Film Review: Wheel of Time

I watched Werner Herzog’s 2003 movie, Wheel of Time the other night, and was powerfully reminded of the difference between Buddhism as a religion—in this instance, the Tibetan variety—and Buddhism as a teaching and a practice that I follow with enthusiasm. Herzog’s movie documents in two parts—the first in Bodh Gaya, the second in Graz, Austria—the Kalachakra Initiation ceremony for the faithful. The first, in India, was cut short by the illness of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, so the Austrian event provided a convenient opportunity to show the completion of the ceremony.

Herzog himself was at first ambivalent about the project, hesitant about the adoption of an eastern religion into Western culture. As he put it, colorfully, in an interview with BBC’s Channel 4 with reference to the Graz ceremony, “Wouldn't it look strange if you were in Bodh Gaya and saw 10,000 Tibetans in Hassidic outfits celebrating Yom Kippur?” An exaggeration, as he himself readily admitted. But his ambivalence reveals itself in the film, as we watch monks chanting and prostrating, creating the awesomely beautiful and intricate sand mandala, and as faithful laypeople make sacred pilgrimages, thumb through long strands of beads, erect strings of prayer flags and twirl their ritual time wheels. Watching the film, I felt like something of an intruder on a practice that remained foreign to me in so many ways, even as I was intrigued by the rituals and awed by the sounds and colors, the “trappings” of the religion.

Not being a religious person, though, I found myself sharing Herzog’s discomfort. To feel the full impact of religious Buddhism in the heart requires a lot more belief than I can muster for any religion, and simply to indulge a fascination for the exoticism of its customs, ritual apparel and paraphernalia seems condescending and inauthentic. Watching the movie, I got stuck between these two irreconcilable attitudes, and failed to achieve that "suspension of disbelief" that Coleridge required for fiction, but which I think is equally applicable to all art forms, even documentary film.

That said, I did find myself seduced, once more, by the Dalai Lama's universal message, repeated at several moments in the course of the film: that we humans are all one, and that compassion for each other is the core of every religion. As Herzog said, in the same interview, to qualify the hesitation cited above: "Yet of course I fully agree with the Dalai Lama on one of his basic views that he voices over and over again - only through understanding other religions will we eventually create lasting peace on this planet.” Bottom line, though, as I hear the Dalai Lama's words, it's not just an understanding and tolerance of other religions that we need, it's the recognition that they all agree on that one fundamental principle: Do unto yourself as you would have others do unto you; or, Love thy brother as thyself.

Leaving Town...

I leave this morning for the men's training weekend I have mentioned on several occasions in the past. It was a life-saver for me, back in the early 1990s, and I have served on staff many times since that first weekend. Some may recall that I was bellyaching, a while back, about not finding ways to be of service in my life; and that I received, in short order, precisely what I'd wished for: the invitation to staff this weekend. A mixed blessing, since it has already required a great deal of time and effort in preparation, and I harbor deep-seated (irrational, what else?) fears about being in a strange place with people I mostly don't know... Which may have something to do with recent posts about bad sits and sleep loss! Anyway, I look forward to it with a mixture of dread and excitement--and I can live with that paradox! Cardozo, I hope, will be posting one of my film reviews in my absence, and I'll likely be checking back in on Monday. Wish me luck, and have a great weekend.

A Meme: How Do You Sleep At Night?

I have never done this before. Honest. I'm not sure I should be doing it now. On the other hand, I'm truly interested in what others are experiencing in these most difficult of times.. and especially how hard times are affecting their good night's sleep.

So here's the first question. It's one that John Lennon famously posed, in song--supposedly to Paul McCartney.

1) How do you sleep at night?

Is your sleep affected by the national angst? Do you drop off easily, as you always did? Or does it take a while to get to sleep?

I was talking with a widely-respected financial whiz, the other day, upon whose judgment my wife and I have relied heavily over the years for our financial well-being, and he confided in me that he is losing a good deal of sleep over the current economic crisis and the plummeting stock market. There can be few people in America who remain unaffected by the downturn, and we ourselves--at an, um, respectable age and no longer reliant on such good things as a reliable income--are concerned about the years to come, and particularly about the length of time it might take for the economy to recover. It was hardly encouraging, in this circumstance, to learn that even a cool, wise head like this one has been losing sleep. In his NYT column last Friday, Paul Krugman wrote: "things are so bad that [even] the summarized musings of central bankers can keep you up at night."

I'm normally a fine sleeper, aside from the one or two nightly calls of nature to which I must respond. Lately, though, I have noticed that getting back to sleep is harder than it used to be. My mind is occupied, not necessarily with the global economy front and center, but perhaps--no, I'm sure--somewhere in the background. A general sense of dread. So...

2) What strategies, if needed, do you use to get to sleep? Pills? Sheep? Late night television shows? And/or...?

For me, counting sheep is useless and irritating. And breathing, watching the breath, is no longer a good option: my mind has learned, through meditation practice, that watching the breath means Wake Up! Be Alert! Not exactly conducive to the return to dreamland.

3) Do you wake up in the middle of the night, plagued by obsessive thoughts?

Actually I wake up for that trip to the bathroom. It's when I get back that the obsessive thoughts kick in. And if so...

4) What strategies do you have to get back to sleep?

Hmmm. I have to confess that, once in a while, I resort to popping half an Ambien. Otherwise, patience...

5) Are your dreams affected? Are they more anxious than before? Do they wake you up in a sweat? Or are they peaceful, innocent, undisturbed by the general malaise?

I have, yes, noticed that I have been having anxiety dreams. I have never been too at remembering any of my dreams, though. I'm lucky if I wake up with the tail end of a thread to start unraveling. Last night, a snatch: I was scheduled to give a lecture, and was boarded in a kind of dormitory with a single long corridor. I had the choice of two bathrooms for a shower before my lecture. My friend--I knew him well, but had no idea who he actually was--took one of them... and I found myself locked out of the other. So the anxiety is definitely there in the dreams, something that hangs around after I wake, in ways difficult to describe.

So how are you doing? That's what I'm keen to know. And I thought it might make an interesting meme. About a year or so ago, I kept coming across these strange beasts on the blogosphere. Not so much any more. Maybe everyone is bored with them. And I'm frankly unsure how they work, or if they're just a burdensome nuisance. But should you find it appropriate to address this theme, I'd love to read some entries on your blog sites in response.

I understand that a meme needs rules. Mine are:

Answer the questions
Link back to the original meme
Tag others to participate

I'll understand perfectly should you consider this rude, intrusive, or inappropriate. But in the spirit of authentic meme-ing, I'm tagging, herewith:

A Quiet Watercourse
Adgita Diaries
Dharma Bums
heartinsanfrancisco
Let It Be Lindsey
Marko Polo (even though he's in Greece!)
Principle of Uncertainty
Tara Dharma
Thailand Chani
When This Is, That Is

Please let me know...

And, needless to say, any other of my wonderful blogger friends are welcome to participate as well.

The Worst Sit Ever

No exaggeration. Well, barely. Ellie and I joined our sitting group yesterday morning for our usual Sunday hour-long sit, and I had what has to count as my worst sit ever--and I've been doing this for fifteen years! Perhaps some of my meditating friends out there could help me with their insights.

Here's how it went: I noticed something "wrong" from the start. It usually takes me no more than a few breaths to get settled in, to slow down to meditation speed. Yesterday, though--and for no discernible reason--my heart was pounding at an unusual rate and my breath was jerky and uneven. I tried the usual tactics. Keep breathing, watch the breath. I moved on into metta, the goodwill practice, first for myself, then for family and close friends--I went through all the usual faces--then those I don't know and have no judgment about one way or the other, those I dislike or distrust, those in power, those without it, who are suffering from hunger, disease, or violence. My mind kept wandering, nowhere in particular, and my body was inordinately restless. Legs, arms, neck... I did my best to bring some rest to them with the breath. No luck.

Undeterred, I moved on to my body scan, starting at the centerpoint and working through the abdomen, the flanks, chest and heart, neck, head... and down the back to the legs and down from the shoulders to the fingertips. I could NOT get settled. Neither mind nor body. I ached, literally, to be out of there. Several times, I nearly got up and left. I resorted to measuring the passing minutes against the breath, and every minute seemed like a half-hour. It wasn't as though there was anything particular on my mind--not that I could identify, though I resisted trying to identify it.

Then came the panic. This was perhaps forty minutes into the sit. It manifested first in the form of body heat. I felt my body begin to burn, a kind of fever which intensified into a sweating anxiety. My head kept saying, gotta get out of here. NOW. Fighting the panic, of course, results only in more panic. I had to MOVE. I found small ways to release the tension, a shift in the position of the legs, a slight stretch of the neck. Small comfort. My head began to go into black-out mode... Fearing that I would quite literally and imminently pass out, I leaned forward, placing my head between my knees.

Then it was over. For perhaps no more than the last five minutes of that long, long hour, I managed to find a place of serenity. I began to breathe easy. I managed to let go of everything that had gone before. My mind was content to accept stillness and peace. Then the bell rang. I was never so happy to hear that mellow sound...

I wonder, then, if any of my fellow meditators have had similar experiences? I have, in truth, had minor episodes of this kind in the past--particularly the body heat and, of course, the struggle with the mind and the breath. But never this intense, or this prolonged. I wonder to what extent it might have to do with our current global malaise, about which I'll be posting more tomorrow. Have you been losing sleep?

What's In It For ME?

The frankly ugly spectacle of CNBC's Rick Santelli on the Today show this morning, calling for debate on the government's mortgage crisis intervention while screaming down anything anyone else had to say was a chilling reminder of the power of the outraged voice of personal grievance in this country. If you shout ME! ME! ME! loud enough and often enough you expect to get your way. This is the bully tactic of those radio talk show hosts (and, I have to say, fellow bloggers: this was "the most emailed moment in the blogosphere") who have managed to amplify Santelli's me-first voice to fever pitch. It's a call that resounds in the United States Congress, in the halls of the state capital in Sacramento, and elsewhere. My great fear is that we have lost all sense of mutual, civic responsibility in America, and that Obama's efforts to revive it may come too late. The fabric of our civility has worn very thin indeed, and if we allow it to shred further, it will not be only our economy that falls apart. We'll all be headed for the cliff's edge. I hope I'm wrong.

A Follow-up

ErnestO, who frequently adds his comments the The Buddha Diaries, forwarded the appeal below to me. I'm posting it here not because I necessarily agree with every part of the position it urges, but because I think it's a call to conscience that needs thoughtful engagement.

This is a critical moment to raise your voice on the deepening U.S. military engagement in Afghanistan.

On Tuesday, President Barack Obama announced his decision to send 17,000 more U.S. troops to Afghanistan, stating that this increase "is necessary to stabilize a deteriorating situation." Currently there are 37,000 U.S. troops.

This action comes on the heels of last week's action by the President to order a full strategic review of U.S. policy in Afghanistan and Pakistan. That review is to be completed before a summit of NATO leaders in France in April.

While the Obama Administration should be affirmed for undertaking a comprehensive review of U.S. policy in Afghanistan, the deployment of additional troops before the review is complete risks the U.S. getting into a deeper war quagmire.

Security is an extremely serious concern in the country, yet even if a troop surge could address violence in the short term, it will be short-lived without building the deeper foundations for peace. A shift in U.S. policy in support of a diplomatic and development surge has far greater potential for such long term stability.

Several months ago, Afghan President Karzai called on the U.S. and NATO to draft troop withdrawal plans. Recent public opinion polling in Afghanistan, released 2/9/09, (click here to read article) shows a significant drop in the perception that the U.S. has performed well in Afghanistan, from 68% in 2005 to 32% now. Many analysts are suggesting that reducing the U.S. military footprint could be one of the most effective measures to weaken the armed opposition

The situation in Afghanistan is volatile and complex. Pax Christi USA's next membership letter (March 09) will be dedicated to examining the situation in Afghanistan. For now:

TAKE ACTION: First, contact the White House hotline by phone: 202-456-1111, or email: www.whitehouse.gov/contact/. Affirm the President's order for a full review of U.S. policy on Afghanistan, and express opposition to sending 17,000 more troops. Urge a new approach on Afghanistan -- one that strengthens diplomacy and development -- instead of an over-reliance on military strategies.

Second, we need to influence the public conversation on Afghanistan. Write Letters to the Editor, post comments on blogs, call radio talks shows. The message: 1) We affirm the President's full review of U.S. policy on Afghanistan. 2) We are opposed to sending 17,000 additional troops. 3) Diplomacy and development are our best hopes for a peaceful and secure Afghanistan.

We must act now. Forward this action alert on to anyone else you know who will take action.

We have seen how ineffective the spiral of violence has proven in Afghanistan. It is time for an approach that utilizes strategies of nonviolence to bring peace to that long troubled country. Let us help to make the change we believe in possible by acting today. Thank you!

In peace,
Johnny Zokovitch
Director of Communications, Pax Christi USA

While I think that President Obama, in the many horrible situations he has inherited, needs our engaged support, I also believe that he should be--and is--open to criticism and question. As my last post suggested, I am myself not convinced of the wisdom of the path he is choosing in Afghanistan. Thanks, ErnestO!

"Post-Racial"?

America is by no means the only country where the notion of the superiority of white human beings and white culture thrived. The hegemony of Western powers for the better part of recorded history assured that the other races and other peoples of the world came to be regarded as primitive, in need of religious conversion by our superior selves, as well as education in all matters related to what we determined to be civilized customs and behavior. Measured by the yardstick of our own standards, we were indeed superior, and it was a very long time before we came to acknowledge that our standards were not the only ones, nor necessarily the best. I think it indisputable that such attitudes are still prevalent today. To dream that we are in a "post-racist" society simply because we have elected a black President is to ignore the vast undercurrents of unacknowledged racism that persist to this day. It is not merely the racist yahoos who scrawl swastikas on the walls of synagogues and ignite crosses on suburban lawns who inherit those bad old habits.

These thoughts were prompted by another episode in the American Experience series that I watched on PBS the other night. Minik: The Lost Eskimo provided a particularly harrowing example of such arrogant ignorance and exploitation of other, non-white peoples. It's the story of the American Arctic explorer, Robert Peary, who made a number of attempts to be the first to reach the North Pole and made, finally, a dubious claim to have succeeded in that effort. There seems to be ample evidence that his claim was actually faked. It was after one of these attempts, however, and under clearly false pretenses, that he brought back a small group of Eskimos from their native environment to be "studied" at New York's Museum of Natural History. Among them was the young boy, Minik, whose father was the first of the group to die in what amounted to the kind of captivity to which we subject animals in the zoo. The grieving boy was led through a pantomime "burial" ritual for his father, whose organs were in actuality preserved for scientific study, and whose bones were taken to create a museum exhibit--a shameless act that Minik discovered only later in life.

It comes as no surprise that the remainder of the "study" group died in rapid succession after Minik's father's death. That Minik survived adolescence was thanks to the care and devotion of one kind, conscientious man who must have realized some debt to these stolen people. He lived for long enough to return to his native land as a young man, only to find that he could no longer adapt to the society of his birth, and returned to the United States to die in isolation and poverty.

Impossible to react to this story other than with outrage. That sense of entitlement to play God with the lives of our fellow human beings has regrettably not yet vanished from the earth. That sense that other men and women are somehow lesser than ourselves and need our help to teach them how to live their lives and conduct their affairs still guides--with our tacit permission--the actions of too many of our leaders. We may have moved beyond colonialism, but its heritage persists. Needless to say, it's equally true that inhuman behavior is not the exclusive province of those of us who inherit from the Western tradition, and that it's appropriate to oppose it with all means in our power wherever it appears. There are perhaps too few of us who have the courage and tenacity of a Nicholas D. Kristof of the New York Times, who takes up the pen to do battle with injustice of all kinds, whether the abuse and exploitation of woman and children in the Far East, or genocide on the African continent. His column in today's New York Times is a reminder of a vigilance for which we should all be grateful. That the actor George Clooney should be choosing, despite the danger to himself, to accompany Kristof on his latest investigative trip to the area around the Chad-Sudan border, is further reminder that the American Experience has its light side as well as its dark, and that the work of such a man represents this light side at its best.

Another, Much Bigger Ethical Conundrum

... I'm thinking about those drones operating along the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, lobbing missiles into Pakistani villages that kill scores of people. We claim that the dead are Taliban or Al Qaeda leaders, but who could contest that there are innocent civilians amongst them.

... I'm thinking of the lead story in today's New York Times: "Pakistan Makes a Taliban Truce, Creating a Haven: Imposing Islamic Law." I'm thinking about barbers beheaded for shaving beards, about women stoned to death for adultery, about the ban on music, movies, dance, the dynamiting of schools whose offense is to offer an education for girls...

... I'm thinking about the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas...

... I'm thinking of what we know about how the Taliban use their havens, as they used their haven in Afghanistan to host the people who brought about the destruction of the Wold Trade Center towers and killed nearly three thousand people; who have wreaked similar wanton destruction of human life elsewhere in the world on, now, numerous occasions; and who want nothing better than to pursue these tactics until the world itself is ruled by Islamic law...

... I'm thinking about the right to use violence in self-defense--a right that even the Buddhist teachings acknowledge--and the limits of that right; I'm thinking abut the "Bush Doctrine," abhorrent when it was used to justify the invasion of Iraq. Do we now approve the implementation of such a doctrine, when Pakistan creates a haven for those we know are plotting to do us dreadful harm?

Can such people be "killed with kindness"?

... I'm thinking about Barack Obama's response to a question at an informal press conference aboard Air Force One, reported by Bob Herbert of the New York Times, and elsewhere: "I'm an eternal optimist," Obama said. "That doesn't mean I'm a sap."

I don't pretend to know the answer to any of the questions. I only know that they trouble me deeply, and that I fear for a future when the world is threatened by the kind of deadly intransigence manifested by the Taliban and their terrorist associates. My every instinct agrees that violence can only beget more violence. But then...?

An Ethical Conundrum

Here it is. I purposely remove the story from any context, for obvious reasons of privacy. Let's make it... yours:

A number of years ago, your closest friend came to you and told you that his girl friend's son was responsible for a dreadful crime. At the time--perhaps out of a sense of loyalty to your friend, perhaps out of that age-old prejudice against telling tales out of school, you chose to do nothing, say nothing. But the knowledge has haunted you ever since, and a recent event brought you face-to-face with the responsibility of that knowledge.

In the intervening years, your friend's girlfriend has become his wife and your friendship with both has deepened. The last thing you would want is to harm them in any way. But the son has proved a no-good layabout, always in trouble, potentially violent, a racist and a petty criminal who has been in and out of jail. To reveal the secret now would not only have ripple effects that would consume your friend and others close to him, but possibly expose you yourself to violent retribution.

So what do you do about it? There are a number of options open to you. You could choose to remain silent, and swallow the guilt and pain--with adverse effects on your own health and happiness, your peace of mind. You could go to the police and tell them the secret as it was told to you, even though you have no evidence and the story came to you third-hand. You could report what you know, or think you know--this is all hearsay, after all--anonymously. You could approach your friend and tell him about the pain his secret has caused you, and ask him to take the responsibility for himself...

What would you do?

This ethical quandary came up recently in a real-life situation, in a gathering of thoughtful and responsible friends. There were persuasive responses representing the entire range of options I outlined above, and more; and there was, of course, no resolution. My own response was to give the secret back to the source. I would go to my friend and tell him: "This is not my responsibility. It never was. It was not an act of friendship to give it to me. Unable to accept the burden of responsibility yourself, you passed it on to me, and I have carried it with me ever since. I now recognize that it is yours, not mine, and hand it back to you in the trust that you will do what is right."

Is this fair? Is it right? Is it enough? Is it simply, as some suggested, an abdication of responsibility on my part? Where lies courage? Where cowardice and self-protection?

At the end of a full hour of sometimes passionate exchange, I found myself agreeing with the one who expressed the thought that the teller of this tale already actually knew himself the answer to his conundrum, but wanted to be given reasons not to listen to it. He had in fact done to us, on a lesser scale, exactly what his friend had done to him. It's now a fourth generation story--but still no less worthy of ethical debate.

I wonder what you think?

Not One

I find it intensely sad that not a single Republican saw fit to break ranks from their bankrupt ideology to vote in favor of the economic stimulus bill yesterday. Not one. This lockstep, party-line performance serves only as a stark demonstration of the absence of independent critical thought in what should be a loyal opposition. Had there been some evidence of debate and disagreement amongst themselves, this would at least have been a sign that there was still some life in this moribund beast. How can anyone trust such mindless, unquestioning unanimity? A bad deal for the country, whichever way you look at it.

Have a great weekend!

Barack Obama/Eartha Kitt

Another superb speech from Barack Obama yesterday, addressed to the meeting of the Abraham Lincoln Association in Springfield, Illinois, at the celebration of the 200th anniversary of Lincoln's birth. The President chose this moment to come back to his great campaign theme, the unity of this country, reminding his audience that, especially in this most difficult of times, it will take the effort of the nation as a whole, united, to prevail over the multiple problems that beset us. I have no idea how widely the speech was covered by the media, but I was happy to have found it later in the evening, amidst my recorded news shows; and I hope that it was seen by millions. It matched, in power and passion, the speech he gave in Philadelphia last year on the subject of race, and deserves at least as wide an audience.

Obama's oratorical skills were held against him during his campaign, as though his speeches were just empty flourishes, devoid of anything but rhetoric. What his critics failed--still fail--to recognize, in what I can only assume to be their envy, is that there is no great oratory without great vision. Obama's impressive strength lies not in his ability to speak fine words, but in the breadth of his historical vision and understanding, his ability to find connections and weave them into a coherent intellectual overview, his command of appropriate anecdote and metaphor, his ability to blend gravity and humor, simple truth with obdurately complex issue. All of which bespeaks not the glib skills of a salesman but the quality of a man who commands his own resources and has the special gift of being able to communicate his vision to others. Beside such a grandly unifying speech as this one, the partisan squeaks of his opponents sound pusillanimous indeed.

In her late-life interview with Gwen Ifill, re-broadcast last night, the inimitable Eartha Kitt was as elegant and eloquent in her own way as the man she did not live to see take the oath of office. Interesting that these two pioneers of mixed heritage should voice much the same ideas about race. A generation older, Eartha Kitt was herself the victim of back-of-the-bus discrimination and an active participant in the civil rights movement on 1950s and 1960s America--a movement without which, as he has frequently avowed, Obama would not be sitting where he is today. With him, however, she shared the notion that more important than being a black American or a white American was being an American. She rejected equally the burdens and entitlements of racial identity, creating her own distinctive path in life with a determination that assured her success.

And what an extraordinary woman she was. At 81, she strode onto the stage for her interview, kicking up a perfectly-toned leg through the hip-to-heel slit in her long skirt. It seemed that she had lost none of the vitality, the assertive, teasing sexuality, the purring sensuality of her youthful years. I recall listening to her songs--"Monotonous," "Santa Baby,"--back in the 1950s, a (very!) young twenty-something year old Brit, totally in awe, unimaginably seduced by the unabashed come-on in her sultry voice. I would have expected all that energy to seem slightly obscene, coming from a woman of 81, but instead I was intensely moved by her performance, and found it no less enchanting than it had been all those years ago. I watched her preen and flirt with the audience, with her interviewer, with the band... all with a kind of throw-away grace that charmed them all. She positively oozed vitality from every pore.

Incredible, really, that this still-powerful woman was to die, barely three months later, on Christmas Day, of colon cancer. I have no doubt at all but that Santa Baby had hurried down the chimney just the night before.

Abraham Lincoln/Charles Darwin

Happy Birthday to both Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin, each born on February 12, 1809, and each of whom celebrates the two hundredth anniversary of his birth today!

If you had to name the two men who made the greatest contribution to their species in the 19th century, these two would be the most likely candidates. What a delightfully curious coincidence, then, that they should have been born on the very same day.

Is it not surprising that Darwin's meticulously researched study that resulted in what some still like to call the "theory" of evolution--now no longer considered theoretical by any reputable scientist--should still be considered controversial, even heretical by so many of our fellow-countrymen today? That there are still those amongst our fellow-citizens who cling to the irrational, anti-scientific belief that the dinosaurs roamed the planet contemporaneously with Adam and Eve and that Noah sheltered them aboard his ark speaks poorly either of their imaginative faculties or of our educational system, or both. I find it sad that the elegant, inspiring logic of evolutionary science should be so threatening to those who evidently believe that the God they worship as all-knowing and all-powerful is incapable of so grand a plan. If God there be, who orchestrates this magnificent universe, I myself would like to believe that his vision extends further in time than a handful of thousand earth years, and in space than our little solar system or galaxy.

And Lincoln...! Last night I watched the American Experience documentary, The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln, and was moved once again to sadness and outrage that this great man, like others of his kind, was not allowed to live out his full lifetime. That one small, narrow-minded man saw fit to take history into his own hands and deprive the world of his victim's potential is a measure of the arrogance of prejudice and hatred of which our species is capable. I was amazed how close that history still felt to us, with shots of the Ford's Theater loge and the very stage the assassin leapt down upon to proclaim his famous cry of triumph: Sic semper tyrannis!

Like most of us, I think, I am awed by the many faces that come down to us of this President, but mostly by the evident ravages wrought by the years of his presidency and the agony of the Civil War. This was a man, as I understand his story, who struggled both with powerful inner demons and the external forces of history itself, the outer winds of change; he became himself, as it were, the field in which the battle for America's future was fought. Seen in this light, his assassination was perhaps the tragic and necessary fulfillment of the myth.

I'm Reading...

... daily--Carly will be delighted, if he's still checking in once in a while--the Tao. Actually, it's William Martin's The Sage's Tao Te Ching: A New Interpretation, Ancient Advice for the Second Half of Life, a rather clumsy subtitle but I guess accurate enough. I have been dipping in at random, either morning or evening, and am constantly amazed at how relevant my random choice turns out to be. This morning, I arrived at #29, "The Wisdom to Know the Difference," which starts out thus: "The sage no longer strives/to make the world a better place,/ thus it becomes better and better." And continues, further down: "Do not mistake the sage's serenity for passivity./ We have not given up on important issues./ We now no longer attempt to change/that which cannot be changed." Ah, yes. Of course. The simplest truths are sometimes the hardest to act upon...

I have just finished another book, Bad Dog! by Lin Jensen. His subtitle is also unwieldy: "A Memoir of Love, Beauty, and Redemption in Dark Places." (Why does every book these days need an unwieldy subtitle?) This one opens on the scene of the young Lin, eight years old, and his brother Rowland lowering their pants and bending over to receive a terrible beating with a splintery lath from their Danish immigrant father--for no reason that any of the three can quite understand. The book's title is explained in the next episode, in which the boys' pet dog, in punishment for having killed one of the hundred thousand turkeys on the family turkey farm--and as a lesson never to repeat this misdemeanor--is forced by that same father to wear the turkey's carcass tied around its neck for weeks, until the stinking mess finally rots away. In this way, Lin begins to learn compassion: compassion for himself, compassion for other beings, compassion even for the oppressor--for he comes finally to acknowledge his love for this seemingly cold-hearted, remote, some might say cruel father who is unable to be in touch with his emotions.

Readers should be forewarned that the above are only two of a number of wince-inducing scenes. But that's the point, as the subtitle suggests. It is life's painful lessons that bring Jensen eventually to the embrace--and the practice and teaching--of Zen Buddhism, a slow tempering of the protective personal body armor that his upbringing creates into the love he eventually realizes in himself for all things. From the small self, it expands to embrace the natural world: is it any coincidence that Jensen's great passion, after some pretty dreadful youthful years of sweat and labor on that turkey farm, is eventually revealed to be birds? And the universe itself, as his mind comes to acknowledge its miraculous, organic one-ness.

This is a book about the awful intimacy and certainty of suffering and death, and of the lumps we must expect along the way; and, importantly, about the compassion they are capable of inspiring in one who simply bears witness with forbearance. It's a book about the gradual recognition of the healing power of love, a power inherent in all beings, ready to be tapped by one who calls upon its limitless resources. It's a story told through a series of epiphanies, each one a small jewel of revelation, all hitched together like a string of prayer beads. Each one is beautifully worked, some anecdotal, others more like mini-essays, and others still prose-poems, where precise metaphors and reflections are worked through with exquisite attention to the subtleties of language.

Okay, if I put my critic's hat on, I can find a few quibbles with "Bad Dog!" There are times when I judge that Jensen gets carried away with his own poetry: after reading several dense paragraphs of reflection on the multiple social and spiritual ramifications of a line of silver maples on a suburban street and what they have to tell us about the understanding of our minds and the way they work... well, I have to confess that I wish that a tree could just be a tree. Toward the end of the book, the metaphors begin to multiply and their elaboration tends to stretch the limits of my personal tolerance. But this is no more than a quibble, the kind of idle carping that I try, these days, to avoid. As I have written elsewhere in the past, I have shed the critic's mantle that I wore for many years.

Of interest to me, also--perhaps thanks to my own strict educational background--is the relationship between discipline and freedom. It occurs to me to wonder to what extent Jensen's attraction to Zen--as I see it, perhaps wrongly, the most sternly disciplined form of Buddhism--is the result of such a childhood. There's a part of me that believes that, in art as in life, it's only the sternest discipline that can prepare the ground for the greatest freedom. There's the old saw about the Japanese master who paints a bamboo shoot ten thousand times in order to be able to paint it once. I cling to the (perhaps vain) belief that whatever skills I have as a writer owe much to the teacher who rapped my knuckles painfully with a ruler when I failed to faultlessly repeat my French irregular verbs, and to the Latin teacher who demanded that I commit to memory great useless chunks of Caesar's wars in Gaul.

Did these and other forms of discipline instill in me some intellectual habits that continue to stand me in good stead, as I suppose? Or, more difficult to accept, did the various and multiple miseries of boarding school--by no means so terrible as forced labor on a turkey farm, but still considerable--contribute to the way in which I try to exercise compassion in my life today? Like Jensen, with whom I feel for these reasons a certain kinship, I come a very long way, and yet perhaps not so very far from that childhood. Like Jensen, I found a way to love a father who seemed so remote, and recognize him in myself. Like Jensen, I have experienced life as a series of epiphanies, each one of which has brought me closer to its meaning and its core.

I found much of myself, then, reflected in "Bad Dog!" and I'm grateful to the friend who brought it to my attention. By the same token, I now recommend it to yours.

(A Note...

... to my handful of valued readers Down Under: I am among the millions of Americans who are shocked and horrified by the news we see on our television screens about the fires ranging in your country, in the Melbourne area--and particularly by the awful loss of life.  We send our sympathy, along with the hope that this hellish nightmare will soon come to an end.)

The Landscape Paintings of William Wendt

I mentioned (yesterday) an embarrassment of riches from the weekend. One of them was the exhibition of the artist William Wendt at the Laguna Art Museum--regrettably, now closed. Not the museum, the show. If it were not, I'd be encouraging all those in the area not to miss it. Too bad, I apologize for the tardy notice about this wonderful show.



William Wendt was a leader of the Southern California "school" of plein air painters who settled in Laguna Beach at the beginning of the 20th century. "Plein air" is of course the kind of painting that is done en plein air--out in the open, confronting the natural environment with canvas, easel, brush and palette knife and tubes of paint, and a sense of reverence that today there are many people struggling to recover. Wendt is a landscape painter, of the kind that was glibly marginalized in the latter part of the 20th century by critics and theorists--and indeed by artists--who sneered at the representational and the figurative in art and who had the obtuse intellectual audacity to declare painting itself "dead." Remember them? If you don't, they're best forgotten anyway.

The Laguna Art Museum show assembled a surprising number of Wendt paintings from various periods of his work. To walk through the exhibition was an experience of sheer, warm, unadulterated pleasure. There was, first, everywhere, the evidence of a human hand that had acquired extroardinary skill in the art of applying paint to canvas--a hand that was clearly guided not only by the eye, but by the mind and heart. The sensuous quality of his surfaces, the feel of the brush and knife, the flow of line and body of color put us, as viewers, in direct touch with the human being who stood in awe before these landscapes and recreated them with loving care. His paintings specifically reject the transcendant grandeur of an Albert Bierstadt or a Thomas Hill. Instead, they are intimate, personal, deeply felt--a way of exploring the inner life through the medium of paint.

The little cottage we were fortunate to acquire in Laguna Beach--in the days when they were still moderately affordable!--is located in a nest of streets that bear the name of several of those original plein air painters: Wendt Terrace is just above us, Cuprien (after Frank Cuprien) to the south, and (William A.) Griffith just a couple of blocks north. Long associated with the world of cutting edge contemporary art, we started to collect the work of amateur plein air painters for the cottage a number of years ago, whenever we could find pictures going cheap at garage sales and swap meets. We came to love the respect for nature that went into their creation, and the desire to capture it on canvas or on board. Had we started collecting a decade earlier, we could probably have afforded to buy the work of artists like Wendt and Cuprien while they were still out of fashion, regarded as somewhat quaint left-overs from the 19th century at a time when Modernism was still marching bravely forward toward the 21st.




I have a rather off-beat theory about these artists and their work. It is that, far from being the sideshow to which they were so long relegated, the artists who were drawn to California--many of them from Europe--were in fact the genuine precursors of the Light/Space artists who were the first to attract international attention to the area in the early 1960s. Those pioneer painters, I believe, were attracted precisely by the environmental qualities of light and space that were later adopted, instead of paint, as literal media in themelves, by artists working with resin, glass or neon, or using space itself to investigate how the eye and the mind co-operate in the act of perception. It is surely also the interplay of light and space, though explored in the traditional medium of oil paint, that engages us in the paintings of a William Wendt.

Today, as we survey the damage visited on Nature by our extravagent abuse of her generosity, we have begun to regret that we did not listen more closely to her needs, nor offer more respect to her awesome integrity. At such a moment in our history, it is refreshing to be invited back to a time when nature could still inspire acts of creation in the human soul, rather than acts of exploitation and destruction.

Memory & the Self

Call it "The Curious Case of Doug Bruce." Until now this documentary film by Rupert Murray about his friend Doug had escaped my notice, but Unknown White Male is a compelling story about memory and the self, narrated in an episodic fashion that reflects the disjointed journey of the young man who comes to consciousness in a New York subway one day, without the first idea as to who he is, where he is, or where he was going. This unasked-for loss of self, a curiously Buddhist predicament, starts Doug on a perplexing, often painful path into a new life where nothing can be taken for granted--not family, friendship, profession--and literally everything is called into question.

Interviewed about the current science in the matter of memory, one expert explains the difference between "procedural," "episodic" and "semantic" faculties: "procedural" is the kind of memory the brain calls upon in performing habitual functions, like riding a bike. "Episodic," as I understand it, is the personal memory bank, the story of our lives and the events that form them; and "semantic" the kind of memory we share as human beings or members of a particular cultural group, those things that "everybody knows."

It's the procedural aspect of memory, I suppose, that leads Doug in his initial confusion and terror to a police station, where the single act that shows some functioning memory occurs when he is asked to sign his name--which he does without hesitation. (The signature, unfortunately, is illegible!) Passed on to the hospital for medical attention, he soon finds himself consigned to the psychiatric ward, still observing everything around him as though it's happening to someone else. Which, in a sense, it is. Doug's disorientation is complete--and terrifying. An English accent proclaims him to be of British origin, but otherwise there is nothing but a scribbled telephone number to aid in his identification. He is entered into the registration ledger as the eponymous "Unknown White Male."

By good fortune, the telephone number turns up a friend whose daughter recognizes his voice, and comes to his rescue. From then on, it's a matter of learning about who he was, before his memory loss; of flying to Spain, where he reconnects with family; and to England, to meet up with old friends. Throughout, Doug seems curious, but curiously removed, as though he has no inclination or desire to re-become his old self. Imagine meeting your father or your adult sisters as though for the first time, as a grown man. Imagine having to re-learn that your mother died of cancer, a few years before. Imagine having a stranger clasp you in his arms, declaring himself to be your oldest friend.

After the fear and the uncertainty, though, a refreshing light breaks in on the story, as Doug discovers the delight of seeing and experiencing everything as utterly unprecedented. Dis-attached from past memories and associations, detached too from the self that has taken most of us a lifetime to construct, everything becomes fresh and new for him, and life becomes the kind of moment-to-moment experience that a Buddhist might strive for years to achieve. He seems to surrender into the not-knowing of who he is, or was, and come to an almost child-like acceptance of whatever-is.

Friends and family wonder whether he is the same person that they knew before. The change they notice in him is the loss of drive that led the former Doug into a successful and seemingly lucrative career in financial services. He has become, we learn from them, more laid-back, more in touch with his emotions, more open. The new Doug enters into a relationship which has no bearing or association with anything in his past life, and which thrives on the wonder of its newness. The great fear of the couple, we learn as the movie ends, is that the past will come back to him, that he will remember who he once was.

There's a great teaching here, of course, in this man's difficult life-experience. It's not something we'd wish upon ourselves in quite this way, and yet something the Buddhist teachings would have us strive for: an ability to work past the attachment to those ego demands, the desires and the repulsions that our minds build up over the years. That's the I-me-mine mind-set which is often at the root of our discontent. A discussion yesterday in our sangha, however, reminded me that a healthy ego is needed, and can serve us well--in building, for example, that sense of self that takes responsibility for work, profession, family. It's the clinging to an illusion of self that brings with it the suffering which, the Buddha tells us, can be ended by simply letting go. For Doug, that self was taken out of play by his radical amnesia. That he eventually managed to accept the loss with dignity, calm, and a heart open to the newness of experience is greatly to his credit, and for the rest of us an example we might find hard to follow.

The American Experience

I have been thinking about the “American Experience” since writing that review in The Buddha Diaries, a few days ago, of the PBS American Experience episode about J. Robert Oppenheimer. In fact, I have given a good deal of thought to the American Experience over the years, starting with my own “naturalization” back in 1972, when I was a mere scrap of a lad in my mid-thirties. I flatter myself to think that I have something in common with Alistair Cooke, a fellow Cambridge-educated English writer who immigrated to the United States. It was Cooke’s history of the country that I read as I prepared to face my questioner to qualify me as fit for citizenship; and, like Cooke, I have written more than my share of letters about America—notably the 801, no less, that I wrote to George W. Bush in my 2004-2008 blog, “The Bush Diaries.”

It amused me no end, back in those young days, that I was virtually required to lie in order to meet the standards expected of a good American citizen. I wrote about it at the time, in an essay that was published on the Op-Ed page of the Los Angeles Times. The forms, signed and submitted under penalty of perjury, asked me to swear that I had never knowingly committed a crime; well, it happened that I had experimented with a variety of somewhat harmless but still illegal drugs back in the Sixties, with the rest of my fellow graduate students. Had I ever committed adultery? It shames still to admit to this youthful moral lapse, but was I going to risk my application by saying Yes? Clearly, I was expected to be politically and morally pure, in much the same way, I suppose, that we continue to expect of our politicians and politically-appointed bureaucrats today. No wonder they so often disappoint us. Naturally, I lied, and signed the forms, conforming with American idealism at its most ironic.

To which I must add that, while I have possessed an American passport since that time, it took me another thirty-five years before I actually felt American. I wrote about that experience, too, in this blog, The Buddha Diaries, that followed The Bush Diaries starting two years ago. The day that I first actually felt American was the day of the inauguration of Barack Obama as President.

Let me explain. As some of my readers will already know, I was brought up in England as a good socialist by a good socialist father. It never occurred to me to question the value of a government that provided health care, for example, and help for those who could not help themselves. No one likes paying taxes, of course, but it had never occurred to me that taxes were a scandalous imposition on personal freedom, to be contested at all costs whenever possible. Arriving in America, I was astounded to discover that socialism was a dirty word and, not too much later, that even the word “liberal” had become one to be uttered in a shameful, hushed whisper. I had also learned as a youngster, through a first-hand experience of twentieth century European history, that patriotism all too often leads to bloody confrontation, and that wars have dire and personal human consequences. I was something of an anti-patriot, then, by the time I reach America, and adamantly anti-war.

It will come as no surprise, then, that I did not feel American in my political and philosophical approach to the world, at a time when the Vietnam war was still in progress and Richard Nixon was President. My naturalization paper was really no more than a piece of paper. It may have allowed me in principle to vote and to enjoy the other privileges of citizenship, but these undoubted benefits did not reach the heart. Jimmy Carter provided me with a brief respite, but I watched in dismay and disbelief as his presidency was destroyed by fellow Americans who dismissed this fine, upstanding moral man as weak and ineffecutal, emasculating him to the point of impotence.

Then, during the nineteen-seventies, in California first but soon throughout the nation, came the taxpayers’ revolt. It seemed clear to me at the time—forgive the remnant trace of European pragmatism—that taxes were a necessary way to fund such things as roads and schools, a health care system that could serve the needs of all Americans, not to mention the cultural arts, the libraries and museums. This still seems clear to me today. If Ronald Reagan was the archetypal American, as the vast majority of my new countrymen—and women—seemed to think, I just did not feel too American myself.

In the years that followed Reagan’s election, I watched the country slide deeper and deeper into a conservatism that may well have been American, but it was something to which I felt alien in my very bones. I watched a (to my mind fanatical) religious right arrogate to themselves the power to sway the government of the country, to sabotage the rational benefits of science and medical progress and the education of our youngsters. My heart was not with them. If this was “American,” I did not feel it.

Then came the nineties, and my heart rose with the election of a Democratic President. Surely this would bring about changes that I could swing with. But by this time the “me-first” anti-government attitudes were so deeply ingrained they would not go away. The first sign was the abject failure of the attempt to create a national system of health care, swatted away without a moment's serious consideration. But the brash nineties brought with them the kind of wealth that enabled many of us to achieve unprecedented material comfort and the confidence that prosperity was our natural birthright. We could all take care of ourselves and, for those who couldn’t, well they must accept responsibility for their failure. The opportunities were endless for those who had the guts and the know-how to seize them.

On which wave George W. Bush rode in with a swagger. It crashed ashore on September 11, 2001. There followed just a moment when, yes, I felt American; when I felt a part of what had been attacked, a part of the family that had been violated by the barbaric attack on the World Trade Center. But that window slammed closed for me when it became clear what our response would be. Not the attack on the Taliban, perhaps. That seemed to me an unpleasant but unavoidable necessity. Not so the subsequent actions taken in our name: the invasion of Iraq with no clear evidence of necessity, the neglect of responsibility for the consequences of that action, Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, the assault on American liberties in the name of “homeland security.” There was a whole big part of me that did not want to be identified with such actions, that did not feel the least bit American.

I began to feel it during the past election cycle. It was agonizing to watch the country torn between those I felt in sympathy with and those with whom I vigorously disagreed with on virtually everything. There were times when I felt for sure that those other ones would prevail, times when the discord on my own side of things was so bitter and destructive that I all but lost faith in their ability to get things straight. And then I began to feel the massive surge of the desire for change, for a return to truly American values that seemed for so long to have been sacrificed to materialistic greed. I heard the voice of a man who spoke a language I could finally understand, who seemed to recognize the need for mutual understanding rather than divisiveness, who seemed open to the thoughts and beliefs of others than himself, who embraced the idea of service and self-sacrifice, who promised a return to basic human values and a respect for all, including the neediest among us.

So the election of Barack Obama seemed to me the triumph of what I always wanted to think of as Americanism. And yet I still held off, hardly wanting to believe it. I held off until the moment came when this man stood in front of the American people and took the oath of office--and finally, finally, I really felt American for the first time.

That, friends, is my American Experience. I do not think it can be taken away from me now. The bond is made. I know that I will disagree with much that happens on the national scene, that I will be appalled, infuriated, incredulous, probably just as frequently as before. But I suspect that I will continue--not to "be proud of being an American" as custom demands, I'm still not ready to concede that much to patriotism--but at the very least to feel American in my heart.

What a Party!

It's becoming increasingly clear from the news that the Republican Party is now the party of Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin, Joe the Plumber (!) and the radical right.  It's frightening to see them cling to the old ideas that led them to so clear a rejection in the November, 2008 presidential election, repeating the tired old mantras about tax cuts and reduced government spending that brought us to the brink of economic catastrophe at which we stand today. It's frightening to see powerful Republican senators and congresspersons tremble at the feet of ignorant, rabble-rousing populist prophets whose ego-driven, inflexibly self-righteous agenda is so transparently wrong-headed and doomed to further failure.  

Will these people succeed, at least, in perverting public opinion to the point of actually sabotaging efforts to get the American economy back on track?  That's my fear.  I watch them nightly as they gather around the media's audience-hungry microphones to voice their opposition to everything and anything the Democratic administration proposes.  They mimic the language of their patron, Saint Ron, whose fiscal policies started the downward slide that persists until this day.  Based in a now-discredited ideology, their views are so far removed from the practical realities we face as to be laughable to those who chose to look forward with eyes open to a sustainable future that will support the lives of all Americans, not just the rich and privileged, not just the corporate elite.  

I choose to believe that Obama is timing things right, as he has done ever since emerging on the national scene.  He has worked hard to fulfill his campaign promises for bipartisan cooperation.  Some are saying that he has worked too hard, that he has bent over too far backwards.  What I have been watching, though, is a well-timed shift from carrot to stick, from seduction to coercion, from persuasion to quiet but form enforcement.  I am choosing to trust that he and his team, with the support only of Democrats, if need be, will prevail.  There have been compromises I myself would have preferred to have seen unmade, but which simple pragmatism may have necessitated.  It may be, for example, as some have said, that the original ante on tax cuts was too high, leaving too little room for bargaining.  I am no politician, and certainly no economist--but I do believe in the validity of the Middle Path.  It is not so much a matter of who's right and who's wrong, but of what works.   

The Republican party line has not worked.  Not even the rants of a Rush Limbaugh or the coy panderings of a Sarah Palin will make it work.  We progressives have long poured scorn on those who most nearly represent our views, for lacking the courage to match their deeds to our ideals.  We now observe the spectacle of Republicans cowering before the ideological extremism of their own extremist flank, and the sight is certainly no prettier from a different angle.  Talk about spineless--masquerading as spine!

And yet... what's on the news this morning?  Ten minutes of Newt Gingrich comparing Obama (unfavorably, of course) with Ronald Reagan.  And then more minutes of one of those news pundits explaining how Obama has failed to get his message across to the American people.

I very much fear, friends, that we are well on the road to self-destruction, on the horns of our own bloody righteousness.     

"Fresh Air" For Children

It's a spiritually impoverished society that fails to adequately take care of its children. Sadly, we fail on many counts in that regard in this most affluent, materially pampered society the world has ever known. We have children living on the streets, children killing other children with automatic weapons, children who are sick and deprived of the care they need, children who are undereducated and deprived of hope and opportunity, children neglected and physically and sexually abused, even children who go to bed hungry every night. (Speaking of homeless children, be sure to check out Katia's powerful pictures at IAMKATIA.)

Fortunately, we also have good-hearted people who work tirelessly to address their needs. I continue in my own support for Save the Children, an organization that helps children in the US and around the world, and I hope that you might join me. Your donation is no more than a click away.

These thoughts were prompted by an email I received yesterday from Sara Wilson at The Fresh Air Fund (see banner, to the right of this column,) requesting help in putting out word about opportunities to work in their organization's summer program, designed to give at-risk inner city kids the chance to spend time in an alternative environment for a brief respite from the tough areas where they live. Sara Wilson writes to me from the fund that they are

now accepting applications for counselors for this coming summer of '09. We hire staff members with a wide range in some pretty amazing fields. We are really looking for college-aged men and women who love to work with children.

This seems like a wonderful opportunity for people, young or old, who are seeking to respond to our new President's call for service to the country and the local community. I know that I have some readers out there who are looking for such opportunities, whether to offer their home to host an inner-city youngster, or to help in some other way. I hope that they will take this to heart; and that perhaps they and my fellow bloggers will put out the word in whatever way they deem appropriate. Thanks!

I am thankful, too, that Barack and Michelle Obama are not only placing a huge priority on children and on education in their words and actions, but also personally modeling great parenthood--that is, if we are to believe the images we receive in news reports and on our television screens. Their two children, while privileged beyond the dreams of most of us, seem remarkably charming and steady in the big shoes they are expected to fill. Good for them!

Crucify Him

Good idea, everyone. Let's string him up. A two weeks' grace period should be enough to solve the country's problems. Now let's have at him...

Maybe it's my European upbringing, but I just don't get this curious American sport. I expect human beings to make mistakes--even those in high office. I try to avoid elevating them beyond any reasonable expectation, no matter what they say on the campaign trail. I like Obama a lot, but I don't consider him to be the Messiah; nor do I think he considers himself to be such, despite what others say, or hope, or pray. I don't consider the "mistakes" among his many nominations to be an indication of anything seriously amiss in his character or his presidency. Rachel Maddow had it right, in my opinion, when she reminded us of the fate of Zoe Baird. Zoe who...?

To judge by the relentless, hour-by-hour hounding by the media, though, a person would be forgiven for thinking that the Obama presidency had already exposed itself as irremediably corrupt; and this toxin is fed in a continuous intravenous flow to a public that has not shown itself to be notably strong in the faculty of critical listening. American idealism is a wonderful thing, but when translated into expectations of perfection from inevitably flawed human beings, it gets to be dangerously and self-destructively naive.

I normally watch the morning news, to keep myself up to date with what's going on. I guess I should have learned by now that it's a mistake. It proved to be such this morning. I felt my temper rising as a I browsed through a couple of "news" channels and heard the absurd debate about the Daschle nomination pursued to even more ridiculous lengths, and I chose the wiser course: switch the damn thing off.

Where do we get the arrogance to demand perfection of everyone? Because we are all so morally superior ourselves? Give me a break.

At this point, I begin to ask myself about my own attitudes toward Bush, Cheney and gang. Was I guilty of the same moral superiority of which I'm now accusing others? Or were my antipathy and distrust more justified in that case, as I certainly suppose? There's a difference, after all, between the thoughtful, even tough criticism with which we need to evaluate the performance of those whom we elect to represent us on the one hand; and on the other, the delight we take in tearing them down, for the sake of drama or the needs of a twenty-four hours news cycle when there's not much to report. It's a fine balance, and one that needs constant vigilance and awareness.

A Modest Proposal

I sent a letter to the New York Times this morning:

President Barack Obama has asked for the collaboration of every American, rich or poor, Republican or Democrat. In view of the "tax problems" that are plaguing the confirmation of his nominees, I have a modest proposal: Let every American who has failed at any time to pay taxes for a nanny or domestic help, who has failed to declare a gift or a casino win, who has fudged--just a little--on income or expenses, stand up at an agreed-upon time and declare out loud to the world at large: I HAVE A TAX PROBLEM. The thunder would be deafening. I know that I'd be standing with the rest of us.

Anyone else standing?

Not Now

I was sitting in meditation with members of our sangha yesterday and struggling with an unusually busy mind. I once asked Thanissaro Bhikkhu for his wisdom on the scattered mind and he advised me to tell myself: "Not now..." A simple instruction, yes. But as with all things simple, I have found that it's easier said than done.

Here's the thing: as a writer, I find that the silence and concentration involved in meditation provide me with an ideal time to "write"--not with the pen, of course, but in the head. And because it's in the head and I want to remember each brilliant construction before it recedes into oblivion, I find myself writing and rewriting every phrase a dozen times, committing it to memory to insure that I'll have it ready to write down when I'm done. This leads me inevitably into an obsessive cycle of thought--and out of meditation.

"Not now." What a simple and obvious thing to tell the mind when it gets into this state. And in fact, when I manage to listen to myself and simply postpone the work I got engaged in, I find that the work has been continued somewhere in the unconscious mind and is ready, waiting for me, when I choose to return to it. It's a matter of trust, then, that whatever it is that's engaging me will not be lost--unless, of course, it was so trivial that it need not have engaged me in the first place. Which is, regrettably, all too often the case.

It's the same with worrying and planning--both activities that address a future I am not empowered to know, let alone to determine. It's the kind of futile work the mind delights in, teasing itself with alternate scenarios until it whirls, hopelessly lost in the activity it has created. My mind, as it turns out, does not much like "Not now." It resists, insists, persists. Time and again I bring my attention dutifully back to the breath, and time and again the mind gets back to its wandering. When--and if--I manage to quiet it, though, what a comfort it is, what a relief! To drop back into the simple awareness of the body and its breathing, the ambient sounds and the attendant sensations. When--and if--I manage to bring myself into the present.

Why, I often ask myself, should it be so hard, when the result is so incontestably pleasant? When what awaits me is a kind of ecstasy, or at the very least, an inner calm? I suppose that my mind has been trained since childhood to believe that it should be "doing something," that idleness is somehow reprehensible.

Then there's the horror vacui (I googled the familiar words, to be sure I had the Latin spelling right, and to my surprise I came upon this wonderful painting by the self-taught artist Adolf Woeffli...


... no vacuum there; but I digress)--the "natural" abhorrence of the vacuum, an emptiness too frightening to contemplate. So the mind does its work. It creates structures of words and images, it noodles with the unknowable and flirts with risks and challenges yet to be realized. It considers this action to be its sacred duty, and sulks or sinks into "boredom" when deprived. It thumbs its nose at "Not now" and tells me to get lost. Which I promptly do.

Ah, yes. "Not now." Such a concept, such a challenge. And, when heeded, such a release!  The wisdom of "Not now" is not limited, of course, to meditation.  I often reflect on how much the quality of my daily life might be improved if I could just stay present to what is happening in the present, and quit worrying about things over which I have no control--such as the future, or the past.

Busy Week, Busy Weekend

Just back in Los Angeles after an unusually busy week in Laguna and a busy weekend--which will explain my dereliction of duty on The Buddha Diaries. This morning, I hardly know where to start. I've been thinking, among other things, about Obama's book, which I finished in the course of the week, as well as two movies, a Masterpiece Theater episode, and the Super Bowl...

"Dreams From My Father" is simply a superb book. For anyone who wants to get to know the heart and soul of our new President, it offers a broader and more profound view of any President who ever was, surely, at the beginning of his presidency. I wrote last week about the struggles of his early years, until about halfway through the book. In the latter half, he writes extensively about his work in Chicago and his first visit to Kenya, to meet a vast extended family there. The Chicago years show a man prepared to work his heart out to achieve social reforms, a man dedicated to the betterment of the lot of the underprivileged and the underrepresented; a man who takes the trouble to listen to the needs of others and, where necessary, to change course.

The family visit in Africa is amazing. You keep pinching yourself, as you read, to remind yourself that this man is to become the President of the United States. He learns so much, not just about the rich mix of his origins--and this is significant, because what he learns has clearly come to inform the way he looks at the world beyond the United States; but about people, their differences and sameness, their common needs for shelter, food, family and community. His mind reaches easily back to the origins of man, embraces the remote villager and the dweller of the bustling, modern city--and constantly reflects, digests, comprehends the value of each new experience. He proves himself a poet, too, writing about the beauty of the African landscape and the thrill of encountering creatures in the wild. I am more impressed than ever with this man, upon whose shoulders the hopes of the world now rest.

I saw more than two movies (theater and Netflix,) but two of them stay with me. The first is Man on Wire, the story of the French wire-walker, Phillippe Petit's illicit stroll across the space that used to separate the north and south towers of the World Trade Center. The location itself, of course, guarantees a poignancy to the story. But more than that, the movie has the feel of one of those heist films, with all the details of the years-long planning and the breathtaking suspense of the eventual fulfillment of this man's extraordinary dream. It's a work of art. Ellie and I thought a good deal about Christo and Jeanne-Claude--they of the wrapped Reichstag in Berlin, the trans-Pacific blue and yellow "Umbrellas" and the orange "Gates" in New York--as the story unfolded. Although their work is always legal, it requires years of planning and risky execution. Acrophobics like myself may have a few moments of vicarious nausea, watching Petit as he dances and prances on his (extremely!) high wire, lies down to rest halfway between the buildings, a quarter mile above the street, and kneels for an ironic salute to the waiting cops, who arrive to arrest him before his performance ends.

The Super Bowl... I watch very little football these days. Perhaps twice a year, at most. But I was glad to have chosen this game, one of the most exciting I have ever seen. Plenty of theatrics, unbelievable pyrotechnics (on the field; the half-time show offered real ones,) and a result that, until the very last moment, could have gone either way. I have reservations, as I suspect many of my readers might, about the absurd commercialization of this annual spectacular. But I'll confess that I enjoyed myself immensely.

Okay, now the second movie and the Masterpiece Theater episode, which shared an interesting and complex theme. I'm speaking of The Duchess (Netflix) and Tess of the D'Urbervilles, which we had recorded. The protagonist of each of these movies is an English woman, quite removed in social station and historical time, but both victims of a social mores that accepted the dominance of men and their right to use women essentially as chattels. Post women's liberation, of course, both stories emphasize the strength of character of their heroines in their struggle to make the best of impossible situations. The Duchess, having failed initially in her "duty" to provide a male heir to her Duke, is humiliated by his unquestioned right to sexual dalliances with others--including with her closest friend--and cruelly punished for indulging in her own. Having been ignominiously raped by a "gentleman" and borne his child, Tess confesses the secret to her beloved husband on their wedding night--as a consequence of his confession of his own youthful indiscretion--and is promptly abandoned by him to a life of virtual slavery.

Seen from a twenty-first century point of view, such double standards are shockingly cruel and unjust. Less emphasized by both of these productions, is fact that the menfolk, like their wives, are equally prisoner to the social strictures of their times. Their minds are simply incapable of working past attitudes and customs so deeply engrained, and they become victims to the tragic circumstances as much as do the suffering women from whom they expect purity, obedience, and subordination. I'm perhaps especially sensitive to this side of the issue at this time, as I prepare for the men's training weekend I am to staff later this month--preparations which, with two lunch meetings and a half-day plenary session with staff members on Saturday, significantly contributed to the busy-ness of which I was complaining earlier in this post. However, the training was an inestimable gift to me, more than fifteen years ago, when I experienced it, and I have served many times on staff for other men since then. It's a way of expressing my gratitude, a service--and also a way for me to experience further growth in my own life and work. Should anyone out there in the blogosphere be interested, I encourage them to contact me for further information and encouragement.