surreal, more socially realistic kind.


Shaun is a twelve year old whose father has just been killed in Margaret Thatcher's senseless invasion of the Falkland Islands. He is adopted as a kind of gusty little mascot, first by a relatively harmless gang of hooligans, then by a seriously sociopathic hoodlum recently released from jail and bent on taking his revenge on society with a gang of demented skinheads. Drummed into a racist frenzy by an England-first ideologue, they wreak havoc with their anti-Pakistani agenda, and little Shaun learns to his cost about the consequences of rage and hatred.

For those who choose to avoid movies that show violence, it should be noted that there is one scene in this film where rage explodes into explicit, momentarily uncontrolled brutality. Generally, though, we are shown the damage wrought by rage and hatred on the human psyche, less so on the human body. Violence is below the surface, omnipresent, threatening, but expressed more in language and attitude than in blood and gore. I kept thinking about this country, about Minutemen, about the shameless exploitation of the immigration issue by Republican demagogues in the presidential campaign, about not so deeply buried racial fears and hatreds, about not so deeply buried rage... "This Is England" is as much about America as it is about the country of my birth, as much about the growing global problems of population growth, wealth and resource distribution, climate change, and consequent migration patterns as it is about Merrie Olde... A disturbing, thought-provoking piece of work, and easily accessible thanks to Netflix.

A Reply...

Yesterday I received a query from a reader puzzled by the inconsistencies in some of the thoughts and beliefs expressed here in The Buddha Diaries. I hoped that a response would help me understand them a little better myself. I don't feel free to post the original questions, since they were sent to me personally, offline, but I thought I would post my own thoughts on the matter this morning. At least the poem, if you don't already know it, might amuse you, and I do think it says something about The Buddha Diaries. Here goes:

I'm not sure why my inconsistencies and ambivalences are such a worry to you. They aren't, particularly, to me. More of a curiosity, really. I can't explain myself, can't justify my thinking, even--perhaps especially--when it fits no rational pattern or philosophical truth. I'm a poet, for God's sake. Always have been. I just put down words, one after the other, without trying to deal out wisdom, even when they contradict each other. You ask questions for which I have no answers, with references that are beyond my understanding. I have no way of satisfying the hunger you project to corral me into some convenient cattle chute. If I seem to be clueless, it's because I am! Sorry! Here's a poem for you. Consider it the source of all the wisdom you mistakenly ascribe to me! I have always loved it. Perhaps you're familiar with it. If not, enjoy.

It was sent with admiration and affection for a mind quite different from my own. Sometimes I wish I could understand all this. Mostly, though, I'm just caught in the muddle of it all, and do my best to pay attention to the experiences that come my way. Best to all...!

George...

... takes his ease...



He sat motionless on my lap during meditation this morning, and silent but for the occasional gentle snore. He is plainly unperturbed by the state of the world. It matters little to him that the "most powerful man in the world" speaks in ever greater inanities. His "gift wrapped in shit" comes unwrapped, actually, on his morning and evening walks, and is left for me to wrap and deposit in the closest trash can. Ah, well, a greater wisdom than I am able to muster.

George also, wisely, refrains from bothering himself with political involvement. As for me, I am changing my mind and thought I'd let you know about it. I have mentioned, surely, that my heart is with Kucinich. Sadly, though he speaks more sense than the rest of them put together when he is allowed a word in the great "debates," he is allowed too few of them to be a a viable candidate. I'm grateful to him for being there, to give an ounce of perspective to the rest of the line-up. I like Obama for his youth and vision, but it's John Edwards who speaks closest to my mind. When he talks of the change that's needed, he's far more radical than Clinton and Obama; from their lips, "change" sounds more like a word than a necessity. With the experience of a trial lawyer, Edwards might be the one to stand up against the corporate powers that constitute that "oligarchy" I was speaking of the other day.

I'd be grateful for your thoughts. Otherwise, for The Buddha Diaries today, I plan to follow George's excellent example. Cheers, everyone...

Buddhist Connections

Updated December 17, 2013

Here are some links that will prove useful to readers interested in exploring Buddhist teaching and thought in greater depth. See also The Buddha Diaries Blog Roll for many fine Buddhist Blogs.


Thanissaro Bhikkhu is a Thai Forest monk, the abbot of the Metta Forest Monastery, north of San Diego in California. He is a widely respected and widely published teacher who visits us regularly at our sitting group, the Laguna Sangha.

Metta Forest Monastery

Access to Insight is a site that offers comprehensive information about Theravada Buddhism. You'll find here virtually any term that you need to have defined and any thought that you need to have expanded.

Tricycle: The Buddhist Review is one of the finest Buddhist magazines you'll find, with monthly articles by leading writers and teachers.

Inquiring Mind comes in a newspaper format and offers a great deal of information about upcoming events and sitting groups.

Buddhist Geeks is a site that leads to extensive information if you're interested in exploring the nexus between Buddhism and technology.

Other Useful Sites:

Ethix Merch Blog

intentBlog

Access to Insight
Shambala SunSpace
Truth Is Within
The Naked Monk
Tricycle Blog
Tricycle Community
Wandering Dhamma
Zen Mirror

The Buddha--A Disturbing Image

It's a good thing that Buddhists aren't Muslims, at least not those of the fundamentalist variety. Otherwise the giant Buddha images by Japanese artist Takashi Murakami in his current exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles would provoke a world-wide conflagration of outrage. (You'll have to check on the MOCA site for images of the Buddhas, but it's worth the time and effort to view and listen to Murakami's tour.)

But more of the Buddhas shortly. First, be it said that if you wish to see a relentlessly sly, subversive--yet savage--assault on the skewed values of contemporary civilization, you need look no further than this show. Murakami outWarhols Warhol in this plethora of work where kitsch meets high fashion meets Madison Avenue marketing meets, um… art. Included in the installation is a complete high-end Louis Vuitton store where fashion accessories may be purchased for barely mentionable sums of money. When we were there, my wife spotted a young woman cheerfully charge $1,000 and significant change on one of the knick-knacks on sale there.

Murakami skewers--and profits from!--not only the high end market, however. Included in the show are dozens of the tiny, cheaply manufactured and cutely bizarre toy figures he produced to be marketed with candy and ice cream—goods as toxic, in their way, as the cigarettes with which baseball cards were once mass-distributed. His high-gloss, psychedelic adumbrations of the human form, ranging all the way from miniature to monumental, combine the terminally cute with the hideously grotesque, sci-fi anime with fairy tale, the child's innocence with the overtly obscene. Garish in color and material, their shapes blend the streamlined finish of the automobile with the sensual rotundity of the egg—or the baby’s bottom, or the mushroom, both frequent icons in this work!—with the harsh, sharp edge of weaponry or mechanics.

His subversion of the post-Romantic, modernist view of the art object as unique, original, disengaged, and isolated in its own aesthetic bubble of perfection could not be more complete or dismissive. His "superflat" paintings, for God's sake, not only "go with" the wallpaper; they match it! Or they reduce the imagery to a single, cartoonish character or line,



a huge, grinning, devastatingly altered Mickey Mouse face, for example, or a branching lightning bolt. He is not above regaling his viewers with a million of those cheap and pretty flower shapes

and simple, repetitive patterns of all kinds. His mushrooms are rendered with the simplistic cheeriness of those you see on the nursery wall, with colorful dots and friendly, bulbous stalks. Every tawdry, cliché’d graphic device is grist for his tireless mill.

A further strategy of subversion is infantilism. The child-like cartoon characters, recurring everywhere in this work, from painting to sculpture to video, are the counterparts of those in the typical Disney film;



indeed the entire installation is a kind of nightmare Disneyland, where cuteness reigns supreme in a kind of extravagant cultural gesture of denial of the grim geopolitical realities that face us in an increasingly at-risk world. It’s no accident that those nursery mushrooms remind us tauntingly of the clouds above Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And the innocence of Murakami’s little people covers for something quite different beneath the benign appearances, and much closer to the surface than is the case with those cute Disney dwarfs and monsters.

Which brings us back to those Buddhas, two of them, towering assemblages of multiple parts on a base, in each case, of the traditional lotus plant. In the most recent, “Oval Buddha,” 2007, the figure of the Buddha sits atop a huge turtle and a tall pedestal encrusted with a profusion of rococo detail. (Tour #6 on the link above will give you a view of this Buddha, and a partial glimpse of the other.) Gone, though, is the traditional pleasing serenity of the Buddha’s smile, replaced here by two faces, one on each side of the head—the first an angry scowl, the other a devouring grimace with ferocious teeth. Murakami’s subversion, it seems, extends from the physical to the spiritual realm, in a world where suffering is omnipresent beneath the mask of material well-being. It’s a deeply disturbing vision, but one that should compel our attention and demand a reconsideration of many of our treasured assumptions about ourselves, our human nature, as well as about our spiritual aspirations and pretensions.

The Buddha Diaries Recommends

To learn more about what is planned as a collaborative site, please check out our just-launched Accidental Dharma: The Gift Wrapped in Shit, presented by The Buddha Diaries. You'll find the site's intention described there, along with several examples of the kind of story that we're looking for. We're hoping to receive your stories to post, if and when you feel moved to send them to us at AccidentalDharma@mac.com. While we can't promise to include everything we receive, we'll post every story that is in harmony with the spirit and intention of the site. The process of writing, as all bloggers know, can serve to shed light on our experience, so we're hoping that this site will prove enlightening to contributors and readers alike.


Also... there's a terrific piece of writing over at Adgita Diaries, which we discovered when we checked in there yesterday. A review of the History Channel's 1968 with Tom Brokaw, it takes the long view of those of us who participated in those times and laments the loss of their promise. Here's a short piece of what MandT have to say, a paragraph that particularly resonates with me:

Brokaw’s ‘suit’ vision of his own youth in the center of a watershed year in contemporary history is profoundly blind as he states in conclusion: “"If there is one enduring lesson for me, it is that we survived as a nation and as a culture.” Not true-- so very not true. 1968 was the year America entered in earnest its entopic decline. The Vietnam War was clearly revealed for what it was---a profiteering corporate militaristic fantasy of long lasting fatal results. The old Democratic Party died with Jack Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy, Martin Luther King, the failure of Lyndon Johnson to hoist The Great Society, and perished in Daley’s thug Chicago amid killings, riots, the ghosts of a murderous Kent State and the future charismatic machinations of the Clintons. The First Amendment became a lethal attraction, the Bush administration----its newly dug grave.

Here's one fellow blogger who concurs with their dissent from Brokaw's conclusion. It is "so very not true," indeed, for the reasons that they eloquently elaborate. I also love their vision of the blogosphere: "The reality community never sleeps, and the Internet has become our Paul Revere."

I do love to read the views of the young and idealistic--represented in MandT's entry by the wonderful song that accompanies it. I also love the voices of those who have managed to maintain the idealism of their youth and temper it with the wisdom and compassion of respectable years! Thanks, MandT, for this good piece.

Over at Nick's Bytes, always a fun trip, there are a couple of interesting memes. I like the one about writing a letter from your now self to yourself as you were when you were 13 years old. Mine would go something like this: "Dear Peter, Don't worry, you'll get out of this alive. Boarding school is hell and everyone knows you're the easiest tease around. Try not to get mad, and feel free to have a good cry once in a while, where the others won't see you. Oh, and that little thing down between your legs. I know it's giving you a lot to worry about right now, but once you get over this 13-year old hump it'll do just fine. You're not the freak you think you are, I promise. Lots of love, Old Peter."

At one plus two read the heartbreaking story of two little girls in dire straights at Christmas time. Though it shouldn't matter, should it, whether it's Christmas or not?

Guns: A Loud Noise

Well, when I said yesterday that I was "sticking my neck out" with my remarks about guns, I did so advisedly. The piece came out in a slightly different version on the Huffington Post and immediately attracted a number of angry and indignant comments--20 as of this writing--several of them starting out with a derisive "Well, Pete..." Ouch! Several referred to my supposed desire to remove guns from people's hands. Though I'd be happy to do this in many cases, what I actually suggested was that we might a bit more careful about whose hands they ended up in. I also specified that I was talking about assault weapons, but this small detail seems to have gone unnoticed in the fury. I suppose this is but a trivial indication of why it is those politicians choose to skirt the subject, whilst the craziest amongst us continue to be able fairly easily to obtain the means to impose mass-slaughter on the innocent in schools and supermarkets and, yes, even churches.

My critics, I note, did not hesitate to be insulting. "Morally corrupt" was but one epithet hurled in my direction. Hmmm... Guess I need to look at that. Voicing mild opposition to easy access to assault weapons does seem, well, morally questionable to say the least. The Buddhist teachings, by the way, enjoin us to "Right Speech," which includes "abstaining from lying, from divisive speech, from abusive speech, & from idle chatter." (Access to Insight.) Have I resorted, in this instance, to "divisive speech," I wonder? Or "abusive speech"? I confess that did use the word "yahoo." And now I find myself resorting to sarcasm. Tsk. And, frankly, taunting. Is this another example of the paper cup and ice cube syndrome? (See The Buddha Diaries entry of 12/7.) Or have I indulged merely in "idle chatter"? All questions to be pondered. But to show the depths of my depravity, the truth is that the response simply makes me happy that I took the trouble to write about this thorny subject.

I noticed, by the way, that the third lead editorial in yesterday's New York Times addressed the same issue, and made much the same points as I did. My thanks to everyone who spoke in reasonable voices on this subject in comments on The Buddha Diaries.

Guns: A Deafening Silence

(A reminder: Click here to read The Buddha Diaries review of "An Arrow to the Heart: a Commentary on The Heart Sutra" by Ken McLeod on the Huffington Post.)


Strange. Strange and profoundly unsettling. In all the news media reports on the recent senseless killings in Nebraska and Colorado, I have heard very little about the guns that were used. If anyone has been speculating about how a deadly assault weapon ended up in the hands of a teenager who was already well known by authorities to be mentally unstable and a man whose hateful rage was also already on the record, I have not heard or read it.

I’m ready to stick my neck way out here and say that I find it incomprehensible and disgraceful that this sad history should have been allowed to repeat itself yet again in a country that suffers the evident delusion of being civilized. It’s incomprehensible and disgraceful that the question of reasonable gun possession legislation is not in the headlines of the media and on the tongue of every presidential candidate.

Has anyone given any thought to how sad it is that a church should need to employ armed guards for the protection of its staff and congregation in this “Christian” country? Apparently the Colorado case is confirmation of the need for such precaution, since the assassin was killed (in a timely fashion, true) by a woman security officer. We can be grateful to this brave woman that many lives were spared, and still rue the fact that her presence there was necessary in the first place.

Is this not yet another piece of evidence that what we are pleased to tout to the rest of the world as our “democracy” is, at best, a malfunctioning oligarchy, at worst, a mere plutocracy? Are we not ashamed that a small minority of fanatics should be able to intimidate our leaders and our elected representatives into continued support for a permissive policy that the vast majority find loathsome? How could anyone in their right mind believe that those who wrote the founding documents of this country intended that fire power be readily available to morons and maniacs alike (“militias,” anyone?)—let alone weapons of a destructive power that to those good men would have been unimaginable?

I am perplexed. Here is candidate Rudy Giuliani, formerly a rational proponent of gun control to stem the violence in the city of which he once was mayor, now doing a volte-face in order to escape the displeasure of the National Rifle Association and its followers. There is a row of Republican candidates confronted with an absurd and hostile UTube question from a pry-it-from-my-cold-dead-hands yahoo, rushing to surrender simple good sense to political contingency.

As for the Democratic candidates, check this out: Senator Biden “does not have a policy on gun control.” Senator Clinton “does not have a policy on gun control.” Senator Barack Obama “does not have a policy on gun control.” Same with Edwards. Of the whole bunch of them, only Sen. Mike Gravel even has a statement: “While Senator Gravel fully supports the 2nd Amendment,” it reads, “he believes that fundamental change must take place with regards to gun ownership. The senator advocates a licensing program where a potential gun owner must be licensed as well as properly trained with a firearm before they may own one." Well, bully for him. But what a weak-kneed, milquetoast qualification. (Dennis Kucinich, I’m happy to say, was rated “F” by the NRA, but I could not find a clear and honest policy statement on his site either.)

So where is the sanity? When do we begin to recognize that not every American citizen needs, or has a right to an assault weapon to protect his home, his family, his person. As for those who choose to hunt deer, or bears, or rabbits, or squirrels, or whatever other of God’s creatures they like to assassinate, are shotguns and rifles not weaponry enough for their valiant efforts?

Actually, I’m beyond perplexed. I’m outraged.

Bad Dream

We are out on a hike with a group of others, walking along the sea shore until we come to a steep climb up the cliff. There is a choice of two path, one parallel to the cliff's edge, narrow and rocky, the other along the top of what appears to be a pipe line, a path impacted with snow and ice. For some reason--and unwisely, as it turns out--I choose the latter, while the rest of our group proceed along the first path. We walk parallel to each other, within hailing distance.

Both paths follow up and down steep slopes, roller-coaster style. My own becomes increasingly slick and treacherous, and I decide after a while that it's time to attempt a crossing over to the other. A deep chasm separates the two by only a short leap. I call across to the other side for help, but I'm too impatient to wait and make the great lunge toward the other side. Mistake. I fall a few inches short of the path, but save myself by clutching to a small projection, no more than the root of a shrub, perhaps, sticking out from the side of the cliff, close to the top.

I call for help. Ellie and a friend of ours, a long-time neighbor, peer over the side and promise help, but need to get assistance. They disappear. I hang there, waiting, descending ever further into panic when the wait becomes interminable. Have they forgotten me? I cling on desperately. Nothing. No one. I start to yell: Help me, help me! Above, an Asian tourist looks about him. He has heard something, but obviously can't find the source. I shout again, but seem unable to raise my voice sufficiently to be heard. Help me, Help me!

No one can hear. I cling with growing desperation to my root. The tourist continues to look about him with a puzzled air. Down here, I yell. Down here!

My yells had apparently shifted from dream to reality. They woke Ellie, who asked if I'd been having a nightmare. She had never before heard me make the sounds I was making as I yelled, in my dream, for help.


Okay, so what's the gift?

My first thought is that the dream had to do with the fear of dying. I was clinging on to life with absolute determination and wild desperation. Meditating on the dream for a few minutes before going back to sleep, I recalled another suggestion Ken McLeod had made in his dharma talk on Sunday: that an good alternative for that "suffering" we hear so much about in Buddhism might be simply "struggle." He asked us to wonder what it might be like not to have to struggle, to simply give it up....

I don't know about you, but I find myself struggling a lot in my life. It's sometimes a struggle just to get out of bed in the morning. I find myself struggling when I write. And yet I know that the best of my writing comes when I give up the struggle, when I allow myself to be the channel for the writing, not the "writer." The same applies, when you think of it, to almost everything we do.

What if, in my dream, I had been able simply to give up the struggle to cling on? What if I had been able to let go, and fall into... I really did not know what lay beneath me. It could, yes, have been a long, steep fall leading to treacherous rocks below. It could have led to my death--which was obviously what had me in such a panic. But I'm thinking now that this is what Buddhism is really all about, achieving that kind of spiritual serenity where it becomes possible to enter into death without the fear that brings more suffering with it.

It's evident that I have some way to go!

Shakespeare, etc.

What a pleasure to spend the afternoon on Saturday in the company of a quartet of actors performing scenes from Shakespeare. Our friend Fred--a frequent visitor and sometime commenter on "The Buddha Diaries"--had invited us to the show that he and his actor friends had been preparing, and the occasion served to remind me of the extraordinary power and versatility of language. No sets, no costumes, just a row of chairs and four lecterns--and words! Shakespeare had written them, centuries ago, and they proved that the human imagination, with their aid, can easily span the intervening years to experience the joys and fears, the pain and anger of those who are given to utter them. Our actors obviously relished them, and their commitment to the words provided us, in the audience, with a rich tapestry of the human experience and a reminder that the dramas in which we play our individual parts are no more nor less illusory than those enacted on the stage in front of us. Thanks, Fred!

Saturday evening we came home to watch The Tibetan Book of the Dead on DVD. Narrated by Leonard Cohen, it's a two part investigation into the way in which that great text still plays out in the life of Tibetans today, illuminating the meaning and rituals of life and death in a remote part of the world where life is at subsistence level and where people still find solace and guidance in the old beliefs. And beliefs they are: here, Buddhism is clearly a religion, as system of beliefs that gives humankind place in the order of the universe and instructs about the mystery of death and afterlife.

Sunday morning we attended a book launch event for Ken McLeod's "An Arrow to the Heart." (A reminder: my review of the book can be found on The Huffington Post.) Ken offered a wide-ranging historical and philosophical introduction to the text of The Heart Sutra and, after a fine buffet lunch, to his book and the process he engaged in writing it. We began to understand more about the differences between Mahayana and Theravada Buddhism and more, too, about their common ground. Of special interest to me, given my intention to launch my "Accidental Dharma" site in the near future, was one of the interpretations of the word "dharma" as "a unit of experience."

It's precisely the intersection of lived experience and teaching--the more common understanding of "dharma"--that I'm looking to explore. Sometimes the richest lessons in life come wrapped in the most unwelcome of experiences--be it some casual insult, a personal disappointment or, at worst, the death of a loved one in a senseless accident like the one described in the Ram Dass "Rachel letter" to which I alluded in the last entry on this site. More of this in the coming week. I hope you'll bear with me.

"Fierce Grace"

It's wonderful how things come together with mysterious and impeccable timing, just exactly when they're needed. We received in the mail the CD version of "Ram Dass: Fierce Grace," which had arrived fortuitously at the head of our Netflix "queue" at the end of the very week in which I had written the "Dear Ram Dass" letter that follows. The film retraces the path that took Ram Dass from childhood privilege to an Ivy League professorship; from Tim Leary/LSD-inspired explorations into the workings of the human mind to the feet of the guru, Maharaj-ji, and a life devoted to teaching and the cultivation of love in a Western world where the worship of reason seemed to have left it far behind. It also describes the devastating stroke, that "fierce grace" he understood as a "stroking" from his guru, which arrived to shake up all his preconceptions about how he himself would reach old age and die. It was the ultimate "gift wrapped in shit" about which I have been thinking and writing all week, as I pursued plans for the "Accidental Dharma" site that I've been planning for.

There are many moving moments in"Fierce Grace," but the most powerful of all is surely the reading of a letter that distills all the wisdom, love and understanding that Ram Dass has come to represent for so many throughout the world. The Rachel letter, as it has come to be known, was written to the parents of a girl who died in a senseless accident caused by a drunk driver. Listening to it read aloud by the girl's mother, Ellie and I were brought to floods of tears by the parent's suffering and by the profundity of compassion from which Ram Dass's words arose. It's an extraordinary piece of wisdom, and it describes better than I could what is meant by the concept of that "gift wrapped in shit."

While I'm still not there with Ram Dass in his ecstatic vision of the universal force that he calls God, he provided me with some wonderful guidance along the path that I have been following in my life. I wrote my letter simply to say thank you to a man whose words and example have given so many cause for gratitude. Here it is:

Dear Ram Dass,

I woke this morning with the realization that I have never done the graceful thing and paused for long enough to express my gratitude for your help in turning my life around at a time when I was in deep distress and trouble.

I met you in 1994. Not in the flesh, of course, but in the mind. It happened following a workshop in which I participated at the Esalen Institute with Dr. Ron Alexander, a psychotherapist who was profoundly influenced by Buddhism and other Eastern religious teaching. After the weekend workshop, I made an appointment with Ron in hopes of getting some clarity in the darkness that seemed to be closing in on me, and he suggested that I read your book, “The Only Dance There Is.”

I did. I think what impressed me most was your joy, mixed with the simple realism with which you viewed the world. The blend of the two seemed quite extraordinary to one who had been looking at a bleak and problematic world with something closer to despair. A friend loaned us a collection of your tapes—yes, this was the way we listened to sound recordings, back in those days!—and my wife Ellie and I played them in the car on our weekly pilgrimages to our weekend retreat. Together we chanted along with you those words from the Heart Sutra: gate, gate, paragate, parasumgate, boddhisvaha for an hour at a time. I had no idea what the words meant, and I have to tell you I felt more than a little foolish at first, but the chant did work, mysteriously, to alleviate the pain.

I had first heard of you much earlier in my life. Back in the early 1970s, remember, you had become quite the fad—so I judged—with one of your other books, “Remember, Be Here Now.” It was a book for that historical moment, appealing to the flower child generation and to those who opposed the Viet Nam war. In my ignorance, however, I was far too smart to be seduced by what I judged to be your simplistic view of the world, and my intellectual roots in the cultural traditions of the Western world had me rationalizing that it was a kind of arrogance to poach on the religious traditions of the East. Ram Dass, I was content to tell myself, is a fraud, a Pied Piper leading the flower children off into some impossible enchanted garden. What a farce! (I also had my judgments about all those drugs...)

That was then. I was not ready, obviously. I was blissfully unaware of my own ignorance and self-delusion. I was stubborn in my rejection of anything the smacked of soul or spirit. I was, as I have written elsewhere recently, embarrassed by my heart and especially by the whole idea of the "love" you preached. Life could not be that simple.

But in 1994, “The Only Dance There Is” was a revelation. It came when I was more than ready, desperate, even, for some kind of a perspective on the world, the suffering I was experiencing, and the suffering I saw around me. I found an extraordinary opportunity in the words you wrote, in the joy that they expressed, in their simple clarity and sanity. They opened the door for the meditation practice that has been my daily anchor ever since.

Then, soon after I had “discovered you,” you were stricken. But that stroke in 1997, it seems, failed to destroy your spirit. By the year 2000, I was far enough along the path to be reviewing books with spiritual content for the Los Angeles Times, and "Still Here: Embracing Aging, Changing and Dying", the book about your stroke and its aftermath came into my hands. I was astounded by your ability to find the grace in your misfortune, and to find a powerful—even joyful—life lesson in the state to which you were reduced, needing help with the most elementary tasks in taking care of yourself.

I woke thinking of you today, perhaps, as a result of a conversation with Michael, a visiting artist friend last night. Michael is a man who has suffered extraordinary pain for years, and has undergone more back surgeries that most of us could bear. Our conversation took place in the context of the article by Daniel Bergner in last Sunday’s New York Times about the right to choose death with dignity over prolonged, incurable debility—the right to commit suicide rather than endure suffering. My Western, rationalist instinct is to support such choices, and the right to make them… until I think of your example.

Ellie asked me on our walk today about animals. We have put a number of them to sleep when the time seemed right. I still think those decisions were right: how could we stand by and watch the innocent suffer? What about people then? Ellie asked if I would “encourage” her to seek a peaceful death if she were ever in such a situation. No, I would not encourage her. But I would be there, I hope, to help her come to her own decision, whatever that might be.

So this will express my gratitude, Ram Dass, for both your example and your teaching. Both have been an inspiration to me, as I suspect they have been to many millions of others on this planet. I trust that you continue to prosper in adversity, and send with this note the love and admiration of a stranger.

In gratitude, Peter

Forgive my wordiness today, friends. And thank you, if you have taken the time to read thus far. Have a great weekend.

Under Attack!

It was a trivial incident, really. Insignificant in the grand scale of things. I had just left the front door of our house, about ten o'clock at night, taking George the dog out for his last pee walk before bedtime. We live on a blind bend in the hills, a very narrow street, made more narrow by the customary row of parked cars, and I heard the aggressive roar of the engine before I saw its source--a large black SUV, taking the bend at inordinate speed. Caught in the headlights, I shook my head in a clear--but quiet, I thought, and non-threatening--sign of disapproval of the speed at which the vehicle was traveling. And was rewarded for my pains by a direct hit from a paper cup filled with ice cubes, hurled at me from the open window of the car as it roared on past.

Trivial, as I say. But I was shocked. The first reaction was a surge of belated fear. This guy--sorry, men, this was masculine driving; my general impression is that women drivers are aggressive in different ways than taking dangerous bends at a high rate of speed--this guy, I thought immediately, would have used a gun on me if he'd had one. Those drive-by shootings are common enough in the city, and surely, some of them, as senselessly provoked. Another surge of anger, easily noted and dismissed. And then sadness, that we humans are reduced to such pitiful instinctive behavior.

So I looked for the gift. I found myself thinking about the driver, the bad karma he must have been carrying with him as he drove, and of which he had certainly just acquired a little bit more. I had learned something from direct experience, I thought, about human nature, the quick resort to violence, the easy release of rising anger through instant action, the gratification of a fragile ego. I thought about that demented teenager in Omaha, Nebraska, who did have a gun available and who used it to devastating effect. The death of those men and women who were the victims of his unprovoked attack is a dreadful reminder of the essentially harmless banality of my own incident, but in principle it was no different. (Is it not disgraceful that we, in this country, apparently still lack the good sense and the will to keep lethal assault weapons out of the hands of even the mentally unstable and the criminally insane?)

And what about myself? Easy to learn about others, less easy to look into oneself and find the teaching there. However minimally, I had my own part in bringing about this explosion of petty rage. What little part of my own ego prompted that message I conveyed, that small, disapproving shake of the head that undoubtedly said: I'm your Daddy, I'm wiser and older than you, I look down upon you from the perch of my righteousness and offer you the benefit of my superior judgment. From a different viewpoint, from the driver's seat, jubilant with my own driving skills and daring, I look out at this judgmental old prick with his stupid little dog and, well... fuck him, right? Who's he to lecture me on my driving?

A trivial incident, yes. And, yes, I was right. The guy was driving like a maniac. His rage was evident in the way that he drove before I provoked it further. I have no need to reproach myself, nor to make the incident bigger than it was. Still, a little something was learned in this very small "gift wrapped in shit."

It's this kind of thing that I'm interested in exploring in "Accidental Dharma," soon to offer space for those teachings that reach us unexpectedly, in small ways--a paper cup, flung out of the darkness on a narrow hillside street--or, sometimes, in truly terrible, life-changing events like those Omaha killings. I'll be asking for stories from anyone who cares to examine the impact of these unanticipated life-lessons on their own consciousness and the way they conduct their lives. I hope that you'll join me. More to come on this topic, next week...

The Buddha Diaries Recommends

Click here to read The Buddha Diaries review of "An Arrow to the Heart: a Commentary on The Heart Sutra" by Ken McLeod.

Thanks to this article by RJ Eskow in the current Tricycle (I think you have to subscribe to the online magazine if you want to read the whole article, but the magazine itself is a wonderful investment: consider this a plug!), we at The Buddha Diaries have been thinking a bit about Buddhism and blogging, and whether the twain should meet. Before The Buddha Diaires there was The Bush Diaries, the political blog that Peter started---like RJ Eskow--immediately following the 2004 re-election, and for the same reasons. Something had to be done, and the only thing I knew how to do was write. You'll find some further thoughts on the matter--and on the Democratic presidential race on Eskow's Huffington Post blog. It's an interesting debate, and one in which I engage every time I feel moved to respond, in these pages, to political events.

Cardozo, meanwhile, my trusty sidekick, turned up this wonderful site, where a bona fide warrior with a conscience fights the good fight against the senseless spilling of blood. Cardozo writes:

Pen and Sword

Jeff Huber, a retired U.S. Navy Commander, has been blogging about the Iraq War and other misadventures of the Bush administration since 2005. The voluminous archives of Pen and Sword exist as a compelling database of the illogicalities and deceptions that have characterized Bush II.

As Huber wrote in the blog's introductory post, by pursuing a "fist-first approach to shaping the rest of the world in our image, [we may] collapse under the weight of our own hubris..."

Pen and Sword is driven by a passion born from patriotism, and tempered by an encyclopedic knowledge of national security issues. The blog url (zenhuber.blogspot.com) hints at a connection to Buddhist thought, but we could find no confirmation of this apparent influence within the posts themselves. Perhaps Mr. Huber leaves it to the reader to draw the natural link between Buddhist teaching and his unflinching critiques of the neo-cons' propagation of war and U.S. global dominance.

Please drop in at Pen and Sword to pay a visit to this military man with two boots planted firmly on the ground.

To which Peter merely adds, Amen.

An Arrow to the Heart

Today I ask you to check out my
review of "An Arrow to the Heart: a Commentary on The Heart Sutra" by Ken McLeod.

And a Bunch of Kids...

... with a mention of at least one show from the gallery rounds that Ellie and I did on Saturday. I’m getting a bit behind myself here, so I’ll make it brief. Of the several exhibits we saw, the one that lingers most in my mind is the work of Akio Takamori at the Frank Lloyd Gallery at Bergamot Station in Santa Monica. Takamori is known for whimsical clay sculptures evoking memories of his early life in post-war Japan, and his latest body of work brings together a little community of quietly contemplative children, each about two feet high, their clothes skillfully, if loosely painted on the surface of the clay.

The figures in themselves are charming, but I especially loved the installation. Stand in the middle of the gallery space and look around, and you’ll find the children placed on pedestals, their backs to you, faces to the wall—with just enough space left for you to walk around them and inspect them close up if and when you wish to. On the wall in front of them, the children are mirrored by a two-dimensional photographic image of their own face, each printed digitally on a rough drawing paper that gives each more the feel of a watercolor than a photograph. They stand there, gazing silently into their own visage, each strange and somewhat lonesome in his or her own space.

As a viewer, you can’t help but be moved and drawn in by this installation. At first, from behind, you see only the reproduction of the faces; the backs of the figures lend the children a kind of reticence that makes them more appealing than might an initial confrontation. When you step around in front of them, you are so close that you get the sense of invading their privacy, an intimacy at once tender and intrusive.

The work is a hymn to childhood, to the awkwardness and the difficulty, the shyness and the beauty of it. If you were once a child yourself—as I suspect you might have been—you will not go away from Takamori’s work unmoved by its charms.

Update: We are pleased to correct a long-standing oversight by adding Tara Dharma to The Buddha Diaries' blogroll. Please be sure to check in there and have a look around.

The Buddha Diaries: Why Blog?

So Robin over at The Dharma Bums is worried that her blog "has no direction or purpose," and wonders if they should change the name because it rightly belongs to Kerouac. I say no. I say they have earned the name with their wonderful ramblings through life and nature, their astute observations with both word and camera, the love their blog puts out into the world. I say they are the rightful owners of the name they have chosen to adopt.

In an offline exchange of emails--I'm sure she won't mind my sharing this--Robin worried about the way we risk hiding our humanity behind our blogs, that the virtual "community" can become a way of NOT sharing our humanity, but rather sacrificing it to the seduction of a few electronic impulses. I do see what she means. For myself, though, I see The Buddha Diaries as another, rather special way of sending out metta into the world. It thrills me that I have readers who check in from every continent--I even have a world map above the desk in my office, where colored pins show the locations of visitors and readers. At this point, it's a veritable pincushion. A kind of vanity, I suppose, but it delights me. It gives me the sense of the potential outreach of this metta I send out, and I believe that The Dharma Bums send out metta of their own, their own goodwill and loving-kindness, along with all those other like-minded bloggers who are dedicated to the examination of their lives in the context of the world we're given to live in. To be even a small part of this global chorus is, for me, enough purpose and direction.

I do think of it, too, as a community. I understand that it is no substitute for personal, human contact. In my own daily metta practice, as an essential part of meditation, after family, I never fail to include three groups of people: the members of our Sunday sangha, our little meditation group; the artists that Ellie and I meet with in our monthly "Artists' Matters" sessions; and the men I have worked with over the years in The ManKind Project. I send out metta, too, to those fellow bloggers I have come to think of as a community. While I have met none of you "in the flesh," you keep showing me new parts of your heart and spirit every time you write, and I value what I read.

So, Robin, if you'll forgive this direct address, you and Roger ARE the Dharma Bums to me. I do hope that you'll not change names, but the name matters less than the spirit behind what you do. That's something I'd be really sorry to lose.