Hatred

I've been thinking about that church shooting of the other day, and the fact that the shooter went there gunning for "liberals" who, so he believes, are ruining this country. Curious, because I'm a twin to him in one respect: I happen to believe that conservatives are ruining this country.

I don't, however, have the slightest desire to kill them. I've been searching my soul to find out whether I "hate" them. I think not. I do stereotype them, which I suppose is a soft expression of prejudice--a form of hate; and I blame them for a lot of the bad things I see happening around me. I get enraged by what I judge to be their stupidity and short-sightedness, but I try not to forget that they judge me for what they see to be mine.

Who's right? I think I am. Bu then, I'm left.

In any event, I don't own a gun. I was taught to use a .22 caliber rifle by one of my father's parishioners, when I was just a lad, and I had fun smashing flower pots. But I don't think there's a single molecule in my body that wants to kill or maim another human being. Luckily, I have never been of an age at the right moment to be called to war, so I have never had to face the question of conscientious objection--at least in other than theoretical ways.

Back to the church, though. Aside from the fact that the poor fellow was clearly insane, I'd have to attribute his action to a mix of rage and hatred. I've had moments in my life when rage has erupted to the surface, so I know it's down there, hiding. I remember one moment, as a boy, then the two came together in a fist-fight with another boy at school, when rage and hate exploded in uncontrollable fury, and the experience is still hotly vivid in my memory. I carry it around with a sense of shame and humiliation (the other boy won! I came away with a bleeding nose.)

Anyway, these random thoughts, these troubling events, this odd memories...

I Have a Question...

... this morning. I'm in a bit of a quandary, and would love to hear the wisdom and experience of readers of The Buddha Diaries--most of whom, I assume, are fellow-bloggers.

Here's the context: I need to take a vacation. I started blogging shortly after the November, 2004 presidential election. I was in shock and disbelief that the American electorate had "re-elected" (I still don't believe Ohio) the current occupant of the White House, and wanted to "do something." Writing is the only thing I know how to do, and I fell into the blogosphere like Alice through the looking-glass. I started with The Bush Diaries, and when I tired of waking up with that man in bed with me every morning, I switched to The Buddha Diaries. Altogether, it has been nearly four years of almost daily entries.

And now I worry about taking a vacation. In part, it's the old, irrational writer's problem that I'm sure many of us are familiar with: if I don't get up and write this morning, will I ever be able to do it again? Will I lose motivation and momentum? Will I lose my thread? It's that compulsion, that fear, that insecurity about doing something so totally beyond the norms of profession and career, so much about the inner rather than the outer necessities. I recognize all that and live with it. You can't help me there.

The other part has to do with blogging, and there you might well have wisdom and experience that could be valuable, if you'd be willing to share it. My concern is about the momentum of the blog itself. I have been fortunate in putting together a wonderful readership over the years, and have this superstitious feeling that unless I continue to up the ante on a daily basis, I risk losing the interest and support of you good people out-there.

So here's my question: what's your experience of taking a long-ish vacation? I'm talking three-four weeks. As I've mentioned here before, Ellie and I are taking a road trip up north with George the dog, while work continues on our cottage down here in Laguna Beach. I'll likely be writing along the way--I'm thinking something along the lines of "On the Road with George." (John Steinbeck did something similar with Charley: I have his book on order from the library.) But I think I want to relieve myself of that sense of daily necessity, which those who follow The Buddha Diaries will know about from past travels, when I have dutifully made my entries every day that I find access to the Internet. I want, in a way, to liberate myself, to wake up in the morning and, er... lie in bed. Listen to the birds. Without needing to gather thoughts to punch into my laptop.

What's your experience? Did your readership lag? How did you set about building the blog again, on your return? Was it hard to get back? I'd love to know...

A Movie...

... we just couldn't bear to watch, even though I suspect that it's a very good one: The Savages. It had been sitting on our Netflix shelf for a few weeks, neglected for reasons unknown to myself but better known to Ellie, who had read about it, and we took it down last night and slipped it into our DVD player. Twenty minutes later, we pushed the eject button on the remote. Too raw. Too close to the bone. It nettled all our fears about growing old and dependent on others for our care.

I understand that the movie is really about the brother-sister relationship between the younger characters, but the first twenty minutes, at least, were devoted to their aging father and his "girlfriend," who in one memorable early scene sits rigid in front of the manicurist who is pandering to the last vestiges of her vanity. "Very sexy," the manicurist declares, delighting in the color she has just applied to a fingernail and looking up at the wrinkled face in front of her... just as the old woman topples over and dies. Ah, eros! Ah, thanatos! The old man, her boyfriend, the father of the squabbling siblings at the center of the story, is rapidly approaching dementia. Incensed by the insolence of his care-giver in scolding him for not having flushed the toilet, he returns to the scene of the crime and smears the word "PRICK" in his own feces on the bathroom mirror.

We did not reach for the remote, however, until the scene where the old man is strapped by airline officials into a wheelchair to be loaded unceremoniously onto the airplane to return him from Sun City, Arizona, to the nursing home facility his son has chosen for him. (Great exterior shots, by the way, of the Sun City location: curiously symmetrical homes and landscaping, almost surreal, overly bright, and distinctly scary.) Caught short on the plane, the irascible old geezer preremtously yells "Bathroom!" at his accompanying daughter, and again, "Bathroom! Now!" Struggling with tiny, painfully slow steps down the narrow aisle in the crowded plane, both he and she are ignominiously shamed as his pants fall down around his ankles amid the pitiless stares of fellow passengers.

Well, it happens to be my birthday in a couple of days. Not a Big One--no zeros. But the first number in the double digit figure is higher than I'd like it to be. A friend pointed out yesterday at the gym that she still manages to feel young when the second digit is a low one, as mine is. A nice conceit. Still, I have been feeling the weight of years. I notice that my steps are sometimes slower, lacking the energy of youth, and I consciously make the effort to appear more sprightly. I notice with aggravation that those things I liked least about myself--my impatience, say; a tendency to testiness--become more pronounced, and harder to contain. I think much more often about the inevitable end of life. My greatest fear about growing old is the dependency depicted in that movie, the loss of simple dignity, the need for others to take care of me, prop me up when I walk, feed me, clean up after my eliminations...

Which is why the most meaningful part of my metta practice, the first and last moments of my daily meditation, is that line from the chant on the sublime attitudes that comes after "May I be happy" and "May I be free from stress and pain": May I look after myself with ease. It's not often that a film is just too intense for me, but this one was. I never even learned the end of the story--a loss that, as those familiar with The Buddha Diaries know, is a serious one for me. But at least a fine metaphor for the experience of life itself, whose end we are rarely privileged to know.

I'm sure I'm not alone in any of these feelings. I'm hoping you might share your own...

Le Tour: Suffering

It's a word that's constantly on the lips of every rider interviewed, every coach and trainer, every commentator on the television coverage. Suffering. It's hard to imagine how much suffering those men incur for twenty-one days on their high-tech machines, riding often over one hundred miles a day, and up mountainsides, day after day, any one of which would challenge the strength of most powerful of men on a single day. They must have been grateful, yesterday, to reach the finish line on the Champs-Elysees in Paris. The Spanish rider who won the race, Carlos Sastre, credited a former team manager for having "taught me to suffer."



All of which led me to wonder what the Buddha might have to say about the Tour de France. He didn't own a bicycle, of course--though I enjoy the image of the Buddha on a bike. He walked. He walked great distances, accompanied by his closest disciples, I suppose with many stops along the way to teach what he had learned. Walking such distances may have caused discomfort--the occasional blister, surely, and sore muscles in the legs--but nothing like the suffering incurred by choice in competitive sports events like the tour.

We suffer enough in our daily lives. Is it "right effort" to incur more suffering by choice? Or is it mere human vanity? No doubt but that it's a discipline requiring incredible focus and concentration--perhaps even an extreme form of meditation, and certainly an extreme test of the stuff we human beings are made of. The slightest weakness is laid bare, the slightest vulnerability exploited by the competition. There's no room for self-pity, no room for distraction, no room for excuses.

The Buddha himself completed a marathon of a kind, in the course of those years of ascetic wandering, when he was reputed to have survived on nothing but a grain of rice a day. (An irreverent aside: I've often wondered how that grain was prepared. He can't have eat it uncooked, can he?) His conclusion was that this form of self-inflicted torture was unnecessary to achieve the goal of happiness. It was not necessary, he discovered, to intensify the suffering in order to find the way to end it. On the contrary, suffering is intensified by what we add to it to satisfy our ego-driven needs.

Egos abound, of course, in an event like the Tour de France. It's a daily battle to win--to win the sprint, to win the stage, to win the daily awarded jerseys: white for the best young rider, green for the best sprinter, polka-dotted for the best climber, and the famous yellow for the overall Tour leader. The competition is intense, and it's easy to get hooked on it--as I have been, this year, for the umpteenth time. Team strategy and individual performance are intertwined in plots and patterns that get more complex by the day. Wild surprises and bitter disappointments alternate to compel attention and wrench the emotional response.

Hardly a Middle Way, then. Strangely, though, it's Buddhist values like concentration and persistence--and of course equanimity in the face of suffering--that pay off in the Tour as in any other challenge that life offers. Depending on how you look at it, it's all a teaching.

Pet Peeve

Sitting here in America. Specifically, outside a Starbucks at a massive outdoor mall in Tustin, California. The parking lot is lined with cars, its perimeters defined by martial lines of palm trees. The sky is grey. The coastal inversion layer has not yet moved out west, over the ocean. Young people at neighboring tables eagerly talk business. Behind me, a couple of Mexican workers pass the time of day in Mexican-accented Spanish. I have read the editorial pages of the New York Times. I have just finished my double latter and the lox-and-bagel sandwich I brought with me, and am contemplating the possibility of a second latte. I’m unable to get online. I thought that every Starbucks in the world was wi-fi’ed, but this one appears to need a “subscription” of some kind; so I write in Word, and will cut and paste later.

I am waiting for my Prius. I took it in to the Toyota dealership this morning for its 15,000 mile service, in preparation for our long road trip up north with George the dog. Ellie has been complaining, also, of a rattle, which she hears from the passenger seat and is a constant irritation. Also we want to get our Bluetooth voice command system activated, now that we can only use our cell phones hands-free in California these days. We want to be able to say, “Peter, Office”, and be connected right away. This is America. (Actually, we use our cell phones very little in the car, but you never know, do you? Best be prepared for that emergency when it’s absolutely needed!) And to think that it’s a few scant years since we all drove our cars (most of us, anyway) without needing to make or receive telephone calls… How rapidly things change.

Anyway, here I sit in America, wasting my time—and yours. Don’t you hate it when people call you from their car phones because they’re sitting in traffic and have nothing better to do than waste your time? Their assumption is that you, too, have nothing better to do than help them waste theirs. This is currently one of my most cherished pet peeves. I’m sure you-all have your own. Could I persuade you to share one with me? Or have you, unlike me, no time to waste?

Pictures & Words

A propos of nothing in particular, some readers may remember our once-resident, sometimes curmudgeonly, always interesting Taoist, Carly. I miss his gadfly presence here on The Buddha Diaries, where he never failed to catch me on my frequent lapses in intelligence. I mention him because he recently sent me this link to some amazing pictures from space, reminding me of how awesome is this universe in which our Earth occupies such an infinitesimally tiny place. The pictures are so beautiful and so powerful that they speak for themselves, without the need for puny commentary from me.

And while I'm in the appropriation business, (I realize this is a lazy man's blog, this Thursday morning: forgive me) here's something I received yesterday from a friend. It's probably making the rounds, but I had not seen it elsewhere and it's smart and funny, and it gave me a few needed chuckles. Here goes:

The GEORGE W. BUSH PRESIDENTIAL LIBRARY is now in the planning stages, the Library will include:

The Weapons of Mass Destruction Room, which no one has yet been able to find.

The Hurricane Katrina Room, which is still under construction.

The Alberto Gonzales Room, where you won't be able to remember anything.

The Texas Air National Guard Room, where you don't even have to show up.

The Walter Reed Hospital Room, where they don't let you in.

The Guantanamo Bay Room, where they don't let you out.

The National Debt Room, which is huge and has no ceiling.

The Tax Cut Room, with entry restricted only to the wealthy.

The Airport Men's Room, where you can meet some of your favorite Republican Senators.

The Economy Room, which is in the toilet.

The Iraq War Room, after you complete your first tour, they make you to go back for a second, third, fourth, and sometimes fifth tour.

The Dick Cheney Room, in the famous undisclosed location, complete with shotgun gallery.

The Environmental Conservation Room, still empty, but very warm.

The Supreme Court Gift Shop, where you can buy an election.

The Decider Room, complete with dart board, magic 8-ball, Ouija board, dice, coins, and straws.

Additionally, the museum will have an electron microscope to help you locate the President's accomplishments.

Admission: Republicans - free; Democrats - $1000 or 3 Euros

A Dukakis Moment; and Who's the Boss?

A Dukakis moment for McCain? While Barack Obama was striding around the Middle East sounding very sane and looking very presidential--and being driven by the King of Jordan himself to his O-Force One jet--Republican hopeful Senator John McCain was getting his own joyride aboard a dinky golf cart, piloted by the aging (sorry, senioring) former President Bush (the nicer one.) I couldn't help but think of the image that so diminished then-presidential hopeful Dukakis, absurdly helmeted as he played solider on that tank. McCain, with a toothy grin that never fails to strike an off-key note, also managed to look more than a little absurd, old-boyish, golf-y, superannuated, out of touch.

And talk about whiners! The best McCain and his campaign have been able to come up with in the face of the wild Obama success in the Middle East is that whiny one-liner, "he'd rather lose a war than an election." Ouch! The media, of course, can hardly wait for the Obama gaffe. They had to settle, yesterday, for his slip in saying that "Israel is Israel's best friend"--or words to that effect. Intending, of course, to say that the United States was Israel's good friend. To call the slip a gaffe is to stretch the meaning of that word. (It did give me pause to wonder, though, how my own reaction might have been different had McCain made that same slip. Would I have been jeeringly condescending, rather than easily forgiving, as I am with Obama? Perhaps. I like to think not.)

It does seem to me that Obama is maintaining remarkable equanimity in that hornet's nest. From what I can gather from news reports--and I freely admit that they are hardly to be trusted--those he meets at the very least feel listened to. What he had to say about his differences with Gen. Petraeus, greatly touted by the press, seems entirely right to me. Who IS the boss? The abject deference to this general or any other is dismaying. Should he be determining our national priorities? I think not. That he has been allowed to do so by the current occupant of the White House is an abdication of responsibility. That McCain would continue to defer to him is sufficient indication that this Republican would be equally derelict in that responsibility.

Equanimity. A good Buddhist aspiration, and one that Obama rather successfully embodies. How very different from what we have experienced in politics for the last nearly eight years. How much what is needed in the face of our current challenges. As the late John Lennon famously wrote, and as TaraDharma sagely concluded in her post yesterday: "You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one." To which I'd add, "I hope some day you'll join us, and the world will be as one."

Progress

Back at our Laguna Beach cottage, we discover that work has progressed in the ten days of our absence. Here's what we found:


The ceiling in the kitchen has been cut open to reveal the structural work of the roof: if it's possible, we'd like to raise the ceiling to give a greater sense of space. As the photos suggest, there's not much room there, but a little.



Meantime, down below, the foundation work proceeds. Here are the new support walls on the south and west sides of the excavated area to the south of what was the garage...


... and the furnace and water heater have been moved from their original location to a new concrete platform, now also supported by newly poured concrete walls.


The brick fireplace, previously supported only by compacted dirt, now sports a whole new support system of its own, below the brick and to the right in this photo.


The north wall of the garage, to the right, has been replaced, and the floor has been leveled out and strengthened with rebar, ready for the pouring of the slab which is due to take place this morning.


Outside the garage, the construction junk--and the charming blue "throne"--make a mockery of what used to be a little "Zen" rock garden I created a few years ago (see the only remaining evidence, the granite rock toward the lower right corner in this picture.


We found the kitchen draped in plastic sheets and the floor knee-deep in dust. By this morning, though, we were almost back to normal. In the next few days, we'll need to pack everything away in preparation for the next adventure: the demolition of the kitchen. We plan to purchase a mini-fridge and perhaps a little burner, so that we can camp out in the house at the times we need to be here. Next month, however, August, we're leaving the contractor to get on with the job while we take that road trip up north with George the dog.

Thanks for joining us at The Buddha Diaries. More later--and I promise that it won't all be about our remodel.

Le Tour, Part Trois

What I've been missing in the Tour de France this year is the fireworks--and I'm much afraid that it may have been the doping that made them possible. It has been a solid race, no question. The competition has been fierce, at times, and there have been exciting moments almost every day. What I miss are those thrilling moments, usually in the mountains, when a single rider light on fire--or perhaps a pair of them--and puts in a gargantuan, superhuman, eye-popping performance to wrest the yellow jersey from the competition. The most notable this year, by the Italian Riccardo Ricco, proved shortly afterward to have been a cheat.

Thus far, it has all been strategy. Not that strategy has not always played a major role in the way teams support their star riders; and not that the CSC team, this year's standout, has not put up a truly admirable show. But it has been more than usually about the peloton, about playing defense, about keeping things safe for the handful of likely general category contenders, about the careful conservation of energies and planning for future stages. No fireworks. But a lot of hard work. The work it takes to get up those mountains is extraordinary in itself. And I guess I'd rather do without the fireworks if they can't be done without the dope--I'd opt for the honest race.

I'll be watching today as usual, at some point. I'm not much of an electronics fan, but I'm grateful for the recording system on my cable box that allows me to record and watch at my leisure, speeding through the dull parts and the commercials.

Today we head back down to Laguna Beach and plan to spend the next couple of weeks there, watching construction progress in the basement and preparing the house for the two-month process of total demolition and reconstruction in the kitchen. Then, early August, we leave for a long road trip north with George the dog. Not sure what will happen to The Buddha Diaires in that time period. Ellie has been pushing for a "Travels with George" story, along the lines of John Steinbeck's "Travels with Charley in Search of America." We have it on order from the library...

A Busy Weekend

We do not often stay in town for the weekend, these days. We love the serenity of our Laguna retreat, and we so much value the Sunday morning session of our sitting group. But this past weekend was a particularly busy one, and there was much to keep us here in Los Angeles.

There was, first of all, the party I have mentioned earlier on The Buddha Diaries: I learned a while ago that there are twenty-nine men and women in the Southern California area who graduated from the Cambridge college I attended in the 1950s. They are mostly men, I have to say, since Gonville & Caius College did not admit women until the latter years of the twentieth century, well after my time. I have only recently begun to fully appreciate the privilege I was afforded, as a young man, by that experience, and it was with that sense of debt--and with a certain curiosity as to what the experience of others might have been--that I reached out to all twenty-nine in the hope of bringing us together for an evening's celebration.

That evening came around on Saturday. There were a number, of course, from whom I never heard in response to my initial contact. There were a number who declined because of other commitments. But quite a number did in fact show up--men only, regrettably, though with their wives; I would have loved to have met some of the Caius women on my list--and we enjoyed a splendid summer evening out on the deck.




Our group included men of all ages, including one who had matriculated in 1948, seven years before I myself arrived in 1955, and one who was my exact contemporary--though we did not know each other at the time. Then a number of younger men who had matriculated in the 1970s and 1980s.

Ellie and I had laid on wine and a generous table of hors d'oeuvres--too much, it turned out; we have quantities of left-overs to dispose of in the next few days, and we all spent a while chit-chatting and comparing notes until the last of the late-arrivals had showed up. Then, not least to satisfy my own curiosity, I arranged us all in a large circle and invited everyone to check in with the brief story of the path that brought them from their Caius days to living here in Southern California.

An extraordinarily diverse group of people we all turned out to be. Not only the Caius men, but also the women spoke about their lives, and I was impressed by the quality as well as the diversity of the paths we had chosen. What I found particularly striking was what seemed to me something of a common trope, a shared sense of redirection toward a less conventional set of values and beliefs. There was one who had devoted the better part of his life to a traditional medical practice, turning now toward alternative medicine; the lawyer turned software engineer turned hypnotherapist; the production designer returning to her original aim to be a painter; a neuroscientist applying his skills to the study of art and the imaginative work of creating special effects for film; there was the computer specialist turned yoga teacher; the corporate business woman now devoted to nation-wide charitable fundraising; and the philosopher pioneering efforts to promote mutual understanding between the world's great religions. As one who quit a conventional academic career to devote myself exclusively to writing, I felt not out of place. (By the way, if I have misrepresented any here, I offer my apologies: chalk it up to the fact that our time together was too short to offer more than a brief sketch of fascinating and productive lives.  Then, too, my memory is not so sharp as it used to be...)

Is it a natural part of the aging process, I wondered in retrospect, that so many of us seem to be looking for something different, something perhaps more meaningful as our lives progress? Or, possibly, as my sister often argues, is there some radical change taking place on our planet--indeed, as she would have it, in the universe? A movement away from the bad old, primarily Western goals of material comfort and individual success and toward a greater understanding and respect for the one-ness of us all, and our unity with nature? On the political front, is our Barack Obama at the forefront of a new wave of global cooperation and resolve to save our planet and people from the ravages of the misguided human ego? Or am I simply projecting my own desires and understandings on the world around me? It's fun, at least, to indulge in some innocent--though perhaps idle--speculation.

We invited our Caius guests for 6 - 8 PM. The last of the group left after midnight. Everyone was grateful to have been invited, and several specifically requested a repeat performance, even an annual reunion. We felt that the party had been a success! So much so that I protracted it, in dream, for what seemed like another few hours after falling asleep, and awoke in the very early hours with the impression that our last guest had left at five past two.

A morning, then, in bed with the newspaper. I did my morning sit out on the balcony, missing our sangha. Then off to brunch at the home of our friend Gina Stepaniuk (here's a 2006 painting of hers; it's called "Petite Mort"--"little death", a French euphemism, by the way, for sexual climax...)



We found ourselves in the company of other artists, some old friends, some new, enjoying good conversation, good humor, a glass of wine, good food... Our mutual interests and shared dedication to the creative life inspired me to think that my speculation might not be quite so idle after all. It's hard, in such company, to bear in mind that there are vast numbers of American voters, still, who do not share our enlightenment!

And then, to cap off a rather hectic weekend in the rarefied atmosphere of creative minds, we managed to stay awake for long enough, on Sunday evening, to betake ourselves to a dingy dive in Echo Park, on Sunset Boulevard, where our daughter's band, The Pickup Sticks was playing a gig. A tiny space, packed with young people and filled with the deafening sounds of hard core rock music. Sarah is a drummer and backup singer...


Her friend, Ed, is the lead singer in the band.


Our unprejudiced opinion was that they were great! We loved the energy and passion of the performance--though I personally wished I'd had a song sheet to be able to follow the words. As Ellie says, I'm "such a word person." The only ones I got were "cookie cutter." Still, I have to say that much of the emotional impact was delivered despite the lack of words. I've been hoping that The Pickup Sticks will soon get around to finishing their CD. They're good enough to deserve a bigger venue than this tiny space--appropriate though it was for their style and energy. It was great, too, to reconnect with many of their friends, and be welcomed by them with such warmth and interest.

Another late night, then. And a slow start this morning for the week to come... But much gained, over the weekend, in terms of the imaginative juices and the confirmation that there are many good people in this world, doing many good things; along with a salutary reminder that the encounter with creative minds is a healthy antidote to the woes that all too often afflict us.

Beach Creatures: Man Made

Watch this. You will be amazed, astonished, bewildered, amused... as I was. Do NOT miss this one, or you will be sorry! Have a great weekend.

Rules

So what is it about the apostrophe? How come so few people know how to use it? And why do I get so irritated by its misuse?

The rules are pretty simple, insofar as I understand them. Rule number 1: "Its" is "it's" when there's an "i" missing, that is, when it means "it is", NOT when it's simply a possessive, as in "the cat lost its virginity" or "my computer needs its screen cleaned." It is = it's. Easy, no? Also there is = there's, as in "Waiter, there's a fly in my soup." And "Who's coming to dinner?" (Not, please, "whose"!) Or, "Where's my umbrella?" Or "Here's a lovely gift for you." It's "is" with the "i" missing. An apostrophe can also substitute for other missing letters, of course, as in li'l' Abner or young 'uns. (actually, that should logically be 'nes, no? But who says the rules of logic apply to the rules of grammar?) Or, "I'm so happy to see you. Aren't we having a wonderful time? Don't you just love this muggy weather?"

Rule number two: possessives. With a plural noun, the apostrophe goes behind the "s"; if it's a singular noun, the apostrophe goes before the "s". Thus, "It's my dog's birthday," or "It's a dog's life." One dog. But, "I forgot to bring the dogs' leashes"--two or more dogs. ("My mother's in the loo," by the way, is obviously rule number 1, above, unless it becomes "My mother's friend is in the loo.") So if you ask yourself, is this noun singular or is it plural?, and act accordingly, you're going to get it right. Usually. I imagine someone will point out some ridiculously obtuse exception.

(While I'm at it, I might as well mention the habitually misused "fewer" and "less". It's a bit like with the apostrophe. "Fewer" goes with plural nouns; "less" with singular ones. Thus, "There is less sugar in this jar than in the other;" but "There are fewer grains of sugar in this jar..." Why can't people get this right?)

The more significant question, of course, is why I should allow such things to irritate me. Language evolves. It's the commonly-made mistakes that determine the way it changes. Those darn Gauls could not speak proper Latin for toffee, so they turned it into French. It took a while, but it was improper use and bad pronunciation that brought about the change. Besides, who needs apostrophes, really? They should probably accompany the copper penny into long overdue extinction. And no one but me gives a damn about "less" and "fewer." They could care... well, less.

So why? I guess a part of it is that I love the English language, and hate to see it being abused. It's such a wonderful instrument, so precise when needed, so beautiful, so poetic, so amazingly flexible and subtle, so rich with meanings, so infinitely utile. It's also easy to abuse, for anyone who does not care enough to use it well--for those who think it's no more than a tool to convey broad swaths of meaning in the crassest possible way. They forget that a slip of the tongue or a change of tone or emphasis can turn what's intended as a compliment into offense. Politicians discover this sometimes to their cost--Barack Obama's "bitter" slip proved bitter, indeed. People forget that words carry more than simple meanings: they carry emotional values, too, and physical heft. Words, and the way they're said, matter more than people think they do--until they discover, as they sometimes do, that something has gone seriously amiss in their communications. (My father learned this once when insisting on showing off his wildly inadequate schoolboy French: having ordered three coffees for the family at a Brussels cafe, he next asked the waitress for the toilet, pronouncing it "twa-ley." When he returned to the table, he found three cups of milk awaiting him, "trois laits;" he should, of course, have asked for the "twa-lette.")

I know that language changes. I acknowledge that it must. But I'll admit to being a bit of a language snob.  It pains me to hear how it's mutilated on the streets, just as it pains me when I see that misplaced apostrophe. There must be some part of me--there IS, I confess, some part of me--that loves the rules. I was too old, by the 1960s, to learn to "question authority"--remember that one?--in that easy, dismissive way that seems to have become a part of our culture. When I question authority, as I actually do quite often, it comes only after an inner struggle with that inculcated habit of respecting it. And obeying it. (To do otherwise, at an English boarding school, was to risk exposing one's rear end to a painful encounter with the cane--or to some other, equally unappealing punishment. At home, little children did what they were told. Rules, my father used to say, are rules.)

And then of course there's that other part of me that hates them, and distrusts whoever is handing them out. The creative part of me, I think, puts both the love and the hate to use. Any poet knows that rules are fun to work with. It's in the tension between their observation and their breach that good things happen, that new ideas are born; between freedom and discipline, the creative imagination and plodding orthodoxy. I'm sure it must be the same with science, indeed with any other intellectual discipline. So I watch my pedantry when it comes to apostrophes and grammatical lapses with both skepticism and fondness. And I continue to wish that people would just speak and write proper, for gods sake, with less mistakes in there (theirs' another one, damn and blast it--don't get me started!) daily acts of casual mutilation.

Two Links: Don't Miss Them

If you haven't already done so, please take a moment to read this beautiful post over at the Dharma Bums. I don't have anything half so urgent to say today. That's it, in the proverbial nutshell. Buddhism... (Well, any religion, really, at its heart. See also Karen Armstrong on TED.) Have a great one...

Big Party

Last night Ellie and I hosted the second of our now annual parties, when we bring together our two artists' groups for a summer celebration. Here they all are (with apologies to those who didn't quite fit in the frame, and to those obscured by plants!) on the deck outside our living room, overlooking the Hollywood Hills; and with George, of course, taking center stage.



One of the pleasures of the evening was for artists in each group to get to know the other. As one said, the Tuesday group is always a little curious about the Wednesday group, and vice versa. We enjoyed a communal feast, a glass of wine, and conversation.

The centerpiece of the evening, though, was unquestionably the unveiling of Ellie's own art work. She has been immersed in contemporary art since her young years, when her father's house was chock-a-block with art, and subsequently famous artists were his frequent dinner guests: I recall sitting down at the table with Claes Oldenburg, R.B. Kitaj, Ed Kienholz... She opened her own gallery in the early 1970s--a time when Los Angeles artists were fleeing to New York because they had such a weak support base here on the West Coast--and showed a roster of artists so well regarded that eight of them, as I recall, were included in one of the noted Whitney Biennials. When her gallery was closed on a city zoning violation, she made the transition into a successful career as an art consultant, helping to shape both corporate and individual collections.

By the early 1990s, Ellie had begun to weary of the relentlessly commercial aspect of the art world, and made the choice to return to her original passion for working contact with artists and their challenges in the studio. She carved out a unique niche for herself as an adviser/mentor/coach to artists (you can find out more about the work she does at her new website EllieBlankfort.com), and has been working with them in individual and groups sessions ever since. The evidence of her success in this work is in the loyalty of those who work with her and their commitment to their art.

And then just a couple of years ago she decided that it would not be a bad idea to get into the studio herself, and get her own hands dirty in the difficult business of making art. With the generous help and support of one of her artists (below, second from left)--and the hospitality of her studio--Ellie started to make pictures of her own. Last night, for the first time, she unveiled the portfolio of work she has put together over the past one and a half years--to the amazement of those she has supported with her love and enthusiasm, as well as with her critical eye.


What a wonderful response! And rightly so. It seems that, while she has not been actually making art over all these years, she has been looking at it with a peculiar intensity, and the results of that looking are unmistakable in what she has produced. It's surprisingly mature, confident--several of those present used the word "bold"--and successful work. The dozen or more pictures show her to be experimenting with a wide variety of approaches, perhaps not quite sure yet of her own individual vision; but with a strong, instinctive feel for color and composition. Here's one of my favorites:

...and a detail



Pretty nice, no? She was widely--and loudly--applauded for her efforts, and is much encouraged to pursue them.

So, a great evening. Good food, good company, good conversation... and good art. We closed with a check-out circle, and with good wishes all around for a wonderful summer.

Walking the Precipice

I woke early this morning from this nightmare: I am near the front of a line of people walking along a narrow ledge at the top of a sandstone cliff. I have no idea who this group of people is, nor why I have chosen to be among them. I am petrified. I have a long-standing fear of heights, and above and below me there is only the canyon wall to my right, and to my left... nothing but the long drop to the canyon floor. The face of the cliff is smooth, its features rounded: there is nothing to grasp on to. At one moment, I see what appears to be a hand-hold, but when I touch it, it turns out to have the texture of a knitted shawl. As we progress, my head reels, the path narrows. I become more and more terrified...

Once I woke, my mind insisted on continuing along that narrow ledge. I was unable for some minutes to shake off the image, nor the fear. Later, thinking back on it, I realized that this of course is how I'm feeling in my life at the moment--as I suspect are many others: at the edge of the precipice, and not a little scared. Scared about money, housing values, financial commitments. Scared about the elections and the quality of the debate leading up to them. Scared about what's happening to America and the world. Scared for my children and grandchildren. I feel like I'm walking along that very narrow path, with nothing to grab onto in order to feel more secure. I'm sure that the feeling haunts the lower levels of my consciousness, even at those times when I'm not aware of it.

Then, after I was up and about, after I'd made our morning cup of tea, the person who has made it his mission to make America feel more "secure" appeared on my television screen--the man who currently occupies our White House and whom I still can't bring myself to call by the title he appropriated. And I listened once again to his blather and asked myself again how a man of this inferior intellect had come to be the "leader of the free world." And I wondered once again how intelligent men and women of the media could sit there listening to this man answering, or failing to answer their intelligent questions with his usual bluff and blather, and later report on it as though it had made some sense. How much more often can this little emperor appear naked before the cameras of the world and still be treated as though he wore the full regalia? Once again, I'm stunned by the inarticulate simple-mindedness that governs this country and exerts so huge an influence on the world. How could this come about?

And then of course I remembered that this man is us. Like it or not, he's the mirror of who we are. We Americans enabled his elevation to the White House. We tolerated his excesses and rushed off with him to war. We allowed him to get away with his cronyism and incompetence. In our greed, we embraced his economic policies and his tax cuts. We threw up our hands in submission when he deprived us of our most basic civil rights. We still, to this very day, have failed to do what it takes to halt him in his tracks. Where we should have impeached we chose, timidly, to wait.

I'm sure I'll hear a chorus of protests: not me, that man in the White House does not represent what I stand for, I raised my voice against the war, I protested Guantanamo and the abuses of Abu Ghraib. Well, yes, you did. And so did I. But that's not exactly what I'm talking about. I'm talking about a collective responsibility for who we are, as a country. I'm talking about who we have allowed ourselves to become--not simply during the Bush administration, but in the course of the past four decades, slowly, inexorably, as we have made collective choices that have led us down this path. I'm talking about our misuse of power, our love of luxury and money, our contempt for education, our lack of circumspection for our place in a planet full of people.

So here we are, on the edge of precipice, and scared. If the housing market is in chaos it is the result of improvidence on the part of some, and greed on the part of others. If the financial markets are in chaos, it is for the very same reason. What I'd want to be hearing from the man at the podium this morning is not the blame and petulance I heard, but a rallying cry to all of us to be prepared, finally, to sacrifice some of our petty needs to the common good, to pull up our socks and roll up our sleeves and get to work on the real and urgent problems that we face.

And, failing to hear it from the Great Pretender, I'd want to see those in a position to do so take the responsibility for a merciless, objectively analytical exposure of his nakedness and the abject failure of his policies on every front. Unless and until we're prepared to acknowledge our responsibility for our current situation, we will not be able to move forward. Like the addict in the recovery program, we must first quit pretending that it's everyone else's fault, and recognize ourselves for who we are. We must quit squealing in indignant protest when a potential leader like Obama holds the mirror up for us to see. That's us, in the mirror there. And it's not a pretty sight.

That New Yorker Cover

Satire? They have to be kidding. Are the editorial staff of the New Yorker so tone-deaf to the political realities in this country that they don't understand how their self-indulgent "satire" will be put to use? By reducing the argument, as they do in their response to criticism, to purely literary and aesthetic considerations, they prove themselves to be asinine beyond belief. As others besides myself have pointed out, this idiocy hands the yahoos a weapon they themselves would not have had the wit to hone. In their sense of intellectual entitlement, they forget the vast mass of voters who lack the critical discrimination to read their cover in other than literal terms: those many who will understand it at face value, not for its ironical intention.

I notice that Obama's poll numbers have dropped significantly in the past week alone. along with his fund-raising potential. Thank his liberal friends, from Reverend Jesse Jackson to the idealist left-wing bloggers and mind-bogglingly stupid "literate" liberals like the New Yorker. I'm planning to send in another few dollars to support this candidate. I hope my readers will judiciously put aside their disagreements--no matter how much I might agree with their arduments--and join me in renewing our support. We simply cannot afford to sacrifice an entire election to our individual principles one more time. There's far too much at stake.

I'm hoping that the example of the New Yorker cover will prove a useful lesson to the liberal conscience about the risks incurred by this lack of circumspection. There's a single, over-riding goal at stake this time around. It's nothing less than the rescue of this country from self-destruction, not to mention the planet that we share with others. And that, to my way of thinking, is no exaggeration.

By the way, I have never done this before, because the gesture has seemed no more than petty spite, but I felt I had to make a statement, no matter how small: I canceled our subscription to the New Yorker. I hope millions of others do the same.

Le Tour, Part Deux

I've been enjoying the Tour much more than I had expected this year. In fact, I had not intended to be watching at all, given the disaster of last year when even the winner was disqualified after the event for doping. But I got hooked again, and was persuaded by the efforts that have been made this year to ensure that the competition would be honest.


Other than the exclusion of some riders and teams before the race, there has been only one incident so far this year--with the expulsion of Miguel Beltran, a "domestique" with the Italian team Liquigas. ("Domestiques" are riders whose chief job is to to the heavy lifting that allows the sprinters and the mountain men to shine. Beltran paved many a path for Lance Armstrong, in his days with U.S. Postal.)

Anyway, I'm keeping my fingers crossed that this was an isolated case, and that the teams are finally smart enough to control their riders. As a Wall Street Journal article made clear yesterday, it's only good business. The article cites Jonathan Vaughters, the directeur sportif of Team Garmin-Chipotle, as "an anti-doping stalwart" who asserts that "teams like Garmin, Columbia and CSC-Saxo Bank are putting up enough empirical evidence that sponsors are buying into something they can believe in and isn't going to damage their brand."

It's nice that the two American teams, Garmin and Team Columbia, have been in the forefront of the anti-doping movement. "Garmin-Chipotle and Columbia," writes the Wall Street Journal, "(formerly Slipstream and High Road, respectively) in particular are at the front of the movement to clean up professional cycling, and the teams are awash in favorable press. Garmin-Chipotle captain David Millar, for instance, is an admitted former drug user who has since become an anti-doping advocate; and both teams conduct internal testing that exceeds requirements in an effort to always race clean."

"Bob Stapleton," the article continues, "owner of Team Columbia, agrees. 'These clear and concise anti-doping measures need to be implemented by all teams across the sport,' he said. 'Then I think you've removed the biggest risk element for sponsors and you can focus on what is fundamentally attractive—it's a growing and healthy sport, and it caters to very influential consumers.'" It's a good thing, then, that Team Columbia is performing so well, maintaining an overall lead in the race with Kim Kirchen, from Luxembourg, in the yellow jersey four days in a row; and with their young sprint star, Mark Cavendish, winning a stage on Saturday.

Okay. So, fingers crossed, I have been watching. There are those who felt that the new anti-doping move would deprive the sport of its excitement. Not so. From the flats to the individual time trials and, now, the mountains (the riders are in the Pyrenees, with one of the Tour's most exacting days today, le quatorze juillet, July 14, Bastille Day, have been no less exciting than previous Tours. Young, previously obscure cyclists have come to the fore, with extraordinary speed, skill, and endurance. The handful of prospects for the final yellow jersey, on the podium at the race's end in Paris, have ridden strong, canny races, and are likely to have to show their mettle today. The French, particularly, on Bastille day, go all out to make a patriotic showing, and we can expect to see them making a strong challenge to the leadership.

Yesterday, the first serious mountain-climbing day, gave the Italian climber, Riccardo Ricco, the opportunity to streak ahead of the main peloton on a steep mountainside and lead them all the way to the finish. I marvel at the strength of men like this, and their ability to persist despite the obvious pain involved in pushing the human body to its limits and, seemingly, beyond. I'm trusting, for now, that he did it honestly.

Obama: The Cardozo View

You may remember, a week or so ago, a piece I wrote on The Buddha Diaries called To My Great Nephew, in which I returned to my theme of the importance of supporting Barack Obama despite one's disagreements with him. My friend and assistant, Daniel Cardozo, wrote what I thought was an intelligent and provocative comment on that entry, and I encouraged him to expand it a bit and to include it on my Huffington Post site. He did. To date, his piece has received 135 comments, and has been re-posted at a number of other sites on the internet. It represents the views of someone two generations younger than myself, and I thought it worth reproducing here as the weekend entry on The Buddha Diaries, in case readers might have missed it at the Huffington Post. (Actually, you should do yourself a favor and go on over to read the piece on HuffPo, to get a full flavor of the range of the responses--from infantile to argumentative to outraged, as well as those that are supportive.) Anyway, here it is. I hope it inspires you to look further, to get some sense of the quality of American political dialogue!

Daniel Cardozo writes, for the Buddha Diaries:

Why the Left Doesn't "Get" Barack Obama

A remarkable lecture by neurologist and internet-sensation, Jill Bolte Taylor, recently brought popular attention to the divide between the left and right hemispheres of our brains. In simplified terms, our left brain is logic and detail oriented, while our right brain relies on feeling and big-picture thinking.

In relation to Obama, we on the political left don't seem to know which side of our brains to trust. We stand open-mouthed in front of our screens as Obama reminds us that "there is not a liberal American and a conservative America -- there is the United States of America," and our right-brains pulse with life. Brimming over with poetry and strength, Obama reminds us that the Iraq war "should have never been authorized, and should have never been waged," and our right brains get intoxicated with hope for a country we can be really proud of.

But then we open up our New York Times and read that Obama opposes a court decision banning the death penalty for child rape; that he supports another court decision striking down a gun-control law; that he supports a FISA compromise bill granting immunity to telecom companies who facilitated the Bush administration's streamrolling of civil liberties; that he supports certain limited federal funding of faith-based organizations.

And so we flip the switch on our right brains and our left brains cry foul. "What happened to our great hope for the future?" Feeling betrayed, Obama supporters organize protests on barackobama.com, and NYT op-ed specialist Bob Herbert accuses the candidate of "lurching right when it suits him, and... zigging with the kind of reckless abandon that's guaranteed to cause disillusion, if not whiplash."

In her lecture, Jill Bolte Taylor argues that both our left and right brains are crucially important in their different ways, and that a symbiotic unification of the left and right brain is possible.

We progressives need to get our left and right brains working together, and to do this means first recognizing the conflict, which amounts to a significant "left brain" misunderstanding about what Obama stands for.

Shame

"Nothing closes ears, minds and hearts faster than shame." So wrote heartinsanfrancisco in response to a comment I left yesterday on her blog--the one with the delicious title, "Guilty With an Explanation." She had written about one of those brief encounters where her own moral values had been put on the spot by the prejudice of a stranger, the kind of situation where you're left speechless--and remorseful that you lack words to express your outrage in the face of sheer, blind, unforgivable and ignorant bias.

She's right, of course. I was writing yesterday about vengeance, which seems to me to belong somewhere in the same category of violence, or violation. To put a stranger to shame in such a circumstance is to indulge in a kind of vengeance. It's an abuse of power--if the presumption of my own righteousness is a form of power. It teaches nothing, since shame overwhelms the listener and, yes, closes the ears, mind and heart to anything but the afterburn. It might give me a momentary satisfaction, but is sure to leave a bad taste in my mouth. It's a pyrrhic victory, at best.

I've heard a useful distinction between shame and guilt: you feel guilty for something you have done; you feel shame for who you are. I have experienced both in the course of my life, and if I accept this definition, I believe that shame is worse. I can use my faculties of reason to get past guilt, by either accepting or rejecting responsibility for the action that provoked it. I can even be guilty "with an explanation"! But shame goes deeper than action, into the very core of who I am. Once I become aware of it, it hurts, and keeps on hurting until I find a way to accept what it is that shames me and learn to be with the truth about myself in more compassionate way.

With regard to heartinsanfrancisco's situation, I might feel guilty for having spoken unkind words; I'd feel shame for that part of me that needed to shame another person for her words.

But this is just the beginning of a huge discussion. The terms are still a little blurred, I feel. I'd be interested to hear what others think, and what their own experiences might be.

That's how I see it, anyway. Thanks to heartinsanfrancisco for bringing all these thoughts to mind.

"Vengeance Is a Chain...

... there is no room for hate." So says Ingrid Betancourt, out of the wisdom of her six years of captivity in Columbian jungle camps by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia. "You have to pardon," she continues. I think that's the key of everything. We're human beings. We think different, we act different, but we are human beings."


I watched the few moments of her interview with NBC's Ann Curry that their morning show could spare, and was glad indeed to encounter her humanity. She spoke of the necessity for compassion not out of some philosophical belief, but out of a heart and body exposed to worst a human being might have to experience; extending it not only to those she loves, but to her captors, imprisoners, and torturers. There's true wisdom for you, compassion in its most generous and non-judgmental form. Let's call her "enlightened." To watch Betancourt and listen to her speak is to see and hear Buddhism in practice, with none of its religious trappings but all of its human understanding. Perhaps she, seemingly a devout Catholic, would call it simply Christian. If so, it's Christianity as Christ surely intended it.

"Vengeance is a chain." Listening to these words, I could not help but think about our hapless situation in Iraq, and how the piously "Christian" man in the White House and those he chose to appoint as his advisers exploited our instinctive (read "primitive") need for vengeance after the 9/11 attacks in order to promote his aggressive resource war for oil; and how we are now "chained" to the Middle East in ways that might have been avoided, had he chosen instead the path of wisdom and compassion. Clearly we needed, at that moment, to do what was necessary to protect ourselves from further attack: I personally think that a forceful response to Al Qaeda and its Taliban supporters in Afghanistan was necessary, if regrettable--not as an act of vengeance, but rather as a practical strategy for self-defense.

The invasion of Iraq was a different matter entirely. It could not have been achieved, I think, without the provocation of 9/11. I don't believe the American people would have tolerated the aggression without the exploitation of their emotional reaction to the 9/11 attacks. As a nation, we were still hot with shock and righteous anger, and still grieving those thousands of us who had died. In our rage, we were persuaded to overlook the well-established truth, that violence breeds only violence, and that vengeance never fails to wreak as great a devastation on its perpetrator as upon its victim. Compassion was the last thing on our minds as we surveyed the wreckage of the World Trade Center, deprived of even the bodies of the dead to bury.

Had we done more to address the root causes--among them, the genuine feeling in the Muslim world that the West was out to exploit their resources at the cost of their cultural and religious heritage--we might find ourselves in a very different situation today. Had we been just a little more Buddhist--or more Christian--in our response, we might now have more friends than enemies in that part of the world. Had we really paid attention and fully realized the role of oil in all this global instability, we might have begun to address our own addiction and be headed, already, toward a diminished dependency and a less threatened planet.

Instead, we chose vengeance. And what a powerful chain it has proved to be. We have yet to learn the lesson of Ingrid Betancourt. "We're human beings. We think different, we act different, but we are [all] human beings."

Bugs

No, not Bunny. Not the cartoon. I mean the live kind, little gnat things, mosquitoes, moths, those little creatures that gather in masses to ruin your quiet evening in the great outdoors. That kind. Well, yesterday, Ellie came home with a bug-zapper--one of those black wire cage contraptions with an eerie blue light in the center, to which flying insects of all kinds are attracted to their instant, sizzling extinction.

It was a kind thought--at least where I'm concerned. We have a lovely balcony that overlooks the Hollywood Hills. At sunset, when the cool ocean breeze (usually) flows in to nudge out the heat of the day, it's a wonderful place to sit and enjoy the gathering dusk. The bugs seem to like it just as much as we humans do, however, and they have a nasty attraction to human flesh. For some reason best known to themselves, they seem to prefer my flesh to Ellie's: I can't sit out there for more than five minutes without that familiar itchy feeling down around the ankles--their preferred target. When I feel one of settle in for a pleasant dinner at my expense... well, Buddhist principles or no, I do confess, I slap 'em. I don't just brush 'em off, I slap 'em. It's instinctive, uncontrollable, a gesture of pure self-defense. Only afterwards do I reflect that I've taken the life of a living being, to whom I should have been sending goodwill and compassion.

But a bug-zapper... That's another matter. That's malice aforethought, a deliberate, coldly conscious intention to instigate death. We debated the issue throughout the evening. This morning, on our exercise walk around the hill, we debated it further with our friend and neighbor, Nancy. She voiced my own opinion, that the sound of death by electrocution is blood-curdling, even when it's "only" bugs that are the victims. The slap is a much more human sound, and one for which one can, after all, accept personal responsibility. The bug-zapper is by comparison, well, inhuman. And there are always those yellow candles with the nasty smell...

So, finally, after much debate and anguished self-examination, the bug-zapper went back, this morning, to the hardware store. What do you say, you good folk who read these words? Do you use bug-zappers? Do you have wonderful alternative remedies to share? Some of you, surely, live in mosquito-infested territories and have patented methods of bug-deterrence. Let me hear from you. Please.

Le Tour, Revisited...

(... but first, thanks to Cardozo for his clear-sighted and well-reasoned defense of Obama in response to yesterday's entry in The Buddha Diaries. I trust that readers will check it out. It deserves not to languish in obscurity.)

Those who have followed The Buddha Diaries for a little while will not be surprised by my confession of a long-standing addiction to the Tour de France. It came about because I was myself a cycling enthusiast for a brief period during my teenage years. My sporty red drop-handlebar bicycle offered me the opportunity, a couple of times a week, to escape the confines of my all-boys boarding school and pedal off, alone, into the Sussex Downs--not incidentally with a contraband pack of cigarettes aboard for a furtive smoke behind the bushes. My enthusiasm did not, I'm sad to say, extend beyond those school years: the slacker's choice of a motorized two-wheeler called--and cigarettes, unfortunately, were abundantly available and no longer forbidden. Of these twin addictions, it was certainly the least desirable. It took me another thirty years to quit.



But I still do love to follow the Tour de France--available these days, thanks to the marvel of satellite TV, from start to finish every day. (I record the stages, so that I can skip through the plentiful commercials.) I was anticipating that last year might prove the final straw, with the doping scandal reaching its direst moment in the exclision of a number of riders along the way, and of the winner at the end. Am I wrong to approach this year's event with trust in the efforts that have been made to clean things up? I was wrong, certainly, to judge from the first three stages, to fear that the race would be less exciting with several of the major teams--and most of the familiar champions--banned from participation. Despite bad weather, the racing has been fine, the contest hard-fought, the results surprising.

I'll keep watching, then, in the hope that no major scandal will disrupt the proceedings this year, and that the race continues to hold challenges and surprises. I might even mention it, now and then, in the pages of The Buddha Diaries. Who knows...? (Please don't tell me who won Tuesday's time trials. I won't get around to watching until later in the day!)

Photo Credit

To My Great Nephew: Re the American Elections

What follows is a letter I wrote yesterday to my remarkably well-informed and curious ten year-old great-nephew, Hugo, who lives in England and was nice enough to inquire after my thoughts about the American elections. I have been slow in responding to his e-mailed question, but I hope these thoughts are better late than never. It's useful, sometimes, to try to boil it all down to words intended for a bright ten year-old who may well be wiser, in some ways, than we adults:

Dear Hugo,

It has been a couple of months since you wrote to me, asking what I thought about the elections here in America. I'm afraid I did not give your question much thought at the time, and wrote only a quick response. But I have been thinking about it since then, and wanted to let you have a proper answer, so here goes.

First, a lot has happened since you asked the question. Senator Hillary Clinton has dropped out of the race, leaving the way clear for Senator Barack Obama as the Democratic candidate. And, surprisingly, because he seemed at first to have little choice to survive the early battle among the Republicans, John McCain is now the Republican who will run against Obama. Interesting, isn't it, that before Hillary Clinton dropped out, the main contenders were 1) the first woman to have ever reached so far; 2) the first black man to have ever reached so far; and 3) the oldest man ever to have reached so far in the presidential race?

So here's my first thought: that speaks well of America, that it is no longer only sprightly young white men who can qualify for the position! And while we're on the subject, let me add that I was delighted to see a woman so clearly in contention--but extremely disappointed when she felt she had to prove how "tough" she was in order to gain the nomination. During the last part of her campaign, I have to say that she lost me--along with many others--by trying to prove that point in every way she could imagine. For myself, I think it's time for us to abandon that old notion, that America needs to be the tough guy in the world. I believe that it's time for a more compassionate, "feminine" energy in leadership positions in this tired old world, where men, I fear, have contributed more than their share of trouble in grabbing for wealth and power no matter what the consequences to this small planet we inhabit.

That said, I also believe that Barack Obama has some of that energy. Until recently, when he became the "presumptive nominee" of the Democratic Party, he was able to articulate a wonderfully broad, inclusive, and humane vision of the change that we humans must be ready to make in our lives--and our relationship with each other--if our planet is to survive. We can't go on forever exploiting it and making wars with each other over the food we need to eat, the medical attention that we need to remain healthy, the resources that we need to run our lives. Because that's what it's coming to, isn't it? I read in the New York Times just this morning that more than 30 countries have already experienced violent internal battles over food. America is still the richest and most powerful country in the world, and we need to provide the leadership and the example, and to exercise the generosity it will take for all human beings on the planet to live together in peace and harmony.

I had high hopes that Obama envisioned an America of this kind. I still hope he does. What has happened in recent weeks, however, is that he has been voicing ideas and opinions that sound quite a lot different from those he was expressing before he became the front runner. It's my belief that he has been doing this out of a sense of realism--that he must take positions that will attract the support of the many, many voters it will take to get him elected; and to avoid alienating them from his ideas. The truth is that many Americans are deeply conservative, they resist change, perhaps even fear what it may bring. They value the old ways, and those ideas they feel made America "a great country." Obama will need a good number of their votes if he's ever to be elected.

Obama's opponent, John McCain, the "presumptive nominee" of the Republican Party, is making his appeal based largely on those values. He is making a great deal of his "patriotism" and his past service to this country, as a brave Navy fighter pilot who endured five years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam. He wants to persuade Americans that he is the one with the experience that can be trusted, that he's the "tough guy" in this race, that he knows how to deal with those ruffians in the rest of the world. He's trying to persuade voters that Obama is weak and inexperienced, and that he can't be trusted to run the country. In my view--and bear in mind, Hugo, that these are my views I'm expressing, not necessarily true facts!--McCain represents that old school I was talking about earlier, the one that thinks America should lead the world with military and economic power, and protect itself from every potential "enemy" out there. He seems to believe in America's God-given right to economic prosperity and world leadership, at a time when I myself believe that we must learn to become a nation among nations, in a whole co-operative, sharing, mutually-concerned global community.

I think that Americans--if I can generalize--tend to be idealists: I'm sure you've heard of "the American dream." We hear a lot about it over here. And it's a short step from being an ideal-ist to being an ideologue, the kind of person who is so convinced of the rightness of his own ideals that he's blinded to any others--something like the current president and his cronies! Ideals are important, of course, but it's also important to recognize and accept some of the limitations of the real world. It's hard to be both an idealist and a realist all at once, however, because reality keeps demanding that we compromise a little on the ideals in order to get things done; and ideals, by definition, don't want to be compromised!

So that's where we're a wee bit stuck right now, as I see it. And I have to add that Americans are mostly just tired of this election at the moment. I think I'm right in saying that most of us want to have it over and done with. We are mightily tired of hearing the candidates trade petty insults with each other, instead of discussing real, urgently important issues like global warming, world hunger, poverty, war and the threat of widespread disease. Instead we hear them talking about who's more "patriotic" than the other guy, while we begin to wonder who's the more "idiotic." You can tell from what I've written, I'm sure, that I support Obama. I hope he wins. I just can't wait until it's over with. (Did you know that we have another 196 days of Bush?)

With love to you and your Mum from your great-uncle,
Peter

Warriors

I notice that I have been writing more about art than about the Buddha and his teachings in recent days. It's an old habit, and I'm glad to be finding the opportunities; and besides, I see little conflict between the two. After all, art at its best, is about the life of mind and spirit, about the inner work it takes to come to the kind of clear-sighted self-knowledge that the practice of Buddhism invites. I trust that my reflections are of interest to visitors to The Buddha Diaries, because your visits are important to me. For me--as I'm sure for others--it's of essence that what I write be read. It's not my wish to be that "voice crying in the wilderness." As I tried to clarify in that recent lecture, "Going Deep: Mining the Inner Self," I write in part to find out more about myself, and in part in order to be heard by others.

Back to art, then. Thursday this past week we went with our friends Fred and Lynn to see "Terra Cotta Warriors: Guardians of China's First Emperor" at the Bowers Museum in Santa Ana--the exhibition's first stop on a North American tour. I have known about these figures for some time, of course, and was excited at the prospect of seeing them at first hand. What I had in mind--somewhat naively, I suppose--were those serried ranks of foot soldiers and cavalrymen I had seen in photographic reproduction, and I have to say that what I got was something different from my expectations. No less valuable in its way, perhaps, but different.

What I got was a great deal of historical and cultural information about China at the time of the First Emperor, Qin Shi Huang (250-210 B.C.) and a lot of fascinating information about the creation of those figures, their re-discovery centuries later, and the archeological restoration process that it took to bring them back to something close to their original splendor. What I missed was what I can only describe as the oomph I had expected, the spectacular quality of the sheer mass of them, the "serried ranks" I mentioned above. The relatively small number of restored figures were exhibited separately, as individuals--marvels in themselves but deprived of their collective grandeur. I got a lot less awe than would have met my expectations, and had to satisfy that desire through the photographs and video that accompanied the show.

(Thanks to the Bowers Museum for providing me with these images. I should point out, however, that they are not installation shots from the current exhibition, but rather from the Museum of the Terra Cotta Warriors and Horses at Qin Shi Huang, Lintong, China.)



That said, I did learn a lot; and I was awed, in a minor key, by the marvelously skillful construction and the quiet serenity of the isolated figures. It's amazing, given their numbers, that each is an individual, with individual physiognomy and posture, each with an individual energy and emotional affect. No two, as I understand it, are identical. In their centuries-old silence, they exude an inner strength and purposefulness that is, yes, awesome in itself. They stand before us, somehow above the vicissitudes of the current history of the world, secure in their deathless certitude and improbable survival.

What is it, I wonder, about we humans that we have been so obsessed, throughout our history, with making images of ourselves? There was a practical/spiritual purpose, of course, to the creation of this terra cotta army: the emperor needed their protection in the afterlife. Installed at strategic locations at the outskirts of his necropolis, they have stood guard for centuries, in defense of his eternal soul. Well, not quite. The non-romantic, Buddhist part of me needs to point out that this army, too, fell victim to the ravages of time, and was utterly destroyed before modern man came along to meticulously recreate it. Dust to dust... and back again!

Still, we turn our human skills to the attempt to perpetuate who we are, and it is certainly moving, amongst these figures dignified by age, to feel that we are in some small way in touch with those who walked the earth so many years before us; and that their spirit can still in some small way walk amongst us. I value enormously the small statue of the Buddha that sits in eternal contemplation in our garden, where I sit writing these words on a sunny Saturday morning in twenty-first century Southern California; and the larger face of the Buddha, down whose cheeks the water of our fountain runs like ever-compassionate tears for the suffering we bring upon ourselves through our attachments. These figures are true presences in our lives, reminders of the values that we try to live by. I know they are not the Buddha, that they do not remotely "look like" what the Buddha may have done, twenty-five hundred years ago; and even so they bring something of his serenity of spirit into the garden, along with a healthy reminder of the impermanence of all things.

As for the warriors, eternally stalwart and eternally loyal to their emperor, they too bring something of value into our lives, reminding us in their wordless way of the deepest fears and grandest aspirations that we share with our fellow mortal beings throughout history, and in all parts of the globe.

Remodel: Progress Report #1

Damn! I could kick myself. I forgot to take "before" pictures of the basement/garage area of our Laguna Beach cottage before the demolition started.



What you see here is what used to be the garage--too narrow, by far, for any contemporary vehicle. The total garage area reached from the window across to just to the right of where the water heater still stands.



The heater will be moved, probably next week, while we are away. To the right of that, there was a big concrete step-up, about a foot and a half, to a storage area; then a wall to a dirt area beyond, where the furnace stood. The brick wall is the foundation of the fireplace in the living room, directly above.





You can see here where they have excavated a good deal of dirt, in order to widen the total square footage of the basement for considerably more under-the-house storage than we currently have.

We are very fortunate with our contractor and the people who work with him. We had been nervous about the inconvenience to our neighbors, before the work started on this very narrow street, but we have heard nothing but compliments about how (relatively) quiet and how (extremely) courteous everyone has been, so we are pleased on that score. Larry, our contractor, seems to have the knack of employing people who are not only well qualified and industrious, but also cheerful and polite. So far, so good!

I did manage to get "before" pictures of other areas of the cottage that are a part of the remodel, and will post them here as and when the work gets started. Along with the "after" pictures that will be available, we hope, by November of this year. In the meantime, I plan to continue with these progress reports--as memory aids for Ellie and myself, and for anyone else who might care to follow the events with interest.

A footnote: yesterday, the 4th, we went down to the beach in the early morning with George the dog--he's not allowed after 8PM for the duration of the summer--and enjoyed the freshness of a lovely early morning mist at an unusually low tide. At one very special moment, I was surprised to see an egret fly toward us, low along the coastline, something I can't remember having seen before. I associate egrets with marshy lake and river-beds more than the ocean, so it was a thrill to watch its flight over the breaking surf.