JUDGING...

Today, I'll be spending a good part of my time in the difficult task of judging art works in a competition. If you're interested in my reflections on this task, you'll find them over at Persist: The Blog, just an easy click away.

ACTIVATE!

That's it! Buddhist or no Buddhist (see yesterday's entry) I can't stand by and watch. I had made a kind of tacit agreement with myself to spend less time, in my blog, on politics; but I realize now that I need to spend more.

Long-time readers will remember that this whole blogging business, for me, started out with "The Bush Diaries," which took the form of a daily, somewhat irreverent letter to George W. Bush about the lapses, misdeeds and crimes of his administration. My first blog entry ever followed immediately after Bush's re-election in November 2004. I could not, then, believe that the American electorate could be so blinded to his disastrous policies--both foreign and domestic--as to vote him back into office for another term. I knew I had to do something, and the only thing I know how to do is write. It was then that I stumbled headlong into the blogosphere...

And two years after that, I woke one day with the realization that waking up with Bush every day was no prescription for serenity or sanity, so "The Bush Diaries" morphed quietly into "The Buddha Diaries."

The events of this past week, however, have convinced me that I cannot remain silent. The Glenn Beck/Sarah Palin rally that attempted to co-opt the memory and the values of Dr. Martin Luther King was loathsome enough to arouse the old political bile. Their call to restore America to God--and, oh yes, the radical conservatism that God apparently approves--came at the same time as the Jane Mayers article in the New Yorker about the Koch brothers and their determination to destroy President Obama no matter what the cost, financially, or to the truth. This past week, too, we had news of the poll indicating that vast numbers of Americans had been persuaded against all reason to believe that Obama was neither American nor a Christian, but rather a cuckoo in the nest, a foreign-born Muslim out to destroy this country.

Enough already! Even the Buddhist blood boils at the enormity of the lies that are being disseminated, the hatred that accrues, the prospect of the country's future--the future of the world--in the hands of people of this kind.

Don't worry. I'm not going back to daily politics. That would drive me crazy. Besides, it's perfectly plain by now that it's not about the honest debate of issues and ideas It's about money. It's about the inordinate greed for money and for the power that goes along with it. It's about defending, consolidating and multiplying wealth, and seizing the political power to make that possible. It's about deluding the American electorate into wild and self-destructive beliefs.

I cannot match the Koch brothers in political contributions. I cannot match Rupert Murdoch in access to the hearts and minds of American voters and in the manipulation of their views. I must think more in terms of proportion. I will act proportionately. I will give money in proportion. A billion in Koch money equals, what...? A hundred dollars of my own? I'll give the hundred dollars. I'll even double them up: I'll give two hundred to support the Democratic effort to retain control of Congress at mid-term.

And I will make a point of asking all my friends, and all my American friends on "The Buddha Diaries"--and all my "friends" (Facebook)--to do the same. I will importune them mercilessly, to give ten dollars, twenty, fifty. If they can, a hundred... I have about nine hundred friends on Facebook alone. If I could persuade them to give, say, an average of fifty dollars apiece, that would total forty-five thousand dollars. And if each of them were to pass on my challenge to, say, a hundred of their friends, and each of their friends were to respond with a donation, say, of an average of fifty dollars apiece, that would total four million five hundred thousand dollars. And if each of their friends' friends... It's a dream! An "American Dream"--and not the kind that simply advances my own interests.

But wait! I know that you're all impatient to get started, but hold your fire. I intend, in the next few days, to write up a kind of manifesto, something that can easily be copied and pasted and sent on, so that we could hope to start a movement and gain momentum--along with the millions of dollars--in time for the November elections. When I'm done with that, I'll post it. But in the meantime, your feedback would be appreciated. I'm ready to modify my plan to include all reasonable suggestions.

Meet the New Buddhist!

Yesterday we joined Thanissaro Bhikkhu for a day-long sit with our Laguna Beach sangha. The theme for the day’s dharma talk was “Questions and Doubts.” I felt honored that Than Geoff had added the second part of that title at my request. Because, yes, I am a skeptic when it comes to religions of all kinds. I have reiterated, perhaps too often, that I am reluctant to call myself a “Buddhist,” even though I have engaged in a serious and committed sitting meditation practice for some fifteen years and have done my best to understand and follow the teachings of the Buddha; and I have often struggled with my inability to make that final leap, that final avowal.

So I brought that struggle with me to our session yesterday. After the period of meditation that started the day, Than Geoff led us for a good half hour on an extraordinary, wide-ranging trip through the history of Western religious attitudes and man’s perception of, and relationship to “God.” As I understood his argument, the fundamental difference between those religions and Buddhism is the notion of absolutism, whether of the authoritarian God himself or of man’s interpretation of his existence or his word. The heart of the Buddha’s teachings lies less in the answers than in the questions we ask and the actions that we take, the way we choose to live our lives. It’s a “work in progress” rather than a system of beliefs.

Than Geoff’s talk, and his answers to the questions that followed—many of them, I have to say, from my skeptical self—helped me to refocus my thoughts in an important way. Up until now, I have thought about religion principally in terms of the transcendent: what happens beyond and after our physical existence. Religion, as I have understood it, was about providing answers to the unknowable, the mystery of death, the experience of the numinous; and as such, it always seemed to involve what our current, often vociferous atheists refer to as “magical thinking.” I have found it as difficult to accept that kind thinking as the atheists who scoffed at it, and yet I have found their screeds to be in the long run unconvincing and deeply unsatisfying.

The ultimate challenge, in this way of thinking about religion, is the afterlife. I have never—at least since graduating from Sunday School—been able to give much credit to the notions of heaven and hell. The whole idea of a God making judgments about who should live in bliss for all eternity and who should burn forever in the fires of hell has seemed absurd to me, and incongruous with the very concept of a merciful and loving God. It’s for this reason that I have tended to identity rebirth as the source of my discomfort with Buddhism “as a religion.”

So far as the afterlife is concerned, one part of the Buddha’s teaching reminded me very much of Blaise Pascal’s famous wager in his struggle with Christian thought: to believe in God is a better bet than not to believe, Pascal argued. If you believe and God exists, you’ll go to heaven and avoid hell; if you believe and you’re wrong, you have nothing to lose. But if you don’t believe in God and God does exist, you’ll lose heaven and go to hell; if you’re right, and God really doesn’t exist, then you still have nothing to gain. The Buddha, Than Geoff explained as we went through the relevant text from the Pali canon, agrees that he can’t prove the truth of rebirth and other lives, and argues, like Pascal, that it’s simply the better bet. But the Buddha's wager works positively both ways: if you learn to act skillfully in the world, you stand to gain no matter what the outcome after death because you’ll be happier in this, your single lifetime. And for the Buddha, of course, if we do get to experience an afterlife--or lives--the prospect is not for the “eternal” damnation envisioned by Pascal; hell is just another stage along the path to the deathless, the end of suffering.

Than Geoff, however, made it clear that this was not the central issue—and indeed that an understanding of rebirth is dependent on what is the central issue, which is action, and the consequence of action. Unlike the belief or faith required by other religions, the practice of Buddhism requires only constant questioning, and the testing of actions in the real world against the results they produce: do they add to our stress and suffering, or do they act to release us from their grip? The “deathless”—again, as I understand it—is not the reward of eternal bliss offered through the grace some higher power, but the result of our actions in the world: the eventual, final release from all suffering.

Of course, it doesn’t really matter to anyone, doctrine-wise, whether I call myself a Buddhist or not—though it does seem to matter whether I call myself a Christian, or a Jew, or a Muslim. Buddhism is different from other religions in that regard. It matters really only to me, and I have to conclude that my long-standing reluctance has its origin more in personal and emotional history than in mature thought. There is the history of my father, the Anglican priest, the example of his very physical (Christ-like?) suffering on the crucifix of his ill-health, the guilt I felt for many years about not being able to accept his teachings, and my inability to confront him with my reality as a apostate to the religion to which he devoted his entire life.

So what I think what I’ll do is try being Buddhist on for size. The next time someone asks me if I’m a Buddhist—and it happens fairly frequently—I think that instead of using the usual circumlocutions and qualifications, I’ll try simply saying Yes.

PLUS CA CHANGE...

... plus c'est la meme chose, the French saying goes. The more things change, the more they stay the same. Having made a couple of posts, in the past few days, about religious intolerance and skewed social values (see "The Mosque" and "Christians,") I was reminded yesterday with a jolt, in an artist's studio, that we were debating the same issues fifty years ago.

I'll be showing you pictures to prove my point, but for the moment let's talk about my studio visit. Since I have no permission to use the artist's name, I choose not to mention it. (Note: I have since spoken to him and, with his permission, can identify him as G. Ray Kerciu!) I have known G. Ray/of him for a number of years, but it was not until last week, when we ran into each other at a local cafe, that I suggested further acquaintance. We traded a few missed calls in the days that followed, but finally managed to get together and arranged the date. I drove up to his studio yesterday afternoon.

Quite a drive. G. Ray lives way up in the hills, overlooking the entire city of Laguna Beach and a vast vista of the Pacific Ocean. He greeted me on the steps and led me into the garage that stands in for his "gallery," where he hangs a couple of dozen recent paintings on the white walls that surround the parked vehicles. The paintings, neatly arranged in rows and in identical scale, are accomplished work; landscape abstractions (or abstract landscapes!) for the most part, they are done in thickly textured acrylics whose surfaces swirl with gleaming, even pearlescent color. The painted surfaces are sometimes layered in construction, with window-like rectangular cut-outs creating set-backs that invite the eye to explore the inner depths as well as the surface of the painting. G. Ray has been working with two- and three-dimensional artifacts for many years, and the experience shows. There's a confident ease about the work that makes it clear he knows what he's doing and is passionate in doing it.

It has to be passion that drives him. Like so many of his peers, G. Ray has limited opportunity to show his work these days. Down in his studio, where he is working now on some new impressive, three-dimensional investigations of the ancient obelisk form, we talk about Egypt, art history, his days as a teacher and sometime head of a significant university art department and, yes, the art world... I learn about what he describes, wryly, as his "fifteen minutes of fame," when he was teaching, at the height of the Civil Rights movement, at the University of Mississippi and was witness to the moment when Bobby Kennedy arrived with the National Guard to escort James Meredith, the first back student on the campus, to register for classes; and when he, the artist, achieved sudden fame for paintings that dared to address the social issues of the day--a huge American flag, he recalls, for example, boldly graffiti'ed with the racist comments he would hear all around him on the campus.

His fifteen minutes led him to the dizzy heights of an exhibit at the noted Martha Jackson Gallery in New York, its opening attended by all the notables of the day--Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, the whole gang of them; and reviews and articles in Time magazine and all the art journals. He was the hero of the day... for a day or two.

Since then, as evidenced by the sheer quantity and diversity of work that hangs everywhere at his house, G. Ray has persisted, as artists do, out of passion and because that--as I like to say--is what he is given to do. He tells me that he is content to keep working in his studio, now that he is retired from the teaching profession, and that he can well do without the other part--the galleries, the exhibitions, the sales. Still, I see the profusion of his work and I feel a certain sadness about the fact that it is not seen outside the studio. It has always been my contention that all creative work is an act of communication, a way of showing ourselves to the world, of being "in touch"; and that it needs that other part, the recipient, the responsive party, in order to complete its own intention. Hung up against the walls or stacked and heaped in corners, it feels, well... lonely. I want it to be out there, seen, appreciated, doing the work it was made to do with the eyes of those who look at it.

As for pictures of G. Ray's work... perhaps another time. I'd like to see it on the walls of a gallery one day. But I did promise you a glimpse of his early work, from the early 1960s, nearly fifty years ago, with its sad reminder that things have still not changed as, back then, we might have hoped they would. The pictures were taken unprofessionally, on my cell phone, but with the artist's permission. I append them here without further commentary, but with the hope that they'll be seen in the context of those earlier entries that I mentioned. Here they are:

THE "MOSQUE"

A new friend and reader of The Buddha Diaries challenged me--whether consciously or not--to offer my own thoughts on the brouhaha around that "mosque" planned for a location two blocks for the site of the World Trade Center. My friend forwarded me a paragraph written by a friend of his, in which the writer expressed the view that Mayor Bloomberg and other supporters were being naive in believing that their support would send out a message of tolerance to the Muslim world. "The Muslims," he wrote, "have an agenda... They will get the message from their leaders that Americans are weak, capitulate and the Muslim message of eventual conquest will be the mosque, a monument to their victory blocks from the Twin Towers. Sharia law will be the next thing to creep in."

I have to say that I disagree completely with this view. My own is shaped by my admittedly limited knowledge, based on what I have read and heard in the media, but it starts out from the belief that this whole thing started out as a non-issue. The plan was brought to public attention months ago, without the slightest negative response from anyone. It was a plan--again, as I understand it--not for a mosque, but for an Islamic cultural center; it has since been dubbed a "mosque" for mainly rhetorical purposes. It became an issue only once it was recognized for its political potential--when those who stood to gain politically from its exploitation seized upon it and inflated it beyond all reason. That it is now seen as a part of an international Muslim agenda for world domination is, to my mind, wildly paranoiac.

I understand how the feelings of those whose lives were affected by the 9/11 attacks could be aroused by this, but I believe they have been manipulated and inflamed by others, more cynical than themselves. A two-block walk in densely-populated, densely-built New York can be made to sound like close proximity, but in reality it is a substantial distance. The cultural shifts are sudden and dramatic. As even Jon Stewart's The Daily Show suggested, with its own brand of humor, the proposed conversion of a former Burlington coat factory could hardly be considered an incursion into sacred ground; nor, as The Daily Show effectively documented, are the businesses in the adjacent area exactly monuments to hallowed territory.

No, I myself believe that it's not a Muslim but a home-grown, cynical political agenda at work here. The opposition to the construction of Islamic centers--be they cultural or religious--is by no means restricted to the area around Ground Zero, it's nation-wide. And there is no question in my mind that its origin is in religion based prejudices and fears. I was writing only recently about those "Christians" whose ignorance has now succeeded in blocking medical research that would bring hope to thousands upon thousands suffering from disease or physical debility. Today's New York Times National section headlines news about a pastor in Florida who "who plans to memorialize the Sept. 11 attacks with a bonfire of Korans." This is the loamy, fertile ground in which this issue has taken root and sprouted like an ugly weed. It is no longer just about an Islamic cultural center near the site of the World Trade Center. It has exploded in our faces into a debate about who we are as a people.

Is is a part of some "Christian agenda"? No. It has nothing to do with Christianity. It has everything to do with politics, with the exploitation of ignorance, prejudice and fear in order to further a political goal. My friend's friend writes that Muslims throughout the world "will get the message from their leaders that Americans are weak." My fear is that not only Muslims but other right-thinking people throughout the world will get a different message: that Americans have taken leave of their senses, that they have abandoned their fine principles to ill-thought, knee-jerk reaction to political rhetoric, manipulation and transparent lies. My fear is that, if there are victors in this, it will be those who sought to destroy the best about this country on that dreadful September 11, 2001, not those who seek to preserve and protect its ideals from the assaults within.

SCAMMED?

I don't know. Remember last week I was writing about my encounter, outside the grocery store downtown, with a down-and-outer who wanted just a couple of dollars? I turned him down. But I did want to understand a little more about the spontaneous mental and ethical gymnastics that went into that decision. Well, yesterday I had a second chance. I'm not sure whether I blew it, passed the test, or just got scammed.

It's mid-afternoon. I'm sitting out on the patio behind our cottage with a book when I think I hear the tinkle of the little bell at the front door. George is a bit slow on the uptake, but he starts to bark, so I assume there's someone there. I tear myself away from my reading (I'm catching up with Martin Cruz Smith, of Gorky Park fame; Red Square has me hooked, and it's quite a trek from winter at the Kremlin to the front door of our cottage in Laguna Beach,) and find a young black man, neatly dressed in white shirt and khaki slacks, greeting me with a big smile on his face...

This is Maxwell. Well, you just know he has to be selling something. He starts by selling his own story. a journey from the mean streets of Oakland, through addiction and jail time in San Quentin, to the self-help program in which he's now engaged. He tells it effortlessly, with great charm, without even a hint of self-pity; and he invites me, graciously enough, to compare it with my own tale of... well, middle class privilege. He speaks beautifully--no ebonics!--and has an engaging personality. My initial resistance yields to lending a grudging ear and, soon, to unconditional surrender.

I have enough gumption left, after a few minutes listening to his spiel, to ask what it is he's selling. Whatever it is, he has mastered the car salesman's--and the magician's--art of distraction. It's as though he's doing me a favor by engaging my philanthropy. But when he finally gets around to pulling the sales pad from his back pocket--where it has been carefully concealed--it turns out that he's selling magazines. I should have known. Actually, I did know, by this time I was expecting it. For a charitable cause, of course: the Ronald MacDonald house in Santa Ana, where needy women and children find refuge from the cruel circumstances that many of the poor are compelled to face out on the streets. Incidentally, the more magazines he sells, the more points Maxwell earns toward a program for his own betterment in life.

So of course I'm sold. It's not only my guilt that kicks in--though there's certainly an element of that involved in this transaction--there's also a genuine admiration for my visitor's skills and for his effort to put them to good use. He has managed to overcome much of my instinctive mistrust of the salesman (it was e.e.cummings, was it not, who wrote, unkindly, "a salesman is an it that stinks, excuse me"...?) and worked his way past all my other defenses. He has earned his keep.

He shows me, now, a list of magazine subscriptions to choose from and invites me to pick out three, or five, or six. I choose three, circumspectly. He offers me a choice of two-year, three-year, multi-year subscriptions. I choose the two-year option. I'm beginning to calculate, now, how much this is going to cost me, and I'm figuring, well, maybe fifty dollars. Then I notice that he's writing down on his sales pad, for one of my choices, what looks like $230. Whoa, I say! Hold on! I do plenty of giving in other ways, I'm not up for that kind of money. He scratches out the expensive choice without grumbling, and tots up the other two. It's still more than I intended--and a whole lot more than the two dollars I saved myself last week!--but my defenses are all worn down by this time and I append my signature on the appropriate line.

My new friend Maxwell is now set to leave and offers me his hand. I tell him to wait for a moment and return to the door with a copy of my book, Persist. He has earned that, too.

Here's the thing. Generosity is supposed to make you feel good. It does, when the generosity is altruistic. I felt generous in giving away a copy of my book. That was unasked for, spontaneous. I did not feel generous about any of the rest, with so much quid pro quo between me and the supposed end-recipient of my "generosity," the Ronald MacDonald House. So I resumed my seat in my back patio, after Maxwell left, still unsure as to whether or not I had been generous, or just expertly scammed. I would have wanted to feel the warm inner glow that rewards an act of generosity. Instead, I sat there simply feeling foolish and exploited, like an easy mark.

"Christians"

I use the quotes advisedly. And in anger. I read the headline in today's New York Times in disbelief. A Washington DC judge, it seems, has overturned the executive order, issued early in Obama's term, that allowed the scientific use of embryonic stem cells that George W. Bush had prohibited. The judge acted on a case brought principally by a "Christian" adoption agency on behalf of embryos. Now thousands upon thousands of already living human beings are forced to relinquish the hope that stem cell offered for the treatment of their diseases and disabilities; and hundreds of already advanced scientific research programs will be halted.

I was brought up a Christian, and do not recognize what is practiced and preached today in this country in the name of Christ to be anything close to what I was taught as a youngster. I do not believe that my father, an Anglican minister, would have recognized it either. From the literal-minded, intelligence-defying "creationism" to the angry, blinkered dogmatism that promotes this kind of perverse, unyielding, fanatical opposition to stem cell research, these people show as little mercy and as little civilized common sense as the Taliban.

What kind of God do they worship, that inspires such woeful, pitiless ignorance?

A Cut

It was a small matter of cutting a large white onion into thick slices, ready for the barbecue. I have done it many times. Instead, yesterday, I chose to make a long incision into the index finger of my left hand. The knife was new and sharp. The pain was immediate, a flash of it. The blood flowed freely.

Inattention? Unskillfulness?

Remembering my father's insistence that each of the fingers has a special meaning, I turned to the Internet to see if I could find out why I had chosen this particular finger to cut and I happened upon Amy the Palm Reader. Unfortunately, her fine chart was cut off at the very spot in question, but I did pick up a couple of useful pieces of information. One was that the top of the finger--the part into which I so neatly sliced--represents the spiritual (the middle section represents the practical, the lower section, the basic.) The second is that the index finger is Jupiter, "the chief god ruling over laws and social order, so the Jupiter finger represents leadership and interest in laws." Also, I seem to remember from my father's lore, the left hand represents the feminine. Hmmm. I have some thinking to do about all of this. There has to be some subtle explanation... Perhaps you can help?

While I'm thinking, you might have fun with the fascinating science of palmistry. Here you will find more hand charts than you ever needed to see. In the meantime, I must nurse my wound and change the bandages...

As you can see, it took three Band-Aids in a row to cover the whole length of it. And it's still throbbing, this morning.

We did have a good evening, though, with our dinner guests...

SMALL ACTS…

… of cowardice and dishonesty. These are the ones that betray us. This morning, for example, I watched myself tell a lie so easily, without question or hesitation and without the slightest embarrassment… until after the fact. Here’s the circumstance:

I am sitting on a bench outside the grocery store in downtown Laguna Beach with George, the dog. We are waiting patiently for Ellie to finish with her shopping and rejoin us. A man approaches, clearly Latino, kind of unwashed but not severely so, and offers his hand. “Good morning, my friend,” he says with a big, friendly Latino smile. And adds, “Could you give me two dollars to buy something to eat?” He points to his mouth to ensure that I’ve understood.

Two dollars. It’s been a good long while since the days of “Brother, can you spare a dime?”

I guess that, given an adjustment for inflation, it was not an unreasonable request. But my knee-jerk reaction was the familiar one: self-protection mixed with more than a little spontaneous and self-righteous judgment. “Begging” is not approved behavior in the little universe I have created for myself. Besides, I was importuned. If the man was hungry, it was somehow his fault, not mine. Compassion, I regret to say, did not for one moment cross my mind—or enter my heart. Nor did any one of my professed social and political beliefs about the injustices we mete out to the poor and underprivileged. Had I parted with two dollars, it would not have made the slightest difference to my own well-being, and I had them in the wallet in my pocket.

Still, I chose to lie. Immediately, and without a single thought—especially none of those in the preceding paragraph. I said, “I’m really sorry”—without really being the least bit sorry—“but my wife has all my money and she’s in the grocery store.”

My new friend walked away, and left me to think more about the wallet in my pocket and the two dollars tucked away there with the rest of the bills. It was a small act of cowardice and honesty, as the scale of such things goes, but it served to remind me, uncomfortably, of qualities that I do not find admirable in myself. Namely, for one, hypocrisy. I do not practice what I preach, and quite easily find justification for the failure.

Namely, too, that little bit of cowardice that fails to take responsibility for a choice. It was after all my choice not to give the man the money that he asked for, but I managed in a subtle way to pass on the responsibility for it to my wife: she, I told him, had the wallet.

A little white lie? Yes, I suppose. It spared me embarrassment and allowed me to be parsimonious, all at once. It would have been unnecessary, perhaps, and a sad reflection on myself to tell the truth: “I don’t care enough about you to want to help you.” It would have been harsh to take the principled stand—“Get a job”—at a time where there are no jobs to be had. My choice, to tell the lie, spared me the awkward necessity of having to tell the truth, let alone admit it to myself.

What, I ask myself in retrospect, would have been the skillful action—the one that would have left me with the feeling that I had done something good for another person and, not incidentally, for myself? Had I given him the two dollars, would I then be encouraging vagrancy? I remember a friend, a young woman, an artist who worked in a cheap studio area in downtown Los Angeles, where numerous down-and-outers inhabit the streets. This young woman was herself struggling financially to make ends meets, but she never left her studio without a small bundle of dollar bills close to hand, to help out those less fortunate than herself. She made no judgment as to their relative need, or what she thought they might spend it on—cheap wine or food; when asked, she gave.

I’m glad to have remembered Cindy at just this moment. Another fine teacher. Wherever you look there they are. My Latino friend was my teacher for this morning. I’m just sad that I was too ungenerous to have been able to reward him in some small way for what he had to reveal to me about myself.

DRIFTLESS: A Book Review

I don’t suppose I would have come across this book, had it not been for my son, who sent it to me as a birthday gift. It’s called Driftless (the name derives from a peculiar geological area in southwestern Wisconsin which, eons ago, was spared the “drift” of the receding glaciers) and it’s written by David Rhodes. The author started out on what promised to be a notable career in fiction in the early seventies, but was halted in his tracks by a motorcycle accident that left him paralyzed. Driftless is his long-delayed return. Those who follow “The Buddha Diaries” will know that I have a special interest in, and fondness for creative people who have been sidelined in any way, and this writer certainly appears to fall into that category—though I have no idea as to why he chose to remain silent for so long.

In any event, this is a remarkable book. I love the way each of its many short-ish chapters has its own title, and could be read, almost, as a story in itself. Together, though, they follow several narrative threads, interwoven in the same odd ways as the lives of the characters. There’s the farmer and his wife who realize they’re being stiffed by the corporate milk company; the country singer who slowly finds her voice; the heart-sick repairman who can’t get beyond his mourning for his lost wife; the local pastor, a woman unable to let go of her childhood wounds; a wheel-chair bound spinster who squanders her life savings (and her sister’s) at the casino and rediscovers life at a local dogfight; a militia training for the overthrow of the government… And a wild creature, a black puma long absent from this area, stalks the pages like some wild, animating spirit reminding us of a time when nature was as yet untamed by man.

There are other threads. The setting, a small village whose very existence is threatened by the march of twenty-first century “progress,” is rich in natural beauty, poor in material wealth. Rhodes is at his lyrical best in evoking the landscape and its changes with the passage of the seasons, and in describing the symbiotic relationship between the land and those who live on it. His people are scarred, their hands gnarled by decades of hard labor, their faces marked by age and care. They are real in the same way that the trees are real, and the barns and silos of the farmyards, the jalopies and the trucks they drive. They need love and attention, don’t know how ask for it, suffer stubbornly and, sometimes, die.

I like writing that is straightforward, honest, un-literary, and at the same time rich in associative and evocative depths. I do not want to be impressed by the writing, so much as by the authenticity of where it comes from. Driftless , it seems to me, comes from a place of long experience and deep compassion, a place where suffering is understood to be both hard and real—and the threshold that leads to a more profound experience of life. The center of gravity of the book lies in the integrity of its central characters in the face of physical and emotional hardship. Their relationships, shifting nervously between suspicion and trust, generosity and self-protection, are deeply human. They invite us to laugh at them—and with them—to pity them, to “feel their pain” as well as their occasional rapture, and accept them for who they are.

There is also a broader context here, in which nature plays a significant role. It is, as the pastor discovers at a moment of revelation described with wry humor and compassion, both: that sense of Oneness that embraces everything. Call it--as she does, transcending the limited vocabulary of her Christian calling--love, a word that carries a good deal more freight than its deceptive single syllable. And this, perhaps, along with that wild black puma that stalks the human heart as it does the driftless landscape, is the animating spirit of the book.

DEATH: THE FRONT PAGE

(Another in my continuing essay series. Feedback MORE than welcome...)

Let’s say one minute you are walking across a New York City intersection, chatting with your good friend on your mobile phone. Or maybe making that all-important business call. Then, the next moment… nothing. You are dead.

Or this: you are a Pakistani villager. The monsoons arrive with particular ferocity this year. You and your family are gathered, huddling against the persistent rain in what shelter you have managed to find. Then, suddenly, the flood. A wall of muddy water, and you are all swept away to your death.

Or this: you are a nationally-known American, a conservative editor and writer, with a whole life’s history of success and recognition for what you do. You have reached the respectable age of 89 and have led an eminently fulfilled life. Today, your heart gives out. It has done all that was required of it for 89 years, and now it just stops beating. You never awaken from your sleep.

Or this: you are a moose. You suffered for years from arthritis, thanks to an impoverished nutritional diet in your early days. You suffered quietly, not knowing how to register complaint. You died many years ago. Then, a while back, you were rediscovered; your skull was disinterred and delivered to a laboratory for study by scientists, to see if you might offer a clue to human osteoarthritis.

Or this: you are a young man or a young woman in love. You live in a village in northern Afghanistan. Your relatives will not permit you to marry, so you decide to elope. You are tricked into coming back home with the promise that all is forgiven, but when you arrive you are summarily sentenced by the Taliban in a sharia court, and you are stoned to death in the village square.

Or this: you are a shrimp, living peaceably enough in the waters of the Gulf of Mexico. But today the shrimp fishing season starts, and you are caught up, along with thousands of your brother and sister shrimp, in a fisherman’s net. Tomorrow, perhaps, you will be served up as a rich patron’s dinner in some posh restaurant.

All this—on what I dare say is a not untypical day—was gleaned from the front page only of the New York Times on a single day, August 17, 2010. And then I may have missed some…

I have been thinking a good deal about the arbitrary and unpredictable nature of death. I read about the skeleton of a many-thousand year old humanoid excavated from an arid part of Africa and I wonder about that life, how it was lived, what ended it. I read about the extinction of whole species of living creatures from the face of the earth, and wonder when, not if, our own species will face extinction… perhaps not for another few million years, perhaps in this present century. Either one is possible.

And then, of course, I have to think about my own life, in both the great and small perspectives. In the great perspective, how small and insignificant I seem; in the small, how eminently important is my life! How much I seem to count for!

No wonder that we human beings are driven to create our stories, to prove to ourselves that our short lives have meaning and importance in the grand scale of things. No wonder we invent our Gods, to assure our immortality. No wonder we want to reassure ourselves that this is not the only life we have, that others will surely follow to give us a second chance, a third, a fourth, a fiftieth, a thousandth…

In this light, though, we can at least take comfort in the understanding that a single instant, this fleeting present moment, is hardly distinguishable from the four score years or so that even the fortunate among us are given to live. And that this single instant, this fleeting present moment, if we value it, may in itself afford us a good deal more happiness and satisfaction than the sum of all those four score years. All the more reason, then, not to let it pass without paying attention.

A MOST PECULIAR DREAM...

... last night. And a rather confusing one, which I do not remember well. I do know that it involved two pieces I had written for an art magazine--for which I no longer write--about some Dutch masterpieces--about which I do not normally write. One, I think, was an exhibition review. The other, an article around the social and political implications of a genre painting of some kind. I had written these two pieces on commission, and one of them--the review--seemed to have been accepted.

It was the second one, the article, that seemed to be causing problems. I heard from the magazine that the publisher--it was Milton Esterow, of ARTnews magazine, for whom I wrote for many years--had decided that he could not use it because of some perceived conflict of interest. The managing editor--Stephen Madoff, I remember him from the old days--was sent out from New York to Los Angeles to investigate and showed up at my "office," which turned out to be a rather luxurious corner space in an office complex in a high-rise building in the west part of town. It was furnished more like a living room than an office, very comfortably appointed. I was kind of embarrassed, since it was clear to me that it was not really my office, nor would I ever choose to have one like this.

Stephen's visit, however, did turn up the reason for this "conflict of interest." My office, it seemed, was in the sports section of the magazine I was writing for--not the art section. Stephen went around opening file drawers to check that this was indeed the case, and confronted me with this scandalous situation. I tried to explain that this was not really my office, that it was far too well placed and too luxurious for anything I might occupy and that, anyway, I had shared it until only recently with some other writer, who had left. I could not be held responsible for having this office, I argued, and it was only a temporary arrangement.

I wonder if this all has to do with the difference between the writer I was--the art critic, article writer, sometime journalist--and the writer I have become? It is a long time since I left all those responsibilities behind me...

Ah, Monday!

The skies are almost clear this morning... I imagine that within an hour or so we shall have sunlight--an unusual event for this time of day, this year. It has been an extraordinarily gloomy and cold summer, for Southern California. Yesterday, I set out at ten to fetch Ellie from the sangha--I had decided, exceptionally, to sit at home instead of with the group--and the exterior temperature gauge in the Prius read 59 degrees. Which suggests that, at six, say, it could not have been more than mid-fifties--a winter norm for us. Amazing! And much of the Midwest and East Coast swelters.

Something is happening and the worst of it is, we don't know what it is, do we, Mr. Jones? My friend Gary sent me this link to a recent presidential order from the White House concerning the protection of our great lakes and oceans. Lefties notwithstanding, this President has managed to do some good things for the country and the world. And the alternative looks worse by the day...

THE ADVISORY BOARD

MEET MY EGOS (Some of Them)

(This is the draft of one in a series of essays I'm working on for possible inclusion in a new book. I'd welcome feedback.)

I’m a Leo. I’m not much of a fan of astrology, but the descriptions of Leo characteristics I have read do seem alarmingly apt. In any event, I subscribe to the notion that we have not just one but multiple egos/identities, either those we adopt as we move through life, of those that we accept through the eyes of those around us. It’s a committee, an advisory board. Some members are useful, some delusional, and yet others actually detrimental to the conduct of our lives. We don’t have to be saddled with them, of course, but we do need to know who they are before we can dismantle or dismiss them—if we choose to do so.

I have been giving some thought to this, in the attempt to identify some of those who sit on my personal board. I do this not to give them a platform from which to perform their antics, but rather in the attempt to put them under a microscope, like specimens, where I can take a better look at them. Here are some I recognize fairly easily:

Peter the Writer is my main man. He’s the one who wants to be known to the rest of the world. He thinks he's pretty good at what he does, and takes his work seriously: he’s at it virtually every day, and feels bad about himself when a day goes by without something he can claim as an achievement, no matter how small. He is ambitious for his efforts, strives for recognition, and feels disappointed when recognition does not come his way. He thrives on response, particularly on praise for his efforts, and is never happier than when he hits the right chord for some reader—preferably for many.

A close relative of Peter the Writer is Peter the Perceptive, who was known for many years as an art critic for national publications and an occasional book reviewer, and who continues to this day to review books, movies and art exhibits on his various websites. He loves to hear from artists and writers when he has hit it right, when he has identified just exactly what it was they were trying to achieve. He prides himself on his aesthetic sensibility and on his sensitivity to the work of others. He takes pleasure in saying nice things, and in this way is related to…

Nice Peter, also known as Peter the Charmer, who was born and bred in England. It shows. He is always careful to offend no one and to do what he can to make life smooth for others. He is quick with a disarming smile and an encouraging word; quick to open the door for any and all comers, and to stand back whilst everyone else goes through first. He “would not hurt a fly,” but is painfully aware in lucid moments that niceness can be hurtful in its own way, too. He tends to overlook or subordinate his own needs, but then will turn around and get mad because they have been neglected. Or else he'll store the anger inside until it bursts out in unexpected and unwanted ways.

Peter the Dad has been around for what will all to soon be fifty years. He harbors two main qualities: guilt and pride. The pride is understandable, since he has three terrific children—not children any more, but grown people, each with their own life and independence. By one, he is the proud grandfather of three fine grandchildren. The guilt is about not having managed to do better as a father; about having failed to be a constant presence for his sons in their young years; and about the difficulty he has had in freely and fully making known his love. His reward for clinging to guilt is absolution through self-punishment.

Peter the Gourmand, otherwise known as Peter the Eater, just loves to eat and drink. He is inclined, in fact, to eat more than he needs to, whether out of enjoyment or simple greed he is not sure. A bit of both, perhaps. In recent years, he knows, he has put on more weight than is in the best interests of his health—but that knowledge apparently does nothing to deter him, since he does not think of himself as “fat.” He also loves his wine. In part, granted, it’s the taste; but in part, to be honest, it’s the nice buzz a glass affords him in the evening. He uses both food and drink as an easy way to assuage any discomfort or unhappiness in his life.

Peter the Wise is a relative newcomer to the board. He made only occasional appearances before reaching “a certain age,” but now he’s likely to show up pretty frequently. He’s the old guy with grey hair who likes to think he knows it all, who basks in the limelight of his (imagined) reputation as a thoughtful and compassionate elder who sees things in the broad perspective of time and space. He thrives on love, respect and admiration. He ‘s also the one who thinks he has learned a lot from the teachings of the dharma, and who prides himself on the equanimity with which he views the world—though he’s not always successful at practicing what he preaches. He can laugh at himself, but there are also times when he fails to notice his own self-righteousness and pomposity…

And there are others, of course. We each, I believe, have our own advisory board that meets—or sometimes fail to meet at critical moments—to discuss the future of our lives. It’s good to be able to identify the members, because they otherwise can act in secret, making decisions and establishing directions that might not be in our best interest. It’s good, too, to be able to recognize the agenda each brings to the table, because we need to know whose voice is predominant at any given moment, and to what end. It’s only with such awareness that our minds can be clear and free to negotiate a skillful path through the vicissitudes that otherwise beset us. The best way for me, always, is to call a meeting of the board, so that everything is "above board"--and be sure that it's me who's sitting in the chair.

MORE FUN & GAMES: INCEPTION

There's something computer game-y about the movie, Inception, which I saw last night after writing my piece yesterday about computer games. At least so I imagine. As I wrote, I'm not really in a position to know, not being a gamer; but the sheer speed from which we move from one level to the next, the cartoon-like quality of visual effects and the non-stop (virtual) violence are a part of what I imagine to be involved in the experience of computer games.

It was a curious experience. Unusually, I went alone, because this was a film that Ellie did not want to see and she had arranged for a girls' night out with friends to see a film that I did not want to see about Joan Rivers--a chalk-on-the-blackboard voice as wince-making, for me, as Sarah Palin, though in a different key. The audience for "Inception" consisted of three people and myself. Two of them, elderly and apparently a bit deaf, chose to sit in the row I had decided to occupy, and saw fit to comment rather loudly at intervals about the action on the screen. I could have moved...

No matter, the somewhat surreal quality of the the actual, theater experience, was a good match for the surreal quality of what was happening on the screen. It took me a good few minutes to get past the initial scenes, in some Asian locale, where the inexplicable dialogue between what would turn out to be the main characters took place against a background of multiple, equally inexplicable explosions and panic in the street outside. The dramatic explosions, along with an unending series of "virtual" deaths by gunfire, proved to be a staple of the movie, alternating with scenes in which, with a stretch of the imagination and a great deal of suspension of disbelief, the plot actually began to make some sense.

The idea of "inception" has to do with the penetration and plundering of other people's minds. I was never quite sure why this involved quite so much violence, but it was as an exploration of the mind and its activities that the movie did engage me and carry me along. It was a matter of moving between different levels of dream and actual experience ("reality"), without ever being quite sure at which level one might be at any particular moment. It was, as the script was at pains to remind us at intervals, a dream within a dream within a dream--or, rather more frequently, a nightmare within a nightmare within a nightmare. The story involved the attempt to enter the mind of the scion of a multinational corporation and implant an idea that would alter the course of human history. Along the way, we encountered the more personal--and generally Oedipal--obstacles of both the mind-penetrator in chief (Leonardo di Caprio) and his intended target.

I left unsure as to whether I had enjoyed the movie or not, and indeed as to whether it was a good movie or not. I battled mightily throughout with the sheer implausibility of the action and, as I mentioned, never quite cottoned to the necessity of so many assault weapons and explosives--unless to cater to the tastes and expectations of the computer-gaming audience. As an exploration of the mind, I think I enjoyed the quieter Being John Malkovich more. Still, it was certainly a lot of fun and games. And, as I say, by the end of it all you could put together a plot that held together and came to a cathartic conclusion that was, in the terms set up by the movie, reasonably credible and satisfying.

Bottom line: I say, see it, if you're up for having your mind bent and can tolerate a good deal of (virtual, remember!) violence.

FUN & GAMES

FUN & GAMES

My good friend Gary urged me to read an article titled "Painkiller Deathstreak" by Nicholson Baker in the August 9 issue of the New Yorker (sorry, no link available.) The title, honestly, might well have turned me off right away without Gary’s recommendation. It’s about computer games.

I'll confess I have not played a computer game since Pacman, which dates me somewhat. Oh, wait a moment, I forgot: I was hooked for a while on Solitaire, but even that I haven't played since I switched from PC to Apple years ago. For some reason, it was no longer so easy to access--and I didn't miss it. In any event, be it known that I can't write out of direct experience--I have only the word of the author of this one article to go on, so I’ll have to chip in a few prejudices of my own. At the risk of sounding like a ridiculously uninformed and cantankerous old fogey, I have to say I was appalled.

There was a time, remember, when we were urged to worry about the number of (fictional) violent deaths our kids might witness on our television sets before they reached the age of adolescence. Now, it seems we must worry about the number of (fictional) violent deaths they have perpetrated by their own hand--let alone the number of brutal mutilations and maimings. From what I understand, it is likely to be in the thousands. The contemporary computer game puts every means of slaughter at their fingertips and provides them with a compelling narrative to engage their rapt attention. The plot can last for dozens of hours before it is exhausted--hours in which the eye-mind co-ordination is focused intently and exclusively on the task at hand: mayhem, and bloody murder.

As children, when I was growing up--I hate to hear myself sound so ancient and pompous!--we also had our fun with violence, and did act it out in the games we played. We hunted Nazis in the woods, and "tortured" them, when we caught them, or shot them, mercilessly, dead. Our "guns" were sticks, but the intent was clearly not much different than that of the boy, today, with his fingers wrapped around the joystick and his eyes on the action on the screen in front of him. Am I right in thinking, though, there there's a qualitative difference in the experience? That the imagination is engaged in a different and less healthy way today? That the mind is more fully consumed--entrapped--by the multi-layered structure of the computer game? That the "training" involved has a greater and more lasting grip on the mind than our games in the woods?

When we were not out in the woods, we played board games. We played chess and drafts, where "men" were captured, not killed, and where the action was slow, thoughtful, methodical. We played war games, like "Minesweeper," where little cards stood in for battleships and destroyers, submarines and mines, and where detonations were no more than simple graphics with perhaps a little fiery color for a touch of realism. It all seems so quaint, does it not, in retrospect?

Am I simply being old-fashioned, then, when I worry about the direction of our culture and the way in which the minds of our children are being targeted, commercially, at an early age, for this kind of training? Are we developing the means for those young minds to be sharpened, in extraordinarily efficient ways, to perform extraordinarily skillful feats--of simulated mass destruction? Do we risk numbing those minds to the kinds of brutal reality these games mimic so effectively? Are we breeding our own nation of Taliban---fostering murderous vengefulness, control, and utter disregard for human life? Okay, it's fiction. Okay, it's fun. But surely there is a system of mind-training involved that is far from healthy for the young, or for the future they will be need to assure.

I'm glad I am not faced with the responsibilities of my friend Gary, who must weigh what I'm sure must be the genuine passion of his two young boys in the balance of powerful social pressures and his own good conscience. Or of my son, Matthew, and his wife, as their son Joe approaches adolescence. I wonder how many victims have already met their violent demise under his watchful gaze and at the pressure of his skillful little finger? I wonder whether my concern for the shaping of his mind is justified, or whether I'm just taking on the role of some ancient Jeremiah, prophesying doom?

Lacking the training and experience of the child psychologist--or of the teacher who is in daily contact with these young minds--I am in no position to answer my own questions with anything like authority. But to read "Painkiller Deathstreak"--isn't the title enough to give you a serious case of the creeps?--is to begin to understand the scope and power of these products, for which our young people stand in line for hours to purchase at the moment of their release. The games the author of the New Yorker article decribes are magnificently crafted, both in story-line and visual effects. Art schools have developed whole "games" departments to attract and train the imaginative talent that goes into their creation. They are the flowering of the magnificent potential of the human imagination and human ingenuity—gone dreadfully awry.

It comes down to that age-old question, then: because we can do it so well, does that mean we should? Or, now that we have gone so far already down that path, is there any way to put ourselves in reverse? It's a cause, for me, of infinite sadness that the non-violence I personally embrace seems so thoroughly out of keeping with the age in which I live. I hang on to the belief--the hope--that there's a shift in human consciousness taking place on the planet, and I see signs of it all around me. Technologies of unprecedented power and promise abound. But at the same time the technologies for the implementation of the old ways--warfare, violence, brutality--become ever more powerful and efficient.

It's truly a critical moment in the history of our species and the outcome, as I see it, is far from certain. There’s much work to be done and many minds to change. Thanks to our apparent indifference, though, our leaders are disinclined to ask much more of us than acquiescence. And in the meantime, in our addiction to distraction, we continue like children to be seduced by the fun and games on our computer screens.

GETTING RESULTS

It's always great to find some area of disagreement in the comments on what I write. I love the thought that a blog can be a place for debate, not just a place in which I sound off with my own ideas. And I love to be pushed a bit further with the ones that I put out.

Thus it was yesterday with Jean, who found the thought of "getting results" in meditation to be anathema. Results, she wrote, "is not what meditation is about, is it?" Well, yes, for me it is. The Big Result, as I understand these things--the one that Buddha held out as the ultimate goal--is true happiness. That's the kind of happiness that results from the release from suffering, the promise of the third noble truth which is attainable by following the path he alludes to in the fourth. If we can release ourselves from the obsession with clinging to those things we want and aversion from those we don't, we're on the right path.

But the Big Result involves a whole lot of smaller results along the way. The practice of "breathing fiercely" that I mentioned yesterday resulted, for me, in a more focused, concentrated--and more interesting--meditation. I can't say whether the benefits extended to my suffering friend, which would have been a wonderful result indeed; but I know that the energy I managed to generate was more powerful and more fiercely compassionate than the prior, "feeble" efforts!

I have written elsewhere about how I got started on the Buddhist path years ago. It was at a moment of great difficulty and suffering in my life, and a friend introduced me to the chanting practice of Soka Gakkai Buddhism. By following the practice, he told me, I could focus on specific results and be assured that I would achieve them. I could chant for, I don't know, success as a writer, the cure for an illness--even, say, an Aston Martin or an island in the Caribbean, if I wanted them badly enough. No kidding! I did actually chant, daily, for a year and a half. Among other things, I chanted for the cottage in Laguna Beach which has been our retreat these past fifteen years. No kidding.

I'm grateful to my friend for having introduced me to a practice that really did extend beyond the purely material; I do not want in any way to diminish the value of that experience. But I'm also happy that the path led me eventually to the Theravada tradition that I follow today. The results I look for are different from those I looked for when I started out, and they are the kind of results Than Geoff proposes as being useful ones. They all involve learning greater and more refined skills in releasing myself from old habits that no longer serve me, and in honing those that do.

One such "result" might be the growing ability to sit for at least a little while and keep the mind focused solely on the breath. My mind tends to wander. It has all kinds of problems that it wants to solve, all kinds of projects that it wants to get involved in. I learned a big lesson from Than Geoff on Sunday: I had indeed allowed my daily meditation to become "feeble"--a harmless enough habit that was not getting the results I was looking for in doing it: a clearer focus, say, a greater compassion for my friend's predicament, and greater serenity in the face of life's challenges. The insight that his comment inspired led me to that understanding that "breathing fiercely" could achieve different and better results in this regard than the ones I had been getting.

There are numerous ways in which I can yet learn to be a better, happier human being--more generous, more focused on my sense of mission, more concentrated on what I see to be my work. Having come to appreciate the infinite power of the human mind, including my own, I want to do everything I can to make it more efficient, more skillful in its actions. And speaking of actions, I have to recognize that my own are too often clumsy or unskillful. If I can carefully observe them in meditation, along with the results they bring, I can also learn to avoid those that result in harm to myself and others, and to encourage those that bring benefit. But first I have to recognize them for what they are.

These, I think, are the kind of results that Than Geoff speaks about. It's not just about the result in itself, it's about the path that leads to the result--a path that requires some fearless and persistent self-examination. Meditation, as I see it, offers me a place in which I can conduct that business, observe the mind in action, analyze the causes and effects that influence the direction of my life. It's here that I can usefully look for results.

There was a long article in Sunday's New York Times magazine this past weekend, My Shrunk Life, written by a woman who spent forty years submitting herself to various forms of psychotherapy. Forty years! It was only forty days, wasn't it, and forty nights, that Christ spent in the desert wrestling with his demons? The terrible thing about it was that she appeared to be virtually unchanged by the experience. "Still," she wrote at the end of her story, lamenting "all that money, all that unrequited love," "I recognized that therapy served me well in some ways, providing me with a habit of mind that enabled me to look at myself with a third eye and take some distance on my own repetitive patterns and compulsions... I sharpened perceptions about myself and came to a deeper understanding of the persistent claim of early, unmet desires in all of us." All of which, to my way of seeing things, she could have achieved as the "result" of a meditation practice--and for free!

BREATHING FIERCELY

What am I doing?

Why am I doing it?

Am I getting the results I’m looking for?

If not, how can I do it differently?

Four simple questions. They came up yesterday in response to a question at our sangha’s monthly session with Than Geoff. They might be seen as the basics of his teaching about meditation.

At the end of the session—and without really thinking about this previous response—I myself asked a question that had been on my mind since the beginning. Is there any way, I wondered, in which I could use my meditation to be of help to a friend struggling with serious illness? I understood about metta, I said, and the practice of sending out goodwill and compassion, but in view of what my friend was going through, I added, that seemed a bit feeble just to be sending out good thoughts. Than Geoff laughed good-naturedly. “Then,” he said, “try meditating less feebly.”

As usual, his response came effortlessly out of his own clarity. But it was not a glib one. I laughed along with him at the obviousness of it. And then, this morning, coming to my daily sit, I saw the relevance of those four questions to my own. If I was not getting the results I wanted, how could I do it differently? Feeble was my own choice of words. And the opposite of feeble, I realized, is fierce…

Time, then, to summon up some of that inner warrior energy and breathe fiercely. I did. Instead of my usual body scan, directing the breath to different areas of the body and checking for unwanted stress and tension, I directed it exclusively, and fiercely, to the area of the heart, breathing in and allowing the breath to suffuse the entire body, breathing out through all the extremities. In those minutes I devoted to metta, I practiced fierce compassion rather than gentle goodwill.

The results were certainly different. I can’t speak for my friend, to whom my healing thoughts were directed. But I do know that the meditation was far more energized than my sits have been of late; and I do know that it was a mind-changer, to be focusing on fierceness rather than feebleness. I felt, in a curious way, more useful.

What am I doing?

Why am I doing it?

Am I getting the results I’m looking for?

If not, how can I do it differently?

A BIRD'S EYE VIEW

Our friend Susan Thacker--and an erstwhile member of of our "Artists' Mattters" group--was in Laguna at the weekend for her opening at the Studio Arts Gallery. She moved up north a couple of years ago, so it was good to have the opportunity to see her again and catch up. We enjoyed, too, the opportunity to see the work she has been doing since she left the fold.

Susan works out of a nice conceit: that seeing things from above, from the bird's eye view, offers us the chance to witness human activity in a different way. Initially, her paintings give the impression of abstractions, accumulations of colorful dots of various sizes arranged in curious patterns on the painting's plane. Closer examination confirms that these are actually human figures, seen from above. Their configurations suggest patterns of assembly or migration, and ask us to think about the ways in which we come together, socially or for business or other practical reasons. Here's "Starting Line," for example...

... where competitors assemble in athletic gear, perhaps for a marathon. And the more structurally complex "Crowded House"...

I love the whimsy of Susan's conceit, and the way it manages to put all of us human beings--who each consider ourselves so important and unique--into a rather humbling perspective. We become little toys, or pieces in a board game; the place we occupy is almost arbitrary and our action--flying a kite, say--becomes a tiny gesture in the greater plan of things. Susan can also be satirical, as in "America on Sale"...

... where she slyly includes price tags and special offers in the crowd of mall shoppers.

But note also in these paintings the skill with which color and patterning are used. Susan's work has echoes, for me, of Wayne Thiebauld, whose paintings have a sensuality that betrays a passion for the objects he portrays. In the same way, Susan's work seems to me about a genuine love for, and curiosity about our species. She invites us, warmly, to contemplate who we are, how we sometimes isolate ourselves from others in a crowd, or how we establish relationships. From the perspective she affords us, we are indeed small creatures, almost interchangeable; seeing ourselves in the same way that we look down on a colony of ants, we are offered the opportunity to smile a little at our self-importance. What hand, we may wonder, might reach down casually from above, and shift us to a totally different position on the board? Or what foot stamp down to crush us?

There's a quirky vision at work here, but put to service in the structural context of the painter's conventional territory: the rectangular canvas. All painting--even the most apparently representational--is, of course, abstraction. Susan seems to meander happily between the two, and takes our eye along for the pleasurable ride.

THE MYSTERY

There’s something rotten in the state of… Sweden. As I wrote yesterday, I’m approaching the end of the third book in the Stieg Larsson trilogy, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest. I can’t wait for the mystery to unravel, and yet I shall be sorry when it all comes to an end. Unless rumors are true, that a fourth novel was tucked away in a computer somewhere, there will be no sequel, since Larsson died before even the first book was published. That they have become an international phenomenon in so short a time is one of those sneaky, painful ironies that death is known to play with us mortals.

It’s the “something rotten” that’s at the core of mystery. I have loved the genre since boyhood, when I first got hooked on G.K.Chesterton’s Father Brown stories and, a little later I think, Sherlock Holmes. I may have inherited the fascination from my father, who was a great fan of such English originals as Agatha Christie and Ngaio Marsh. Dorothy Sayers’s Lord Peter Wimsey was another favorite, and Leslie Charteris’s The Saint. Great characters, all, indomitable searchers after the truth and avengers of the victims of what the Buddha identified as the “defilements” of the human mind: greed, anger, and delusion.

I cut my teeth on these great writers, and only later discovered their American successors and counterparts, including the inimitable—though often imitated—Raymond Chandler. When I first read his novels, I could have had no idea that I would have ended up in Phillip Marlowe’s (to me, then, exotic) territory. I now live just a few blocks from the hardcore detective’s fictional Hollywood home. It was inevitable, then, that I should try my own hand at the trade, and I did publish a couple of mystery novels back in the 1980s. They met with modest success.

It’s a simple formula, really. Something stinks—most frequently the corpse of some unfortunate victim. The odor catches the nose of one with the curiosity, the dogged determination, the guts, and the smarts needed to get to the bottom of it all and expose the evil-doer(s). In the case of the Larsson novels, the evil is pervasive. Its toxicity reaches from the personal lives of its characters into the major arteries of the national economy, the media, the police and security forces, and the government itself. This is no small stuff. And along the way, Larsson manages to address moral and social issues of urgent current import—sexism and the abuse of women, child trafficking and prostitution, freedom of the press, financial shenanigans, corruption and power-mongering at the highest levels.

The murder mystery, of course, is a metaphor for the great, ultimate mystery of death itself; and all the characters are merely human beings caught up in the mysterious web of mortal life. It is the protagonists who take up the challenge of sorting out good from evil, right from wrong. Their job is to shed light in darkness, to re-establish the equilibrium of a society—or a social circle—upset by the wrongful action of one its members. Thus, Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, has thrust upon him the unwanted task of revealing the truth about his father’s death. And thus, too, the countless “private eyes” in modern and contemporary crime fiction. They stand in for us, for the truth-seeker in each one of us who longs for a just and equitable world.

Our heroes are often of two kinds—the rational Sherlock Holmes, or the intuitive Father Brown. The Larsson books have dual protagonists who, it seems to me, represent those two sides of the brain: the dogged, pragmatic investigative journalist Mikael Blomkvist and the brilliantly intuitive Lisbeth Salander, the “girl with the dragon tattoo,” whose jagged, offbeat personality defies all social norms. It’s their unlikely association that sets out to heal a long-standing and still festering wound that goes deep into the Swedish soul. That their story is a compelling one is evidenced by the stunning sales of books and movie tickets.

I have been writing a good deal this week about the dark side of humanity in books and movies—and there are those, I know, who choose consciously to avoid its representation, particularly in graphic, visual form. I’m wondering at what point violence—and, indeed, sex—become “gratuitous,” in the sense that they lack what the US Supreme Court defined as “redeeming social value.” I myself am squeamish. I can’t stand the sight of blood—real blood, that it—and I’m easily disgusted by the seamier aspects of our physical existence. There are scenes in movies where I’m compelled to avert my eyes. And yet… I recognize some part in myself that is fascinated by these things. Better to say, perhaps, I recognize some part of myself in them.

I am born human. I am not an angel. I deny the dark side of my nature at my own peril, because it is likely to find some way of poisoning my life if I fail to acknowledge it. In the terms the mystery genre sets out, I am both victim and perpetrator: I recognize myself in both. I harbor both innocence and guilt. The genius of the genre, I believe, and the reason bloody murder and mayhem attract us so much, between the pages of a book as much as on the movie screen, is that they are enactments of our deeper selves, cathartic representations of the human soul at its best and worst. We are hungry to see ourselves, hungry to realize who we really are beneath the veneer of our civilized social rules and agreements.

Thank goodness for what Abraham Lincoln called “the better angels of our nature”! Without their restraints, without the conscience they provide us with, we should be in much direr straits than we already are. We see everywhere the results when the worse angels are unleashed. Better to allow them freedom in fictional form, I believe, than out there in the real world, where their damage is inestimable.