Back to the City

Back to the city yesterday. We have been gone for a week, Ellie and I, and it seems like a long time. It feels strange to be back. Above all, the traffic... It took me fifteen minutes, yesterday afternoon, to drive down to the grocery store at five in the afternoon. Rush hour. At another time of day, it might have taken no more than three minutes to make the trip. The clogged traffic has become emblematic of the city itself, the clogged energy, the vain expenditure of power, the toxicity, the pollution of the air we breathe. But here is where we live, at least for the working part of our lives.

It was a day of transitions, and not only the transition back to city life. The big transition was the actual work of saying goodbye to "The Bush Diaries" and hello to "The Buddha Diaries." I wrote a single entry and posted it on both sites, with some minor modifications for the former. I had hoped that Daniel, my assistant and recently my co-writer on The Bush Diaries might be interested in taking over and continuing that work. But no. I made the offer and he declined--quite sensibly, I have to say: he has his own work to do, and, as he pointed out, his voice is different from the one I had established on The Bush Diaries. So good for him, to have made that choice.

It does mean, though, that The Bush Diaries will likely die on the vine. I decided to keep it open, in case I should feel moved to return on occasion with something useful to say. But the day was spent wrapping it up, printing hardcopy of the pages that had not yet been printed, and bidding an emotional farewell to something that has been an important part of my life for the past couple of years. I have much to thank it for. It helped me refine my notion of what it means to have a writing practice, and kept my nose to the proverbial grindstone. It allowed me to publish something virtually every day, and reach out to a few readers who liked what I wrote--no small blessing for a writer. I have always thought the notion absurd, that one should write solely, even primarily, for oneself. It's an act of communication which is eventually meaningless without the other party.

So I was genuinely sad to let it go. On the other hand, a tremendous feeling of release, a lightening of the spirit, as though some serious burden had been lifted from my shoulders. There had grown to be a kind of umbilical attaching me to Bush, and it felt good to cut that cord and let him loose. I didn't even bother to listen to his big Wall Street speech on the economy this morning. Instead, I took a walk around the hill to freshen up my head and allow myself to think a bit about what "The Buddha Diaries" is about, how it in some way relates to The Bush Diaries, and how it in some ways differs.

In the first place, like The Bush Diaries, it's personal. Looking back on my history as a writer, I recognize that everything I have done is personal--whether the books of poetry, the novels, or the memoir. Even the writing about art, on which I have based what reputation I have as a writer, is a very personal take on what artists do. My writing has been a means of exploration, a way to find out what's going on in my own mind and heart. The Bush Diaries was no different, and I can be sure that The Buddha Diaries will share that quality. As a writing practice, it will be a way of examining my Buddhist practice, and the ways in which that practice helps me process what else is going on in my life.

But my intention is that it be more expansive, more inclusive that The Bush Diaries ever was. Although I managed to include references to art and movies and books along the way, it was always with Bush in mind, with an interest in what they might have to say about American culture and America's place in the world in the Bush era. I am released from that unspoken obligation now. My mind can wander where it wants, and not from any special point of view. It is free to roam the universe.

That said, The Buddha Diaries will be a regular--though not necessarily, as The Bush Diaries, daily--conversation with myself. It will be an observation post, a listening post, for what's going on in the inner world--in body, mind, and heart--in response to what's going on in the world out there.

It will also be a record of my meditation practice, which was deepened considerably in the course of Than Geoff's retreat. That's Thanissaro Bhikkhu. It represented a major breakthrough for my practice. For several months before this past weekend, even after years of daily work, I had been struggling with my ability to concentrate. I had been unable to keep my attention on the breath, and had been desperately watching it wander from distraction to distraction as I sat. I did stick with it, despite the obstacles, but with a pervasive sense of dissatisfaction and self-criticism, even anger.

In part, I believe this had to do with The Bush Diaries. My mind reached a point where it was always busy preparing what I needed to say, unable to let go of the ideas and thoughts that kept popping up, absurdly presenting themselves as being of such pressing importance that they needed my immediate consideration. Even early morning was a constant battle, trying to achieve a simple focus on the breath. In short, I believe that The Bush Diaries, once the source of a great deal of joy and inspiration, had become a toxic element in my life. I know that I'm not about to abandon all interest in politics and social justice, but the priorities have radically shifted as a result of the retreat, and I'm experiencing a sense of freedom that I have been sorely missing for some time now. The Buddha Diaries, above all, must be an expression of that freedom.

The Last Post

I thought it would be of interest at this point to include my last post in "The Bush Diaries", the blog I have been writing for the past two years and more. A word of explanation, though: as readers of that journal will already know, it was written tongue-in-cheek as though addressed directly to the president himself. The Buddha Diaries will use no such impudent device, but take the form of a purely personal reflection, my thoughts addressed primarily to myself. Here, then, is the last (well maybe, as you'll read, not quite the last) entry in The Bush Diaries. A kind of farewell:


"THIS IS GOODBYE…

… to The Bush Diaries from PeterAtLarge. Well, maybe not a complete goodbye, but rather more of a Let’s not see quite so much of each other any more.

Here’s the thing, Bush. You have just been taking up too much of my time of late. You have been occupying too much of my mind space. I have been getting up early every morning thinking about you and what I have to say to you. I have been too anxious to get to the newspaper and the morning television news. I have been too anxious to get to my computer.

It has been a good run. I have enjoyed our daily chats. But more and more I have been finding myself predictable on virtually every issue that comes up between us. I know exactly what I’m going to say, and I’m guessing that you do, too. Truth to tell, it hasn’t been so much fun as it was when we started out, more than two years ago. And I want more time to read. I want more time to explore the intricacies of my mind, and follow where it takes me.

I know you have another two years in office. I’m all too aware, indeed, of that unpalatable fact—as is most of the rest of the nation at this point. But you, too, have become irritatingly predictable. “Stay the course” seems to have become your whole life’s purpose. And not just in Iraq. Your State of the Union speech was proof enough that you don’t have a single interesting new idea on any subject. You’re just treading water at the moment, in the desperate attempt to remain afloat for another two years.

So you’ll just have to manage without me, Bush. Well, as I say, not completely. My hope is that my colleague Cardozo will accept my offer of The Bush Diaries, which I intend to make today. He’s a bright young man, and he writes well. I trust that he can do a good job for you. If he accepts, I make the gift without strings attached. I know that he’s partial to Obama for the 2008 election: maybe he’ll want to change our daily conversations to reflect that view. Maybe he’ll bring friends in to the conversation, more voices… I don’t know. He’ll be free to do whatever he wants to.

And I hope that he’ll be open to posting a word from PeterAtLarge when the spirit moves me. Once in a while, Bush, I do have something that I need to tell you. But I don’t need the responsibility of having to talk to you every single day. I have begun to get tired to the sound of my own voice. At least in this particular forum. If Cardozo declines, of course, this entry will be the very last in The Bush Diaries. I hope not.

To those of our faithful readers who have enjoyed this journal, I say thank you. As I say, it has been a good run for me, and I have always enjoyed your comments and responses. And to them, too, this invitation: come join me in my new venture, the new forum for my writing practice—for I would not wish to give that up with The Bush Diaries. You’ll find me meandering through my thoughts and feelings at The Buddha Diaries. It’s a fit sequel, I hope, and one which will allow me the freedom that I’m always looking for. It started yesterday.

To you, Bush, I send all the metta I can muster. That’s goodwill and compassion. As my teacher has taught me to say: May you be happy. May you find true happiness in your life. Because, as he points out, if you and others like you were to find true happiness, the world would be a better place. "

A Commitment

For a long time I have resisted calling myself a Buddhist, even though I have been following a Buddhist meditation practice for more than ten years now, and have attended a number of retreats under the aegis of several different teachers. For a while, I was the primary reviewer of mostly popular new Buddhist books for the Los Angeles Times, and I have read fairly widely in this literature. I still feel, however, largely ignorant of the religious aspects of Buddhism, and have in all honesty shied away from this deeper knowledge.

There are a number of reasons for this. The first, and surely the predominant, is the fact that I was brought up in a Christian home, the son of an Anglican country priest, and was sent from an early age to schools with a strongly Anglican bent. In part this was because my father could not afford the steep fees commanded by private schools and, in choosing a private school education for his son, opted for establishments that allowed respectable discounts to the sons of clergy. The story is unhappily a familiar one--almost, really a cliche: boy gets overdose of religion in his tender years and adolescence, and vows to chuck it all in as soon as he achieves the independence of his majority.

That's what I did. From the age of six I was a choirboy, a server, an acolyte. Religious services, at my school, were compulsory twice a day and three times on Sunday. When I left "public" (read private) school and went to Cambridge University, I lost all interest in religious matters, particularly those having to do with going to church, singing hymns, kneeling down to pray, and receiving wafers at the communion rail. No matter that the kindly Dean of my college took a friendly interest in this son of a brother clergyman, I avoided his sherry parties and never once, I think, set foot in the glorious college chapel.

Along with that cliche came another: the rejection of religion on philosophical grounds. I was a teenager in the 1950s, a student of French literature--and indeed of everything French. I gobbled up Jean-Paul Sartre hook, line and sinker. I dressed in existentialist black and smoked Gauloise cigarettes. I forgive myself. I was a youngster. I was angry for a variety of reasons--perhaps most angry for having been sent to a "good" school and exposed to all the cruelties inflicted in that environment on a sensitive young man who hated sports and wanted to be a poet.

I was also an ardent socialist. I realize that this has become a dirty word in the country of my adoption, but it was a political attitude that I inherited from my father--in compensation, perhaps, for the religion I rejected. I was leery of the communism embraced by Sartre and his ilk, since enough was known already at that time of the unconscionable, inhumane, and even murderous manifestation of that political philosophy in the Soviet Union. But a good socialist concern for social equality and justice seemed unquestionable to this lad of privilege who had received the best of educations at public school and Cambridge and who spoke with a very nice upper middle class accent.

Religion, then, was intellectually beneath me. I was too smart, too worldly wise, too sophisticated to bow down to somebody's idea of a God who lived up there in heaven and ordained the doings of the world. I rejected not only the Christianity of my father, but all religions, attributing to them most of the injustices and sorrows of the world. The Holocaust, a fresh memory in those days, seemed to me--as it did to many others--conclusive evidence that if God existed he was pretty much a disaster as an overseer of events here on earth, deserving more of scorn than abject worship.

So I abandoned religion, and for more years than I care to count dismissed it from my life. I have still not reconciled with Christianity. Nor have I, indeed, acquired a great deal of respect for any of the Gods who seem to inspire human beings with the most despicable of words and deeds. It was not until the sixth decade of my life that I began, for the first time, really, to give serious thought to these matters.

I am just now back from a silent meditation retreat in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The first entry in what I intend to be a series in this nascent weblog (see below,) consists of direct quotations from our teacher, Thanissaro Bhikkhu, scribbled down by myself as he spoke extemporaneously. Those little "poems" will give, I hope, some sense of the depth of his wisdom, his humanity, and his humor. Along with the rest of the experience of those three days, they have inspired in me the intention to change the direction of my writing practice.

In the past three years I have been preoccupied with a very different weblog, "The Bush Diaries," which I have described as a daily, somewhat irreverent "conversation" with the current occupant of the White House in our nation's capital. Needless to say, I have been less than delighted with his performance, but I have tried to be guided, in what I write, by the spirit of compassion that is a great part of Buddhist values. This journal will be different. This one starts with the simple admission that I embrace the teachings of the Buddha, and will explore the implications of that embrace in my daily life and practice. I do not promise to write in this journal every single day, as I have done with The Bush Diaries. But I do set the intention, as of this date and time, to make it a regular part of my life's work.

Viva Voce

(Un)Intentional Haikus

by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
as written down by Peter Clothier
January 28, 2007




the fear:
more dangerous
than the tiger

*

learn
to perceive your anger
as dangerous

*

be aggressive
not out of anger
but out of strategy

*

what made me angry
today? why? what
was the issue?

*

your anger starts
speaking; its reasons
not so good

*

in case of possession, spread
lots of metta
to the spirit

*

give these things
space; think of it
as possession

*
we all
have multiple
personalities

*

"as excited
as a Chinese person
during a fire"

*

the Buddhist approach:
dealing with anger
spread lots of goodwill

*

next time you get
angry, remember: you look
really ugly

*

remind yourself:
I'm not seeing straight
right now: be quiet

*

let loose, or
bottle it up: neither
of these is healthy

*

forty years
of bottled-up anger? Put it
in little bottles and sell it

*

use the energy of anger
without the blindness
to work it out

*

what could I have said
differently, so that person
would not have blown up?

*

think: often
the opening words
are the important ones

*

how to deal with peole
that you hate? analogies
change your perception

*

when we're angry
we think we're in a position
of total power

*

seeing goodness
in other people
nourishes ourselves

*

when you're thirsty
and trembling, you need
what water you can get

*

this person does have
some good; let's
forcus on that first

*

if you spend your time
hating that person
you consume yourself

*

acknowledge their power;
let's see
if we can work together

*

standing here
I haven't seen
anybody

*

that's us; we need
the goodness of other people
to nourish our own goodness

*

when you're in the human
realm, there are going to be
injustices

*

if we take injustices
personally, we've got
a problem

*

why is this
happening to us? We're
human beings

*

shame and compunction;
when they're gone
you're left without defense

*

with anger, there's
a surge of power; but it's
a false power

*

if he keeps acting
in that way, he causes
trouble for himself

*

the sword
coming out of the pillar of fire:
what was that about?

*

may you learn
to do those things
that lead to true happiness

*

am I speaking
out of kindness, or
vindictiveness?

*

who made you
the National Bureau
of Standards?

*

you're getting upset
about the normal course
of human events

*

equal to the great earth;
try to make your goodwill
that big

*

the Buddha is not
teaching us to be
doormats

*

you can defend yourself
but without hatred
for that person

*

if you have an attitude
of goodwill, more of your mind
is available

*

there are times when fear
is skillful:
it helps you

*

when your fear gets tied
with anger and delusion,
that's when it's dangerous

*

your big fear: to do something
unskillful. I'd rather
go down honorably

*

we tend
to spot fear easily
in each other

*

the state of your mind:
more valuable
than your body

*

you've got
something nobody
can touch

*

it takes an act
of will to maintain
that attitude

*

when we grow up
as a country
we have to live with danger

*

a stingy person
cannot attain nirvana; you've got
to be generous

*

if you're talking about
our basic nature, well,
we need food

*

the Buddha
never mentioned
Buddha nature

*

when people asked
certain questions, the Buddha said
don't ask

*

it takes time
to become a Buddha:
it's your choice

*

a false assumption:
that you can go out
and save somebody

*

at some point in their life
people will want
to find a way out of their suffering

*

even this wonderful state
is not
the ultimate freedom

*

is the mountain
heavy? Not
if you don't try to lift it

Peter Around the Web

Accidental Dharma

The Huffington Post

"The Art of Outrage"

Progressive Buddhism