Please note...

My post today is on Persist: The Blog.

The Bush Tattoos

(George H. W., that is...)

I remember only a single image from my dream last night. It's former President George H. W. Bush lying on a beach. His swimsuit is light blue, with an intricate patter of small, colorful figures. Above the waistline of the swimsuit, his belly is covered with multiple tattoos of similar, though even brighter figures, in amongst a fuzz of small hairs, shimmering in the sunlight.

A respectful Memorial Day to American readers! To all others, my gratitude for checking in on The Buddha Diaries. And if anyone could help me with that dream...

THIS MORNING...

... I sat. I closed my eyes and straightened my back. I bought my attention to the breath. I began to allow the body to relax... And the mind kicked in.

It asked: why are you doing this? Is this not a total waste of your time? Are there not many other things you could and should be doing? You could, for example, be reading the New York Sunday Times. You could be taking another hour in bed. You should be writing your blog, or outside in the back yard, changing the water in the fountain. (It got soapy yesterday, with cleanser dripping down from the balcony above, where the outside furniture was being given a wash. This morning, it's filled with foam.) So many things you could be doing with this time...

And yet... the choice is made. The commitment, really. And I learned long ago that Why? is the least useful of questions, one that takes me straight from my heart to my head, usually without productive results. I suppose I could come up with reasons for doing this. It clears out the mind, relaxes the body, gets me out of my head and into the here and now. It refreshes. It enriches my life, expands my view of the world, prepares me for life's end...

And, having stuck with my meditation through those initial doubts, I ended up with the realization that there are few, if any more pleasant ways to spend the time than in silent concentration on the breath; that what results is a quiet kind of joy, a distance from all those things that (still!) need to be done, a serenity that I can find in no other way. And the modest wisdom that realization represents.

Metta to all! And a happy and restful Memorial Day!

LOYALTY

What are the limits of loyalty?

It’s a vexing question, and one that troubles me particularly in the light of everything that’s happening in our political life today. On one side of the spectrum, I see an excess of loyalty to right-wing ideology and those who are attempting to implement it; on the other, an absence of loyalty that make progress toward goals I believe in difficult if not impossible. On the one side, intransigence; on the other, a contentiousness and a lack of solidarity that makes progress difficult, if not impossible.

I was reminded by this excellent op-ed piece in yesterday’s New York Times about the Democratic disarray which opened the door to Reaganism and the rise of right-wing power. The prime concerns of Hubert H. Humphrey (the centennial of whose birth is celebrated in the article) were social justice and a fair economic playing field. Had the party honored his leadership at the time, we might be living in a different America at the start of the 21^st century. Instead, fired by a well-justified but narrowly-focused rage against the Vietnam war, the party fled from Humphrey in droves, and stood by as Nixon trounced the anti-war McGovern. (I was, I confess, amongst them. Remember, "Dump the Hump"?)

We find ourselves today in a situation with Barack Obama that is in some ways a similar. There are those on the left who are willing to make the war(s) their primary, if not single issue. I, too, am deeply troubled by these endless, quite possibly irresolvable conflicts. And there are those with genuine, multiple, principled disagreements with the President's leadership on the economy and other fronts. I am personally just as greatly troubled, though, by the resultant, dangerous absence of solidarity and support among liberals and progressives, which leaves our side at once enfeebled and demonstrably vulnerable to the lock-step loyalty of Republicans. In our seemingly unshakable insistence on our individual rectitude on any given issue, we risk losing sight of the greater goals.

So what are the proper limits of loyalty? At what point are we compelled to stand on our own principles and mutiny against our leadership—at the risk of causing our ship to founder on the rocks? This is something that we did with extraordinary success last November, withdrawing our support from Democratic candidates in anger or disappointment, or simply abstaining because of our deflated enthusiasm.

We all have beliefs and principles at stake. Should we be prepared to sacrifice any of them—or none?

My thinking is that beliefs and principles are all very fine and may feel very good, but they don’t get us very far. I’m much aware that for every belief that I hold dear, there is someone who holds an opposite, quite possibly incompatible belief. (I may even have a few contradictions in my own thinking!) And rigid adherence to my principles—that is, ideology—can be as destructive as willingness to compromise them. The question is, when does it serve me better to bend, like the proverbial willow in the wind, rather than risk being blasted into oblivion like the oak?

Loyalty, it seems to me, must be a matter for negotiation—between me and my conscience as well as between me and my opponent. Blind loyalty is no better than its absence, and can be very much worse. We saw the effects of it in Nazi Germany. We also, sadly, see the results of intransigence in the never-ending (never-starting!) “peace talks” between the Israelis and the Palestinians. No matter how much “right” there is on either side, there can be no resolution before both sides are ready for some serious give-and-take. Mindless loyalty to the cause on either side will not lead to the peace from which both would surely benefit.

Still, a leader should not be called upon to do constant, paralyzing battle with those on his own side. The useful yardstick, for me, is the greater or the lesser harm: will his efforts lead to a better or worse result? Which might be different from, and lesser than what I myself deem to be the optimum result.

If by loyalty we mean being able to count on backing and support in tough circumstances, it seems to me that we on the left would do more to further our cause by lending that support than angrily withdrawing it when the optimal goal is not more immediately in sight, or when we happen to disagree. Barack Obama is not—at least in my view—the great betrayer of all principle and breaker of promises that he’s made out to be by those who are disappointed in the slow—they might say, non-existent—pace of change. I say rather that he has his eyes on the same prize as myself: social and economic justice, an end to oppression of all kinds, peace in the world and shared prosperity, a proper balance between humankind and nature. But these results do not come easy in today’s contentious political environment, and I personally don’t have the responsibility, nor the skills--as he does, with our support and that of his political allies--to make those things happen.

My own contention is that Obama is (in what has become a tritely popular construction in the political rhetoric of the day) on "the right side of history"; that he has both the vision and the patience to persist; and that he deserves the solid backing of our support. He has mine. I hope he has yours.

FEED YOUR HEAD

This morning I posted the draft of a new chapter for my book on Persist: The Blog. It's called "Feed Your Head." I hope you might be interested enough to pop over and take a look.

NY 26th

(Cross-posted on VoteObama 2012)

The stunning reversal in New York's 26th Congressional District yesterday, while a hopeful sign for the Democrats, suggests some rather depressing things about the American electorate. Personalities aside--and I'm guessing that the winner was a more... well, winning personality than the woman she defeated--one would want to assume that voters were persuaded as much by promises and policies when they elected a Republican just a half year or so ago, and by a vast majority. One might also, fairly, assume that yesterday's result was in good part an utter repudiation of what the Republicans have done, and what they have proposed to do, since gaining control of the House of Representatives.

My own conclusion is that voters were not listening last November. It's not that Republicans failed to make their intentions clear. True, they dressed those intentions up in fancy rhetoric about jobs and tax cuts, and sold them aggressively to easily seduced buyers. But really, who could be surprised by their continuing, stubborn, irrational opposition to everything the President presented--even when, at times, his proposals met with or surpassed their own requirements? Who could be surprised by their draconian budget proposal, their attack on Medicare, their inalterable opposition to putting an end to the Bush tax cuts? All these were perfectly predictable, to anyone who cared to listen to their message.

The point is, people listened to what they wanted to hear. They listened to the fear and the greed in their own gut, not to the unconcealed ideology or its predictable consequences. There was no exercise of judgment, no critical discernment. I have to add, ruefully, that something similar can be said about Democratic voters in 2008. They projected all their desires and all their hopes on candidate Obama. He became some kind of messiah, rather than the politician that he was, and is, necessarily, in order to reach the Oval Office. He could never have fulfilled all the expectations that built up around him. (I hear you say, "But he promised!" Don't you listen to a politician's promises with an ounce of realistic skepticism?)

If it were in my power to endow American voters with a gift--excuse, for a moment, the presumption!--it would be the gift of that skepticism. And I'm not talking about the cynical form that discounts all hope and aspiration with a smirk; nor the kind that belittles every effort to progress. I'm talking about the kind of skepticism that simply asks reasonable questions and insists on reasonable answers; the kind of skepticism that requires the careful examination of conscience and the weighing of likely outcomes; the kind of skepticism that is as skeptical of itself and its own self-interest as it is of others.

So the wild pendulum swing in New York's 26th District is less a cause for celebration among Democrats than for some sober self-questioning. Where were all those voters in November, 2010, who so miraculously saw the light in May, 2011? What does it mean, that the pendulum swung so far, so fast? What dangers does the swing suggest, and how must they be addressed? The success of a democracy depends on the educational maturity of the demos. No nation can be run on the basis of purely emotional self-interest. It must be governed by rational choices and well-thought decisions. But alas, given the history of the past couple of years, I'm compelled to wonder if this is what people find so objectionable about Obama? I remain, um, skeptical.

JOPLIN, MISSOURI

I imagine those poor folk in Joplin must have thought the world was coming to an end. This New York Times panoramic view, with what remains of St. Johns Regional Medical center at the horizon, is breathtaking evidence of the extent of the destruction. Unimaginable. The images, as usual, speak louder than all the words that have been written; and the widely-played five minute video from the mini market, which I discovered posted in full length on the Huffingtion Post, evokes the horror of those few minutes even in utter darkness, with only momentary flashes of lightning to illuminate the scene. The voices document the anticipation, the chaotic arrival of the tornado itself, and the terrified aftermath.

Later this morning, I will be sending some money to one of the organizations aiding the victims. It's a small gesture of compassion, and as usual it feels inadequate to the enormity of the suffering. From a lecture visit to Drury University some years ago, I have friends in the neighboring city of Springfield. I heard from one of them yesterday, to say that he is planning to make the trip to Joplin as soon as it is permitted, to see what he can do to help. It's good neighbors like these that remind us of what is best in the human spirit. Sad that it sometimes takes tragedy to jolt us into our better selves. To paraphrase a famous utterance, "Today, we are all Missourians."

STICK ART

I love these modest, ephemeral art works by my niece, Charlotte Docking, who lives in England. They share the art-and nature quality of better-known contemporary artists like Andy Goldsworthy, but have their own unique blend of ritual and whimsy...

I like the evocation of primal, slithery creatures--snakes, centipedes, nautilus--in artfully distributed sticks and tree bark, and my mind engages in the intricate process of laying out the pieces. Quite simple, and yet eloquent. Though modest in medium and scale, works such at these can resonate in the human consciousness at the same archetypal level as the ancient, monumental grandeur of Stonehenge or the enigma of "crop circles" today. The imagination works in wonderfully diverse ways. I hope she does more. I hope she finds a place to show the photo-documentation...

ROUTINE

(I think this is the beginning of an essay...)

These past few days have been a curious lapse for me. Things have seemed out of sync. What started out as wi-fi troubles in our home network led to a temporary aversion to all things electronic, including my blogs. Not unlike George, the dog, I recognize myself to be a creature of habit. I get upset and discombobulated when my normal routine is interrupted, for whatever reason. One of these, currently, is our regular migration from the city to our cottage in Laguna Beach. It has been more than two weeks since we were there, and it will be another ten days before we get back down. (The cottage is currently on loan to a young British couple, actors hoping to find work in Southern California,; we have arranged an exchange for their flat in Islington, not far from our grandchildren, where we will be staying for ten days in September.)

Routine is useful to me. I’d almost say indispensible. It’s a kind of security blanket, without which my mind is more than usually restless and uncomfortable. Things just seem to move along smoothly when I’m in it; when I’m not, everything goes wrong. That hard-to-reach bulb explodes and needs changing. The garden hose develops a leak. I lose my place in the book I’m reading. At dinner time, I eat more than I need to, to compensate for the discomfort that I’m feeling—and wake up in the morning feeling slow and bloated.

Big things, little things. It all seems out of kilter.

Worst of all, the writing suffers. My usually powerful motivation flies out the window. Long-forgotten fears about “not knowing what to say” come flooding back. When I do sit down to write, I get side-tracked by some triviality that would, in other circumstances, be made to wait for my attention.

Routine is not practice—neither creative nor meditative practice—but I find it essential to facilitate practice.

Is it humdrum? Is it boring? I suppose that it might seem to. I suppose that it might be allowed to become so. To prevent that from happening, it needs to be properly observed and used. Like practice itself, it is a discipline that brings its own challenges and rewards.

I understand routine to be a temporal analogy for spatial orientation. It’s a matter of knowing where, in time, I am. It helps to recognize that is cognate with the word “route.” It’s a navigational device that sees me through the day. Without it, I am blown by the winds and driven by the tides. With it, no matter the external circumstances, I know my longitude and latitude (no coincidence, surely, that these are measured in minutes!) and where I’m headed. I know when it’s time to trim the sails and idle, and when it’s time to tack hard in the opposite direction.

Okay, forgive me, I’m getting carried away with a rather trite metaphor, but I hope that it serves to clarify the point. As I say, I’ve been watching myself go increasingly adrift in the past few days, and need to get back on track. Which will mean rediscovering the routine,

WORK SPACE

In connection with the book I'm working on right now, I have been thinking a bit in the past couple of days about work space. I hope you might be interested enough to click on over to Persist: The Blog, to find the draft of a chapter there. Apologies for shifting you over once again today--but the topic, I think, is just as relevant to The Buddha Diaires. It's all a package, really. I just like to be sure that Persist: The Blog remains an active site.

JUST A NOTE...

... to ask you to hop over to Vote Obama 2012 and take a look at yesterday's brief entry about iMatterMarch, an organization of teens working in ingenious ways to demand political attention to the health of the planet they will inherit from us. I have made a contribution to support their effort, and hope that you might, too.

JOHN FRAME

(I promised last week to write more about the artist John Frame’s work at the Huntington Library…)

So what are we to make of this endlessly fascinating work-in-progress, Three Fragments of a Lost Tale: Sculpture and Story by John Frame, currently on view at the Huntington Library in San Marino? It’s part puppetry, part kinetic sculpture; part grand opera, part grand guignol; part medieval morality play, part post-Armageddon futuristic narrative; part fairy tale, part visionary quest; part Luddite hand-carving and stitchery, part hi-tech animated movie.

Perhaps the German compound word does it best: Gesamtkunstwerk—the “all-together-art-work.” This link will give you access to a foretaste.

Frame’s work sets the mind reeling with cultural associations. Its art historical roots take us back to Breughal and Bosch, and bring us forward to the dream-worlds of the Surrealists and the dark vision of the German Expressionists following the first World War. There are powerful literary associations with visionaries like Tolkien and C. S. Lewis, even with the bleak Shakespearean landscapes of The Tempest, Hamlet, King Lear, or Macbeth. More recently, we think of movie epics like the Star Wars cycle, Harry Potter, or the Lord of the Rings--but the hi-tech effects look and act more like Rube Goldberg—or Heath Robinson, or Jean Tinguely. In theater, there’s Godot to think about; in opera, Wagner…

The work astonishes us, too, with variety and accomplishment of the skills involved. The exhibit walks us past numerous artfully lit cases, where we meet the small scale, cleverly articulated figures of not only the main characters...

(All images borrowed from the Huntington Library's website)

... of Frame’s megadrama—the Crippled Boy, Mr. R, O-Man—but also a myriad of bit players in three-dimensional stills, along with their intricately carved props...

... and multiple costumes; past large-scale photographs documenting the artist’s workshop and his process: and finally into a small theater where the some of the drama’s scenes play out for us on the screen. There is just enough completed footage for us to put together the outlines of a still unfolding story—a future-viewed-from-the-past in a post-Apocalypse world, where the quest is on for the Crippled Boy and the secret of salvation he alone might possess.

Basically, the exhibition is an adventure for us viewers, as for the artist, whose journey continues as his vision evolves. It started, we understand from the show’s catalogue, from a single dream, opening up a new path for the artist at a moment when he was fearful that he had reached the end of the aesthetic line he had been pursuing until that time. It’s a dark story, offering the vision of a world in torment, where the existential struggle for survival becomes the metaphor for the situation in which we find ourselves in the real world today. And as in the real world, Frame’s story offers us an inexhaustible set of choices as to how we may understand and interpret our circumstances, and how we may relate to our fellow travelers. His play is open-ended, bringing us back time and again to the impenetrable, richly textured mystery of life—and death.

It’s rare, these days, to come across work that is so inclusive, so ambitious in intention—and yet so content to unfold at its own pace, with such meticulous attention to detail. Clearly, Frame has struck a vein that will fruitfully occupy his time and energies for years to come, and will continue to engage the fascination of his viewer.

Big as this show is, Frame is also content to curate a concurrent, intimately scaled exhibition of work by the Romantic visionary William Blake...

... from the Huntington’s impressive collection. Installed in a tiny gallery, Born to Endless Night: Paintings, Drawings and Prints by William Blake Selected by John Frame is a timely reminder of the early influence of Blake on Frame as a young artist, and on the development of his vision. Blinded by formal and aesthetic concerns. contemporary artists have generally been loath to address the moral and philosophical mysteries of good and evil, life, death and the afterlife—Heaven or Hell—the existence of God and the presence of the divine. More to his credit that Frame looks to an artist like Blake, and finds in him the inspiration to take on those great and lasting issues with commitment and seriousness of purpose in his work.

A VERY SPECIAL EVENING

I much appreciated the honor of being invited to be the keynote speaker at the Third Annual Benefit Dinner at the 18^th Street Art Center in Santa Monica on Saturday—especially in view of the fact that my two predecessors were the art critic and curator Davie Hickey and the world-renowned creativity expert Sir Ken Robinson (if you haven’t yet come across his wonderful TED talks , it’s really time you did!) I’m happy to say that my talk was enthusiastically received, and it was a great pleasure to see many familiar faces amongst the guests.

Ellie and I arrived early, in order to join one of the tours the Center had laid on. Our first stop was the studio of John Malpede and Henriette Bouwers, whose nicely named Los Angeles Poverty Department (LAPD) works to empower Skid Row residents through a variety of art programs, ranging from performance and installation to public art projects. In my ignorance, I had been unaware of this immensely valuable and compassionate initiative, and I was glad to hear about it. Incidentally, it fit in well with the theme of my own presentation, later: the responsibility of artists to use their gift to “change the world, one art work at a time.”

Next stop was in the Center’s small gallery space, currently devoted to a show called The Los Angeles-Istanbul Connection—a curatorial collaboration between Saliha Kasap, an Istanbul-based artist, and Arzu Arda Kosar, a resident at the Center. Modest in size, the exhibition managed to cover a lot of interesting territory, and served as a fine reminder that the 18^th Street Art Center is conscious of the international reach of art, and the common ground between artists everywhere.

Aside from its residency program, which attracts artists from throughout the world, the Center provides studio space for a number of Southern California-based artists. If these, we visited the studio of Clayton Campbell, the evening’s honoree for the many years he devoted to serving as Artistic Director of the Center, who was recently appointed Director of the Joan Mitchell Center in New Orleans. Amazingly, despite the time he has devoted to art community service, Clayton has maintained a steady and serious practice as an artist working with photo-based media. He’ll be missed in Los Angeles, but the benefit dinner offered him a fine send-off from Los Angeles.

At dinner, we sat at round tables in a gallery currently devoted to a photographic survey of the remarkable work of the Australian artist Andrew Rogers. To quote the press release:

Rogers has spent the last 13 years engaging over 6,700 people in 13 countries on seven continents to create stone sculptures in deserts, fjords, gorges, national parks, and on mountainous slopes. He often works for months on end, engaging hundreds of local workers and even a thousand Maasai warriors to help him erect his visionary installations. By building structures with local significance and providing sustaining support to maintain the mammoth artworks, Rogers engages the communities where his works are created. Following each project's completion, Rogers photographs the work himself either from a not air balloon, a helicopter 500 feet aloft, of from a satellite stationed 450 miles above the ground.

Here he is in Kenya:

And here in Chile:

But I do encourage you to go to the artist’s Land Art site and click on the names of the various continents to get a complete sense of his work.

All in all, it was a memorable evening, and one in which I am most grateful to be been able to play a role.

THE CREATIVE SPIRIT

I just published the text of the speech I gave last night on Persist: The Blog. It was the keynote address the annual fundraising dinner for the 18th Street Art Center in Santa Monica, and was received with gratifying enthusiasm. It encapsulates a lot of my thinking on the subject and, as always, I'd be happy to hear what you think.

INTENTIONAL CONVERSATION

I did not get the time, yesterday, to report on Wednesday's Intentional Conversation at the Huntington Library. I was so busy that I can't even remember what I was doing all day...

The "Intentional Conversation" sets out, in part at least, to be an antidote to the notable deterioration of that art in our society today. In our national dialogue, we have taken to talking past each other rather than with each other; and our more private, sociable conversations too easily degenerate into the exchange of pleasantries, party talk in which all serious discussion is avoided. I happen to love conversation. I love to hear how other people see the world and experience their lives--and I love to talk about what's in my own heart and what is on my mind. The Intentional Conversation's round table format takes us back to the circle around the camp fire or the kiva, where weighty matters can be debated without reticence or fear.

The day's theme was "Life in Uncertain Times: Responding to Change in Our Lives, Our Community, and Our Nation"--a topic of compelling and lasting interest to me. It's forty years since I published an essay titled "Living On a Fault," which focused on the peculiarities of the Los Angeles art world and its uncertainties. The day started with round-table introductions, with eight people of diverse backgrounds, interests and attitudes gathered around each of a dozen tables. It was surprising--actually, not surprising, because I have now seen this happen so often--it was not long before we were hearing intimate stories about the uncertainties that have intruded, sometimes rudely, compelling change in our personal lives. It is very human, I have found, to want to share one's secrets in a situation of anonymous trust. Some of our stories, yesterday, were astounding, and had a lot to say about uncertainty and change.

This first session was followed by a panel discussion led by Hoyt Hilsman, the title of whose new e-book, The Power of Uncertainty (co-written with David Palumbo) is sufficient indication of his own interest in the topic. Panelists included a film producer, a CalTech physicist, and a university administrator with a long-standing Buddhist meditation practice (details available at the above-linked website) which assured a lively and varied discussion coming from different, sometimes opposing points of view. A good conversation is not a place where everyone sits down and agrees with everyone else; it's a place to be open to other ways of looking at the world, and hopefully to expand one's own limited point of view. The panel offered a civil, serious, and often charmingly humorous model for the rest of us to follow.

(During the lunch break, I joined a small bunch of people who wandered over to the Huntington galleries to see a small exhibition of twenty works by William Blake, curated by the artist John Frame--a participant in the day's conversation, whose own current work is the subject of a major exhibition at another of the galleries. The juxtaposition of the two shows is in itself a fascinating topic, as is Frame's exhibition. These will have to await a future entry.)

The two round-table-sessions in the afternoon gave us the opportunity to address the topic of uncertainty in the public arena and to consider what might be learned from the day's discussions. At our table, it seemed to me, the fear of change was far outweighed by its generally positive outcomes. Terrible things may happen in our lives, but we usually come out stronger for the experience, and more compassionate toward our fellow beings. We were more divided on the subject of the national trauma we are currently engaged in. I myself have mixed feelings about it. I am a pessimist when it comes to this country: I am fearful (or should I be hopeful?) that our current downward spiral will lead to an end to America's leadership position in the world. The prosperity that has been our privilege for many decades now cannot last in a world of shrinking resources and growing populations.

On the other hand, I am an optimist in the sense that I believe that a major shift in human consciousness is imminent--and has indeed already started to take place. We have created a world in which uncertainty is the only certainty. Our current global turmoil will either make us stronger as a species, or it will destroy us. Either one is possible. But I'm choosing to opt for the former. Change is necessary, change is good. It may be uncomfortable, it may bring up our deepest fears. But in my own experience even the most difficult of challenges have worked out for the better, and I believe the same can be true on a global scale.

Which reflects some, but certainly not all of the conclusions offered by spokespeople for the various tables as we wrapped up for the day. E pluribus, plurum. (Is my Latin correct?)

Fore-Edge Painting

(I'll be gone all day today, attending the Intentional Conversation, sponsored by Marymount College. More about that tomorrow. In the meantime...)

For your delight, I have just a few minutes to post these pictures of a "fore-edge painting" by Lynne McDaniel (please visit her site: you'll be amply rewarded by her paintings!) Lynne is one of our artists' group members, and brought in a couple of these amazing pieces for our session last night. I had never heard of this unusual little corner of the art world, but apparnently there is a long tradition of fore-edge painting. It can be done only with gilt-edged books, which allow the painting to completely disappear...

until the edge is bent, revealing...

...the painting! Thanks, Lynne. A real treat!

Meditating Fiercely

I received an invitation, yesterday, to contribute some thoughts to my friend M. A. Greenstein's site, Bodies in Space, "in the light of upcoming Father's Day." Here's that I wrote:

In the light of what has been happening in the world these past couple of weeks, I have been wondering, not for the first time, about how the warrior spirit can be brought to bear on a Buddhist meditation practice. Are the two incompatible? I have written recently about the difficult moral conflict between taking life, on the one hand, and on the other acting to protect it from those who would wantonly attack it. But what I’m talking about here is something different. It’s more about inner warrior energy than warrior action in the world.

I have worked a good deal with this energy in recent years. I have become familiar with it both internally, learning to recognize and direct it in my own life as a man; and in group work with many of my fellow men, in pursuit of its appropriate use in the contemporary world, where warrior energy is all too often misunderstood and misapplied. We inherit it from our forefathers, but chucking spears around leads to disastrous consequences in a world of sophisticated weaponry and fraught relationships between nations. A glance around the world is sufficient to confirm the truth of this axiom.

It’s in this context that I recall sitting in a question and answer session with Thanissaro Bhikkhu (Than Geoff) with our sangha in Laguna Beach. At the time, I was dealing with a great deal of sadness over the approaching death of a good friend of many years, a still-young woman, a gifted artist, a beautiful and vital human being whose body was now racked by rapidly metastasizing cancer. This friend was foremost in my mind in the metta practice with which I always start my daily sit. As I told Than Geoff, I was agonizing over the feeling that sitting on my cushion and sending out goodwill and compassion to my friend seemed like a feeble gesture, given the enormity of what was happening to her.

Than Geoff offered me his most benign of smiles. “Why not,” he asked, “try meditating less feebly.”

Well, that hit home. Reflecting on what his suggestion might mean in terms of actual practice, it came to me that the opposite of “feeble” might be “fierce.” But how to put fierce meditation into practice?

I decided that it had in part to do with the breath. There are many ways, as Than Geoff himself frequently points out, of taking the breath in and letting it out. I began to experiment with the idea of doing it fiercely and discovered that, yes, indeed, the breath can be fierce. Which does not mean that it has to be loud, or particularly deep, or hot and heavy. It’s the intention that counts. I discovered not only that I could bring warrior intention to the breath, but also that the warrior intention brought with it a whole new possibility of focus and concentration.

Next, with this intention in mind, I started directing that familiar warrior energy to different parts of the body as I worked through the scanning process I have learned as an aid to concentration. I found that, during my sit, a simple message from the brain would allow me to tighten the muscles—or even simply to envision them tightening—in each part as I brought the attention to it: the lower abdomen, the upper abdomen, the solar plexus, the flanks, the chest and neck, the face, the top of the head and down the back, then each of the legs in turn, and each of the arms down through the fingertips…

The result of these discoveries was to bring me to a whole new level of practice. I had reached a plateau, where it had become all too easy to find myself just, well, sitting there and breathing. The combination of warrior intention and the actual exercise of muscular warrior energy in the body brought a new intensity of focus to my practice, and a new sense of accomplishment. And I hasten to add that I believe its benefits are available not just to people of my gender; warrior energy is not the exclusive province of men. I believe that women, too, can find this energy within them if they care to look for it, and that they too can bring it usefully to bear on their practice and in their lives. It just needs to be directed with circumspection and discrimination, because—as I suggested earlier—the consequences of its misuse are dire.

When properly understood and properly directed for the benefit of oneself and others, though, the warrior spirit can be a powerful source of concentrated and productive energy.

A STEADY HAND

I am squeezed for time this morning. After two weeks at our Laguna Beach cottage, we return to Los Angeles for three. We have to leave the cottage in good shape, with some drawer and closet space cleared out for the guests who will be spending ten days here as a part of our house swap--the first we have attempted. We will be staying at their flat in Islington, London, for ten days in the fall. The exchange also involves a car, and we will be an easy (we hope!) drive from where our grandchildren live. Our swap-mates are a young British couple, both actors, who are relocating to Los Angeles in the hopes of finding work in Hollywood; they'll be enjoying some down time in Laguna Beach. All this means a morning of preparation for their arrival--and our departure for the city.

Still, I could not let the moment pass without a word of praise for the President's interview on last night's 60 minutes. He was calm, clear, concise in his answers to Steve Kroft's questions. He avoided boasting or self-aggrandizement--though not coy about taking credit where it was appropriate--and came off, I thought, as a steady and reliable "Commander-in-Chief." He stands comfortably head and shoulders--and more!--above the craven contenders for his office, and is remarkable for the ease and comfort with which he handles himself in the most trying of circumstances. I get the sense, watching him, that he has the context of a much larger perspective in mind in all that he says and does, and that he is not easily swayed into rash decisions and actions by the pressures of the moment. I think we are wise to have elected this clear-headed man at a time when our country and the world are rushing toward the precipice. I trust that he will prevail in the 2012 election. I need to believe we have placed the reins in steady, thoughtful hands.

GRAMMAR COUNTS

We tend to be loose with our grammar these days, as though it were more decorative than functional. I came across an amusing example of why grammar sometimes does count in yesterday's New York Times. It was in Joe Nocera's column, You Call That Tough?, where the Manhattan-based US Attorney Preet Bharara is damned with faint praise for bringing a case against Deutsche Bank in which all those ultimately responsible--the executives who perpetrated the alleged fraud--are spared criminal indictment. "Every lie is not a crime," Bharara reportedly responded, when asked why no criminal charges had been brought. What he intended to say was, clearly, "Not every lie is a crime."

I wonder if the attorney's sloppiness with language is a reflection of the lack of clear focus and intention in the case he brought? Does the slip betray some deeper inattention or indifference to, um... the truth?

Is it picayune to draw attention to such lapses in the use of the English language? Not, in my opinion, when they distort meaning in the way this one does. I'm sure that readers will find some such grammatical errors (and certainly typos!) in The Buddha Diaries, but I do work pretty carefully to avoid the worst of them. And this one reminds me that it's important to be vigilant, even with language.

IN THE VALLEY OF THE SWEET PEAS

A Saturday morning stroll...

... with thanks to David and Nancy for the heads-up. A wildflower treat we would never have known about without their tip.

BELIEFS

The media seem to delight in polls, whose results seem to me increasingly absurd. They have become a way of assessing irrational beliefs which bear no relevance to the serious discussion of the issues facing us as a nation. Who cares if thirty-one percent of the American people believe that moon is made of Cheddar cheese? It signifies only that thirty-one (or however many) of the American people are perfectly content to be deluded.

Polls are based on the proposition that "I believe what I believe and therefore it must be true." What the Buddha teaches, usefully, is that beliefs are not much use to anyone until they have been put to the test and proven demonstrably true by the results. The theory that the moon is made of Cheddar cheese is simply beside the point--who cares?--until you actually go there, chop off a piece, and subject it to the taste test. In which case, it either is, or isn't.

True believers, though, it seems, are not so easily dissuaded from their beliefs. I was gratified to note that the percentage of Republicans who believe that President Obama was not born in this country dropped, after the release of his "long form" birth certificate, from 45% to 14%. But there's still that 14%--millions of people. And how about the 45% who clung to their belief for years, despite ample other evidence to the contrary? The "short form" birth certificate, apparently, was not enough.

Now we're supposed to worry about how many people "believe" that Osama bin Laden is dead? Should we "prove" it by producing photographs? And, in these days of easy photo-shopping, how many people would "believe" this evidence? How many people "believe" that the burial at sea was right, or wrong? Etc.

I'm not so much bothered that people nurture delusional beliefs. I probably nurture a few myself, hidden away somewhere. What bothers me is that these delusional beliefs are treated as though they had some serious significance, sufficient to have an effect on truly significant things--like the policies that determine the direction of the country. Their ability to foster the belief that Obama is a "socialist"--whatever that means!--has enabled right-wing ideologues and corporate interests, for example, to stall all progress toward financial reform at a time when it is sorely needed.

Delusion reigns where belief is king. Unreason is let loose upon the land. Plain truths--even demonstrable facts--are endlessly questioned, while arrant nonsense is allowed to stand unexamined. I realize that it's too late, at this point, to hope for a return to reason. But will we destroy ourselves with our "beliefs"?

Bin Laden: Corpus Delicti

(cross-posted to Vote Obama 2012)

I'm astounded... no, why should I be astounded by this familiar pattern of events. After a few hours of faint praise for Obama, the second-guessing starts.

There is, as I see it, a legitimate moral question as to whether the Osama bin Laden assassination (call it by its name) should have been undertaken in the first place. Had we elected a Buddhist abbott to the White House, he might not have approved it. We didn't. We elected a hard-headed pragmatist with the expectation that he would take responsibility for the nation's business both at home and abroad. World leaders are required to make decisions most of us would shrink from making--including, alas, in a world inhabited by wicked humans as well as by the well-intentioned, decisions about war and peace. Violence is sometimes, for such people, not an option. My own personal qualms about taking a life, in this case, are easy enough to debate because they have no real-life implications or consequences. They are, in a sense, a luxury. And even with those qualms, my thinking is balanced in this case by a sense of justice accomplished.

Once we're past that debate, however, we risk descending into small-minded contention and absurdity. There are thus far four fronts of attack. The first was opened up by the revelation that bin Laden did not have a gun in his hands at the moment of his demise--as though this were some 1950s Hollywood oater whose conventions require the bad guy to draw first. No, this was an assassination, pure and simple. Clearly, from reports I have heard, had the man come forward with his hands in the air in an act of overt surrender, he would not have been gunned down. He did not. A fire fight was in progress. He was, as it were, commander of the fort that was under assault and providing fierce resistance. I'm no expert on the rules of war, but once I'm past my Buddhist qualms, I have no problem with this one.

Next, of course, is the burial at sea. Was it Muslim enough? And why dispose of the corpus delicti? Who will now believe that he is actually dead? We should have preserved the body as evidence... I actually thought this was a rather brilliant solution. No place of burial, no martyr's shrine. A Muslim ceremony to show respect for the religion, not the man. And slip the corpse into the ocean, an anonymous presence in an anonymous location, and hopefully lost to the world's consciousness.

And then the photos. The hunger for evidence, in part perhaps, but also for sensation. Obama's choice was a wise one, in my view. He reminds us frequently to ask ourselves, what kind of a country do we want to be? Do we want, in this instance, to be the kind of country that makes public exhibition of its violence? To produce the bloody pictures would be the equivalent of that gruesome medieval practice of impaling the victim's head on a pike and raising it above the castle walls. It would be an open taunting of those to whom we wish to show our humanity, a further provocation and incitement to violence among those to whom we wish to preach the values of peace and tolerance.

And finally, Geronimo. I confess that I was taken aback at first by the code name that seemed to have been assigned to Osama bin Laden. But then I read, in the exhaustive New York Times report, I think, that it was the operation that was code-named Geronimo; bin Laden's code name was "Jackpot"--a far more appropriate association. I'm hoping/assuming that this was a confusion promulgated by the media. It would have been insensitive, to say the least, to have honored this mass-murderer with the name of a brave man who had the courage and audacity put his life on the line in the service of his people--in much the same way as those intrepid Navy Seals who conducted the operation. If I have it right, it would seem entirely fitting and in no way disrespectful to the history of our native Americans, but rather a fine way of honoring their hero.

I have yet to see this last point clarified. I hope I'm right. On all other points, I support the President's decisions and remain in awe of the cool-headed, meticulous planning and execution of this unpleasant but historically necessary operation.

THE LIFE OF THE BUDDHA

I'm just about half-way through a book that I'm sure will be of interest to readers of "The Buddha Diaries." It's called Thus We Heard: Recollections of the Life of the Buddha by Bhante Walpola Piyananda and Stephen Long (the link is to the book's Facebook page), and it's published by Metta From Us, Los Angeles. You might not come across it otherwise.

The nice conceit of the book is that we are present at the First Sangha Council that was convened a mere ninety days after the death of the Buddha, and that we are able to sit in on the "sub-committee" meetings of his first friends and followers, the arahants who knew him and worked with him during his life time, as they put together a "biography" from their collective memories. At the same time, the larger context of the full sangha offers a useful overview of the teachings, and a plausible and scenario of how the sutras came to be collected into the familiar "baskets" and passed down to subsequent generations through an oral tradition, before eventually being written down in the form in which they are known today. The result is part fiction, part biography, part dharma--and an entertaining read.

The story of Siddhartha's life from prince to pauper and from the moment of his enlightenment under the bodhi tree to his later years as one of the greatest and most influential teachers in human history is by now a popular, quasi-mythical one, recounted in countless books and films and widely available to all. For myself, with a bare-bones knowledge of that story, Thus We Heard fleshed it out not only with authentic and fascinating detail but also with a sense of the personalities involved, their frailties and humor, the way they lived their lives, the distinctions between rich and poor, privileged and outcast in a society that existed two and a half thousand years ago--as though it were today. A truly engaging experience.

But let me share my anger with the Buddha as I read this story. It's not so much about the abandoning of his wife and family--particularly his four-month-old son--when he answered the call to go off and seek his own enlightenment, his answer to the great, ubiquitous conundrum of human suffering; no, I found my anger arising only much later, on his return to visit that same family, now fully enlightened, with his multitude of disciples and supporters, revered by all and greeted with worshipful attentions to his every need. Okay, I thought as I was reading, so he is enlightened. Does this qualify him for such universal adoration? And does he need the thunderbolts and cosmic light shows to prove his mastery of the universe? Could he not be a little more, well, humble, toward the wife and son he left behind? He seems (in this narrative) quite content to be treated like a god.

So I noticed the anger coming up. And then I realized of course that my anger was really not about the Buddha at all; it was arising to teach me something important about the self-aggrandizement I was heedlessly projecting on to him, about my own vanity, my own need to do special things to draw attention to myself and earn the admiration of those around me. It was also about a deeply-rooted and carefully concealed resentment of those who presume to "teach" (do you think it might have to do with the abuse I experienced, as a boy, at the hands of a teacher I was supposed to respect and obey? And my resistance, all these years, to fully committing to the teaching profession myself? These are deep and complex issues.) And my skepticism of those who presume to know the answers--even though I know the Buddha's answers to be reliably good and trustworthy ones. The Buddha offers a brilliant, shining mirror whose clarity allows us to see ourselves ever more clearly, should we care to look into that mirror with uncompromising attention. Thus we learn.

"Thus We Heard" is, of course, the constantly repeated phrase from the Pali canon that reminds us that everything we know about the Buddha and his teachings is based on what is reported to us and what has been passed on from human ear to human ear. It's a perfect title for a book that manages to both humanize the Buddha and show his life to be exemplary, the model of a livable, workable moral code and the practice of compassion.

I'm still reading. And I have a long way to go--not just to reach the end of the book...

OBAMA/OSAMA

(For anyone who might be interested, I have a report today on Persist: The Blog about my experience at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books.)

So what's a Buddhist to say about last night's news? The death of Osama bin Laden came as a huge surprise, with the President interrupting our evening with his announcement. Do we condemn the taking of life, or celebrate the demise of a man whose past actions and future intentions are equally and unquestionably evil? In an ideal world, retribution is hardly a noble, less still a Buddhist practice. It can be said to merely perpetuate the cycle of violence and to generate unwished-for karmic response. On the other hand, in the real world, I'll confess to a certain satisfaction, and a sense of justice fulfilled.

Will the careful preparation and apparently impeccable execution of this operation do anything to silence--or even quiet--those critics who complain about Obama's equanimity and patience, his insistence on examining a situation from all sides, with an eye to the eventual outcome? Probably not. And yet the story, insofar as it is known to date, suggests that he brought all those qualities to bear, along with a great deal of courage. The action was surely fraught with risks. It could have very easily ended up like Jimmy Carter's disastrous--and widely ridiculed--attempt to rescue the American hostages in Iran. Its success was just as surely due to the several months that were devoted, since last August, to the verification of intelligence and the meticulous planning. It was, from all I hear, a faultless operation, for which we have not only the skills of the special forces involved, but also the rigor of their commander to thank.

The statement announcing the event was also classical Obama. He carefully avoided boasting, claimed an appropriate amount of credit for himself and was generous with the credit he assigned to others--including his predecessor, whose rash abandonment of the hunt for Osama in favor of a dubious and unrelated war proved a grave setback to his promise for justice. In reminding the American people that this was not a part of some war against Islam, he wisely and generously recalled the same assertion made by George W. Bush in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. His tone was measured, calm, authoritative, and he projected a quiet, confident strength--beside which his current critics and opponents look like a bunch of ill-informed and mean-spirited hysterics. Chalk a big one up for Obama in the political sphere.

And then... retribution is one thing. Prevention is another. Being of a generation who remember such things, here's a question I ask myself: knowing what we now know about 20th century history--and had we been able--could we, should we have assassinated Adolf Hitler in the later 1930s, before he unleashed his madness on the world? Should we, if we could, assassinate Colonel Muammar Ghadaffi today? Where there's a deadly snake that threatens whole populations and that could be clearly and cleanly rendered harmless by decapitation, are we right to cut off its head? My head and heart say one thing; my gut says something else entirely.

Any thoughts?