PRIVILEGE... AND SERVICE

I'm watching (a recording of) the royal wedding, and am surprised to find myself so emotionally engaged in the whole thing. Perhaps it's the British genes. The royal family played a big part in our collective lives when I was growing up, during the war, and the respect I learned for the King and his family at the time has survived in some hidden part of me. I'm well aware, of course, of the subsequent scandals and fiasco that have plagued the Windsors in recent years, and share the skepticism of the privilege they enjoy. That said, the two princes, William and Harry, do seem to understand that service is the necessary concomitant of privilege. They seem capable of both seriousness and exuberance.

There is, too, something uplifting about simple celebration. In a world where there is an ample supply of doom and gloom, it's heartening to see people celebrating a happy occasion...

As I think you know, I have a booth (#344) at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books this weekend, so unless there are two very slow days ahead, I'll not be posting until Monday. Have a great weekend. And wish me luck!

WHEN DO WE ALL GROW UP?

I posted some not terribly original thoughts this morning on Vote Obama 2012 about the President's rightfully exasperated release of the "long form" of his birth certificate yesterday. The rest of the world--at least those parts of it not too busy with their own crises to care about what happens here--must think that America has finally lost its collective mind.

Are we a lost cause? What will it take for us to come to our senses? At a time when we are beset with challenges as great as any since the Depression and World War II, we are childishly playing chicken not only with each other, but with the stability of the world, the survival of our species and the future of the planet.

No wonder the President is "bemused." That's to put it mildly. Please consider joining me with a voice of reason on my new blog. I don't want it to be "mine." It's too important, and too big for me alone.

ODD DREAM

My brain seems to have latched on to a different meaning of the word “cold.” It understood, not the cold in the head I’ve been complaining about, but rather winter’s cold. It came up with this dream...

We’re booked on a flight—to New York, I think, from London, except that it’s certainly not Heathrow or any other airport that I know of anywhere near London. It has been snowing (hence the “cold”?) We arrive by car and find a spot in a parking lot not far from the airport. And thinking, for some reason, that we have ample time, we decide to leave the bags in the car and take the tube in to Victoria Station. Despite the weather, we have the notion to take the long walk from there up to Westminster Abbey (another brain misapprehension, I suppose, with the much-ballyhooed “Royal Wedding” happening this week!) then on down Whitehall and back via Buckingham Palace.

Absurd idea! We arrive at the crowded terminal and find the passengers for our flight gathering in a kind of tour group, ready for departure. Ellie checks the yellow file in which she always carries our travel information: the flight is scheduled for 3:25. I look at my watch. It’s already 3:30. But the young man who’s handling tickets and bags says brightly: It’s alright, you have another fifteen minutes.

So I have to run back to the car park to retrieve our bags, and it’s a whole lot further than I had imagined. I’m running down through the slushy snow and ice in a narrow alley, and realize I’m never going to make it. A cab comes around the corner to let out a passenger, and I seize the opportunity. The cabbie seems glad to have a fare, but he abandons his cab and instead brings over a tandem bicycle. I mount behind him, and we pedal madly on toward the car park.

Bags in tow, bumping along behind us in the snow, we head back for the terminal. The "cabbie" falls off the tandem and has a hard time getting back up: my rollie suitcase is incredibly heavy, and he grimaces and strains his back trying to get it back upright. The journey to the terminal, if you’ll forgive the pun, is interminable. And when we do arrive, the group of passengers has disappeared. No worries, though, Ellie spots us from a corner cafe and waves us over. I feel for my wallet, thinking that ten dollars will be a generous remuneration for the cabbie, but of course I can’t find it. Then I realize that I’m wearing a jacket, unusually, and that I put it in the inner breast pocket.

Relief! But then there’s the trouble fumbling for the right bills. I find a five, but otherwise it seems there’s only a twenty. But wait… sorting through a confusion of banknotes, I finally succeed in sorting out a four-dollar bill, and a two. Which would make eleven, more than I had planned to give him. No matter. No time to worry about it. I hand the man the bills and we join the party headed for the aircraft—again down narrow alleys filled with the debris of winter, snow, slush and ice...

Do we catch the flight finally? I have no idea. I awoke in a state of total exhaustion, recalling that the kitchen trash is overflowing and needs to be taken out.

Any dream interpreters out there?

MAKING PLANS

Much improved, today, healthwise. I managed to get up at 6AM, feeling relatively sprightly. Coughed my way through meditation... May take a walk.

I'm making plans, now, for this weekend. I'm sharing a booth at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books with my friend, the artist Mark Strickland, who has a big new book out, The Art of Mark Strickland, documenting his work.

I'll be representing Parami Press and, of course, Persist. I'm hoping that if you're thinking of attending the Festival, you'll stop by to visit us. Our booth is in the Arts section, not far from Tommy Trojan. (I'll try to remember to post the actual booth number in the next couple of days, but we should be easy enough to find.) I also have a book-signing session lined up for 2PM on Saturday, in a location designated for that purpose. I'm sure there will be plenty of information available on site.

If you're a reader of The Buddha Diaries, be sure to let me know!

LAID LOW

It's ten o'clock on Monday morning and I'm still in bed. Well, back in bed. I got up briefly for a cup of tea and a bowl of cereal, in hopes of gathering some energy. I'm usually up and about hours before now, but this bug has succeeded in laying me low. Really not much in the way of symptoms, aside from a scratch at the base of the throat and debilitating fatigue. Ellie has had something similar for weeks. I want to get rid of it ASAP because I have a booth at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books this coming weekend and, the following week, a keynote address at the annual fundraising dinner for the 18th Street Arts Complex in Santa Monica...

I've been trying to work with the breath, watching is patterns, watching the body's response, but I soon got into a spat between head and body. Remembering Than Geoff's familiar instruction, "What kind of breath would feel comfortable right now?" my head said: energize. What you need is a good, strong, energizing breath. To which my body said, No. It said, please, a soothing, healing, comforting breath that requires no energy. Head said, I can't believe you're giving in to this; it's just sheer laziness. And body: I ache all over, I can't move, just let me be. Head said, expend a little energy, you'll get energy in return. Get up. Take a walk. Breathe in the sea air. Body said, I need sleep.

So it goes. My body wants to give in to it, relax, allow time to recover. My head is scornful of my failure to tough it out and beat back the beast. For today, I plan to keep listening to my body...

IN SICKNESS AND IN HEALTH

I have a cold. Ellie and I have been arguing about whether she gave it to me or not. She claims that all the quite remarkably similar symptoms from which she has been suffering for a good while now are the result of an allergy, triggered by a long hike into the pollen-infested hills up behind our home in Laguna Beach. Ha! I say she had a cold, and passed it on to me. She asks if she should therefore hang herself in penitence. I say, yes, if she feels that guilty about it, she should.

So it goes. The attendant argument is, who is the better--or worse--sufferer? Ellie just announced that men are far less tolerant of minor afflictions of this kind, with the suggestion that women suffer more nobly, while men simply whine. It's my firm belief that I have, on the contrary, been suffering with admirable stoicism. I scarcely like to remind her, but she lay in bed moaning for days on end, requiring liberal doses of spousal attention. I have been fending for myself. Who was it, I ask--without actually asking--got up and made the tea for both of us this morning, despite his dire sickness?

I guess the truth is that we all think we suffer nobly, while our spouse makes a big fuss of relatively minor complaints. Comparisons are invidious. Pain and suffering are immeasurable. Who knows whether the pain in my knee is more or less bearable than Ellie's pain in the back? Better simply to avoid the judgment and respond with compassion--for oneself, for the other--when these circumstances prevail, as they will certainly continue to do as we advance in years. One of the hoped-for benefits of meditation is to learn to age wisely. The number of aches and frailties is likely---no, certain--to increase in the coming years. Now is a good time to learn how to "take care of myself with ease."

IMPATIENCE

(The draft of a possible chapter for the book I'm working on)

I watched myself being rude last night. I don’t like myself when I’m rude. I usually manage to hide my impatience under a veneer of politeness, but there are times when the veneer wears off and the ugly truth reveals itself, and last night was one of them.

It was at the end of a seder—the Passover festival that celebrates the liberation of the people from the period of their bondage in Egypt. It’s a fine ritual. Though not Jewish myself, I believe I have participated in a seder almost every year for the forty I have spent with Ellie, who is. They say the Last Supper was a seder, and I recall the pleasure of my Christian father sitting down at Ellie’s father’s table, many years ago, both finding the common ground between their respective religious faiths. You don’t need to be a Jew to celebrate human freedom, and as we look around the world today we find the relevance of the seder in many different circumstances—not least in the turbulent Middle East, where many of the ancient animosities still roil.

But a man, as we were reminded in our ceremony last night, can be as much a slave to his own inner obsessions and personal flaws as to those who oppress him from outside. My work, over the past few years, has been in good part an attempt to free myself from the bad attitudes and habits that, in the Buddhist view, bring needless suffering into my life and restrict my ability to flourish in the work I’m given to do as a writer.

Chief among these is my impatience. It affects every aspect of my life, including my writing. It is rooted in part, as I have come to understand it, in that old “I have no right to be here” syndrome that became the Big Lie that I explored just a short while ago. The greatest challenge of my meditation practice is to take the time to be present in the here and now: to take the time, in the first instance, that is needed; and, when I do take the time, to prevent the mind from wandering off into the future, planning, writing, taking care of business that has absolutely no relevance to this present moment.

I believe—I flatter myself—that I have learned a lot from this practice, but obviously still not enough. Last night was evidence that I have a ways to go yet before I conquer this particular demon that haunts me.

The story is a sadly familiar one: I could hardly wait for the seder to end so that I could home. The past few days have been busy ones, and I have had several writing projects on my mind—including a catalogue text I have committed to, along with the next chapter (this one, it turns out!) in the book I’m trying to get written, and entries in my (now three!) blogs. For a variety of reasons, I have not had the time or the mind space to get the writing done, and my impatience to get back to work has kept building.

I was also, for the same reasons, feeling physically depleted. Last night’s seder was the second in two days. Out of mostly sheer greed, I had eaten more than I should have done, and had indulged in more glasses of wine than I should have done. I had begun to feel heavy and slothful, and impatient with my lack of simple good sense on this score, too. I was much aware that, if I was to get down to some work today, I was in need of an early night and a good, long sleep.

The service part of the seder ended. Conversations ensued. I got into a perfectly civil discussion about taxes with a friend who is a registered libertarian. There was much upon which we did not agree, but the tone was friendly. Dessert was served, and I tucked in with abandon. I declined the coffee, on the grounds that it would keep me up. And gradually we all got up to leave…

This is the point at which my impatience starts to show itself. There’s the joke about the difference between the Jew and the Englishman: the Englishman sneaks away without bothering to say goodbye, while the Jew says goodbye and never leaves. Not to be prejudiced, but Ellie and I are a case in point. When I’m ready to leave, I’m ready to leave. Out the door, for me. Ellie is… different. Finality appalls her. She is reluctant, always, to say those last few words and actually leave.

Thus it was, last night, that I found myself still waiting to leave after having said my polite goodbyes all around. It was at that moment that a friend approached and asked me in the nicest and most genuine way possible how I was doing. We had not talked all evening, she said, and she was anxious to catch up. Well, I could easily have taken those few extra minutes to respond to her friendly interest, but instead I was frankly rude. Unresponsive. Unfriendly. Not that I actually said anything impolite, but my tone must have made my impatience clear as I muttered some of the explanations and excuses I have just outlined. But excuses just don’t hack it. They sounded hollow even to myself as I listened to them.

I felt bad about the whole thing, of course. It’s not how I wish to appear to others, not what I’d wish to recognize about myself. I believe in the possibility of change, and this is something about myself that I would truly wish to change. Am I better than I was ten years ago? I’d like to think I am, but then I watch myself in a situation of this kind and I realize that I’m right back where I started from.

This morning, out on our daily walk around the hill, we ran into a friend who was also, like ourselves, out walking his dog. I was anxious to get back home to work on this very essay that I’m writing now, and had put on hold, but we stopped for a chat. This is a wonderful opportunity, I told myself, to watch the breath, enjoy the morning air and the friendly exchange. I would not, I told myself, be the first to break up the conversation. And I watched with admirable equanimity at first as the level of impatience rose. I listened quietly as my mind started to insist that it was time to leave. I breathed. I watched myself as the conversation ran on—longer than necessary, in my judgment—and glanced at my watch and began to edge away compulsively…

Ah, well. I am sure there are those who share my seemingly incurable impatience. If not, you will surely have some weakness of your own that causes you to suffer unnecessarily, and may well stand in the way of your creative work. What’s important, I have come to realize, is not to keep doing battle to the death with this or any other demon; it’s rather to recognize its power and be aware of its intrusions. Because otherwise the feelings that accompany it—the anger, and perhaps the fear—get stored away in places where they dam up and block the flow without your realizing it. That’s when your demon becomes subtly harmful, and when you find yourself standing rather ridiculously in your own way.

HONOR AND VIRTUE

Honor and virtue. The words sound, sadly, rather quaint, faintly Victorian--if not medieval!-- in the querulous cacophony of self-interested debate in our world today. They came up in our sangha yesterday afternoon...

It was a huge pleasure and, as always, hugely instructive to sit with Than Geoff (Thanissaro Bhikkhu) again, after many missed opportunities. His schedule and mine have been out of sync for several months, and I have been away from Laguna for a number of his recent monthly visits to our sitting group here. I find in his presence--and in his voice--a source of calm conviction that I find nowhere else.

We sat with his guidance for the first half-hour, then for a further half hour in silence. As usual, yesterday, he led us first through metta--the practice of goodwill and compassion--and then through a scan of the body that involves bringing the attention to a particular location, identifying any stress or tension the body might be harboring there, and using the breath to find release. Than Geoff starts us out at the area around the navel, moves us down to the lower abdomen, and then up to the solar plexus, the center of the chest; from the shoulders to the base of the throat and, very gently, into the center of the head; back down along the spine and the back, through the lower back and the hips to the legs and down to the tips of the toes; and finally from the back of the neck through the shoulders and down the arms to the hands and the tips of the fingers, By the time we're done, the whole body is in a state of fully attentive relaxation, breathing comfortably through every pore.

Then comes the question and answer session. Than Geoff draws quite a crowd for these sessions--some thirty people, at a guess, in a relatively small sitting room--and fields questions on any number of topics. Some have to do with technical issues that arise in meditation practice--problems with focus and concentration or the distractions of the mind. Others have broader implications about faith, belief, and the way we live our lives. It was in this context yesterday that the words honor and virtue came up. In response to a question about the fear of death, Than Geoff said quietly that some things were more important than the physical body. Which prompted me to ask, what things? And Than Geoff to respond: "Things like honor and virtue..."

I'm not sure how to make a distinction between these two, though "honor" is perhaps more a state of being, and "virtue" the practice that leads to it. Both, for me, are implicit in the word "integrity", which I understand to mean, at its most basic level, that my words and my actions are congruent. I say what I mean and I mean what I say. I lead my life in accordance with my beliefs about fairness, honesty, compassion, justice, service. To be in integrity with myself and others, I need to have those qualities in balance, and to practice them consistently.

Are they more important than life itself? I asked Than Geoff if they had any meaning without the prior assumption of being alive in the world. As I understood his answer, it was, yes, because we have not only this present life to consider, but also past and future lives, the persistence of consciousness. This, of course, as readers of The Buddha Diaries will know, has been my sticking point for years. I find the afterlife a hard enough concept to embrace, let alone that of lives I may have led before my current incarnation. Than Geoff had a quiet chuckle at my skepticism, and invited me to consider than I might be in for shock a little further down the road.

In any event, is it not enough to realize that the practice of integrity is important to my happiness in this present life, and to my relationship with those around me? I regret to have to admit that I have many negative judgments about the way we live our lives today, and the way we treat our fellow beings--human and non-human--on this planet. I fear that we have sacrificed our sense of honor and virtue to contingency; and that we pay lip service to them in creating the image we wish to present to others, then twist them around to accommodate our desires and needs. I know that each one of us likes to think of him or herself as an honorable person, but we very easily impute dishonorable intentions to those with whom we disagree.

I do struggle with these things. Integrity, as I see it, is a work in progress, in constant tension between the selfish impulse and the altruism I would wish to practice.

My college in Cambridge was famous for its three "gates"--actually, passageways between courtyards. The first was the Gate of Humility, the front entrance. which you passed through as you entered the college as a new student; the second, the Gate of Virtue, in the center of college, was a frequent passage as you worked your way through your studies; and finally, the Gate of Honor, used only as a passage to the neighboring university Senate, where you received your degree. (There was a fourth gate which led down to the loos. This was irreverently dubbed the Gate of Necessity.)

Humility, Virtue, Honor. Quaint notions, it may seem, these days. It's hard to even mention them without the appearance of sanctimony, but they are still useful codes for those in search of the true happiness offered by the teachings of the Buddha. And, if this life should happen to lead on to the next, they will assure the good karma needed to ensure a propitious transition. No harm in that.

MAKING A DIFFERENCE

I was watching the network news last night and came upon this "Making a Difference" report, one of a series of "good news" segments on NBC Nightly News. It's about a wonderful volunteer effort to promote literacy amongst the poor and the underprivileged, and I thought, yes, these are truly generous and compassionate people who devote their time, energy, and financial resources to improving the lot of other less fortunate.

And at the same time I thought, this is disgraceful. Disgraceful that in this wealthiest of wealthy countries, a job of this importance should be left to a handful of good-hearted volunteers. The education of our young is a responsibility that should not be handed off to the charitable efforts of a dedicated few, it should be the obligation of every one one of us--an obligation of such vast and critical importance that only government is able to handle it with equity and fairness. And yet, in this country, successive governments have been systematically degrading our education system for decades. And now our Republicans are intent on making still further cuts in funding for basic education progams like Head Start.

"Making a Difference" notwithstanding, education is not, and should not be a do-good enterprise. As one who was born and raised in ("socialist"!) Europe, I still feel appalled when I find myself listening to appeals for money from what is billed as "public" radio or television. Public is public, I always thought. Of course there's a place for private enterprise, but private enterprise brings with it the private slant, the usually profit-driven motive. Between Fox News and corporate network broadcasting, we need a source of information that is put out in the public interest. I'm aware that the BBC has had its problems and controversies over the years, but if you take a few minutes to compare the quality of news presented on BBC World News and American commercial networks, the difference is clear. Even Al Jazeera English, these days (have you watched it?) offers a fairer and more complete picture of what's going on in the world than, say, CBS or NBC.

I think it's wonderful that private donors are generous with their support for all kinds of organizations that provide help for those who need it. But these "thousand points of light," as the first Bush famously called them, cannot conceivably replace the responsibilities of government in today's complex world, with its rapidly growing populations and decreasing resources. There are many functions that must be addressed as a collective responsibility: education is but one of them.

The fundamental belief in ever smaller government, as embraced by Republicans, is a pipe dream in a world of such complexity. Our children have a right to receive the education they need as a first step toward a successful and happy future. It should not be left to the whims of a charitable few, no matter how valiantly they may be "making a difference." The only real difference that can be made through a common effort to make education a national priority, and a determination to devoting the resources needed to make it happen.

Out of the Flow

I gave one of my lectures last night--this one at Marymount College in Palos Verdes, and had the unfamiliar feeling of not being quite connected with what I was saying. I'm not sure why this was. I followed pretty much the pattern of my past "Persistence" talks, but found myself at times struggling to pick up my own thread. I was "thinking" about what I was trying to say more often than allowing it to flow.

What was different? Well, I arrived an hour early, thanks to some miscommunication about the arrangements. But that was fine, because it allowed time for a bite to eat with my nice hosts at the college cafeteria, with a grand view of the Pacific Ocean. Afterwards, back at the auditorium, it took a good while for people to arrive and I was worried, frankly, for a few minutes, that no one was going to show up. And attendance was indeed sparse--a couple of dozen people, by my count: I was competing, I discovered, with a college basketball tournament of some kind. There was a good deal of echoing space behind the first three or four rows. But that happens. I have spoken to small groups before, even in auditoria, like this one, that can accommodate far more.

I started off comfortably enough, with some memories of my time as Dean of the arts at Loyola Marymount University, back in the 1980s--a time when the merger between the Jesuits at Loyola University and the sisters at Marymount College seemed more a formality than a true marriage of the heart. The imbalance, in my college, between the Jesuit "Communications" department and the various "Fine Arts" brought in by the sisters could not have been more marked, and my years there were spent in good part trying to boost the latter. I was not aware, actually, that Marymount had survived as a separate, independent entity--for years as a two-year college and only recently reinstated for the full four-year degree program.

Was it the memory of those academic years that distracted me? Hardly. I often talk about them, particularly with reference to my decision to quit, cold turkey, some twenty-five years ago, to become the writer I had always known myself to be. My years in academia were rewarding in many ways, but I have never for one moment regretted the decision to leave.

No, there was something else that was distracting my mind. It was as though I was not quite present to myself. I was listening to myself talk, and in that self-conscious mode had the odd experience of losing my way quite often, consulting the cue cards that I prepare before each event, but rarely need to look at. Once that starts to happen, the familiar inhibitors creep in--the fear, self-doubt, self-criticism that set off a kind of internal panic.

I exaggerate a bit. The internal effects were less dramatic than that last sentence suggests, and from the response and questions that followed, it seemed that I may have been the only one to notice my discomfort. At its best, I have discovered, public speaking creates a bond between speaker and audience, a real pleasure for the speaker to experience--and something that is not available to the writer, for whom response is less direct, less immediate. Reflecting on this, I think perhaps last night's experience had to do with the fact that I was less aware than usual just who was in the audience--artists? writers? students? aculty? visitors? Most likely a mix of all these elements.

My friend Valerie, a member of our artists' group here at home, was kind enough to come to hear me speak and had a useful suggestion in an email this morning: when in doubt about who's out there, to ask. And perhaps to ask also what brought them to the lecture. The group was small enough to have been able to do that comfortably, and to establish something of a bond that way before setting out. Something to remember for the future.

CLOSED MINDS

Is there not one, single, responsible Republican voice that will concede the possibility of ending the Bush era tax cuts for even the wealthiest Americans? Not one, single dissent from the already long-discredited party mantra? Impossible to believe that such lock-step, hard-headed unanimity results from any real thought about the issues involved, or any willingness to engage in serious discussion. I was impressed by President Obama's speech yesterday. I appreciated the commitment not to capitulate on Medicare, and the implied threat to veto any attempt to perpetuate deficit-creating tax cuts. I noted my approval on my new blog, VoteObama 2012. (Please note that the site is still under construction, and is not yet fully workable. I have not yet decided quite how it will look, and I'm still hoping for partners and contributors. Anyone with me on this?)

While I deplore the closed minds of Republicans on the subject of reasonable tax increases, I don't want Obama to allow this to become a negotiable issue. I'm with Nicholas D. Kristof in today's New York Times: raise America's taxes. It's absurd that this has been absent from all discussion of the deficit to date. I'm glad that the President finally challenged his opponents and laid it on the table. I for one am willing to pay a fair share, and I believe that many of the wealthy are, too.

FILM FESTIVAL RWANDA: A Documentary Film

I don't often do this, but I'm asking readers of "The Buddha Diaries" to consider supporting this film project. Film Festival Rwanda: A Documentary Film is produced by Leah Warshawski, the daughter of very old friends of ours, who was inspired to make the documentary to support young film-makers in Rwanda. Our country stood shamefully by a few years back, along with the rest of the world, in the full knowledge that a dreadful genocide was taking place in that small African country; former President Bill Clinton has publicly admitted his regret that he did nothing to save hundreds of thousands of innocent lives. Now, with her documentary, Leah wants to introduce us to the work of five young film-makers, all devoted to passing on a hopeful message for their country's future. This trailer and Kickstarter campaign will give a sense of her goal, and of the cheerful optimism of the young Rwandans whose work she is promoting.

This, it seems to me, is precisely the kind of project that can inspire renewed confidence and trust in our country in places where it threatens to be lost. I'm personally inspired that a young American like Leah has dedicated so much of her time and energy to facilitating the voices of young Africans, seeking out ways to enable them to speak for themselves, achieve their own goals, and fulfill their own vision. Our record of either opportunistic paternalism or neglect in other parts of the world does not speak well of a country whose heart at its best is generously supportive and caring. We are, after all, the privileged ones. It is heartening to see some of our young people turn that privilege into the service of greater goals than their own small needs.

Good luck to Leah in her quest for the relatively small sum of money she needs to bring this project to fruition. Please help her if you can.

IN HIS HANDS...

I was reminded of this powerful pair of images yesterday...

It's created by the Mexican artist Gabriel Orozco and it speaks to me of the human clay, of the relationship between the human species and the earth with live on; of the human heart and its fragility; of the value of generosity, the opening of hand and heart; of the process of creation in all its simplicity and complexity; of the power of a simple idea conveyed in simple form; of what is hidden and what is revealed.

Make of it what you will, I think it's a distillation of self-evident beauty and declarative truth. I thought I'd share it with you, in case you have never seen it--and in the belief that, having once seen it, like myself, you will never forget it.

HEALING

Sometimes, as a way to get into our morning meditation, we choose to listen to one of the many short dharma talks by Thanissaro Bhikkhu that we have stored on our laptop. This morning, pretty much at random, I clicked on a talk about healing--and was glad to have done so. Than Geoff's calm, soothing voice led us through the healing properties of the breath and left us feeling, well... healed.

I have talked a good deal recently in these pages--I hope not tediously--about the effects of the aging process on the body. They are omnipresent, principally, but not exclusively, in the aching joints. The trick is to be aware of them without allowing them to become the source of constant complaint. Than Geoff's talk was a reminder that the breath can be an indispensable tool in achieving this: it can be directed intentionally toward the point of pain, bringing its healing energy to release the hurt; failing this, it can be directed to some other, painless place in the body, allowing the mind to dwell on that painlessness instead; it can suffuse the entire body all at once, head to toe and fingertip to fingertip, so that particular aches and pains are soon absorbed into the whole breathing network of millions upon millions of individual molecules.

When mind becomes breath and breath becomes mind, pain becomes less the source of suffering and more the object of interested observation. Aha, there's that knee again! It becomes, too, the source of wisdom--and compassion.

I like to imagine, once I manage to get into this healing mode, that my breath can be directed far beyond my own wounds to the wounds of the world. There is so much pain and suffering out there, everywhere one looks in this deeply troubled planet at this moment in its history. There is warfare, rebellion, the struggle to be free from tyranny. There is hunger, poverty, homelessness, disease. Once I have allowed the healing power of the breath to suffuse my own body, I try sending it out in all directions, as far as I can possibly imagine, trusting that its boundless energy can play some small part in healing the pain of my fellow-travelers; indeed, of the ailing planet itself.

A conceit, perhaps, but one that can certainly cause no harm, and brings with it a measure of serenity.

RIGHT TO BE HARD

(from VoteObama 2012)

Paul Krugman is right to be hard on Obama in his column this morning. I, too, want to hear stronger opposition from the White House and the Democrats to the current Republican push to the far right on the economy. Because I want more from him, however, does not mean that I must withdraw my support. All the more reason, indeed, to redouble it.

ART NOTES

We drove to downtown Los Angeles yesterday, primarily to stop by the rented studio space where our friend Richard Bruland is completing a large 9-panel painting commissioned by a business in Kentucky. He'll be driving it across country in a little while, so this was probably the only opportunity we'll get to see it at first hand. It's an impressive piece of work, somewhat akin to the considerably smaller "Promise"...

... which I just pirated (apologies, Richard!) from his website. You'll find plenty more examples there. We learned a lot about just how Richard creates these intricate, endlessly fascinating surfaces, with layer upon layer of paint applied in carefully structured grids (subtly apparent in the example above) which are textured while still wet and finally sanded down to reveal the colors of different levels simultaneously. The play between light at the top and and shade below carries with it just a hint of landscape--along, of course, with all the metaphorical associations evoked in the mind by their juxtaposition.

Having known Richard's work for many years, we were delighted to see how successfully his process works for him in this very large scale. Those familiar with Monet's great water lily paintings will perhaps share my sense of the analogy. There, as in Richard's big painting, we find ourselves unmoored from any single point of reference, and swimming in a warm and welcoming pool of color which, like the universe, has no discernable beginning or end. Nice work!

We did leave time to stop by at CB1 Gallery on West 5th Street on our way home and were happy to have the chance to see at least one half of an exhibition of the Brooklyn-based artist Susan Silas, still in the process of installation. (Don't think of this as a "review"!) The half we got to see was called "eyes wide shut"--a series of color photographs of a dead hawk, set against a stark white background...

and sometimes arranged in the intimate company of another dead bird...

(Images courtesy of CB1 Gallery and the artist)

Observed over the course of several weeks--and therefore in the natural process of decay--the hawk presents an image of stark, innocent beauty and unsentimental pathos. The sharp definition of the photographs and the isolation of the image itself against the white background combine to create a kind of serenity, and a profundity of feeling that is far from the objectivity they might suggest. While the images are, of course, a reflection on mortality, they evoke a comforting sense that even in death there is beauty. (Interestingly, the artist--who was on hand for the installation--told me that she had attempted a similar series with bats, but found that these creatures, as fellow mammals, were too close for human comfort.)

There is, too, the suggestion in this work of a much broader, global context. We do not know how the hawk died, but its "wide shut" eyes--at least for this one viewer--gazed out at me with a kind of accusation. I found myself thinking, inevitably, about the havoc our species wreaks upon our environment, and upon the other species who have the misfortune to have to share the Earth with us. Oblivious to their beauty and their role in the ecological integrity of the planet, we heedlessly pollute the skies that are the province of the birds, destroying those whose natural skills we manage to emulate only with massive, noisesome, lumbering machines of our own invention.

The elegiac quality of these images will surely touch your heart, and their sheer beauty will captivate your eye.

Mens sana...

... in corpore sano. A healthy mind in a healthy body. (It's interesting to read the Juvenal text from which the familiar quotation comes. It contains a whole list of desiderata for the happy life.) Anyway, not sure about the mens, but the corpore seems to be okay. I was at the doctor's office yesterday for my annual physical and submitted to the usual prods and pokes.

Nothing remarkable. There are the aching joints, of course, knees, hips and lower back, all attributable to the kind of arthritic degeneration to be expected in one of my somewhat advanced years. That knee I was complaining about a while ago? My doctor applied the McMurray test, which consists of elevating and twisting the knee until you yelp with pain. Yep. The meniscus cartilage is wearing down, allowing bone to rub up against bone. The body ages, as the Buddha usefully pointed out.

But otherwise, the body is fit. The mind is giving me a spot of bother at the moment. I am not unaffected by what I see happening on the political front. I was brought up with a social conscience, which is must disturbed by the self-interested heartlessness of the right-wing zealots who seem to be hold government by the balls. It is barely imaginable that, as last viewing, yesterday evening, Pacific time, they had resorted to insisting on the elimination of funds for Planned Parenthood from the federal budget--and would shut down government in preference to yielding an inch on this essential service to the health of women everywhere.

This is the background noise. Internally, I am reaching one of those well-remembered moments in the book I'm working on, where I begin to wonder if it's worth it, whether I'm merely repeating myself, whether anyone will publish it or, eventually, read it. And time continues to course by at inordinate speed, leaving me with the perpetual anxiety of so many things undone...

I need to meditate! See you tomorrow.

Obama

Okay, a confession: I have started another blog. It's the very last thing in the world I need to do, and I'm hoping to get some help with it. Some co-bloggers, contributors.

I'm going to get some flak for this one. I know that there are friends out there who disagree with me vociferously, even--dare I say--bitterly on this issue. But when I look around me, when I read the newspaper, when I listen to the news on radio and television, I am frankly scared for the future of this country. There are powerful people out there who have the capacity to destroy it. My new blog is called Vote Obama 2012. If you go there now, please be aware that I have done little more than grab the url and put in a couple of initial entries. The design is pending, the direction unclear. But it will reflect my personal conviction that Barack Obama is the best man for the job for another four-year term.

I'm expecting controversy and disagreement. That is welcome. I'm expecting passion. Fine. What I'm also expecting, with some dread, is the kind of thing I have been finding recently on some liberal/progressive sites: venom. I have to admit that I was astonished, on visiting a site I have admired in the past, to find such poisonous, hate-filled rants fueled, presumably, by disappointment that Obama has not been able to fulfill significant parts of what he promised in his campaign. I share that disappointment on many fronts--most recently his inability to shut down Guantanamo. I would like to have been able to see him dominate the budget debate and force concessions from those wrong-headed Republicans.

I have been criticized, here in The Buddha Diaries, for supporting gradualism at a time when it is not appropriate. I would love nothing better than immediate, radical change. As I have often said, I was brought up a socialist, and I remain a proud socialist. As such, however, I am simply foolish if I fail to recognize that I am in something of a minority in this country. Democracy means allowing the voices of all the people to be heard, and the majority of voices in this country, at the present time, are conservative. A small, but vocal minority are far-right wing conservatives. Those on the right, in my view, both moderate and fanatical, are being manipulated by a still smaller minority with unlimited supplies of money and influence, who are obsessed with the need to acquire more.

This, in my view, is simple realism. Short of a violent revolution, I do not see how radical change is possible in this circumstance. In my view, Obama is right to hew to the middle way--to gradualism, if you wish. I admire his calm, his ability to wait, his willingness to listen. He is the voice of reason and sanity in a class of noisy, petulant children who throw tantrums when they fail to get everything they want, immediately, and get it their way. To judge from what I have been reading recently, that goes for the left as well as the right.

Let's bring about change in the only way possible, in the face of powerful, obstinate opposition: slowly. We are addicted to our comforts, to the swift satisfaction of our own demands and needs. Addicts, as I understand it, have to hit bottom before they can begin to turn things around. How long will that be? I don't know. I thought we had done that with Reagan. With Nixon, for God's sake. Are we hitting bottom now, with our current fanatical crop of right-wing extremists, who believe in a vision of freedom that dismisses the needs of all humanity other than their own? I don't know. We may have further still to go.

I dread that thought. I believe that we elected the right man in Obama in 2008. He is more unflappable than me. He is a realist and a pragmatist, not an ideologue. The vision (rather, these days, I think, the illusion) of the strong leader who can command the ear--and the obedience--of his people is an attractive one. But with a people as fractious as we, today, it is no longer realistic. We build our leaders up with unrealistic expectations, then tear them down when our expectations are not met.

So it has been with Obama. He has made some pretty remarkable achievements, but he has not been able to fulfill all expectations, even his own. I know there will be those who disagree, but I believe he has earned the shot at another four years to work toward the goals for which we elected him. Is anyone out there with me?

Consider this a request for help with the new blog. If you're interested, please write to me.

Horror vacui

What could be more ridiculous? I have to laugh at myself, sitting around yesterday afternoon doing nothing--and feeling bad about it! Feeling guilty. At my age! Racked with pain from a horribly aching back. Well, that's a bit of an exaggeration, "racked." But yes, I was in pain. And yes, I did deserve an afternoon off. And no, there was nothing really pressing that had to be done. So what could be more ridiculous?

Do you share this horror of "wasting time"? It's something deeply rooted, I know not where inside me. It's true that time is precious, and that it seems to grow more precious with each passing year. What's not true is that, to be well used, it has to be by doing something. Doing nothing is sometimes precisely the best possible use of time. I know this rationally, I know it from the experience of meditation--well, that's not "doing nothing"--so why do I not believe it in the gut, where I feel the protest?

It's not just me, I know. This fear is pervasive in our culture. Not only is it impermissable to be doing nothing, you're wasting time if you're not doing several things at once. We have even invented a word for it: multi-tasking. I catch myself reading the newspaper and watching the news on television as I eat! Oh, and compose the next blog entry in my head and plan for the next few hours. That can't be good for me.

Horror vacui, it seems to me, is applicable to time as well as space. In physics, it's the theory that "nature abhors a vacuum"--long discredited, I believe. In painting, it's a critical term that describes the work of those artists who are driven to fill in every empty space on the paper or the canvas. It's a phobia, a fear of leaving any hole left unfilled, any space blank. In the matter of time, it's the fear of leaving any single second unproductive. And, of course, the fear of being late (another of my personal obsessions!) The White Rabbit syndrome.

As I say, it's all perfectly absurd!

"The View From the Studio Door"

You'll find today's entry on Persist: The Blog. It's about Ted Orland's book, The View From the Studio Door: How Artists Find Their Way in an Uncertain World, which I'm reading currently with much enjoyment. As you'll guess from the title, it has much in common with my own "Persist: In Praise of the Creative Spirit in a World Gone Mad With Commerce." (We seem to share a predilection for the long title, too.) I hope you'll take a moment to click your way over and take a look.

Howards End

I found myself a little puzzled by Howards End, the movie, on revisiting it last night. It is so long since I read the E. M. Forster novel that I can't remember it well enough to know what part of it might be missing in the movie, but I found it hard to know exactly what the movie version was about. Was it about the Emma Thompson character, the amiable--and infinitely pliable--Margaret Schelegel? Did it matter that she was half-German at the time the novel was written, shortly before the start of the first world war? And what about her bolschy sister, Helen, played by a youthful Helena Bonham-Carter, who takes every opportunity to throw a wrench in the smoothly oiled workings of the British class system? Did that make it about women's rights? And Henry Wilcox, wealthy capitalist, who looks down his nose at both women in general and the working classes--and is looked down upon, in turn, by those who did not have to make their money, but inherited it? And his son, on his way to becoming one of the latter, but who blots his copybook by causing the death of one of those working class slobs because he betrayed his class by fathering a child with Helen?

I mean, I understand that it's about all these things, but somehow they never quite came into focus. The movie had no clear moral or emotional compass, to put these things into perspective. We admire Margaret for her kindness and humanity, but worry that she surrenders much of that kindness and humanity when put to the test, marrying herself off to Henry and, aside from a few small gestures and protests, subordinating herself to his dismissive snobbery. Is she selling our for money, social standing? Love? Do we admire Henry for his forthrightness and his imperturbable sense of the rightness of his every thought and action? (Again, there are occasional signs of doubt, but nothing significant. His universe is clearly defined, as is the social structure he embraces.)

What are we to make of the ending, when Henry announces to the family that Margaret will inherit Howards End (a metaphor for England?), a rather cynical gesture in view of the fact that he had knowingly conspired with the family to betray his mother's intention, at her deathbed, years before, that she should have it? This deception, along with his callous dismissal of his wife's wishes, would seem to require a different reward than her lasting devotion. Perhaps, we hope, the fact that he allows Helen and her illegitimate child to remain a part of the Howards End household suggests some small change, some growth in his vision of the world. The movie seems to suggest, however, that he remains comfortably superior in his attitude.

Where there's conflict, of course, there is bound to be confusion. Not everything in life works out quite as we would want or expect it to. And just as often, there are no clear moral boundaries. But there's a kind of gut-level dissatisfaction, a puzzlement, if you will, that you don't want to take away from your two hours spent with fascinating characters. You want things to feel right at the end, and for some reason that didn't happen for me with this movie. I was left feeling slightly annoyed and disappointed with Margaret, the main character, and the one whose gratifying resolution is the most important. And still pissed at both Helen and Henry, opposite ends of the pole that Margaret seeks to balance. Which is why I'm let wondering whether the film version missed some important aspect of the book, or whether a re-reading of the book today would leave me similarly exasperated and incomplete.

Movie Week Continues

Down in Laguna, we have time to watch movies in the evening...

Last night, we downloaded Casino Jack and the United States of Money from Netflix. It's the story of Jack Abramoff's rise and fall from star Young Republican in the Reagan era to jailbird. It's also about youthful fellow zealots like Ralph Reed, Grover Norquist, Karl Rove and Tom Delay, who grew into the powerful right-wing core of the Republican Party and did their best to create that permanent Republican majority that was their ultimate goal. The path to their goal was paved with money. Abramoff's genius was to be able to attract it to their cause. That he, along with the rest of them, became a liar and a cheat, is perhaps attributable that skill. The movie carefully and persuasively documents how the combination of money, zealotry and ruthlessness led him steadily further into corruption.

If you still believe that corruption is found only in other countries than our own, I invite you to watch this chilling, deeply nauseating film. It's one of a number of documentaries that our naive Tea-Partiers should be required to watch. Some of their beliefs are called into question here, along with many of their heroes on the right.