A Truly Happy New Year...

For a moment last night as I went to bed, it crossed my mind that today would be the last day of a decade. And then of course I realized that, no, the last day of 2009 would have been the end of the decade, and that the new one would have started on January 1, 2010, now long since past. We are a full year into it.

Still, the thought gave me pause to reflect that the first years of this still new century have not augured well for the progress of humanity--if, by progress, we mean not further economic growth and technological advances but rather movement toward greater happiness for all. It seems that while we are busy marching forward in the former direction, we take just as many steps backward in the latter.

So I have a wish for our human species in the coming year, the second of the second decade of the twenty-first century--and those, let's remember, are only a small handful of the centuries we have been able to count, let alone those eons that passed for our species before counting began! My wish is for greater harmony between us all; for greater compassion, greater understanding, greater tolerance, greater love.

Oh, I know. It's a hoary old wish, and one that is frequently scoffed at by cynics as some kind of sentimental dream. But I'm with John Lennon: I hope some day the scoffers will join us, "and the world will be as one." And I do dare to sense, behind or beneath all the rupture and rage and desperation we are experiencing in the world today, the glimmer of an understanding in the human consciousness that we cannot persist in our current behaviors without wrecking the only planet we have--the planet that we share with countless other beings, great, and small, and miniscule.

Something, somewhere in the depths of consciousness, I am convinced, is shifting. We have evolved and survived thus far, as a species. Surely our minds are capable of further evolution, of further adaptation to ensure the survival of us all. Perhaps, rather than the global caliphate that some are seeking, we will evolve toward a global sangha, a community of humankind where we are all, yes, kind; and where the guiding force will be the ultimate message of the dharma: compassion for all beings. This is my wish.

So... Happy New Year, everybody! May all living beings find true happiness in their lives. May all living beings be free from stress and pain. May all living beings be free from trouble. May all share in the blessings of a life well lived.

Larks

Up late last night. For us. We're larks, not owls. Early to bed, early to rise... This morning, then, I was not very lark-like. A bit drowsy, in fact. It took a long walk in crisp (for Southern California) air to get the blood flowing. But it was a good evening. Good food, good talk, good wine (well, not-bad wine,) good friends. What could be better?

I'm reading two books about life. I have mentioned the first previously: it's the excellent How to Live, Or, A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer, by Sarah Bakewell. I'm excited to find out that my favorite essayist was quite the Buddhist--not in name or religion, of course. This was the 16th century, after all. But in spirit, in the way his mind worked, in the way he approached his writing and his life. On education, for example, Bakewell reports, he believed that "the child should learn to question everything"; and, quoting the master now, "should learn to pass everything through a sieve and lodge nothing in his head on mere authority or trust." I'm looking forward to digging further into this book, and MUST get hold of the Essais. I have not decided, yet, whether to go for an English translation or challenge myself with the French. There is a magic to the original language, especially with a writer like Montaigne. But do I dare...? It would be, after all these years, a serious commitment of time. I'm thinking I could perhaps find a single essay in French online, and give myself a little test.

The second book is the (thus far) wildly entertaining and thoroughly disturbing Life, by Keith Richards--a Christmas gift from Ellie, as the result of a few subtle hints from me. Entertaining because this is the rogue Stone with his tongue firmly in his cheek, cheerfully disrespectful of everything and everyone; and the man writes well (I'm giving him credit for the writing.) The book has an authentic feel to it that makes it an easy and pleasurable read. It's also (thus far) familiar territory for me--the area around London during and immediately after World War II. I, too, remember the visits to the "sweet shop" with the ration coupons you needed to buy candy. Bullseyes, anyone?

Disturbing, though, because of the constant, casual reference to drugs--indeed, an uninhibited celebration of a life seemingly devoted to their use. It's not the legality or the illegality of them that bothers me, nor am I one to make easy condemnations of other people's choices in these matters. But I do harbor judgments about the surrender of the mind to intoxicants and stimulants; perhaps these judgments originate in my own experiences with drugs, back in the 1960s, which were not always happy ones. Remind me to tell you some time about my one experience with LSD! But anyway, what do you think? Am I just being a prude?

I'll probably stop by tomorrow to pass on wishes for the New Year, so I'll refrain for now...

Tibet: The Struggle

In the Shadow of the Buddha weaves two narrative threads together. The first follows the journey of the man whom the current, 14th Dalai Lama once designated "the great protector of the Tibetan nation," Tetron Sogyal, who lived from the latter years of the 19th century into the early years of the 20th; the second is the story of Matteo Pistono, the book's author, in the steps of this master, at the direction of his own teacher, Khenpo Jikme Phuntsok. Together with the better-known Sogyal Rinpoche, Khenpo was one of the two concurrent 20th century reincarnations of Tetron Sogyal; and Sogyal Rinpoche, you'll recall, is the author of the justly celebrated and influential Tibetan Book of Living and Dying.

Does this sound complicated? Be ready for the infinitely mysterious, alluring, and disturbing world of Tibetan Buddhism. The story's roots go back much further, to the vajrayana master Padmasambhala, the "Father of Tibetan Buddhism" who, in the 8th century established the religion and went about the country concealing "treasure teachings" in remote locations, to be revealed across the centuries at an appropriate moment by those gifted with special powers--among them, Tetron Sogyal. Under the threat of invasion and occupation since the late 19th century by, among others, Britain, Russia, and China, tiny--and virtually defenseless--Tibet has been a turmoil of political intrigue and violent uprising, mixed in with religious fervor and centuries-old ritual.

Enter, in the late 20th century, our guide Matteo Pistono, a native of the American West brought up with a conscience that enjoined him to engage in social activism, who found in the Buddhist dharma a meaningful call to the service of his fellow beings. Drawn to Tibet--or rather, directed there by his influential teachers--he finds himself engaged in a personal pilgrimage, an inner search conducted in meditation practice and prolonged solitary retreats; and, at the same time, in the Tibetan struggle against the brutal Chinese occupiers. Part spy, part warrior, part courier, he acts as a go-between for the exiled Dalai Lama with monastic and secular leaders inside the country. The latter role is an often dangerous adventure under the suspicious and watchful eye of the omnipresent occupying Chinese forces; Pistono's major purpose is to bring documentary and photographic evidence of Chinese abuses to political leaders in the West--a risky undertaking in a time of unremitting tyranny.

These are the bare bones. The flesh is in the maze of intrigue, the narrow escapes, the perilous journeys on foot, horseback, motorcycle or jittery jeep; it's in the (sometimes confusing) cast of saints, mystics and hermits, the teachers and spiritual leaders we encounter in dizzying array from page to page; it's in the majestic landscapes of Tibet and the hearing rooms of Washington, DC, the remote caves and the magnificently decorated temples--the former glory of the "Land of Snows"; it's in the observation of esoteric traditions and prayers, the oracles and seers, the venerated ritual objects and the offerings to protective deities. A rich tapestry, indeed, a panoply in which this unique religion amazes and, at times, confounds the lay reader like myself.

The 14th Dalai Lama has become the major voice for Buddhism in the world today. Part politician and diplomat, part spiritual leader, he speaks for a particular, esoteric branch of Buddhism that is perhaps too easily mistaken for the larger picture. The mysticism, the ceremony and ritual of Tibetan Buddhism are not to everyone's taste--and, I feel obliged to add, not to mine. This does not mean, of course, that they are not authentically fascinating and rich with history and human significance. And the fundamental teaching of the dharma is common to Buddhism in all its manifestations: that we human beings have within us the ability to find happiness in our lives, no matter the social or political circumstances; and that we will not find that happiness without compassion for all our fellow beings. As Pistono writes, toward the end of his compelling narrative:

In politics, ultimately, there are no winners, for every politician will die and every government will fall--the wise, the durable question is not if a political system will survive, but when will it fall? Because everything is impermanent, including politicians and their governments, we have a responsibility to effect change that will bring about conditions right now for others to find contentment and happiness.

And surely there are few among us who would quarrel with that. At the same time, who could fail to be moved by the tragedy of this beautiful country and the life-and-death struggle for the survival of its religion, its people and their customs? May Pistono's story prove an important reminder to the conscience of the world. Long live Tibet!

Mistaken Identity

Speaking of Nazis... is there anything we can't laugh about?

I was writing, yesterday, about the movie documenting the escape of Jewish children from Nazi Germany--and not only Germany, in fact, also from other Nazi-occupied territories--via the Kindertransport. There were the familiar scenes in the documentary, with storm troopers brutally attacking Jews in city streets, painting racist epithets on the store front windows of Jewish businesses, throwing bricks through the glass, and dragging Jews from their houses for transportation to concentration camps. I wept.

Last night I watched another movie. It had scenes with Nazi storm troopers brutally attacking Jews in city streets, painting racist epithets on the store front windows of Jewish businesses, throwing bricks through the glass, and dragging Jews from their houses for transportation to concentration camps. And I was in fits of laughter.

Last night's film, of course, was The Great Dictator, the Charlie Chaplin classic from 1940...

... in which Chaplin plays the dual roles of Adenoid Hynkel, the ruthless dictator and a poor Jewish barber, a dead ringer for the "Fuehrer." It is years since I last saw the film, and I had forgotten how irresistibly funny it is. The strategy is mockery by slapstick. The brutality of the troopers who march under the banner of the Double Cross is laughable when they're presented as mindless and incompetent, easy targets for the handily wielded skillet or the well-flung pie. The target of the parody is, of course, far from funny--and is never out of sight. The film is also a devastating indictment of Hitler, his henchmen (in the movie, Field Marshall Herring and Reichsminister Garbitsch) and those who were so easily led into following their vile ideology. That it was made in 1940, before the worst of the atrocities was revealed, makes it all the more amazing.

Amazing, too, is Chaplin's performance--not only the extended tour de force parodies of the Hitler speeches, the callous ruthlessness, the laugh-in-the-aisles fits of rage. These are indeed splendid. What's striking, though--and the source, I think, of the powerful emotion his acting evokes--is his ability to use his body as a medium of expression. The famous scene, for example, where Hynkel toys with the globe balloon, bouncing it genially high into the air with a flick of the heel and catching it with arrogant grace, is nothing less than accomplished ballet; as is the street scene with the little barber where, mistakenly beaned by a piece of heavy cookware, he staggers off into an intricate, dazed little dance up and down the sidewalk and over the curb (an inspiration, I wonder, for the later Gene Kelly scene in "Singing in the Rain"?) These scenes are justly praised, but almost every frame of the film seems choreographed with equal poise and intention. It's beautiful to watch.

There is, too, a good deal of Chaplin sentiment in the movie. There is the starry-eyed, impossible love interest--and a hilarious scene where the besotted barber, with his enamorata, Hannah, in his chair, forgets himself and starts to soap her chin ready for the shave. And, at the end, with Hynkel sent off mistakenly to the camps by his own storm troopers, the little barber is mistaken for him and escorted to the podium at a vast Nueremberg-style rally; finding courage and inspiration in his heart, he surprises the world with a speech that begs for peace and brotherhood, gentleness and love among people of all races...

The movie ends on this note, with Hannah in a bucolic setting, listening to the sound of her little barber's voice on the radio, her eyes aglow with love and adulation.

Okay, it would have been better if history had come up with the same conclusion. It didn't. Tragically. But it was still good to laugh. And it felt strange to be laughing about the same things I had wept about the night before! What a curious bundle of contradictions we human beings are...

Kindertransport

We drove down yesterday, Boxing Day, to visit Ellie's sister in her beautiful new home in San Diego. Susie has become a loyal reader of The Buddha Diaries, so she knows more about our unfolding lives than we do about hers, and it was a good moment to catch up and a pleasure to find her so comfortably installed. It was a family event, too: our daughter made the trip with us, and Susie's daughter was also on hand, which made for an interesting mother-daughter dynamic over lunch. The talk, unsurprisingly, was about family relationships...

Then in the evening, back at home in Laguna Beach, we watched Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories from the Kindertransport...

... the beautiful and moving documentary about the Jewish children who were permitted to escape Nazi Germany, mostly to England, in the days immediately preceding World War II. Relatively, there were just a small number of them--a few thousand, when compared to the estimated 1,500,000 whose lives ended brutally in the camps; and there are today a dwindling number of survivors. A child born in 1930 would now, of course, be 90 years old. A handful of them, though, were interviewed for the documentary, and their stories--along with the montage of old photographs, documents, and film clips--were heart-breaking. You think you have seen it all and then new dreadful episodes appear, new stories of inhumanity from that bleak period.

Those who made it out of Germany were the lucky ones. The bureaucracy involved was in itself a nightmare: it required not only the permission of the Nazis, but also affidavits from the host countries, advance assurances of financial support, visas, and a host of other red tape. The US Congress debated the issue as to whether the children would be allowed to enter the United States and voted, in its wisdom, against their immigration. One of the reasons disgracefully offered was that it wold be "against the law of God" to allow them to enter the country without their parents. Seriously. As though the law of God countenanced their murder. Some things never change, and apparently the heart of the US Congress is one of them.

For those who made it to the Kindertransport trains leaving Germany at the last hour, good fortune was tempered by the tragedy of separation from their parents. The scenes, recalled by survivors and shown in grainy black and white film clips, were heart-rending for both parents and children. One father, unable to let his little daughter go, dragged her out from the window of a departing train--condemneding her to the misery of years in concentration camps. She survived, only to struggle with the fearful task of having to forgive her father for his action. The promises that this was only a temporary arrangement, that the storm would soon blow over and that families would be reunited, must have sounded hollow even to those who could not yet bring themselves to believe in the horror to ensue. The goodbyes, they knew, or must have suspected in the hearts, were in many cases final.

But the reason these stories are so affecting is more broadly significant, I believe, than the history of Nazi Germany and its treatment of the Jews--though that is indeed the poignant and peculiarly loathsome context. The stories speak to us, though, of something with which every human being is familiar, whether consciously or not, and that is the wound of separation. We bring with us into this world the experience and expectation of one-ness; perhaps, who knows, we return to it once we have lived out our human life. Between birth and death, however, sooner or later--and usually during early childhood--we experience separation. For myself, memorably, it was most dramatically the time when I was sent away to school. It came for my sister at a cruelly young age, when she was taken off with scarlet fever as barely a toddler to an isolation ward. For Ellie and her sister, with the separation of their parents. It is the stuff of pain for all of us, the cause of suffering that some of us carry with us for a lifetime.

I'm happy to report that, with some regrettable exceptions, the children from Germany were treated well in England--though, some noted, with the kind of British reserve that would seem unfriendly to one from more emotionally expressive European Jewish stock! I have a personal connection with the Kindertransport, which made the film of special interest to me: one of the children came to live for a while at my parents' home in Bedfordshire. I did not know him well at the time, because we met only during school holidays. But I do know that my father was an important inspiration in his life. Whether before the war--as many families did in the hope of avoiding persecution--or after, he converted to Christianity and thanks in part to my father's influence, he became a devout, practicing Christian in his later life. He was reunited with his parents after the war, and lives to this day in Chicago.

Which brings me back to our lunch-time conversation. As we talked about our sometimes uneasy, judgmental relationship with the next generation, I could not help but notice to what extent we were each talking out of our own separation wound, our own sense of loss and our need to rediscover or maintain connection with those we love. As I was saying to my sister this morning--she called via Skype as I was starting to write this entry--I am grateful to what I have learned from the dharma about my ability to reconnect with that sense of original one-ness by examining the inner wounds that cause me suffering and, by seeing them for what they are, to begin to let them go.

Merry, Merry...

George poses in a borrowed "Ho, Ho, Ho!" jacket with scant tolerance for the indignity...

Despite which, he joins us in sending good wishes to all.

And here's the Buddhist Christmas poem I wrote for Ellie:

Sometimes…

... when you forget (and here,

by “you” I mean not just

you, but you and me and

everyone;) when you

forget to remember

who you think you are

and what you think, and

what you think you know,

and what you think

you need; when you

leave thought behind

and words give way

to silence; and when

silence yields in turn

to measureless, spacious

emptiness; then, some-

times the mind is freed

from rage and fear

and grief, expanding

into the great solace

and the possibility of joy.

(For Ellie, at Christmas,

and for all good friends,

with love)

A Book Review: "Choosing to Be"

We receive our life-lessons in often less than comfortable or welcome ways. A good part of our suffering is created by the need we develop early on in life to “be someone”—often at the unwitting urging of our parents, if not that of our social conditioning. We may take years to build an identity (well, several of them, really) in order to satisfy that inner need. And then that identity becomes who we are, a role we unthinkingly act out until something comes along and hits us in the gut; by which time it is so hardened as a “reality” that it is difficult or impossible shake without further suffering.

Kat Tansey’s Choosing to Be: Lessons in Living from a Feline Zen Master (Findhorn Press, 2010) opens at just such a moment of painful realization. A successful woman thus far in her life in the business world, she was brought low by chronic fatigue syndrome and debilitating depression, and the identity by which she had defined herself until that moment imploded. In her first chapter, “Deciding to Stay,” we find her desperately searching for some reason not to end the agony by taking her own life. She begins to find it in The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, picked at random—no, of course not at random!—from her bookshelf; and in the subsequent conversation she engages with her Maine Coon cat, Poohbear Degoonacoon, the Zen master of her title.

This is the beginning of the journey that her book describes. It proceeds in the form of a personal narrative and a continuing dialogue with Poohbear, in which Kat (I’ll call her by her name, because this is an intimately personal book) slowly discovers for herself the healing potential of the Buddhist path of meditation and compassion.

Let’s get the cat thing out of the way, because it brings immediately to mind the specter of cute animal/people stories. Well, no. Dispel that notion. Poohbear—his name notwithstanding—has all the gravitas of the personal guru that he is for Kat. He does not do cute, nor would she allow it. Even the playful kitten, Catzenbear, who is brought in as a companion for the older cat, does not succeed in knocking him off his wisdom-center. The alter ego for the appropriately-named Kat, he speaks for her own innate wisdom, for the “Buddha mind” that opens in her as she begins to explore and acknowledge the limitations of the “ordinary mind” whose games have become unbearable.

Put simply, "Choosing to Be" is the story of one woman’s search for happiness. Kat is surprised, at first, by her discovery of the Buddha and his promise that there is an end to suffering if we go about seeking it in the right way. With Poohbear's guidance—and soon also that of human teachers, Jason Siff and his wife, Jacquelin, of the Skillful Meditation Project—she develops a meditation practice and learns to watch her mind in action—frenetic action, to begin with!—and to tame its reactive patterns. She learns to recognize the hindrances, including the inner anger and sense of loss. When they come along to distract her, she digs persistently behind and underneath them, and discovers that these too can be overcome by the practice of patient, persistent mindfulness and awareness.

The useful thing about Kat’s book is that it documents each step along the way with enormous and compassionate attention to the detail of what is happening in her own mind. This is not a how-to book, like so many that preach the virtues of meditation. There is no instruction here—although there’s much to be learned. It’s an “essay” in the true sense of that word—an attempt, with words, to capture and describe an intensely human experience in all its transience and subtlety. It’s also the celebration of a struggle with the ego and its clinging habits, and of the discovery of joy that results from working through that struggle to attain a measure of wisdom. In this, Kat’s book offers us the model of a journey from which we can all take solace and inspiration as we pursue our own.

Laguna Beach Flooding

We made page A22 of the New York Times this morning... Here's the picture to prove it--our theater on Pacific Coast Highway.

Not a Revolutionary

Okay, here I go again. I persist (apologies for the commercial!) in my support for Barack Obama. I know that it's a point on which I and many of my liberal/progressive friends disagree, but I believe that I will be vindicated in the long run.

We know now, two years into his first term, that he is no revolutionary. That, I think, is what we were hoping for; that is what many of us believe that we were promised. We took the word "change" he reiterated so frequently during the campaign and made of it what we wanted; what we wanted was radical, revolutionary change. We wanted--I include myself--comeuppance for the Republicans, a full repudiation of all the misconceived and misconducted policies of George W. Bush. We wanted, as the Tea Party-ers are fond of saying, to take our country back. We wanted an end to war. We wanted a reversal of what we saw to be the corporate takeover of this nation, of dishonesty and cheating at the highest levels of the financial industry, of the exploitation and co-option of our government and politics by the rich. We wanted an immediate and irreversible turnaround, and that was what we heard when we were promised change.

Looking back on it, I realize how much I projected on this one man, Obama. There were political realities that I forgot--political realities that had to do not just with "Washington" and "Republicans," but with the readiness of vast numbers of my fellow-countrymen and women to accept the kind of change that I myself believed in. America was not--is not--ready for a revolution. So it was not only a disastrous legacy that he inherited on all fronts from his predecessor--two wars, an economy in tatters, a deeply divided and toxic political climate--it was also a country whose proclivities were far more conservative than my own, or those of almost everyone I know. I find it hard to acknowledge that there are those who disagree with my enlightened views, but regrettably it is so.

So, no revolution. Too bad. But the fact remains that Obama has already achieved, or at least addressed--in the view of a no less well-credentialled progressive than Rachel Madow, expressed on a morning network show today--about 85 percent of what he promised during the campaign. There's no doubt that a significant part of his agenda remains unaddressed, notably Guantanamo, immigration and, yes, those Bush tax cuts for the wealthy. And more. But I again agree with Madow, that those issues have not been abandoned or betrayed. The President has made it clear that there was some nose-holding to be done in making the compromises that he made; and that those tax cuts will need to be revisited in the next two years.

I'm glad that Obama managed to fly off to Hawaii for his family Christmas with a couple of victories behind him. I wish him well. I admire his courage, his remarkable calm, his humor. I continue to believe that there is method and vision for the future in his measured, accommodating approach, and that we will continue to move forward with hard-won changes in the direction of this country. I personally wish that it could happen faster, more dramatically, without compromise. But this is a massive and unwieldy ship we sail in, in these perilous times. It will take time and patience to set it back on course.

And More Rain...

More than 3.6 inches of it, last night alone. We woke to the news that downtown Laguna Beach was under 3 - 4 feet of water. The canyon was closed. The newspaper (again, for the third day in a row, despite repeated pleas, was not delivered.)

Horrors! Can you imagine the human misery!

Seriously, we were lucky, of course. Just a small leak in Ellie's studio. I managed to mop up the water with the aid of just a few beach towels.

Determined not to be outdone by the weather, we set off in search of a replacement for our missing New York Times. The village was out of the question, so we drove south at risk of life and limb, and eventually found a Starbucks on Crown Valley Parkway. NYT in hand, we found the sky clearing as we drove back north toward the village, so we decided to see how close we could get to downtown before the streets were closed; and in fact found a parking place just a couple of blocks from the main street, Forest Avenue.

The water, by this time, had subsided, but there was clear evidence of its power, flowing down the canyon to the ocean. Here's a couple of shots of the main shopping street:

Here's a view of the Pacific Coast Highway, closed by the mud flows:

The boardwalk, with the main life guard station:

The Pacific Ocean, where the runoff from the canyon creek runs through the main beach:

The High School track:

And the bottom of our own street, also blocked by mud. A few cars, we were told, had been swept down the hill.

So that was our adventure for the day. The skies are clearing now. The sun is breaking through the clouds. Hope you're dryer than we are!

Please note...

... this guest post at Sweep the Dust, Push the Dirt.

Filbuster

Please consider joining me in signing the Daily Kos petition to end misuse of the filibuster in the US Senate. This is a much needed initiative, about which I wrote in The Buddha Diaries just the other day. Thanks!

More Rain

It keeps coming. All day yesterday, all night, and still this morning--with no sign of letting up. The weather forecast says it will continue all day tomorrow. I cannot remember such an event here in Southern California.

I notice that the rain brings out the worry-er in me. I worry about leaks. We ventured out yesterday to check on Ellie's studio down in what used to be the garage. Long-time readers will recall that we have had floods down there in the past, and that our contractor has come up with a variety of solutions. The sump pump seems to be working. We hear it kick in regularly as the pit fills with water; it pumps the excess out from under the house and spews it down the brick steps out in front. So that's fine.

The other problem has been the leakage from the back of the studio. It drains down underground from the back patio and seeps out through the packed dirt that supports the pump for the jacuzzi. Our contractor, most recently, laid a concrete floor and a drain that should have directed the water down to the street, but yesterday we noticed a small amount of seepage circumventing the concrete and gathering at the far end of the studio floor. I cleaned out some mud from around the drain last night, but am worried that the contractor's fix is not working as we had hoped. I have yet to go down this morning to check things out.

My big concern is that the water is eating away at the dirt foundation below the patio (see yesterday's picture) and that the whole substructure will eventually give way. So the rain gives me something to worry about, and my mind has a field day with the worry. I feel the physical effects in the gut, where they seem to gnaw at the stomach lining from the inside. Behind this is the mental preoccupation, a constant low-grade fear that something is not quite right, that something terrible is about to happen.

(Have you heard of the ARkStorm disaster scenario--so named after Noah's mythical vessel? Something else for Californians to worry about, next to the Big One. It's literally an airborne atmospheric river driving across the Pacific from the west, an unstoppable flow of rainstorms that could cause as much damage as a San Andreas earthquake--more, in fact, according to seismic and geophysical expert Dr. Lucy Jones of CalTech, whom we saw interviewed yesterday in the course of a television weather report. The last such event was in 1861-62, when it rained for 45 consecutive days. The next ARkStorm could happen any time...)

So this morning's sit was about the worry. In fact, it was the worry. I spent the entire time trying to identify it, recognize it for what it was, acknowledge that there was nothing I could do about it at that moment, and bring the attention back to the breath. With the sound of the rain drumming down on the roof, the water flooding down the hill outside, the sump pump gearing up to do its work, that was no small task...

Rain

We are down in Laguna Beach for the holidays. This picture was taken this morning early (I-Phone) to show the results of two days of pretty much solid rain in Southern California. It actually looks much wetter than the picture might suggest. I gather there is much more to come in the course of the coming week. Still...

We aren't allowed to feel sorry for ourselves. I spoke to my sister this morning: there's a foot of snow in Cirencester, where she lives in the Cotswolds. The images we've been seeing on the TV screen of European cities and airports are dramatic evidence of the havoc being created by the weather there. Likewise a big part of the United States. My sister thinks it's Nature getting back at us. And still we have the climate-change deniers in Washington paralyzing any serious discussion, let alone the need to take action; and still we have countries throughout the world--most recently at the conference in Mexico--talking to a standstill. Woe is us...

I have been struggling with Skype. I signed up a couple of years ago, but abandoned it after a couple of conversations with the grandchildren in England. We had not mastered the art of using the medium, and the result was frustration and confusion. We also found the visual effect distracting: the placement of the camera at the top edge of the computer means that, if you're looking at the other person on the screen--and they at you, on theirs--everyone is looking down, rather than at each other. Still, at my sister's urging, I managed to get the application working again this morning, and the three of us had a fine conversation, with a cameo role for George. Now we're planning to make more use of its potential.

I'm halfway through a new book, and will be writing more about it soon. In case you're looking for a wonderful Christmas present for a friend who's contemplating a meditation practice, let me recommend it right away. It's called Choosing to Be, by Kat Tansey. The subtitle is "Lessons in Living from a Feline Zen Master," and it's about the teaching wisdom of the author's Maine Coon cat. Should your mind jump to "cute," let me promise you: not the least bit cute. A beautifully written, deeply felt, throughly believable conversation between human and cat about the difficulties we humans face in our daily lives, and the wonderful solace afforded by the Buddhist teachings about meditation.

The Essayist

I was delighted to see, in yesterday's New York Times, this Conversation Across Centuries With the Father of All Bloggers, by Patricia Cohen. The "father of all bloggers" is, of course, Michel de Montaigne, the sixteenth century master of the essay. It's true that we all walk in his shoes. Or rather, we stumble along as best we can in shoes that are way too elegant for most of us. It's to him, in good part, that I owe my love of this particular literary form.

I first read Montaigne when I was a student at Cambridge, now more than fifty years ago. His Essais, published in 1580, were required reading for my degree in French Language and Literature, and I'm sure that I treated them with the lofty disregard of the typical undergraduate--well, at least the lazy ones, amongst whose number I must surely have been counted. But something must have sunk into my numb skull, because I have thought about them ever since. Just recently, I formed the intention to re-read them (hoping, now that my French is so rusty, to be able to find a good English translation. Any ideas?) thanks to a generous review of my book Persist: In Praise of the Creative Spirit in a World Gone Mad With Commerce--a review in which James Scarborough, the author, was kind (rash?) enough to mention me in the same breath as the master.

I have not yet re-read them. I have not even laid my hands on a copy of the book, either in French or English. I hereby promise myself that I will do so.

Here's the thing about Montaigne: aside from being a writer of supreme elegance, who manages to say what needs to be said with absolute precision and economy, he had the courage to write about... himself! All of his essays are just that, "attempts" to come to terms with himself, his ideas, and the world around him. As I remember them they constitute, all 107 of them, a scrupulously honest examination of the contents of his mind, an observation of the way it worked, its byways as well as its highways. Nothing was so insignificant as to escape his notice; whatever he noticed became subject matter for his writing; and his writing was not simply his analytical tool, it was itself the process. He is the prime example of one who practiced my favorite, often repeated adage as a writer: How do I know what I think 'til I see what I say

So it's good to see this great writer back in the swim of things after more than four centuries, acknowledged for his 16th century contribution to the 21st. It's clear that I now have another book to buy and read--the book that is the subject of this article: Sarah Bakewell's How to Live. I'll report back when I've had the chance to fulfill both promises to myself.

The King's Speech

I myself heard the King speak, on several occasions. I remember just how important his speech was to us at Christmas each year--at least among our family and friends--during the years of real hardship in England, both during and after World War II. No matter what else might be happening, the radio was switched on when it was time for the speech, and we all gathered around it in respectful silence. (I'm trying to remember what our radio looked like, or where it was in the house, but here my memory fails me. My sister will remind me if the rest are imagined rather than real recollections.) We had a big household. The old Rectory in which we lived during the war years had more than enough room for our family of four, so we housed a continuing parade of billettees and refugees, some from Bletchley Park (of "Enigma" machine fame,) some from the local RAF station down the hill at Cranfield.

The King's speech answered to our need for reassurance, continuity, the survival of social order in a time of chaos. By today's standards, the sound quality was appalling. I recall the voice as thin across the airwaves, and disrupted with static. I recall its hesitations, the lasting evidence of that stammer that plagued the King's early years, as Duke of York, and clearly caused him so much agony and self-doubt. Or was it rather the result of those qualities? The King's voice was an annual reminder of the determination and courage needed to see our country through the London Blitz, the air raids, the daily reports of the war's progress on the BBC. Quite aside from the political and the military leaders, the Churchills and the Montys, we needed a strong moral and spiritual core, and it fell principally upon this man to provide it.

So I brought a great deal of personal emotional history to the movie, The King's Speech, which makes it unsurprising that I was profoundly moved. On the one hand, it was about this one man, Bertie's struggle with his personal demons, the result of a childhood traumatized by cold, impersonal relations with his parents, the dread fear of a strict, unbending father, the painful imperative to wear leg irons, day and night, as a cure for "knock knees," and a social code that instilled a pitiless, unrelenting sense of duty. The famous stammer originated in this childhood, perhaps as a strategy for self-protection, a way to hide. It took an immense amount of inner resolve and courage to overcome it, and to fulfill the role that fell on his reluctant shoulders. Not looking much like George...

... the actor Colin Firth managed to channel the spirit of the man, the conflict between his inner "Bertie" and the "George" he was required to be, between self-doubt and duty, natural self-deprecation and disciplined acceptance of the dignity and pomp required by the role he was given to play.

I have no way to judge the historical accuracy of the film's portrayal of the relationship between the King and the commoner who helped him overcome that crippling speech impairment, but I had little trouble in accepting its dramatic propriety. Born to privilege and the expectation of deference, the Duke, and later King would have found it hard to trust himself to the mercies of a man who started out, after all, as something of a charlatan: Lionel Logue, an out-of-work actor from the Commonwealth (Australia) who was a self-taught speech therapist with neither qualifications nor credentials. Geoffrey Rush's performance in the role was, I thought, pitch perfectly in balance with Colin Firth's; Logue, too--portrayed here as a natural-born, ego-driven eccentric--had work to do in order to come to a working relationship, and finally a friendship with his royal client.

Were there gaps in this narrative, I wonder, that I filled in from my own background, my own experience of the war, my own childhood impressions of the characters involved? I'm sure. I brought with me some of that sense of awe I felt as a child for the King, that awareness of the historical import of the moment, the dangers faced and the courage that was needed to face them. To me, it was a matter of faith that this king was a great man, a man with the awesome responsibility of a national destiny on his shoulders. I recall today the sense of loss when he died, that feeling that someone irreplaceable had left us, leaving a deep and terrible void for his young daughter to fill. I was moved, too, watching this movie, to be reminded of the nobility of a true man of service; he did not ask for the power he held in his hands, did not want it, and yet devoted his life to the performance of an office that required everything he had to give. His service was untainted by ambition or personal gain. As they say, we do not make them like that any more.

I thought this was a terrific movie--poignant, intelligent, well-paced, at times even riotously funny. Its "R" rating is a travesty, resulting from the scenes where Logue urges his royal client to release his voice--as well as his inner reserves of socially unacceptable rage--in torrents of repeated curse words. The fact that the words come from the mouth of a man of exemplary integrity seems to have escaped the literal-minded censors. Do they believe their children have not heard these words a thousand times in the school yard? Would they not wish them to find inspiration in this model of courageous and self-sacrificing service? We are painfully lacking in such role models in the world today. Nobility of character--something quite different from unearned, "noble" heritage--is something that gets easily overlooked in the rush for power, wealth and fame. I say, let the children see it. The film has something of great value to be taught, not only about those who control the destiny of nations, but also about the humbling responsibility each one us bears toward our fellow beings.

Censorship: Coast to Coast

Here's the question: are we returning to the repressive days of Joe McCarthy? I read today in Nicholas D. Kristof's column in the New York Times of the Republican plan for a congressional committee to investigate American Muslims. Like the Reds back in the 1950s, "they" are everywhere, spying on us and infiltrating our government in their effort to sabotage the American way of life. We must protect ourselves against our internal enemies at all costs...

Artists, of course, are thrust unwillingly into the front line of today's cultural battle, prime targets for the kind of philistine paranoia that characterized the shameful McCarthy era. Two current headline stories remind us that the Constitution--with its protection of freedom of speech--is wielded as a weapon by the righteous right only when it suits their purposes. In Washington, DC, the National Portrait Gallery of the Smithsonian Institute has capitulated to conservative religious and political pressure, removing from its current exhibition a videotape by David Wojnarowicz entitled "A Fire in My Belly" (see it here.) The video includes a sequence with ants crawling over the image of a crucified Christ...

Less frequently mentioned is the video's brief but explicit glimpse of male masturbation, which must surely be equally offensive to the censorially-inclined. The Smithsonian yielded to threats from newly influential Republicans to withdraw its federal funds.

Meanwhile on the left coast, the Museum of Contemporary Art saw fit to white-out a mural by the Italian artist Blu, commissioned as a part of their current "Art in the Street" exhibit. The piece, painted on the north wall of the museum's Geffen Contemporary building, depicted rows of coffins, draped not with the American flag but with dollar bills.

Jeffrey Deitch, recently recruited from the commercial gallery world as MOCA's Director, defended the removal on the grounds of the mural's "insensitivity" to a neighborhood the includes a Veterans Affairs hospital and a war memorial to Japanese American soldiers. The museum seems to have conveniently forgotten that what happens "in the street" is usually not of comfort to those who wish to be reassured that all is well with the world.

It was always my own understanding that art was supposed to challenge my assumptions, not to confirm them. My own defection, back in the early 1970s, from writing poetry to writing about art was sparked by an exhibition which totally offended my sense of propriety and my understanding of what art was supposed to look like. So much so that I was unable to get it out of my mind, and I resorted to my usual way of dealing with those things that upset me: I wrote about it. Artists--especially those who choose to address issue of urgent social relevance--may prod uncomfortably at our collective conscience, and ask us to contemplate those things we would much rather avoid. Such is the case with both Wojnarowizc, working at the height of the AIDS epidemic; and Blu, at a time when this country is engaged in the tragedy of yet another futile war.

But the sad truth, I think--as Blu suggests in his mural--is that money is king. What is true of wars is true also of the art world. Out for survival and dependent in part on government support, in part on the charitable donations of the very wealthy to assure it, museums these days recognize on which side their bread is buttered. Museum boards and directors bow to masters whose interests are generally economic rather than aesthetic; they need the next blockbuster show and the sponsorship that makes it possible, and since controversy is the enemy of monied interests, it must also be the enemy of the museum.

Money--and power. The Republican agenda, it seems to me, is primarily about getting power and holding on to it at all costs. If that involves cow-towing to the Catholic church's objection to a ten-second sequence in an artist's video in a museum exhibition, so be it. If it comes down to a choice between pandering to prudes and bigots and defending the Constitution to which they loudly proclaim their unswerving allegiance... sorry, no choice. If it's a matter of promoting xenophobia or targeting a currently unpopular minority in order to prove their patriotic credentials, bring it on. It's all money in the bank--whether real or metaphorical.

I'm wondering, now that the Warhol Foundation has also threatened with withdraw financial support, which threat will prove more persuasive to the Smithsonian authorities? But I guess, sadly, that it's no contest. The threat from our government carries with it, also, the dread prospect of... investigative hearings. Back to old Joe.

Filibuster

I note that the congressional approval rating is now down to 13 percent, a new historic low in the Gallup poll. Does it not seem somehow discordant, that Americans voted just a month ago to make a significant change and now seem more disenchanted than ever? The electorate has, absurdly, voted itself into a corner from which there seems to be no escape.

Can we imagine that things will be different in January, when the change is actually realized? I tend to think not. My best hope, however, is that January 5 will herald a change, with senators like Tom Harkin and Tom Udall (two Toms!) working to implement one of those arcane procedural rules that might serve to undermine the currently crippling filibuster in the US Senate. Sam Stein writes in the Huffington Post:

Essentially, that path to reform requires Vice President Joe Biden -- who supports weakening the filibuster -- to rule on the first day of the next session that the Senate has the authority to write its own rules. Republicans, presumably, would immediately move to object, but Democrats could then move to table the objection, setting up a key up-or-down vote. If 50 Democrats voted to table the objection, the Senate would then move to a vote on a new set of rules, which could be approved by a simple majority.

Changing the rules would not, of course, end Republican obstructionism, or stall right-wing policy initiatives, or put an end to the tyranny of the rich. But it would hopefully return some vestige of power to the majority and open the door to some effective decision-making.

Would this country then be able to get some of its business done? I don't know. But things could scarcely be any worse than they are right now.

A Riot

Last night, Ellie and I hosted the last of our artists' group sessions for the year. Intending to end up on a light note, we decided to play the recent Colbert Report interview with Steve Martin, poking fun at the contemporary art world with a delicious parody of pretentious artspeak; and Colbert's follow-up the next day with William Wegman, the artist whose Weimaraners have been celebrity dogs for decades. For good measure, I read this hilarious send-up of the annual brag letter that HeartinSanFrancisco posted on her blog, Guilty With an Explanation the other day. We hope she doesn't mind. If it has not yet come your way, take my word for it: it's one of the funniest things I've read all year. Last night, it brought the house down... Acknowledged, with thanks!

Rebel Buddha

I have been reading Rebel Buddha: On the Road to Freedom by Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche. It's a relatively short book, but a dense one; and it provides an excellent guide to anyone choosing the Buddhist path to awakening--or contemplating that choice. It's clear that Ponlop Rinpoche believes in our ability to reach that goal if we diligently follow the promptings of the "rebel buddha" he refers to in his title--the enlightened nature that is our birthright, but which we are too often content to leave hidden behind layers of ego-driven delusion. It is our inner rebel who reminds us of the responsibility to question and test everything from personal experience to the cultural assumptions that stand between us and a clear understanding of ourselves, the world, and our place in it.

There are, frankly, easier introductions and guides than this one. The book eschews the facile "how-tos" that characterize so much of what is on the bookstore shelves these days. Based on the Rinpoche's live dharma talks, it is a serious, thoughtful, thorough-going examination of the steps needed to free the mind from its own fabrications about our selves and the nature of the reality in which we live. It identifies, step by step, the sometimes convoluted knots that keep us tied up in confusion--including, especially, those we do not wish to see; and it demonstrates, step by step, the kind of sound, clear-sighted analysis that allows them to be loosened and, eventually, untied.

They are many, and tricky, as those who have followed this path with any degree of seriousness for even a little way will know. Chief among them is the ego, that sense of self that is at once wonderfully seductive and powerfully persuasive. It is no small task to take apart the many identities we create for ourselves and to break through the armor with which we protect them, and not for the faint-hearted. By the same token, to recognize both our treasured desires and our aversions as equal obstacles to the freedom that we seek is a challenge that is not soon and not easily overcome. It takes the kind of unsparing self-examination that Ponlop Rinpoche prescribes to unmask them, evaluate them, and let them go.

Given the Tibetan tradition from which the author comes, it is gratifying to this Theravadan reader to discover, toward the end of the book, that the Rinpoche is ready to extend his rebellion even to the religious teachings and the cultural heritage of his own branch of Buddhism. If I read him right, such trappings of religion may also be suspect as constructs of the clinging mind, and are therefore no less subject to our scrupulous examination, and no less necessary to let go. Discussing the relatively recent, sometimes clumsy embrace of Buddhism in the West, he argues that attachment to our own cultural traditions is equally open to challenge here, and that the true heart of the Buddha's teachings can take root anywhere where the "rebel" has the commitment to go the whole distance, regardless of what must be left behind along the way.

A Question

Does anyone have any wisdom/insight on the relative benefits of Blogger and Wordpress? Anyone with any experience to share? I have been with Blogger since I started, in 2004; but have heard suggestions that Wordpress offers more bells and whistles. Are they worth it? Has anyone made the switch? Is it complicated? Worth the time? I'd really appreciate feedback.

Oh, and for your viewing pleasure, another delectable photograph, just pirated from Jean, at Tasting Rhubarb... For a better, larger image, please go there.

Kirk Pedersen: Urban Asian Series

The cover images of Kirk Pedersen’s new, handsomely-boxed two-volume photographic publication, “Urban Asia” and “Tradeoffs,” from his Urban Asian Series, offer a striking study in contrasts. It’s a contrast that suggests the dominant theme of the entire collection: urban Asia as the meeting ground between our global past and future, a visually compelling metaphor for the frenzied activity, uncertainty and angst that grip the world at the start of the twenty-first century.

The cover image of “Urban Asia”...

... is the detail of what appears to be a decaying wooden fence, its white paint peeling, its sparse fragments of old notices stripped, frayed and tearing away from their background. The texture is painterly, the mood lyrical, elegiac. It is all upfront, open, exposed. As a “remembrance of things past,” it asks for our quiet contemplation. The cover of “Tradeoffs,” by contrast...

... speaks of an uneasy future. It is jazzy, energetic. The camera looks up, past a stark metal telegraph pole, through a crazily tangled network of wires and cables, to a forest of multicolored signs, billboards, marquees... Its depths are bewildering, indecipherable. Its texture is dizzyingly complex, its mood electrifying. We recoil from its loud, immodest and insistent demands.

"The Urban Asian Series" results from a sequence of visits by the artist to Far Eastern countries, starting in the mid-2000s: China, Japan, Thailand, Cambodia, Malaysia, Korea, Vietnam... It's a part of the globe so removed from his American experience, perhaps, that it could be seen afresh through this Westerner’s eye. He brought with him a painter’s sensibility and zest for the formal organization of visual information, along with a profound experiential and intellectual immersion in the history of painting: we find echoes of the great, late 20th century mainstream of art in these pictures, from Abstract Expressionism to Pop, Minimalism and Photorealism. Indeed, Pedersen's finely and thoughtfully realized images may seem as much a meditation on the recent history of art as on the cultural realities they set out to investigate--with the kind of all-consuming curiosity that wants to miss not a single detail of the world out-there. The camera, in this circumstance, provides Pedersen, the painter, with a portable and exacting medium to make an instantaneous record his observations.

Missing nothing means photographing everything: street scenes, skyscrapers, hotels and hovels; ancient alleyways and modern thoroughfares, pedestrian crossings and the crowds of people striding past each other on their busy routes, cell phones glued to their ears; men and women at work, window displays; the machinery and technology required to keep civilization ticking; walls, doorways, fences; vehicles of all kinds… To “read” through these pictures, page to page, is to accompany the artist on a stop-action tour, to almost physically feel the constant turn of the head, the click-click-click of the camera. It’s a restless journey for the eye, a feast of information from the imposing to the trivial, from the elegant to the trashy and undignified.

The lens might seem on first glance to provide an equivalence, a dispassion that accords equal rights to people of all kinds as well as to all kinds of things. It is up to those of us who read the images to make judgments, draw conclusions… And yet, not entirely. Because Pedersen also brings an unobtrusive passion of his own, a subtly critical discrimination that suggests not only that we look at what his pictures show, but how to look at them. The better word, perhaps, would be com-passion. We feel for the alienation of the people he allows us to glimpse, so absorbed their busy-ness that they have no time to stop and see, as he asks us to do. We are not merely awed by the sheer, soaring, steel and glass facade of a skyscraper and its architectural formality, we experience the smallness and vulnerability of our own human scale beside it. Watching its simultaneous proliferation and entropy, we question the ineluctable progress of the civilization we humans have created, and its effects on the quality of our experience of the world we live in.

These images that Pedersen has created insist on revealing beauty where it is least expected. They remind us of the value in each passing moment which, too often, we allow to pass with pausing to take notice. Their attention to detail reminds us of everything we fail to see in our rush to get things done, or in our desire to interpret and make sense of what we see. They remind us to pay attention to what is there, in front of us. Watching things ineluctably decay, or sensing the imminence of their decay, is finally also a reminder of our own mortality. The peeling paint and paper fragments on the cover of “Urban Asia” speak to us of the fragility and transience that characterize everything we can imagine, everything we create, and everything we think ourselves to be.

“The Urban Asia Series” is published by Zero+ Publishing Inc. in a limited edition of 1,000 copies, of which 100 are numbered “deluxe editions,” signed by the artist. “Urban Asia” has an introduction by Jeff Brouws and an essay by David Pagel; “Tradeoffs” has an essay by James Scarborough.

Two Churches

I wish I could remember more of the dream I had last night. What I do remember is that we were traveling, and came upon two of my father's churches; two of the churches in parishes he served as Rector, back in the day... The churches were barely recognizable: both were in terrible disrepair, with roofs collapsed and walls caving in. But, stepping inside, we found them brilliantly aglow with light and color, a magnificent tangle of green vines and flowering exotic plants, a veritable jungle of lush growth and life. Everywhere rare birds and butterflies flitted joyfully past, pausing only to feed on nectar and the profusion of insects. The air itself was shimmering with light...

* * * * *

I judge that I have been over-invested in the on-going farce of politics in recent days. I do enjoy the controversy, but am less than enchanted with the energy it seems to require, and the bleak prospects of anything like progress on the national scene. Time for me to back off and have a bit of a laugh about it all. And breathe...

THE BLOGISATTVA AWARDS

And finally, on another more cheerful note: if you're not already aware of them, please take note of the Blogisattva Awards. If you visit the site, you'll find lists of the five finalists in a wide variety of categories, and links to the some of the best Buddhist blogs around. Aside from its purpose "to recognize and honor excellence within the Buddho-blogosphere," the site's directory provides an unparalleled resource of information about the international community of bloggers of all kinds who are inspired and guided by the dharma. A much more productive and enlightening way to spend one's time...

Mere Anarchy

Another outrage from the United States Senate! Despite the wishes of the electorate to whom they are answerable, despite the collective wisdom of the military brass, despite the response from men and women serving in the ranks, a sufficient number of senators vote to reject the repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell." It's an outrage that such an obstructionist minority (40 - 57 in the Senate vote) are able to derail this one-time democracy, and make us the laughing stock of those many countries more enlightened than we.

Now, to what I was going to write about. These lines from W. B. Yeats's "The Second Coming"

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

I woke up thinking about the lines yesterday morning--well, actually, it was only the second line that came readily to mind, in the context of the recent release of floods of documents from Wikileaks. Whether you agree or not with Julian Assange's action, or in his assertion that it was taken in the altruistic, public-spirited interest of transparency, can we agree that it was anarchistic? Anarchy used to be mostly a matter of crazy people throwing bombs at people they didn't like, or publishing wildly worded polemics against government. Their influence was limited. They were what was referred to as the "lunatic fringe." These days, with instant access to the Internet at his or her disposal, the anarchist wields global power. In the case of Assange, it appears that his gesture sparked a fellow-anarchistic zeal in hackers and bloggers of all stripes, as evidenced particularly in the digital assault on international credit card companies that followed his arrest. Now, no matter how seemingly "powerless," a single person with a grudge--a Private Bradley Manning--can set the world in an uproar overnight.

It's perhaps that unprecedented access to power and influence, in part, that fosters the widespread spirit of anarchy in America today. It's apparent not only in the single Senator who can--and does, at will--gum up the works for the entire country. I think it's also manifest in the Tea Party, in the frenetic support for bomb-throwers like Sarah Palin, in the blogosphere in which I myself participate with glee. We are all anarchists, we all reject the authority of anyone other than ourselves, we all feel free--myself included!--to spout our opinions to the world. We all loudly proclaim for our freedom from every constraint (or at least the ones we don't happen to like) and are delighted to fight for our individual rights, even if they run counter to those of effective government, or society, or the world in which we live. We have become a nation of rebels, each out for ourselves no matter the cost to others: "Things fall apart," Yeats writes; "the centre cannot hold..."

Okay, I see the "blood-dimmed tide," but I'm not so sure about that "ceremony of innocence." It's those last two lines in this section of the poem, though, that really struck me. I had forgotten them--or rather I had forgotten them in this particular context. But don't they ring awfully true? "The best lack all conviction, while the worst/Are full of passionate intensity"! Are we speaking of Democrats and Republicans here? Or what? I'm no Rapturist, but I look around me and I wonder whether we're not due for that "second coming" Yeats writes about. He sees it as as a "rough beast" that "slouches toward Bethlehem to be born." I see that rough, slouching beast as the future we're preparing for ourselves--the nightmare world of a depleted Earth and an anarchy of human beings pitted violently against each other.

What do you think? Here's a link to the whole poem.

Drawing the Line

Roger raised a provocative and troubling question yesterday in the context of my reluctance to condemn Obama's actions and decisions on the tax bill: "Do you have," he asked, "a line he mustn't cross?" Having given this challenging question a great deal of thought since I read it, I have come to the realization that I actually don't--which, as I say, is troubling for one who considers himself a man of principle.

Here's what I've been thinking: when it comes to the decisions that I myself make, and the actions I take, I do have a line I believe I should not cross. That line is one I have learned from the Buddhist teachings. It's about not doing harm--to myself or others. I can do harm in many ways, from taking life to theft, to idle gossip and, in principle, telling lies--though there are situations in which the conscious lie can be less harmful than truth. (I struggle with the idea that the same could be said for killing, or declaring war. I consider myself fortunate not to be in that position of power, to not have that responsibility.)

But it's more problematic when it comes to drawing lines for others not to cross, presidents included. By all means, I can hope and wish most earnestly that other people share the line I personally will strive to respect. But I am not empowered to make their decisions or take their actions for them. I am not in a position to do more than make an educated guess at the complex factors that motivate and guide them. When I start drawing lines for others, I risk crossing another, into the territory of judgmental self-righteousness. I am inclined to go along with the suggestion of the title in Thanissaro Bhikkhu's recent essay in Tricycle magazine: "The Power of Judgment: Judgmental Is Bad, Judicious Is Good." There is a difference between the two, in that "judgmental" reaches out with blame, while "judicious" evokes an essential inner ability to discriminate.

To get to politics, then: I ask myself what purpose my line serves, once I have drawn it? Roger brings up the matter of "ratifying torture and illegal wars," raising truly agonizing questions about what I will condone. I do not, obviously, condone either of them--not even by my silence: I wrestle with my conscience, I question, I speak out. Nor do I agree with many of the other decisions Obama has made since taking office. I personally would rather he had taken different paths on a number of issues, and made more gratifyingly principled stands. But I am not faced with the burden of his responsibilities. I am not in a position to have to weigh the awful potential consequences of his actions, as he must do: will they result in greater or less harm to the people he has sworn to serve? Should he--as Tara suggests in a later response to the same piece, in a comment with which my gut heartily agrees--"turn up the volume and be confrontational"? Would that action serve his purposes, and ours; or would it merely satisfy my need to vindicate my principles and end up doing more harm than good to an economy already stressed to breaking point?

Let's recall that, a few days ago, the United States Senate voted overwhelmingly, 36-53 and 37-53, against Democratic attempts to restore taxes for those earning over $250,000 and $1 million, respectively. Let's not forget that Congress ducked their responsibility on this issue at a moment that would have been more propitious, before the November elections. With such meager, even mendacious support from his own people, would Obama's principled veto serve the great majority of those he serves, or harm them? I don't pretend to know the answer, but I believe it to be a problem that defies simple answers. I would personally love him to step in with a righteous veto pen and allow all the tax cuts to expire. But it's easy enough for me to wield my principles. I don't have anyone but myself to answer to.

I do believe that I share both the values and the conscience from which Roger speaks. I believe that I have not only the right but also the obligation to speak my truth out loud. But if I am to make a purely practical choice between support for Obama's moderation and the excesses of his opposition, my choice is clear. So I'm with Gail Collins, the only New York Times columnist I can bear to read these days. (I actually agree with most of them, but it's painful reading!) As she says in her column today, "I've got to admit it: I've fallen off the line-in-the-sand bandwagon."

Thanks for listening. I welcome your thoughts...