All Will Be Well...

I just read this lovely quote on Jade Mountains. I thought you'd like it... I do, anyway. In the context of our current mess, it evokes some measure of equanimity and sanity. Thanks to the Rev. Mugo for putting my head straight!

All will be well, and all will be well, and all manner of things will be well -- Julian of Norwich

Religious Intolerance

I was sorely tempted, this morning, to write once again about the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, and my dismay at his seemingly intentional subversion of the Obama presidential campaign. In his appearances these past few days--cocky, snide in his remarks, intemperate, self-congratulatory, playing to the gallery--he would have you believe that this whole brouhaha is about religious intolerance, an attack on African-American religion. I don't see it that way. I believe it to be more about monomania, vanity, personal envy and spite.

But I decided to contribute no further to this unseemly and depressing spectacle. Instead, I'm choosing this morning to pass on a story of real religious intolerance, one that I heard just a couple of days ago from a friend about a mutual friend of ours--more an acquaintance, really, than a personal friend of mine, but a man I have known for some forty years, and one whose privacy I would not wish to risk violating in these pages. He will remain, then, anonymous. Call him Greg. And understand that parts of the story are suppositions on my part, based more on guesswork than actual fact.

I'm guessing, then, that Greg was born into a secular Jewish family--refugees, I perhaps, from post-World War II Europe, rather than Holocaust survivors--and was raised in this country as a non-religious, non-practicing Jew. As such, reaching adulthood, he married and became the father of a son, whom he raised, in turn, without any particular religious affiliation or belief. By mid-life, not unlike myself, he found himself searching for some spiritual underpinning for his life and--again, not unlike myself--found in the Buddhist teachings and the practice of meditation a resource for the rational but spirit-yearning mind, a religion that required no suspension of disbelief but, rather, welcomed healthy scepticism and curiosity. He studied the teachings and developed a strong meditation practice.

Greg's son, meanwhile, clearly felt the call of the spirit at a much earlier stage of life and turned to his neglected Jewish heritage. Perhaps because of his sectarian education, he was attracted to the farther extreme, an embrace of increasingly strict orthodoxy that led him, eventually, to religious education in a yeshiva. His enthusiasm even carried his father along--perhaps in part, at least, out of love for his son and respect for this new path that he had chosen. Greg began to rediscover his own Judaism, to study kabala, to venture into kosher eating practices, and to embrace the Jewish faith. He told friends--including, at one point, ourselves--that he had found in Judaism a richer and more rewarding resource than Buddhism, and he seemed committed to a serious change in his affiliation.

We were surprised to learn, then, in that recent conversation with our mutual friend, that Greg had returned to Buddhism and his meditation practice. According to our friend's account--and I remind you, none of this is told first-hand--Greg's son had become increasingly strict and intolerant in his views, to the point that he began to complain, on visits home, about his mother's kitchen habits, to criticize her for not being "kosher enough," and finally to issue threats to the effect that he could not continue to come home to visit unless she would conform to his requirements. Greg, it seems, was willing to risk alienation from his son in defense of his wife, asserting that he, the son, must be willing to accept his parents for who they are, and not for who he imagines or requires them to be. At the same time, he made the decision to return to his Buddhist practice.

A sad story, then, of religious intolerance and its destructive and divisive potential, even in a close and loving family. And this is not about Judaism. The story could equally well have involved Muslims, Catholics, or Protestant Christians. It reminded me of another, similar story, of a very old family friend, a Kindertransport survivor from Austria, who lived for a while in our house as a child and, uprooted from his Jewish origin and partly under the influence of my Anglican minister father, whom he dearly loved, even idolized, became a committed Episcopalian when he arrived in America after the war and was reunited with his parents. The last time I met him, in Chicago, many years ago, I was appalled to learn that he had disowned his daughter because she had decided to become--an Anglican priest! He believed that the priesthood was reserved for men.

I was happy to learn since, from other sources, that this particular rift was eventually healed. But I am saddened by the never-ending evidence that religious beliefs, while purporting to teach us to live better lives and promoting love among human beings as their ideal, continue instead to foster hatred and intolerance in the world. It's another good reason, for me, to value what I have discovered in the tolerant, always skeptical wisdom of the Buddha.

Clinton Tactics; Wright Is Wrong

I came upon this entry in World Changing 101 and thought it worth passing on--both the entry itself and the responses, all worth reading. I have to say that none of it surprised me. It just confirmed my own response to what seem to me despicable--and needless--tactics on the part of Hillary and her spouse. Not only is she willfully sabotaging Obama's chances in November, she is working hard to ensure her own defeat, should she be the nominee. A year ago--well, even a few short months ago--I was dismayed by all those irrational Hillary-haters. Now she is simply vindicating a view of her that I always thought to be sheer prejudice and distortion. I agreed with her about that "vast right-wing conspiracy." But not it's as though she has transformed herself into very worst that all those people could imagine of her. Has she been hexed?

I wonder what Clinton thinks of her new cheerleader, William Kristol. His op-ed piece in Monday's New York Times argues the "liberal media" are failing to give her "the respect she deserves." Kristol concludes that Obama "[is] happy to have fantasy debates with unnamed people who are allegedly challenging his patriotism. But he is not willing to have a real debate with the real person he's competing against for the nomination." "Will Obama pay no price for ducking?" Kristol asks, rhetorically--presumably referring to that single debate in North Carolina that Obama declined, after... how many already? The last of which was a farce in the guise of a political debate.

I'm sure that Kristol and his ilk are falling all over themselves in anticipation of a general election with Clinton pitted against McCain. They are counting on that history of powerful, passionate negatives to work in their favor. And as things stand now, Hillary seems to be working hard to prove them right.

I wrote in an earlier entry that Wright was right. Watching his dreadful performance yesterday, I have changed my mind. While some of the substance of what he has to say about the history of race relations in this country is incontestable, he seems to have decided at this point to use the unexpected gift of a national bully pulpit to wreck the chances of the first serious African American candidate for the presidency. His unnecessary, sneering mockery of JFK and LBJ, his snidely cute responses to genuine questions, his cocky, self-congratulatory demeanor left a very different impression of The Reverend Jeremiah Wright than the one I had before, from the Bill Moyers interview, when he seemed relatively modest and realistic. He seems now to be merely reveling in the make-or-break power he has undeservedly acquired over the presidential candidate, and the spectacle has become at once unseemly and depressing. Bob Herbert has it right in his New York Times column today. After Obama's generosity toward him, Wright's response seems particularly mean-spirited, short-sighted, and spiteful. I hope that voters in the next primary states will have the good sense and the fairness to ignore his toxic influence, but in truth I have learned to have little faith in the electoral process. If it's all about image and sound bites, Obama will have a hard time overcoming this new obstacle in his path.

Memories

I did not know Leonard Rosenman, who died earlier this year at the age of 83. I did, however, by reason of our family connection, join the throng of friends and family who gathered yesterday afternoon at the Eastwood Sound Stage at Warner Brothers Studio to honor him and celebrate his life.

An extraordinary life it was. A composer of note who turned his primary attention to scores for film and television, he was "discovered" by the young James Dean in the 1950s and composed the music for both Rebel Without a Cause and East of Eden, along with an innumerable list of other movies; drank beer with Dylan Thomas and bummed around with Leonard Bernstein; joined Albert Einstein (who by then, according to the account we heard, had become somewhat hilariously tone deaf) in a chamber concert; studied with Arnold Schoenberg; made more friends than could possibly be imagined; won Oscars and Emmys; and of course, with his music, reached the ears of countless millions of those who did not know him.

All of which would be impressive enough in itself--a rich, luminous life, lived to the full, and an important contribution to the history of both music and film; and, on the personal front, a wonderful, loving and mutually supportive family, many of whom were there on this occasion to offer their own tributes. Almost more impressive, though, was the twilight of his life. Diagnosed in his 70s with frontal temporal dementia , a degenerative brain disorder, he lost certain capacities of his formidable brain but, as one of his daughters put it in her tribute--and here I paraphrase--found a way to live, instead, more fully in his heart. He lived those last years of his life, I heard reiterated many times as those who loved him spoke, exclusively "in the moment." Last to take the stage in his honor was the group of young, creative people known as "Leonard's posse," care-givers who discovered in his energy and joie de vivre, and in a capacity to love that transcended his disease, a source of inspiration that changed their lives.

There was the opportunity, of course, as is inevitable on such occasions, to reflect on the fragility of life and the advance of years. Particularly moving, for me, was the moment when the octogenarian actor, Robert Brown, a contemporary of Leonard's, spoke with personal intensity about the experience of watching the body in the process of its inevitable changes as it ages--something I myself am keenly aware of. And toward the end, the presiding rabbi spoke of memories--"the only thing we truly have," he said. I see what he means. Our own memories, and the ones that others form of us, exist on a plane that is quite different from that of material reality.

Still, in my understanding of the Buddhist teachings, I find myself in disagreement with the rabbi on this point. Memories, like everything else, are illusory and fleeting; they come and go seemingly as they will, often in conflict with our own needs and desires. We each have our different ways of remembering: Ellie has an incredible memory for faces, but searches in vain for names; I can often supply the names, but fail to recognize the faces. Like everything else, our memories fade and disappear. Leonard's short-term memory was pilfered from him by the peculiarities of his disease; but, not long before his death, we heard, in the comfortable home to which his family had entrusted him for his health and safety, he sat down at the piano one day and played, beautifully and to everyone's surprise, the theme he had composed decades before for "East of Eden."

One thing, of course, is certain: that Leonard is more fortunate than most of us in that his memory will live on in his music. Those listening to it, years from now, will have no living "memory" of the man who wrote it; but they will have the evidence of the music itself to identify and communicate with the human spirit from which came into the world. The impression I was left with was that this Leonard was a truly happy man, who spent his life devoted to what he loved the most--whether his art, or the people who supported him in his practice of it. May we all find such happiness in our lives.

A Wonderful Opportunity for Hillary

Senator Clinton, it seems to me, has been presented with a wonderful opportunity to regain some of the high regard in which she was once held, and from which in recent months she has fallen with many people like myself. All she would need to do is to come out with a strong, public statement decrying Republican attacks on Barack Obama on the issue of the Reverend Jeremiah Wright. Were she to express some understanding of where the pastor's fiery words might come from, and to support Obama's powerful utterances on race in America instead of muttering about how she, righteously, would have shunned this pastor's church, she would do much to rehabilitate herself with those of us who believe that Wright was right in substance, if infelicitous in tone. If she were now to side unambiguously with her own party instead of the Republican candidate on this issue, she would demonstrate to Americans a good faith that has been singularly lacking in her campaign of late.

Alas, I think the opposite is likely: my guess is that she will use the opportunity of Reverend Wright's re-emergence, with his appearance on Bill Moyers tonight, to cast more stones. Not having seen the interview, I'm holding my fire about its content, but the network media seem content to let loose before it airs. I do plan to watch...

The Painter from Shanghai

I have been reading, this week, at our cottage retreat in Laguna Beach. And thinking, not for the first time, about art and artists...

There’s a huge amount of interest in the art world, these days, in what’s happening on the art scene in post-Cultural Revolution China. The phenomenal exhibition of the work of Shanghai-trained Cai Guo-Qiang, currently installed at the Simon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, offers but one example of the new wave of Chinese artists recently “discovered” by the West. Western dealers and collectors, so I’ve heard, are swarming through the massive buildings that house galleries and studios in cities like Beijing, and not only those artists but also the newly wealthy Chinese plutocrats are a becoming significant presence in the still-overheated world art markets.

All the more interesting, then, to take a leisurely trip back through time to catch a glimpse of a very different “art world”—both in China and the West—a century ago. The Painter From Shanghai, a newly published novel by Jennifer Cody Epstein, offers just this opportunity, since the academies of Shanghai and Paris provide the background and local color for her story. From the point of view of artists’ expectations and the role of the art market, as well as that of public attitudes and tastes, that world seems strikingly innocent by comparison with our own.

Not so innocent, however, were the early years of the protagonist whose story Epstein tells. This fictional account is based on the real-life experiences of Pan Yuliang, a woman who was to become, in exile from her homeland, one of China’s best-known and best-loved painters of the early twentieth century. Orphaned as a child and sold into prostitution at the age of thirteen by the opium-addled uncle entrusted with her care, this remarkable, strong-minded and eventually independent woman (a stubborn, footloose “boar” in the Chinese calendar) survived the beatings, the abuse, the abject humiliation of life in a provincial town brothel for long enough to be rescued by the gentle, respectful, progressively-minded man whom she would eventually marry as his second wife, or concubine.

In Epstein’s sensitive and persuasive telling, it was the common love and knowledge of classical Chinese poetry that formed the initial bond between these two, and served as the glue that kept them together over many difficult years. A “Selected Bibliography” at the end of the book—unusual for a novel—makes it clear that the author read widely in preparation for her understanding of early twentieth century China, its history, culture and social mores, as well as the sights, sounds and smells of a city so far removed from our own experience. Still, one of the most remarkable things about this book is Epstein’s imaginative ability to make it all come alive through the precision of detail and evocative image. She manages to convey a sense of the ambience of the period that is at once poetic and steeped in realism.

If the first half of Epstein’s novel immerses us in the world of provincial and then, in Shanghai, cosmopolitan China, the second takes us to Europe where Pan Yuliang experiences new hardships as an impoverished art student struggling to make ends meet and to refine her own skills and vision as an artist. The twin threads of the story are, on the one hand, personal, intimate, aesthetic and, on the other, social, global and political, with rival factions of Communism and proto-fascism clashing, at times violently, in the streets of both China and the West, and Japan’s brutal war on China leaving a lasting scar on the country’s subsequent history. Modernity is in its birth throes, too, throughout the world, and there are cultural taboos with which Pan Yuliang must struggle, painfully, in order for her vision as an artist to achieve maturity. Known chiefly for her highly lyrical and overtly sensual nude self-portraits, she courted the outraged disapproval of an easily-offended, tradition-bound public—at times at risk of life and limb.

Epstein weaves her dual threads together skillfully, and “The Painter from Shanghai” is an enjoyable, engrossing read. Having spent a good deal of time with artists and writers over the years, I generally get nervous when I encounter a fictional version of one or the other—particularly of artists. There’s a tendency amongst writers to romanticize the artist, and to produce characters that in no way resemble those I have come to know or am likely ever to meet; and despite the hardships she so effectively describes, Epstein does leave something of a rosy aura around both her characters and the cultural and political world in which they live. Her detail can be so exotic, so subtle, so “Chinese” in flavor that even a life of slavery and physical abuse in a brothel risks seeming charmingly oriental and seductive rather than truly vile.

Still, without that glow the book would perhaps not be the pleasure it is to read. Those interested can readily find examples of the real Pan Yuliang’s work online. Blending her own native Chinese traditions with an obvious love of Matisse and the lessons of pre-Modernist masters like Cezanne, her pictures exude that unabashedly sensuous energy that seems entirely in keeping with the Pan Yuliang portrayed by Epstein in her novel. The artist’s story is a remarkable and touchingly human one, extolling the triumph of the imagination over any and all obstacles life chooses to thrust in our path. While she is never fully allowed to escape the pain and isolation incurred on her journey from desperate childhood into eventual exile as an artist and teacher, she has learned to live with them, by the end of Epstein’s story, with a true measure of dignity and inner peace. In this regard, the pursuit of material “success” that colors the vision of so many artists in today’s market-driven art world seems shallow and paltry by comparison.

TBD Recommends: Zen Habits

(with thanks to Cardozo for this posting)

“If we seek inner detachment and clarity while our outer life is a mess, we may enjoy periodic escapes from turmoil but find no lasting equanimity. If we devote ourselves to the welfare of the world while our inner life is riven by irrational ideals and unresolved compulsions, we can easily undermine our own resolve."

-Stephen Batchelor, Buddhism Without Beliefs

Is Buddhism “deep?” If so, what do we mean by “deep.” When we think about Buddhism, what is the first image conjured by our brains? Someone sitting the lotus position, perhaps, engaged in meditation?

Meditation is, by all accounts, central to Buddhist practice. But it’s important to note that some thinkers – such as Stephen Batchelor who writes, above, about the notion of “unresolved compulsions” – take pains to put meditation within a broader context. Meditation, they remind us, is not an end goal, but rather a step along the path toward awakening. And while meditation is ultimately a solitary practice, our awakening is characterized by our enagement in the world – in the mundane, surface-level, non-intellectual practice of our daily lives.

Leo Babauta, author of zenhabits.net, carries on admirably in Batchelor’s tradition. Even though his Buddhist ideas are strictly limited to the concept of zen, his entries provide thoughtful tools for engaging successfully, simply and directly with the world.

A list of some of his popular posts will serve to convey the thrust of the blog:

* 18 Practical Tips for Living the Golden Rule

* 5 Powerful Reasons to Drive Slower

* Become an Early Riser

* Email-Zen: Clear Out your Inbox

* 50 Tips for Grocery Shopping

I think you get the point, just from the titles of his entries. Each of them is infused with common sense wisdom and stripped of gimmick or distraction. Yet they are written in everyday vernacular and supported by poignant and often humorous examples from Leo’s own life. A life, incidently, in which he lost 30 pounds, doubled his income, eliminated his debt, revolutionized his eating habits, quit smoking, and ran a marathon, all within the same calendar year.

In sum, we’d like to thank Leo for reminding us that all Buddhism really offers is a path, and the outline of a path at that. Walking the path requires not just non-attachment, but also the cultivation of productive habits in the myriad everyday tasks that comprise our modern lifestyle. Do check out the blog.

As a teaser, we’ll sign off with one of Leo’s strategies for becoming an early riser:

“Go out of the bedroom as soon as you shut off the alarm. Don’t allow yourself to rationalize going back to bed, just force yourself to go out of the room. My habit is to stumble into the bathroom and go pee. by the time I’ve done that, and flushed the toilet and washed my hands and looked at my ugly mug in the mirror, I’m awake enough to face the day.

The Energizer Bunny

She keeps running, and running, and running....

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton lost a lot more than she won yesterday.

What did she win? She won a short-term political victory. She vindicated herself and her campaign for the presidency, at least in her own mind. She won another state primary, by a respectable majority. She proved that win-at-any-cost can win--despite the cost. She proved that harsh words, the pretension of strength, negative attacks, distortions--plus a few outright lies--are still effective weapons in swaying the American electorate. More's the pity. Shame on us.

What did she lose? Sadly she lost what little affection may have been left for her (I speak for myself, of course, but I suspect for millions of others.) She sacrificed admiration, respect, and the trust of a preponderance of the American people. Worse, she lost them not only for herself, but also for the party she purports to represent. She reduced the level of discussion to scrappy trivia, personal attacks, and the vanity of one-upmanship. I do not buy the claim that she and her campaign campaign promulgate that Senator Obama has used these cheap strategies in the same way that she has.

Senator Clinton won a personal political battle yesterday. She can call that a victory. But she won it in a way that risks losing the larger and vastly more important war to redeem the American soul and repossess what once was a fine, generous-hearted country--a war that she could have helped us win by showing us her best qualities rather than her worst.

Don't call me a sore loser. I would have wanted to support the senator. I would have wanted to celebrate this victory, if it had been won without leaving so much destruction in its wake. I once liked her and respected her. It has been her choice to wallow in the mud of divisiveness and slander rather than to yield a single inch of ground. Too bad for all of us.

Masami Teraoka: See This Show

So here's what I had been planning to write about yesterday, before getting sidetracked by Rudyard Kipling and his son Jack. I wrote back in October of last year about the essay I had been asked to write as a part of the text for a catalogue for an exhibition of Masami Teraoka at Sam Freeman Gallery in Santa Monica. The show finally opened at the weekend, and Ellie and I were there to greet Masami--an old friend who once showed at Ellie's gallery, back in the early 1970s--and to see how the work looked in its installation.



I was in awe. Much of the work I'd written about I had seen only in reproduction--either in hard copy, in books, or online. As I told Masami, what I saw was much, much better than what I had written about. Quite different, in fact, in many respects.

First, the scale. These are massive, mural-sized paintings, many of them, and as imposing as their size would suggest. They dwarf the viewer, and demand to be experienced as physical presences, not simply as visual objects on the wall: to actually see them, you have to walk with them, end to end, following their "story" and their multiple incidents. Taken as a whole, the installation gives a whole different sense of the artist's intentions: the gallery space, with its calibrated lighting and high ceilings, becomes a cathedral--or in the case of one small side galery, a chapel--in which art occupies a quasi-sacred space and invites that kind of attention. Sacrilegious though many of the paintings might appear in theme and image, they refer the viewer indisputably to the traditions of Renaissance religious painting, and carry that weight with them.

Satirical, parodic, scatalogical, erotic, Teraoka's paintings mock the holy cows of present-day society and expose its myriad hypocrisies. He takes on Bush and politics, the Pope and sexual abuse by Catholic priests, food fetishes and exercise fads, sado-masochist perversions and sexual stimulants. He explodes violence, sexism, and corporate greed with gleeful passion and often bawdy humor (take note, in "Cloning Eve/Viagra Falls," above, of the curious projections from the loins of mummified corpses--giving a whole new meaning to "rigor mortis!)

The work, then, is at once spiritual in intention and highly irreligious. It celebrates human diversity and the joys of art and culture even while poking fun at all hypocrisy and pretension. It is deeply engaged in life, even as it refuses to allow us to sweep death under the carpet of distractions. With its constant, bemused references to the ubiquity of twenty-first century technology, it celebrates the inventiveness and creativity of the human mind, even as it deplores the results to which some of our greatest achievements are put. Its vision is lively, voracious, wildly comprehensive, charged with irrepressible energy and, yes, compassionate toward our wayward species.

All of which it to say that if you live in or near Los Angeles, you should not miss the opportunity to see this show. Knowing how frequently important work gets overlooked in the welter of what is fashionable in the art world, I'm hoping that this one receives the attention it deserves. I know, I know, I wrote the catalogue. I'm not exactly an impartial witness. But I'm asking you to trust me on this one anyway.

Kipling & Son

I was about to write something different today, but I got side-tracked by the excellent Masterpiece Theater dramatization of Rudyard Kipling's loss of his son, Jack, to the slaughter of World War I, the "war to end all wars." "My Boy Jack" was another powerful indictment of war, blind patriotism, and the nationalist spirit that inspires them.


Kipling is superbly played by the actor who also wrote the piece, David Haig, and the terribly young son Jack, also superb, by the Harry Potter star, Daniel Radcliffe.


Since I was a child and had them read to me, I have always loved Kipling's stories. I read "The Jungle Book" and "The Just-So Stories" to my children when they were young, rediscovering the sheer oral pleasure of reading Kipling's words out loud: what could be more glorious and appealing than that "great, grey-green, greasy Limpopo river," or "old dog Dingo, grinning like a coal scuttle"? As an adult, certainly, I was not unaware of the imperialist paternalism behind the Mowgli stories, nor of the cheesiness of Kipling's jaunty verse, but these faults mattered little compared to the joys of narrative and language.

Until close to the end, "My Boy Jack" threatened to undermine everything about Kipling that I loved. It was unsparing in its exposure of his simple-minded jingoism, his devotion to the monarchy and the British Empire, his unquestioning and enthusiastic rush to war with "the bloody Hun." Returning to his home country from years of world-wide travels, he was by this time widely known and influential not merely as a literary figure, but in the world of politics and the military elite. Brought up in this spirit of nationalistic pride, Kipling's boy Jack was mortified by his rejection by the Royal Navy on the grounds of his severe myopia; initially, he was rejected by the officer's training academy at Sandhurst, too, but his father used every ounce of his significant influence to get him admitted--despite the fact that without his glasses the lad was nearly blind.

Gung-ho for the war and the defeat of Kaiser Wilhelm, well-educated young Britons like Jack were volunteering manfully for the armed forces as junior officers and being sent off like lambs to the slaughter in the poppy fields of France. (Read Rupert Brooke and this poem by Wilfred Owen, or this one, among many others, for a feel for the initial pride and the disillusionment.) With his father's blessing--and his required permission--Jack was posted to France in charge of an infantry platoon at the age of seventeen. He celebrated his eighteenth birthday in the sodden, vermin-infested trenches, ankle deep in filth and mud and the blood of the injured. And at the age of eighteen plus one day, he led his men "over the top" into enemy machine gun fire, where all but one were mowed down by enemy bullets.

The family--mother, sister, father Rudyard--were informed by telegram that Jack was "missing," and spent months contending with the cruel hope that he might yet show up alive; until the lone survivor from his platoon showed up at their home and told the dreadful story of his death. Racked with guilt and grief, Kipling was brought face-to-face with the futility and tragedy of it all, and the teleplay ended with a scene in which he recites with deathly dispassion the poem that he wrote to mourn his son's death. Here it is:

My Boy Jack

“Have you news of my boy Jack?”

Not this tide.
“When d’you think that he’ll come back?”
Not with this wind blowing, and this tide.
“Has any one else had word of him?”
Not this tide.
For what is sunk will hardly swim,
Not with this wind blowing, and this tide.

“Oh, dear, what comfort can I find?”
None this tide,
Nor any tide,
Except he did not shame his kind—
Not even with that wind blowing, and that tide.

Then hold your head up all the more,
This tide,
And every tide;
Because he was the son you bore,
And gave to that wind blowing and that tide!

The tragic part, for me, is that Kipling still could not transcend the jingoism inherent in that "he did not shame his kind," nor the need to "hold [his] head up all the more." He still needed, perhaps more desperately than before, to believe in the meaning of his son's sacrifice--even though it was no more than to "that wind blowing and that tide!" The teleplay has him agonizing over existential doubts, and the belief that he has condemned his son not to some glorious afterlife, but to "oblivion." Clearly, he had glimpsed the futility, but could not allow himself to acknowledge it.

With Jack's mother and his sister, it was different of course--both, too, superbly acted roles. They got it from the first, but were powerless to argue with Kipling's male conviction and authority. And the real tragedy of it all is that NOTHING HAS CHANGED. Here we are, close to one hundred years later, with a predominantly male, predominantly military power structure (in BOTH conflicting worlds) sending others to their needless deaths in order to promote the interests of that same predominantly male, predominantly military power structure. We have learned nothing from a century of wars and countless millions of human beings slaughtered.

Must we still stand, hand over heart, flag pin in lapel, and pay pious homage to the memorials we erect, supposedly to honor the dead? It all brought me, once again, to tears.

The Debate--and Chamber Music

The anger subsides. I spent some time yesterday morning checking out media and blog responses to the infamous debate, and found that the vast majority agreed that it had been a disaster , not just for the candidates, but for the ABC TV network, its ill-chosen moderators and their ill-considered questions.

Much later in the day, I had the opportunity to put these things into perspective at a chamber concert by the Beaux Arts Trio in the series hosted by Ace Gallery. The main fare proved to be two late piano trios by Franz Schubert. Largely ignorant of the history of classical music, I learned that this composer died at the age of 31 in 1828, and that the two trios in question were written in the last six months of his life, with adumbrations of his approaching early death. The music, to my unskilled ear, was alternately light and somber, delirious and mournful as I listened with closed eyes and tried to focus on the track of each of the three instruments simultaneously--a demanding task that required full mental concentration.

Listening to these musical masterworks, I found myself reflecting on the basic, but still interesting phenomenon that it's impossible to conceive of quiet without loud, slow without fast, joy without sorrow, delight without suffering. And I was not surprised, as many times before, to notice how precisely the simple, practical wisdom of the Buddhist teachings sheds its light on every aspect of human experience.

In the light of Schubert's music, his short life, his intense, passionate dedication to the work by which he is still known today, the absurdities of current political events gave way to an appreciation of the deeper realities, the deeper truths that provide the too often unheard bass line of our lives, the work of the human spirit. I myself have already been given more than twice the number of years than those Schubert was allowed. All the more important, then, to be listening for that bass line in everything I do.

The Great Debate

Angry!  Again!  Bitter?  Undoubtedly...  I sat in meditation this morning trying to fathom my clinging to this anger, using every technique I know to let it go.  But it persisted.

Last night's debate, for the time that I watched it, was another exercise in mindlessness.  This time I blame the candidates less than their inquisitors, Charles Gibson and George Stephanopoulos, who seemed intent on nothing more that baiting the two into further petty attacks on each other.  

I switched off, frustrated, after maybe half an hour.   There had been not a single question of substance in that entire time.   Perhaps those questions came later--questions about Bush's inexcusable war, global warming, world hunger; about our faltering economy and broken health care system, about jobs, education, a dangerously neglected infrastructure...  I hope so.  In the meantime, the two media questioners came up with Hillary's Bosnia fibs and the Reverend Jeremiah Wright.  Pathetic.  The result of their efforts was to make Hillary look still more offensive and Obama defensive.  When asked to explain yourself about the same issue for the hundredth time, how can your explanation look anything but defensive.

I just wished that either one of the candidates would have the guts to say, "No.  I would be happy to answer this question if I had not already answered it publicly a hundred times already, and five times already in the past half hour.  It was once a legitimate question, but by this time it is merely  demeaning to me and demeaning to my opponent.  It demeans you to keep asking it, and it demeans the intelligence of the audience and the American electorate.  If there were anything further to learn in pursuit of this topic, I would have no hesitation in pursuing it with you.  There is not.  I have nothing further to say about the matter, and ask that you turn your attention, instead, to matters of real importance."

That moment did not come while I was watching what ABC TV allowed to pass for a political debate.  From news reports this morning, I gather that it did not come at all.  The great Aha! moment, it seems, was that Clinton was brought finally to agree that Obama would be able to defeat McCain in the November election if he were nominated as the Democratic candidate.  (Has anyone noticed that Hillary rhymes with pillory; and Obama with diorama?)   Big deal.

Shame on Gibson and Stephanopoulos.  But shame on me, really, for allowing my mind to be engaged by this endless nonsense.  As I started out saying, I could not shake the anger that it left me with.  The great thing about meditation is that usually the practice of paying attention to the breath brings the mind into focus and allows it to leave intrusive thoughts and feelings behind.  This morning, I watched myself boiling inside and tried to breathe it all away, but after a half hour of assiduous effort, my mind was still clinging stubbornly to its indignation.  So I try writing instead.

Is this what the American public asks for?  Is this what we deserve?  When does it stop?  It feels like we're caught in one of those nightmares that allows us no prospect of escape.  Reason tells me that it can't go on forever.  But the heart is caught in dread. 

Ninety-Seven Percent

No, that's not the latest George Bush unpopularity rating, it's the chance we have, here in Southern California, of a major 6.7 earthquake between this very moment and 2038., according to the U.S. Geological Survey, USC's Southern California Earthquake Center AND the State Geological Survey. Oh, and a 37 percent chance of a huge, 7.5 event. By 2038, of course, the chances of my still being around are a good deal slimmer. If that should happen, though, I hope it's without being totally gaga or physically debilitated.

Still, I don't relish the prospect of another massive shrug of Mother Earth's shoulders. The first big one I felt was back in 1971. Ellie and I were living on the same hill, around the corner from where we are now. The quake struck early morning, and we won't easily forget the big, cheesy moon dripping down over the Griffith Park Observatory, nor the eerie green flashes throughout Hollywood and beyond as the electrical transformers blew. We had an old friend staying with us at the time, a Korea vet, and he woke in a panic, thinking he was back in combat.

The second big one came in 1993, I think, in Northridge, to the northwest from where we live. For some reason, the shock waves traveled in our direction, and we found ourselves, downstairs, ankle deep in glass and pottery shards from our collection of purple glass and American art pottery. We had big cracks in the walls of our substantial old house, too, and one injury: our new puppy, who normally slept on the back porch, came dashing through the shards and rushing upstairs with bleeding feet.

I recall having pretty much enjoyed the first jolt. It was a novelty. I was young, European. It felt exotic, somehow, very Californian. And of course I was still invulnerable. The second time around, I was scared. Nowadays, I confess, I never go to sleep without thinking about earthquakes. Not once. I'm not sure why, but they're always on my mind. Perhaps I was a little traumatized by the Northridge quake. Those who follow these meanderings in The Buddha Diaries will know that the death I fear the most is being buried alive under tons of rubble. That might have something to do with it.

Still, better to be Buddhist about it, right? Practice a little equanimity. Breathe. Let go of the fear.

PopeMobile

So, friends, the Pope arrives today. Big news. Sad, though, isn't it, that we have to put the earthly representative of the Prince of Peace behind bullet-proof glass?

I've heard that some people want him to apologize (again?) for those naughty priests who couldn't keep their hands under their own cassocks. Okay, but I think there's bigger work to be done, addressing the whole issue of the church's insistence on priestly celibacy--which, as I see it, is at the root of the sexual abuse problem. To require them to surrender so vital a part of their humanity seems, well, inhuman. Not to mention unrealistic. Come to think of it, is it not time to revisit the concept of sin, guilt, hell, and eternal damnation? The simple Buddhist injunction to "do no harm" seems to me so much more comprehensive, so much healthier, so much more human...

Oh, and while he's at it, if the Pope wants to do some really useful, really urgent, really world-changing, would it not be appropriate and laudable if he were to seriously revisit the church's attitude toward contraception in his United Nations homily? That, of course, would be a miracle--but surely one within his papal powers.

Humming Along...

On our morning walk this Monday, George and I were accompanied by a hummingbird, who seemed inordinately interested in us. He came upon us first by accident, zipping across our path. But then he stopped in mid-flight, hovering for a moment and pivoting on an axis to turn and look back at us. Apparently we seemed of interest, because he dropped in closer, a few feet from the ground, and came back to take a closer look, hovering again at eye level, holding steady, curious--so I thought--about who we were and what we might be doing in his territory. And out and back a few times more before deciding there were better things to do that stare at the human and the canine species.

I have another few busy days ahead of me. This afternoon, on our return to Los Angeles, I have another two interviews with artists, then two more tomorrow, in connection with my next "Art of Outrage" piece. Then there's the work of stitching all the various sound pieces together into a hopefully coherent podcast. This episode is based on "Phantom Sightings," the current "post-Chicano" show at the Los Angeles County Museum. It's always fascinating, exploring new territories in the art world, and it's a long time since I caught up with what's happening in this particular area; but at the same time, demanding on the time and energy I have at my disposal. "The Buddha Diaries" has had short shrift these past few days, and will likely go neglected for the next few, too. I'm missing my wanderings in cyberspace...

Bitter? You Bet

It's sad to watch how people get dumped on these days for telling the truth. It seems that we prefer to remain in our state of comfortable denial, rather to recognize the truth in sometimes harsh words about ourselves. Cases in point, clearly, are the absurd uproar around the words of the Reverend Jeremiah Wright and, now, Barack Obama's use of the word "bitterness" in describing the attitude of certain middle and working class Americans about the state of the nation.

"Bitter" is right. I spoke to a bitter man only yesterday, right here in Southern California. He was bitter about "government"; about the intervention of local government in his affairs and those of his friends when it comes to decisions about their homes; about the federal government and those politicians who fail, in his particular view, to adequately step forward for the protection of the state of Israel; about his fellow Americans who fail to elect those people who would properly emasculate government and keep it out of his life.

And who could blame the recently dis-employed for being bitter about their loss of jobs? Who could blame the poor for being bitter about their neglect? The millions of Americans who can't afford the premiums demanded by insurance companies to protect their health, or who refuse them insurance on the basis of pre-existing conditions, or who simply refuse to pay up when the time comes?

Bitterness, it seems to me, is a not inappropriate response for institutional and systemic failures that have gone unaddressed for years. Bitterness may lack nobility, but it's very human when cries for help go unheard for so long. And to deny the bitterness rampant in this country is to close one's ears to much of what's being said on talk radio, for example, or on the streets. Indignant, outraged denial is no adequate answer to the simple truth. But, to quote myself, immodestly, from yesterday's entry, "denial is still rife here in these United States." As Frank Rich noted in his New York Sunday Times column with morning, with reference to the Iraq war, "It's not just torture we want to avoid"--that would be terrible enough, in itself. "Most Americans don't want to hear, see or feel anything about Iraq, whether they support the war or oppose it. They want to look away, period, and have been doing so for some time."

Unfortunately, however, denial may work to the advantage of unscrupulous politicians when it comes to getting votes--or slandering the opponent.

Food

It's started. The BBC World News report on the startling rise in basic food costs throughout the world is alarming new evidence of the trouble we're in as a species. Unless we can learn to let go of our addiction to our comfortable standards of living, our excessive material possessions and our hunger for wealth, I do believe that we're headed for extinction--like those millions of other species that have failed to survive the continuing evolutionary process. Let's hope at least that we leave behind a world that's still habitable for other, more intelligent species, who share the planet and its resources with more foresight than ourselves.

The report notes a 75 percent increase in the cost of rice over the past twelve months, and a 13o percent increase in the price of wheat. The cost of corn has increased less steeply, but no less dramatically. It showed some of the results in various locations throughout the world, most notably in the Philippines, where dangerous stresses are already evident in the fabric of society. Anger and frustration mount, along with sheer, physical hunger. How long will it be before people start to fight for the food they need to survive? How long will it before nation becomes pitted against nation in the competition for this most basic of resources? How long will it be--no, this has already started--before people die of starvation?

So far, we Americans remain sitting relatively pretty. We whine about gas prices, watch food prices steadily mount and the financial markets teeter on the brink of disaster. We fume at the airport when our flight is delayed. The great middle class is not immune from the effects of global changes, but it has managed pretty much to ignore the plight of the truly poor. So far. But things will predictably get worse, as a result of our heedless consumption and our greed for the good life. In our most recent egregious misadventure, we have chosen biofuels for our machines over food for our people, destroying vast areas of agricultural land in favor of more profitable biofuel-producing plants. We are already paying for this stupidity.

Is there still time for a change of heart, a change of mind, a change of the policies that misguide us? It's such a huge change we will be required to embrace, it's doubtful whether we'll have the guts and the wisdom to do it before the tipping point is reached. And we don't even know where that tipping point is. We might already have passed it. What's clear, with the world population continuing to expand, is that sacrifice will be needed. We Americans will need to learn to honor the fact that there are other people in this world--just as human, if less "developed" than ourselves; and that, if we are to survive, we will need to make sacrifices to enable them, also, to survive. With India and China catching up with our profligate consumption of resources of all kinds--not to mention the attendant pollution--we must act very soon to slow down the approach of mass starvation, disease, violence, and war.

I realize that I'm not a voice crying in the wilderness, here. The voices are getting louder and more clamorous, their message more and more difficult to ignore. But denial is still rife in these United States, as is callous self-interest and willful blindness. This is no longer a matter of finding fixes for small problems, for putting out brushfires as and when they break out. We're talking, finally, about nothing less than the survival of our species.

Peter Saul, Painter

It has been, as predicted, an unusually busy week. I have been working to assemble not one but two hour-long segments in my "Art of Outrage" series for Artscene Visual Radio, and have had a rather hectic schedule of recorded telephone interviews. Yesterday I spoke to two artists and a museum curator, and today I have a follow-up call with one of the artists, Peter Saul, and another museum curator. It's all interesting and lively, but it means that I don't get around to thinking about The Buddha Diaries and the blogosphere as much as I would like.

I have admired Peter Saul's work for many years. In fact, I have lived with an early work of his--a large-ish untitled 1960 pastel drawing--on the wall of my house. Ellie and I first borrowed, then inherited it from her parents, who bought it at a long-defunct Los Angeles gallery probably around the time that it was made. Like all of Saul's work, it is lively, energetic, full of spontaneous humor, and thoroughly engaging to the eye. After at least twenty, and perhaps even thirty years, I continue to explore it with the same pleasure, and never fail to find something new in it to surprise me.

In the line of the German expressionist artist, Georg Grosz, Saul is unafraid to jump into politics and social issues with both feet. He lampoons politicians, plutocrats, exploiters of human frailties of all sorts with unabashed zest. At one level, his work is cheerfully scatalogical, erotic, finger-pointing, satirical, parodic, absurd... all in a joyful welter of color and image that imposes itself rudely on the viewer's eye and skewers his cherished prejudices and beliefs.

What I discovered yesterday, somewhat to my surprise, is that his impulse is not primarily one of outrage. He was clear, in our conversation, that he is primarily a painter, doing what all painters do--that is, indulging their own inner need to put paint on canvas and shove it around to create an object to his own satisfaction. What's likely to come out is what's on his mind, and for Saul that has to do with his observations of what's happening in the world around him. It's not so much a matter of coming up with a political statement about, say, the incompetence and inanities of George W. Bush, as it is of having fun with paint on canvas with George W. Bush featured as its subject. Far from being angry with Bush, as many of us are, Saul expressed his infinite gratitude to the current occupant of the White House for providing him with an endless source of material.


(He had fun from Ronald Reagan, too. I purloined this image from the George Adams Gallery website.)

Talking to him, I found that sense of fun extraordinarily appealing--and refreshing. That attitude does tend to put it all into perspective. When you get right down to it, the important thing is for each of us to do what's given us to do to the best of our ability. Which is why I play around with words in something of the same spirit, I hope, as Saul plays around with paint. It's a matter of each of us using our given medium to find out what it is we need to say.

Meditation

A very peaceful meditation this morning. Usually, when I am as busy as I am this week--with reading, with interviews and preparations for my next "Art of Outrage" podcast, and with the other writing chores that preoccupy me--my mind is all over the place; trying to find directions, trying to find solutions, trying to find words... This morning, though, I was unusually successful in finding and maintaining focus and concentration. And at the end, I was rewarded with a curious sensation that I cannot remember having felt before: all the molecules in my body seemed to start swimming apart and at the same time to merge with everything around it, leaving me with the sensation of pure energy. I have felt that sense of the contours of the body melting before, when the distinction between self and other simply disappears; but never, that I can recall, this sense of swirling, almost dizzying energy. And I notice that the feeling persists, even fifteen minutes after meditation.

I have been reading a manuscript on the concept of "becoming" by Than Geoff these past few days, and just yesterday came upon a section on the jhanas--the states of deepening experience in meditation; and I wonder whether this was one of the jhanas I was experiencing--or whether my mind was fantasizing such an experience, based on the reading? It was by all means a very pleasant experience, and one that I will watch for in the future. I should also go back into the text today, to see whether it corresponds with anything I read with less than full attention.

Believe It

We had an excellent group session with our Tuesday artists last night. The discussion moved right down into a difficult but vital--and very Buddhist--concern with form, form and abstraction, form and meaning, form and emptiness. What made it useful and intelligible was the fact that it all came out of the lived experience of working artists, not out of some abstract world of concept.

Afterwards, to relax, I found myself watching a PBS "American Experience" episode about the Navajo/Puerto Rican dancer Soto Jock Soto. Born on the Navajo reservation in the American Southwest, he seemed like an unlikely candidate for the ballet world of New York City; he made his way there through sheer pluck and determination, and the conviction from the earliest age that this was what he was supposed to do with his life. I was particularly struck by one of the things he said, as a mature dancer, on the point of retirement from the stage (and I may be paraphrasing here, slightly): You have to believe what you're doing. If you don't believe, no one else is going to believe it either.

It's something that I have always thought necessary for a writer, and Soto's words came at a moment when I had been thinking precisely those words earlier in the day, watching (snatches only: I didn't have time for the whole thing) the testimony of Gen. Petreaus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker before the Senate Armed Services Committee. The general, for the most part, seemed to play his cards with a certain measure of honesty: I believed in his integrity--even if I disagreed with what he was saying.


With Crocker, it was quite different. I don't think he believed for a moment what he was saying. He was saying it because his job required him to. The result was a monotone drone, a long series of careful circumlocutions, words built upon words without meaning or conviction. I thought it was a dreadful performance. Ellie described it as "boring." True enough. But I thought it boring precisely because it came from a place of fundamental dishonesty, a refusal to speak the truth about Iraq, the war, the Iraqi politicians, the endless need for American involvement to keep a lid on the seething mess we have created there. (This, clearly, from the point of view of one who watched only very few minutes of the whole debate.)

Back to Buddhism, then: Right Speech means speaking out of integrity, believing what you're saying, telling the truth. In a word, speaking from the heart.

Death & Dying: The Third Challenge

Okay, so here we are, arriving at the third and final episode in Joan Halifax Roshi’s challenge about death and dying from the current issue of Tricycle magazine. The first, as you’ll remember, was about the way in which you most fear dying; the second, about how you would want to die, if you were granted your choice. The third question is this: What are you willing to do in order to die the way you want to?

That one took my breath away. It handed me the responsibility for my own manner of dying. Unless, or course, the choice is wrested from my hands by accident, debilitating disease, dementia… all of which must be entertained as possibilities. Even so, to be given the sense of responsibility for preparing for my death came as a real, and even more perplexing challenge than the first two.

Okay, though. Let’s try it. The first thing I can do is to prepare myself to let go of everything I think I own—to recognize that none of it is truly “mine,” as I have always liked to believe. That includes this lovely cottage in Laguna Beach, where I sit writing these words; the art work on the walls, which I have come to love; the computer on which I’m privileged to write (for how many years did I use, first, pens and pencils, then a manual, then an electric typewriter?) It’s a cliché, perhaps, but one worth recalling: there is not one single thing I can take with me on my not too distant journey into the unknown. Might was well train the mind to let them go NOW. That would be one thing I could do.

Next, as I wrote only yesterday in these pages, I can prepare to let go of the stories that I so much treasure. My own, to start with: the story of Peter, the writer, husband of Ellie, son of Harry and Peggy, now deceased; father of Matthew and Jason and Sarah; and grandfather of Alice, Georgia and Joseph. Human companion—I hate to say “owner,” which reminds me of slavery—of George the dog. I have a great deal vested in that story, I remind myself, and have no wish for it to reach some arbitrary end.

Next, harder still, I can prepare to let go of all those that I love, and all those who love me, some of them not included in the list above. That would include friends, teachers, fellow practitioners, some I have worked with in various capacities. If I can find the wisdom to be able to say goodbye to them all NOW, it will be easier, perhaps, to say goodbye to them when the time comes.

I recall that in answer to the second challenge, a part of my wish was to be conscious at the moment of my death. In order to make this possible I need to do everything I can to avoid disease, senility, unconsciousness. It behooves me, then, to be as conscious as possible at every moment I have yet to live: conscious of body, health, care for myself and those around me. Meditation will help here, I believe, so one more thing I can do in order to die the way I want to is to continue with, and enhance, my daily meditation practice, especially with an awareness of the aging process and the inevitability of death.

These are things that I can do. There may be others that have not yet come to mind, and I’m sure that there will be many lapses in both attention and intention along the way. But the hard part is not being able but being willing to do them—to make that commitment to myself. The first, easy impulse is to say that I will try, but “trying,” of course, is never enough. Keep trying to feed the dog, and the dog inevitably goes hungry. And I don’t want to make any easy promises, if only to myself.

So this is something I will need to meditate on further. I see it as a process rather than a race. Commitment will require full prior understanding of what is I’m committing to. In the meantime, though, I would like to thank Joan Roshi for having brought these matters to my attention, and providing me with sane and practical counsel as I approach my final path.

End of Story

I think I wrote earlier that one of my main objections to dying has to do with not knowing the end of the story. I love stories. I very easily get hooked on them. Last night, for instance, just before bedtime, I caught the start of a particularly intriguing movie and it frustrated me no end to know that I'd have to stay up past midnight to watch the whole thing. I chose not to.

But dying means not knowing the outcome of my own family stories: how my three grown children will develop and change, how my grandchildren will turn out as parents themselves, how their children might look... It means not knowing the outcome of political and global stories: how will the world look fifty years from now? Will our species survive its own excesses? Will we have learned to clean up some of our mess, and to live in greater peace and harmony with each other?

Tantalizing thoughts, brought on in part by a segment on CBS 60 Minutes last night about the space program. Now I have a good puritan liberal streak in me when it comes to the exploration of space: I bother a lot about the incredible expense, and about how that money could be better spent on schools and hospitals and roads. And yet, and yet... there's that other part that is fascinated with exploration, with the expansion of human knowledge, with daring the unimaginable.

This 60 Minutes piece was about the plan to return to the moon and use it as a base camp for the trip to Mars. Mars! Imagine that! What a trip, as we used to say. Human beings traveling hundreds of millions of miles through space and actually landing on another planet. What a story... and yet another that I'll never live to see the end of. I'll never know whether those brave astronauts will make it there... and make it safely back home to Earth.

So, yes, you can see the trouble I have with dying. No fair. Really. End of story.

Children of Heaven

(This one's for Thailandchani, who was kind enough to request another film recommendation.)

Is there something, I often wonder, that we have sacrificed along the way to the material comforts we enjoy in our society? There's a precious innocence about Children of Heaven, a 1997 Iranian movie about Ali, seen here,

and his sister, Khore,
living in the poorest quarter of what I take to be Teheran--or some other great Iranian city. Charged with taking his sister's shoes to be fixed, Ali loses them on the way home, and they agree to hide the loss from their impoverished parents, for fear of punishment. For each of them to get to school, they are reduced to sharing a single pair of sneakers--a trick that involves a lot of running through the narrow back streets to facilitate a timely exchange. At the end, a big interschool running competition holds out the offer of a new pair of sneakers as third prize, and Ali enters, with the desperate hope of taking third place... (I'm not revealing the outcome!)

It's a thoroughly enchanting movie, not least because it's shot with such an eye for the beauty of detail--from the gutters running through the streets, to the faces of the children, to the street vendors' stores and the rugs at the local mosque. A brilliant sense of color pervades the every frame, along with a rhythm in the movement of the characters and the camera's eye. Beyond that, it's a story of utter simplicity, told at a leisurely pace and with an understanding that the tiniest of things (like William Carlos Williams's "red wheelbarrow," perhaps) can have the greatest of significance: the treasure of a gleaming, fake gold ballpoint pen, the opening of a bread oven, the bell-push at the gate of an impossibly wealthy mansion... Every image in this poetic movie seems to carry its own emotional weight, every relationship is sweet and subtle in its complexity, and the sense of community is palpable.

You have to wonder, don't you, how this kind of a movie emerges from this midpoint on our Bush's "axis of evil," our supposed archenemy in the Middle East, while our own "land of the free" produces its endless stream of violence and gore. I wrote a moment ago about the innocence of the film: it is innocent of guile, of irony, of malice. It's suffused with love--even though that love might be forbidding, at times stern. The children are allowed their childhood; even in these poor streets, they have no more to fear than a grown-up's anger. Protected by the community in which they live, they are safe to roam at will. Their deprivation of virtually all material goods--and sometimes of necessities, like shoes--does not deprive them of their humanity. Rather, it enriches them as human beings.

Okay, there's some idealization going on here. Life in the poor district of any city must surely be less benign than what we witness in "Children of Heaven." And yet... we hear, we read about those nine-year old American children in suburban Waycross, Georgia, plotting to harm, even possibly kill their teacher and it's hard not to conclude that there is some deep flaw in the way we raise our children in this largely rather affluent society, that we have lost some of the innocence that goes with the absence of material expectations. As for the protection of community... we have been taught to live in fear--of each other, of outsiders, of the dangers of the street. I watched this movie with both joy and sadness for own own current plight, let alone the plight of its young protagonists.

Change Blindness

Ellie pointed me to this fascinating article by Natalie Angier on change blindness in Tuesday's Science Times section of the New York Times. It seems that there's an awful lot we miss, when we think we're seeing; and that there's an intricate selection process that takes place in the brain, enabling us to select from a vast amount of information out there in the visual world. The choice involved in what we see can prevent us from noticing when even obvious things change in our line of vision.

This is particularly interesting, for me, in my art-writing hat, from the point of view of the way we look at art. When I find myself, as sometimes happens, talking to people who are puzzled or angered by what they see when they look at contemporary art, I'm always at pains to get them away from what they think they see--usually their own prejudices--and what's actually there, in front of their eyes. Most often, when we go into a museum or gallery, we take with us our own expectations and assumptions, and walk out not having seen the art at all.

What do we see? Sometimes we think we see what we ought to see, conditioned by purely social expectations. We are expected to have heard, let's say, of Jasper Johns, so what we see when we look at a painting by this artist is what we have learned about him, what our teachers might have said, what such and such a critic might have written, what we think about the millionaire who has one hanging above the couch in his living room. The more we think we know, the more of this stuff we bring with us--and the more we have to sweep away in order to see what's actually there. If I bring with me a pre-existing notion of what art should look like, based on a casual acquaintance with the history of art from the Renaissance through the Impressionists, anything that fails to fit the pattern of my prejudice--a Picasso, say--will seem like "something my child could do."

Some years ago, I designed--and offered in a number of museum and gallery settings--an experience called "One Hour, One Painting." The idea was to gather a small number of people to sit with me in front of a single painting for a full hour, and do nothing but look. Inspired in part by my knowledge that museum visitors spend an average of six seconds in front of any given painting, and in part by my experience as a practitioner of meditation, the experience was a blend of open- and closed-eye work in which I, as the facilitator/narrator, would lead participants' eyes on a walk through the painting, inviting them simply to pay attention to certain features as we went--and to those we miss on the first, the second, the third visit to the exact same spot. The session always ended with an invitation to find one last "surprise," a detail missed before, despite sixty minutes of attention to the same small area of canvas.

The way I'd prefer to look at art--and I confess I often fail to live up to my own standard!--fits right in with everything I have learned from the Buddhist teachings. It's about being in the present moment, about cutting through the bullshit with which we all too often confuse ourselves and those around us, about breaking the old patterns and habits that prevent us from clear insight. It's also about finding a kind of serenity, a place where I can discriminate, but have no need to judge, a non-attachment that allows the art-work to be precisely what it is, and not necessarily a reflection of my needs.

I also think that this notion of "change blindness" could have a much wider application. So much passes us by, when we fail to pay attention. I have in mind an essay which will be titled "Who Are We? Really?"--an essay that will explore the ways in which we allow inattention to blind us to realities that become distressingly obvious when we take the time and the trouble to look. We need to open our eyes to more than the purely visual information that surrounds us. We need to open them to other realities, too.

Oh, and...

... while we're at it, it pays to take a moment to look at these wonderful photographs from Africa by the Spanish photographer Ana Yturralde on her whimsically entitled blog, Where My Owl Flies Free and the Lion Roars Wild. For those of us who know little of the continent besides what we read in the press and see on our television screens, these portraits provide and intimate and dimensionally human view of her subjects, and her notes provide an interesting context. Well worth the visit. I found Ana in the comments at I AM KATIA.

The Buddha Diaries Travels--and Comes Home...

... to the blogosphere.

I find these days that there are many things that are hard about traveling. Many joys, too, of course. But one of the hard things is leaving, and another is coming home. I come home with the hope of finding a still point, where the traveling stops, somewhere the spirit finds a familiar place to rest and take its ease.

All of which is a part of my experience--the good part. The bad part is finding a mountainous stack of mail to be sorted, bills to be paid, junk mail to be thrown out. It's trying to play catch-up with dozens of neglected emails, getting back to jobs that were left unfinished, tying up the loose ends of the journey, finding a place for all those airline stubs and credit card receipts, the brochures you've picked up along the way and now can't quite bring yourself to discard because they may secrete some important piece of evidence that your memory will surely lose by the time you come to need it. It's finding the house in small but annoying states of disarray, things not there where you're absolutely sure you left them, light bulbs mysteriously blown in your absence and needing replacement, that little pile of termite droppings you had never noticed in the past...

And yes, the neglected tasks you like to think of as your "work." I have fallen far behind in my commitments, and find myself faced with the prospect of scrambling to fulfill the most essential and letting go of those "shoulds" the plague the conscience. While traveling, even though I managed to keep up with the writing of these pages, I neglected my not-quite-daily rounds of other blogs, the community of like-minded scribblers whose efforts are a constant source of surprising information, humanity, and fun.

I dove back into the blogosphere for a while yesterday and surfaced, as usual, with some pearls. Like Primordial Blog, whose subtitle is the delightfully Bushian "Making the World a Little Less Stupider." Nothing less Bushy than this blog, however, which is the brain-child of a reformed "BibleThumper and Young Earth Creationist"--now, thankfully for the rest of us, "a proud member of the reality-based community." Try this entry for a taste of post-religious fervor.

For a more than slightly salacious---but literate! and witty!--take on life, visit the irrepressible Glamourpuss at The Pole Affair. This pole-dancer/trapeze artist does... er, swing! And how's this for an astutely-phrased oedipal insight: "School was a complicated place for me. My father expected me to do better than everybody else, except him. " Puss falls a lot, it seems, but is always ready to bounce back and learn. Her other blog is the surprisingly lyrical Clairvoyance.

And finally, for today, there's The Dragon's Eye, where you'll have fun, as I did, with Kiyotoe, who has a sharp eye for a photograph with a story to tell--and tells his own story to accompany it in a few funny, sometimes poignant, always precise words.

I wouldn't call these exactly Buddhist blogs. But bring a Buddhist mind to them and I think you'll be surprised how much they have to teach.

Watch This...!

Re: the entry below, here's an interesting little commercial venture. You'll get a chuckle out of it. Have fun!

Dying: A Challenge, Part II

A couple of weeks ago, I posted this challenge on death and dying from Joan Halifax Roshi, along with the promise that I would return to steps two and three in the process she proposed. As a reminder, the first challenge was a meditation on this question: "What is your worst-case scenario of how you will die?" I offered my own worst-case scenario, and received several others in return.

I've had plenty of opportunity to ruminate on death and dying in the past week: the history that abounds in Savannah and Charleston almost demands it. In touring the houses of the one-time wealthy, the visitor can't help but sense the ghosts of those who lived and died there--both the wealthy and the enslaved peoples whom they owned. Death, the greatest of all equalizers, visited them all regardless of wealth or color, social standing or religious conviction. Those who were abominably unequal in their lifetimes suffered equally at the approach of death. I've heard that the Civil War, fought in these territories, brought dreadful ends to more Americans than any other war, before or since. And the epidemics of yellow fever and malaria took the lives of many thousands more before their time. Life expectancy was much shorter than it is today, and much that has been learned about medicine, personal hygiene and health care was unknown to these earlier Americans.

So, yes, I could not prevent myself from thinking how it might be to die of yellow fever, in one of those spacious bedrooms in a rice plantation mansion--or in one of the bleak cabins deemed fit for slaves. I could not prevent myself from imagining myself wounded, fatally, by some stray bullet in the chaos of battle. The spirits of those who died in these ways, so many years ago, seemed awfully close to me. It seems entirely imaginable that those whose lives were taken from them before they reached completion would find it hard to consent to the finality of death.

But back to Joan Roshi's challenge, part the second, her next topic for meditation. Here it is: after meditating on your worst-case fears, "How do you really want to die?"

Some, I know, envy those who slip away quietly in their sleep. I don't know about you, but my own great wish is to die conscious, at home, in my own bed. To still be fully in command of all my senses and bodily functions, to be alert in mind and aware of each stage of the process, surrounded by those I love--and those who love me. To be strong enough to keep sending out loving-kindness to all living beings. To be so fully conscious and to have reached a state of such equanimity that I have no fear, and can simply watch and treasure my presence in those very last moments here on earth. My heroes are those monks reputed to have died sitting up, in the meditation posture, conscious to the end; and perhaps, who knows, beyond, through every one of the bardos described in the Tibetan Book of the Dead--though I don't wish this for myself.

The challenge, then, is to meditate on those last moments as one would wish to experience them--a much more pleasant prospect, I think you will agree, than the preceding one. If you're up for it, I'd certainly be interested to hear how it works for you.

Hillary and Barack

A quick starter note while it's on my mind. I have changed my thinking somewhat in the matter of the Clinton-Obama spat. I was among those who was calling on Clinton to withdraw and allow the Democratic Party to heal and get its act together on the road to the convention. I think the party is stronger than that. I caught up with a recording of Bill Maher's "Real Time" from last Friday, and was impressed by the short street interviews that contradicted a piece of polling "wisdom" that's being touted by the pundits: that Hillary voters will vote for McCain rather than Obama, and vice versa. I believe Democratic voters, eventually, will vote Democratic. I also believe that the process, as ugly as it can get, is providing us with important information about each of the candidates and insight into their character. This whole notion that the Democrats are spoiling each others' chances for November is great fodder for the media. They love the drama of dire predictions, as they play on the anxieties and fears of those who take them seriously. Watching an interview with Barack Obama on the Today Show this morning, I was impressed by the respect he managed to convey for Hillary and his easy dismissal of anxieties around her tactics. I'm getting back to the Middle Way: this thing will work itself out exactly as it's meant to.

More later, once I get settled back into my office...