The Buddha Diaries

A SPECIAL DAY

2012-02-01T08:25:00.000-08:00

I congratulate myself. I am recovered. It took a couple of days of (mostly) bed rest, plenty of liquids--the usual stuff, but effective. Here I am... and fortunately so, because this is a special day: this is our first full day with Luka in our care. Sarah, his mom, has had to return to work and we are left, er... holding the baby. For one day of the week. Not onerous duty, we are looking forward to it.

It does give me pause to wonder, though, about how "advanced" we are, as a nation. When compared to most European countries (sorry, exceptionalists!) our provision for the care of the elderly is sadly primitive. My parents, aging in a small country village in Wales, could expect to receive regular visits from health care and other geriatric professionals; when finally incapacitated, there were fine, well-staffed residential homes available to take care of them. So, too, with maternity (and I believe paternity) leave laws, which require employers to provide far more generous and longer-lasting arrangements than were available to Sarah. In general, our health care "system" is an outrageously expensive mess, leaving countless millions to the not-so-tender mercies of private health insurance companies and the possibility of financial ruin. As Obama frequently remarks, we can do better.

Conservatives look back to a time when communities took care of themselves and each other. They call, as did Bush I, upon the "thousand points of light"--the charitable work to which we rightly contribute both here at home and abroad. Was a time when the world was small and relatively simple, as were our communities. These days we're massively overpopulated and globalized; we have become more impersonal, more distant from our neighbors, and feel less responsibility for them. Government, it seems to me, is the only workable medium in our contemporary world, for the collective care-taking that's needed, for the poor, the disenfranchised, the sick, and the vastly increasing population of the elderly. Our advanced neighbor countries have done more to move with the times. We seem unable to change our ways with the changing world, and are currently experiencing the agony of trying to catch up with it. It has gotten away from us, and we don't quite see what adjustments we need to make, and how to make them.

It's all too clear that the solutions offered by the slate of Republican contenders look to the past rather than the future. But there's no way back. What has failed in the past, in some instances disastrously, is not going to work any better in the future...

But what am I complaining about? Little Luka has just arrived. Well nursed, he is now sleeping peacefully in his bassinet. Here he is:

Poor little guy! Sleeping so peacefully, little does he know that he's the one who's going to have to find a new and equitable way to share this planet with all those other living beings. Looking at him, though, I feel sure he'll be up to the task.

ALMOST HUMAN...

2012-01-31T11:28:00.000-08:00

... today. But not quite yet. Still hacking away, and congested. Still befuddled, up top. One insight from the current battle with a cold--it seems almost too much to dignify it with the word "illness"--is the realization that most things can wait. There really is nothing so urgent as to demand instant attention. I don't even have to be writing this entry... Would it be so terrible for readers to arrive at this page and find... nothing new? I think not.

Humbling, in a way, too. I attach too much to the significance of what I do. Then I look out through the window and see the city of Hollywood, California, stretched out below; I think of all the words being entered on all those computers on just this one day--all those novels and poems, all those business documents and letters and, in this city, all those screenplays; and then my mind wanders back to all those words pounded out on all those typewriters over the decades, many of them intended, but so few of them ever reaching, the "silver screen"... So many earnest people, so many ambitions!

... and here, today, is my small handful of words, cast out into that same ocean. With nary a splash, really. You see what I mean? Still, I keep doing it, if only because that's what I do.

(I warned you: befuddled. If not benighted.)

AMAZON

2012-01-30T07:10:00.000-08:00

If you've been trying Amazon to order a copy of "Mind Work," I'm aware that you're still getting a message saying "temporarily out of stock." While I'd like to think that this is because copies are flying so fast off their virtual shelves, more likely it's because of Amazon's slow response to the new publication. On the one hand, I'm tempted to encourage you to keep trying, in the attempt to break the log jam in their author-unfriendly system; on the other, I'm inclined to have you go directly to the publisher, Parami Press, to be sure your order is filled promptly. Or there's always your local bookstore, in which case you'd be doing everyone a favor. (See article in Saturday's NY Times Business section.)

LEMON AND HONEY...

2012-01-30T07:04:00.000-08:00

... in hot water in the morning.

Tart, soothing to the throat.

Antidote to the cold

I nurse. I sit in bed,

a scarf around my neck,

Kleenex in easy reach.

Oh, mighty sorry

for myself, believe me!

STILL LEARNING...

2012-01-30T06:19:00.000-08:00

I remember being hugely entertained, at the age of ten or so, by a mock-history book called 1066 and All That. The only part I can remember, all these years later, is the false-friends translation from the French: voici l'anglais avec son sang froid habituel--rendered absurdly by the authors as "Here comes the Englishman with his usual bloody cold." You had to be English, I suppose...

Anyway, I mention this only because I have a bloody cold. Came down with it right after the first day of a weekend retreat with Than Geoff--sore throat, congestion, sniffles, cough, the whole deal. This is the second I've had in as many months, and I'm mightily displeased about it. Hard to think, to be mindful, to write, when the brain is swimming, as it does, in a dizzy haze.

Today we head back to Los Angeles, as is usual on a Monday. We're fortunate to have inherited a sauna in our (still relatively) new house there. I'll try to sweat this thing out of me. But I'm not very much looking forward to the drive.

Meantime, on a serious note... I have been thinking about the essential value of failure. I have a young nephew in England who, I heard yesterday, is struggling with one of his creative classes--something he's not "good at." Like the rest of us, this promising young performer likes to shine. If he hasn't yet discovered it, however, he surely will: you stand to learn much more from the failures than from the successes. What I don't like has usually more to teach me about myself than what I do. Still, I'm not quite ready myself to take that ballet class. Not at my age. Though I'd certainly learn a lot about myself if I did: mostly, I suspect, from the aches and pains, about what happens to the body as it ages!

So now I have to look upon this bloody cold as a gift? As something that can teach me more about myself? Fat chance!

SUNDAY

2012-01-29T08:28:00.000-08:00

Three dozen human

beings, gathered,

sitting, silent,

breathing, energy

shared. Outside,

the steady sound

of fountain water,

falling. Birds. In

such a moment

everything

is one.

LOVE WINS

2012-01-28T07:00:00.000-08:00

I've been thinking a lot about what my late father might have said about Rob Bell's Love Wins: A Book about Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived. An Anglican minister who struggled mightily with his faith in the privacy of his sometimes tormented soul, my father practiced and preached the dogma of the Church of England to his various congregations--at times wrestling within even as he officiated at communion or read from the Bible at the lectern. He started out as a "High Church" man who loved the theatrical aspects of ritual--the robes, the candles on the altar, the ritual processions and gestures. His country parishioners generally disapproved of such frivolities, and he had to learn to cater to them--much as he had to temper, at least from the pulpit, his socialist beliefs. Toward the end of his life, he came to embrace the European ecumenism--based in Taize, France--that sought to find common ground between the various Christian denominations--catholic and protestant.

Like Rob Bell, my father was inclined to find the fun in fundamentalists. (A scurrilous aside: skip this if you have sensitivities about language. This country pastor used to tell, with considerable glee, the story from his undergraduate days at Cambridge, when a somewhat naive and humorless fundamentalist group saw fit to call themselves the Cambridge University New Testament Society, and cheerfully plastered posters all over town with their acronym printed in bold letters at the top.) I like to think that his beliefs were broad-minded enough to have acknowledged the truth that Bell propounds: the vision of a non-exclusive Christianity, paying homage to a generous, expansive, transcendent God whose love extends beyond the small number of his merely pious--self-righteous?--followers to include those countless millions of perplexing "others," no less human, but definitely not Christian.

(I should mention at this point that, through the intermediary of mutual friends, Ellie and I had dinner with Rob Bell and his family the other night. It was a joyous and rewarding encounter, full of good fun and laughter. Our hosts for the evening were David Vanderveen, editor of The Love Wins Companion and his wife, Sarah. Message: Do not read this as a "book review" in the usual sense. As I have reiterated many times in the past, I am not a critic...)

That said, it's my understanding that Bell's book was hugely controversial in the Christian community when it first came out last year (as usual, I'm the late-comer!) The author stood accused, it seems, of the heresy of "universalism"--the sin of diluting Christian dogma in order to allow for the good will of people of other faiths, or no faith, and their eligibility to share in the love of the all-powerful, all-knowing, all-loving God in whom Christians proclaim their faith. Bell argues--rightly, in my view--that such thinking does not diminish God, but rather enhances his greatness. A non-believer myself at the best of times, I have never come close to an understanding of those who so readily condemn their fellow humans to eternal damnation even as they loudly proclaim their own sanctity and salvation. Heaven and hell are useful concepts only to those who credit themselves with being on the side of the angels.

So why is this book controversial? Could we not all agree that love--in its most expansive, all-encompassing form--is a Good Thing. And that unconditional love--the kind that is given with unreserved generosity, requiring no reward--is an even Better Thing? Forgive me, but this just seems patently obvious to me. Not easy to practice for us flawed human beings, certainly, but eminently desirable. Don't we all long to be loved that way? For the Buddhist, the ideal is to be able to actually practice such compassion. Since I myself am unwilling to believe in a God who embraces me in his love, I must learn as best I can to perform that function for myself, as well as for others. I have to wonder--perhaps a little enviously--how it feels to be wrapped in a creator's arms.

"Love Wins" is a fine read. It escorts us graciously and with humor through the minefield of theological conundrums. Bell's voice is filled with passion for his arguments, but a passion that is also intimate and conversational, direct in its address; rather than providing all the answers, it opens up questions for the reader to ponder and debate. I love that he leaves ample space on the page for this to happen, and that he's not afraid of the silence the blank space suggests. I like, too, his inventive use of the line break, the dramatic pause, the rhetorical exclamation point. He can, truth to tell, become a little arch--as in arching the eyebrows in mock surprise or horror, a verbal throwing up of the hands, a nod and a wink to the wise--but we forgive him that because he is at the same time so entertaining. He delights in playing with his reader. (Having been brought up with it ringing in my ears, I also miss the glorious language of the King James Bible in his biblical quotations. But that's just me.)

Most of all, Bell's voice sounds to me like a voice of welcome, kindly sanity in a field of human aspiration where insanity and contention all too often seems to rule. Creationists, climate change deniers and rapturists beware, you'll get no back-up for your arguments from Bell's God, whose stubborn love of humanity transcends even human ignorance and willful stupidity. If God is Love--and Love is God--I can go along with that, even as a disbeliever. I like to believe that my father would have, too. Not to mention the Buddha. Thanks, Rob!

Gallery Rounds--Revisit

2012-01-27T11:12:00.001-08:00

Those promised pictures are posted now on my Gallery Rounds entry from a couple of days ago. I think you'll find it worth while to take another look--and be sure to scroll down to the Lita Albuquerque images...

LIGHT BEFORE LIGHT

2012-01-27T07:11:00.000-08:00

Light before light.

Dawn, the glow from beyond

the bedroom windows,

an imminence.

Within, expectancy.

The great, daily intention

to start anew.

WEEKEND GALLERY ROUNDS

2012-01-26T07:40:00.000-08:00

There's such a lot happening on the art scene in Los Angeles right now, it's hard to know where to start--and what to choose to write about. With so many shows of interest, too, and never enough time to write about them all, it comes down to a matter of giving short shrift to many artists who deserve much more thorough and thoughtful attention. That said, here goes:

I think that many of my readers will be aware of Ted Orland's work as the co-author, with David Bayles, of the widely-admired Art & Fear; and, more recently, of the solo book, The View from the Studio Door. Both of these are indispensable handbooks for creative people interested in process--how and why art gets made, and why artists persist in doing it. Which is why I thought Orland would respond with interest to my own book, Persist; and I was not mistaken.

Having known this artist primarily--and perversely, perhaps--as a writer, I was delighted to have the opportunity to see his visual work in person at the Creative Center for Photography toward the east end of Hollywood on Sunset Boulevard. The title of Orland's "Scenes of Wonder and Curiosity: A Collection of Black & White Silver Gelatin, Hand-Colored and Inkjet Creations" clues us in to both the breadth of his interest in photographic process and his idiosyncratic vision, which ranges from the awesome to the apocalyptic to the cryptic and whimsical. From his mentor Ansel Adams, whose burly image appears in two of the early pictures--the collection spans the period from the late 1960s to the present--this artist clearly learned a profound respect for the great spiritual vista of the California landscape. But Orland's own sense of fun and curiosity constantly intrude on even the most awesome scenery: one picture of the grandiose orange burst of a sunset over the Pacific Ocean, for example, offers the added spectacle of a straggling line of well-dressed citizens headed down across the beach--and apparently into the waves. We wonder what draws them toward their destiny: the Rapture? Similarly, in "One-and-a-Half Domes"...

(Ted Orland images from the artist's website)

... the shape of a large trash trash can in the foreground rhymes mockingly with that of Yosemite's famous landmark on the skyline, even while a "painting" audaciously intervenes.

Orland delights in the unexpected, in seeking out the oddities of both human behavior and the environment we humans have created--of that which has been provided for us by Nature. He is as fascinated by a "Born Again Truck"...

... an ancient machine gaudily redecorated to proclaim the power of Jesus--as about a towering T-rex reconstructed at a truck stop in the desert, or about an abstract expressionist "Meteor"...

... about to strike the planet with apocalyptic force. It's all a mind- and image-play between what we like to call "reality" and the imagination of the artist; an exercise, as the show's title suggests, in wonder and curiosity.

Down in the Culver City area, we made a stop at Carter & Citizen to see the latest work by David MacDonald, an artist whom we have long admired for the modesty of his means and the quiet there-ness of the objects he creates as a sculptor (how strange it feels to use that word, these days!) and master of the quirky assemblage. I had read with some bemusement the review by a Los Angeles Times critic who expressed surprise by his use of the term "Self Portraits" for the title of this latest show: I have always seen his work, even though "abstract," as a kind of self portrait, explorations into the unknown territory of parts of the psyche which just felt like projections of the intimate self. This is the essence, to my way of thinking, of lyricism, and MacDonald's work is nothing if not lyrical. I see the new works as small totems, with a quietly humorous phallic reference...

David McDonald

Self Portrait (Protected Self), 2011

Cement, Wood, Hydrocal, Re bar, Cardboard, Enamel Paint

36" x 14" x 15"

David McDonald

Self Portrait (All There), 2011

Cement, Palm Tree Wood, Hydrocal, Enamel Paint

68" x 28" x 24"

... intended to catch the spirit of the man much as their larger, Native American cousins are intended to embody the spirit of the tribe. On the walls, in similarly lyrical mode, the artist shows "paintings" created out of elegantly assembled fragments of paint chips, perhaps pried up from the studio floor...

David McDonald

Fractures #16, 2011

mixed media

7.5" x 5"

Their modesty and simple presence gives them an appeal that is far greater than their actual size.

Headed west, we made a stop at L.A.Louver, with two concurrent shows. Put together in collaboration with former Los Angeles County Museum curator Maurice Tuchman, "Kienholz Before LACMA" is a collection of early works by Edward Kienholz, prior to the time when his controversial exhibit at the museum attracted the ire of L. A. County Supervisors and other local dignitaries, notably for the infamous "Back Seat Dodge," in which a couple could be discerned in flagrante delicto in an already socially iconic situation, one in which a good number of young Americans were introduced to the early, fumbling, dreadfully sinful experience of sex. It's an important show, recalling the always challenging, often confrontational, generally dark and brooding, though also strangely elegant early assemblage work of an artist whose place in art history is beyond question.

There's a family connection here: the Louver show includes two works from the collection of my late in-laws. "The U.S. Duck, or Home from the Summit"...

Edward Kienholz

The U.S. Duck, or Home from the Summit, 1960

construction

26 7/16 x 21 1/4 x 6 in. (67.2 x 54 x 15.2 cm)

Los Angeles County Museum of Art,

Michael and Dorothy Blankfort Bequest

... was gifted long ago to that same County Museum; the other "The American Way, II"...

Edward Kienholz

The American Way, II, 1960 and 1970

paint and resin on rubber garden hose with severed deer neck mounted on wood (above);

once covered with paint and watercolor on canvas (top image), subsequently removed by the artist (below)

22 3/4 x 22 1/4 x 8 in (57.8 x 56.5 x 20.3 cm)

Courtesy of Susan Camiel, from the Dorothy and Michael Blankfort Collection

... hangs usually in the home of my wife's sister, who inherited it. Originally hidden by the cover...

... that now hangs alongside it in the Louver show, the piece was offered for purchase by the artist--at the time an unknown newcomer-- as an act of faith: it was to be purchased blind, and the cover was not to be removed for ten years. Halfway through that ten-year period, it was returned to the artist for the investigation of a curious, spreading stain, still visible on the cover; at that time, Kienholz--now much better known, even notorious--offered to buy the piece back, with substantial interest. His offer was refused.

The second Louver show, in the upstairs gallery, is a glance back at some early work by Tom Wudl--paintings made for the most part on rice paper, perforated by innumerable punch holes that give the image a lacy, delicate appearance and allows it to interplay with the white wall behind...

Tom Wudl Homage to Buckminster Fuller , 1973 - 1975 acrylic and gold leaf on paper punch 28 x 37 in (71.1 x 94 cm) plexi case: 35 x 43 x 3 in (88.9 x 109.2 x 7.6 cm) Courtesy of L.A. Louver, Venice, CA

Tom Wudl Untitled, 1973 pencil, crayon, liquitex on paper punch 65 1/4 x 87 1/2 in (165.7 x 222.3 cm) (unframed)

Courtesy of L.A. Louver, Venice, CA

Combining color and abstract, often geometric shape, they result in magical objects of both moving and penetrating beauty, where the observer's eye and mind are invited to play along with the artist's restless, high-spirited inventiveness. That much over-used word, "spiritual," comes inevitably to mind: Wudl's work, I think, intends to move us beyond the realm of material concern and into a place of simple serenity and awe. Its quietly and insistently present beauty can take our breath away.

On to Bergamot station. We did not have the time to stop by all of the many galleries there, but some were of special note. We started out at Shoshana Wayne, with the work of the Israeli-born artist Izhar Patkin. The central work in the exhibition is "The Dead Are Here," a gallery-sized installation within the gallery...

(image courtesy of Shoshana Wayne Gallery)

... hung on all the surrounding walls with elusive paintings on a gauzy surface, draped ceiling-to-floor to create a complete environment. The images (applied in ink), come in an out of focus on this ethereal ground; they evoke the ghostly landscape of a cemetery, with the greenery of trees and lawns interspersed with grave markers, stones and funerary sculpture. It's an environment that poignantly invites memento mori, the awareness of mortality; but also transforms its traditionally absolute power into something more diaphanous, transparent, ephemeral. Watch for announcements of a One Hour/One Painting session that I'll be offering in the gallery in a couple of weeks' time. (Feb. 8, 6PM. Advance registration at the gallery with $25.00 required. Please don't just show up! There won't be space for drop-ins.)

I must say that my initial response to the Jeffrey Wisniewski video at Patrick Painter, Inc. was a somewhat shocked revulsion. It's a six-plus minute animation called "Battle of the Buddha." Here's the banner for the show from the gallery's website:

The juxtaposition of "battle and "Buddha" was itself something of a challenge to one who prefers to believe in the Buddhist values of peace, equanimity and serenity. The Buddha is presented as a sumo wrestler--big, rotund, mask-faced, lumbering. After starting out from a state of meditative levitation, this golden Buddha touches earth and splits into a second, red version of himself; the two go through the ritual sumo preliminary bows, then run at each other, the golden Buddha delivering a swift and nasty kick into his red rival's groin.

The battle is on, and continues for five minutes, resolving itself at the end with the two repeating their ritual respects and merging, once again, into the single, levitating, golden figure. It is, of course, an evocation of the inner battle that we all experience--and that the Buddha did, indeed, himself experience on the night of his enlightenment. So I found my way past the initial reaction and into something more like appreciation--noting, along the way, that my revulsion was probably based in something not dissimilar from what many Muslims felt about those Danish cartoons! Still I do credit myself at least with not wanting to kill the artist to express my outrage.

Rosamund Felsen Gallery is showing Karen Liebowitz's "Magical Thinking"...

Karen Liebowitz

Skinning Leviathan

2011/12

Acrylic on the wall

... a huge mural--16 by 30 feet--that occupies an entire gallery wall. It's an epic narrative painting, showing the slaying and carving-up of a Leviathan, a monster of the deep, by a team of dedicated and athletic women who swarm over the carcass with machetes and knives. Leviathan is

a dragon who lives over the Sources of the Deep and who, along with the male land-monster Behemoth, will be served up to the righteous at the end of time. When the Jewish midrash (explanations of the bible) were being composed, it was held that God originally produced a male and a female leviathan, but lest in multiplying the species should destroy the world, he slew the female, reserving her flesh for the banquet that will be given to the righteous on the advent of the Messiah.

Okay. There is, it seems to me, a certain (rather delightful) ambiguity about the gender politics of all this, but the mural is a spirited, slightly absurdist drama that engages with its narrative and, enormously, impresses as a feat of painterly skill completed in the relatively short time set aside for the preparation of the show. Not on public display as a part of the exhibit but on hand in the gallery office are the many preliminary drawings and sketches that made this feat possible. It's an interesting tidbit to know that Liebowitz used her women artist friends as models for her small army of Amazons. (The two other artists currently on display at Rosamund Felson regrettably fell victim to my shortage of time: my apologies to both Nancy Blum and Vanessa Conte)

Our last stop for the day was at Craig Krull Gallery, to see the ambitious, multi-part installation by Lita Albuquerque, "287 Steps"...

It involves three galleries, one of which is devoted to the artist's very beautiful cobalt blue pigment paintings, stunningly enhanced by explosions of red pigment blown across the surface--either by breath or by the wind...

Albuquerque's vision tends to locate the universal in the intimate and highly personal, and vice versa. Her paintings manage to be at once ethereal and earthy, vastly spacious and intensely present. Viewed at length, they can unfetter the attentive viewer's mind and transport it dizzyingly across time and space...

... which is perhaps the intention of the three-dimensional installations in the other two galleries, one of which is occupied solely by the full-length, prone figure of a nude female in that same Yves Klein blue...

... levitating a few inches above a substantial white sarcophagus; the other, by three oversized, shimmering "space suits" in pure gold leaf, suspended in space in front of a long, blue-painted wall..

There is back-story for all three installations, concerning a female, alien astronaut falling, Icarus-like, to earth in some distant future; for myself... well, I like mystery, I love the invitation for my mind to play, and this exhibition creates ample opportunity for that. Sheer, glorious beauty can be a trap for any artist: Lita Albuquerque embraces it with abandon, and seduces us to do the same.

NONSENSE

2012-01-26T07:25:00.000-08:00

dish wash-

ing liquid

wish dosh-

ing quidlic,

dosh lick-

ing quid-

wosh. Ralph's

Value. Lava-

trastes liq-

uido (aroma

di limon) Oh,

to speak

Spanish! Never

did learn.

And this...

now where

were we when

you last

stopped by

and please

remind me

once more who

you are

IT'S WEDNESDAY...

2012-01-25T08:01:00.000-08:00

So here I am,

walking George

at dawn. A pink

contrail stretching

far and away, arrow-

straight across

blue sky. Crow's

black silhouette

on a telephone

pole. Down here

on earth, George

poops on cue.

A GOOD BOOK

2012-01-24T11:55:00.000-08:00

A good book, for me, is one that tells me more about my humanity--and the humanity of others. It helps me to become more fully human. A pebble in the pond, it causes ripples everywhere. No matter whether it be fiction or non-fiction, poetry or prose, a good book changes everything. So I like to believe. What a joy for me to receive an email this morning about Mind Work: "A magic manual for seeing yourself in everyone and everyone in you." I could find no greater compliment for H.E. Shyalpa Tenzin Rinpoche's Living Fully: Finding Joy in Every Breath.

Had I read one chapter only of this book, I would have been amply rewarded. Reading Rinpoche's passage on "Honesty," I found myself nodding in enthusiastic agreement: it articulated with precision and clarity exactly what I believe the most important human work to be about--both the internal work of self-examination and the external work of being in the world. Read this:

From an unenlightened perspective, the ego or "self" is what we believe to exist as an unchanging, independent, and separate entity. The notion of self is merely imputed upon a ceaseless continuum of thoughts, feeling and perceptions. A careful examination of the self reveals itself only to be a mistaken construct. If we thoroughly investigate this self, we find that it is temporary and does not exist in any substantial way. Nevertheless, we have a hard time accepting this. The self is continually trying to proclaim a distinct identity, separate from the rest of the universe, like an unruly child who insists on being the center of attention.

That's my ego: an unruly child, demanding attention. I don't know about yours, but I suspect it might well be something similar. The task is to observe its actions critically, to disarm its fantasies with kind insistence and substitute them with reality, and to see this small self in the great perspective of the universe. It's a day-by-day, sometimes painful, always challenging, though often simply mundane activity. Honesty, Rinpoche adds, "means living without fabrication, pretense, or foolishness"; and "true honesty also means experiencing each moment completely. When you are dishonest, you miss the present moment because you are lost in thoughts of the past or future."

The central argument of Rinpoche's book, as I understand it, is that we are born with an "innate intelligence," an "inner radiance," a potential for unencumbered freedom and happiness that we are able to achieve only by learning to "dispel our ignorance and enjoy a truly wholesome way of living." His passages are short--I happen to love brevity: why use six hundred words when you can say it all elegantly in half that number?--and easily readable. No obfuscation here; just clarity. If we'll be guided, Rinpoche walks us through the steps that make it possible to move from ignorance and delusion to "perfect freedom."

The essays in "Living Fully" may be diamond-like in their precision and clarity; they are also dense with the complexities of human experience and with a compassionate understanding of our human conflicts and contradictions. Some may find it easy to read cover-to-cover, following the path that Rinpoche lays out. I do not. There's simply too much there. My preference has been to treat the essays as a slow read, not even necessarily in sequence, picking out passages that call to me here and there, putting the book down and returning to it when I'm ready. Generously, the book allows for the slow read--and the slow learner!

"Living Fully" is a treasure chest that yields rich rewards for those in search of a more profound experience in their lives. It's one of those books I wish everyone would read--and pay attention to.

POLITICS

2012-01-24T07:51:00.000-08:00

While it's on my mind, I have to say this: it irks me no end to hear the pundits go on endlessly about how great Newt Gringrich's performance was, at that last debate, when he excoriated the journalist who had the temerity to ask about his personal integrity. No. It wasn't great. It was effective, perhaps, in appealing to an audience that found in his rage a reflection of their own. That doesn't make it great rhetoric. His strategy was not to be responsive but to deflect. To manipulate the question rather than to answer it with anything like honesty. Successful rhetoric, to my way of seeing things, is not the same as great rhetoric; it does not earn the praise that was lavishly heaped upon it.

The Buddhist concept of "right speech" is a useful measure. Right speech is a matter of telling the truth, and telling it skillfully, in a manner that uplifts the dialogue rather than degrading it. By this standard, the Speaker's calculated outburst--why does everyone persist in calling him "the Speaker"? I've noticed that Nancy Pelosi is always "the former Speaker" in the media--fails the test. Posing as righteous indignation, it was nothing if not offensive, abrasive, evasive. I refuse to dignify it with praise.

Small Stones

2012-01-24T07:34:00.000-08:00

I have been remiss. I have been distracted. My mind has been busily occupied and has not wanted to stop, not even for a single moment in the course of each day, to pay attention to the here and now. Here's a small stone:

Fire

in the fireplace.

Penne, with home made

pesto sauce. Candlelight.

A glass of wine.

Or this morning:

After rain, the patio tiles

glisten. In their pots,

the plants breathe happily

and show off their green.

A chill in the air;

soon, sunshine.

See? Not hard. It just takes a moment's pure attention to gather a few words. A poem? Who cares?

A RAINY DAY...

2012-01-23T15:05:00.000-08:00

... in Laguna Beach. The rain is welcome. This morning, the disconcerting return of a "cluster" headache. I have not had one for a while, and failed to recognize the early symptom of sparkly peripheral vision when it came along. Then the headache hit and laid me out flat.

Better now. Clusters are strange creatures. They are incredibly intense, and typically return at the same time each day for a series of days. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that this one was an a-typical one-off, and that it won't return tomorrow. We'll see.

Meantime, I have been working for much of the day (the rest of it) on a longish piece about our art gallery rounds at the weekend. Nearly finished. I'm awaiting images and permissions from the galleries, and hope to be able to post tomorrow. More to come...

NO CONTEST

2012-01-21T07:50:00.000-08:00

(Posted today in Vote Obama 2012. It's time for me to pay more attention to this other domain!)

Today is the South Carolina primary. I listen to the words of the Republican candidates with incredulity: they have been pushed so far to the right that they have left the realm of reality way behind. For any rational, thinking, even moderately compassionate mind, there is no contest between anyone of them and President Obama. Stephen Colbert's initiative as a stand-in for Herman Cain is not merely funny; it's a timely, continuing and essential reminder of the dangerous absurdity of the way in which we have come to elect our public officials. His "super PAC" neatly skewers a system that allows money and power to buy political influence; and his mock conservatism brings the bright light of satire to bear on the heartlessness--and mindlessness--of the right-wing fanatics. A vote Herman Cain is a vote for President Obama!

PS My wife, Ellie, is reading my book. She says it's pretty darn good. No bias, of course. You should get a copy.

KINDNESS

2012-01-21T07:00:00.000-08:00

It's a simple thing, but we seem to be in danger of losing it in our hasty, heedless culture: kindness. This thought was brought to mind by an email I received from a faithful reader (she knows who she is!) after my entry the other day about what I judged to be a disappointing response to my promotional efforts for "Mind Work." Her words were a simple act of kindness, a generous gesture that did not go unappreciated.

Kindness arises, surely, from compassion, the most basic of all Buddhist qualities. It should not be mistaken for a mere softness of heart--the kind that is mocked by conservatives in their scorn for "bleeding heart liberals." Kindness needs to be practiced with generosity, but also with skill and discrimination. It should not be used to reward or condone self-pity, because then it would neither encourage nor support the change that might be needed. To use it unskillfully can as easily cause harm to others as to not use it at all.

And yet there is a great deal of un-kindness in the world today. We need only look at the words and actions of our politicians--much in the news, regrettably--to be aware of its toxic ubiquity in our national dialogue. It feeds on itself and breeds itself, infecting every aspect of our lives. It takes the form of incivility in the social context--from the halls of government to our city streets and highways, even in the intimacy of our homes. In our personal lives, it can range all the way from curt dismissiveness to outright cruelty and abuse.

I aspire to be kind. I am at my kindest when I am least concerned with myself, my own needs, my own beliefs and attitudes. In the course of an average day, I have many unkind impulses, many unkind thoughts. The least I can do it to try to notice them as they arise, recognize them for what they are, and having recognized, to transform them into their kind counterparts. As with most Buddhist practices, it's quite simple--but it's hard! (I find it especially hard to feel an ounce of kindness toward those "conservative" politicians: can I see things from their point of view? No! Can I imagine that they might be right, that I might be wrong? No! Do I credit them at least with sincerity in their beliefs, with good intentions? Perhaps kindness should also not be used to condone wrong-headedness.)

* * * * * * *

From my morning's meditation:

PRACTICE...

... breathing each breath

as though it were my last;

wishing, if it were granted me,

to cross that last threshold

refreshed, invigorated, freed

from all negative emotion;

clear-minded, open-hearted,

body and mind devoid of stress,

ready for the next adventure.

This practice inspired by my current reading of Living Fully: Finding Joy in Every Breath by Shyalpa Tenzin Rinpoche. I'll have more to say about the book when I've finished reading it.

Metta to all!

Skillfulness

2012-01-20T12:01:00.000-08:00

In her comment on one of my entries the other day, my friend, the painter, Cynda Valle told me she was reading one of the essays in "Mind Work" that describes a pretty common, head-to-head marital spat between myself and Ellie, and was a bit puzzled by the meaning of the word "unskillful" that I used to describe our woeful lack of communication. She hopes, she wrote, that I would "clarify the meaning of 'unskillful'; unskillful at what? Arguing, loving, seeing the other side? Would love it if you could elaborate a little..."

As I understand the teachings of the dharma, the "skillfulness" of an action or a word is measured by its outcome. Is the result of my action or my speech a good one, or is it a hurtful or harmful one--whether to myself or others? In the dispute in question, the words my wife and I kept coming up with were causing each other unnecessary pain. Unskillful, then, at arguing and loving, both. And seeing the other side. Skillfulness in communication is determined by my ability to recognize in advance what the impact of my words will be, how they will be heard, and choosing them with care. Which does not mean hiding even an unpalatable truth, when it needs to be told, but rather owning that truth and telling it with compassion and care for whoever needs to hear it.

By "owning" a truth, I mean to recognize that it's only the truth as I happen to see it. It has taken me years, but I believe I have come to understand something of the process of "projection": when I have negative thoughts or reactions to others, it's most frequently because I see them as a mirror, in which I am offered a glimpse of what it is I dislike about myself. When I hear myself insisting that my wife is not listening to me, for example, it behooves me to step back for a moment and contemplate the possibility that it's me who is not listening. This, if I manage to do it (too often not!) is what I would consider "skillful" strategy.

There's a double benefit to skillfulness of this kind. It is helpful to me, because I see myself more clearly in the broader perspective, and the trigger that could burst out into needless anger is defused. At the same time, if I manage to convey to the other person my understanding that my projection says more about me than about them, what could be insulting or hurtful loses its objective, accusatory tone. The negative thoughts or feelings are not bottled up and saved for a later date, then, but aired in a healthy, unhurtful kind of way.

I hope this clarifies things a little. Or maybe it has just made them more confusing? I trust that my friend will let me know.

200,000

2012-01-19T13:16:00.001-08:00

I still have not been able to identify that 200,000th visitor from Surrey, British Columbia, who stopped by The Buddha Diaries at 2:53 PM California time on Tuesday, January 17, in search of a review of the book "Sarah's Key." If he or she does not check in soon, I'll be looking for a reader in Warsaw, Poland, who checked in five minutes later at 2:58. If this is you, or you know who it might be, please be in touch with me at peteratlarge@mac.com.

I also promised a signed copy of "Persist" to each of our next ten visitors after the 200,000th mark. If you identify yourself as one of the following by location and time on Tuesday, January 17th, please let me know at peterclothier@mac.com. This is my best effort to fulfill the promise that I made.

San Diego, California 3:03PM (all times are Pacific Standard Time)

Glascow, Scotland 3:06PM

Los Angeles, California 3:22PM

Laguna Beach, California 3:26PM

Cranbrook, California 3:29PM

Medicine Hat, Alberta 3:38PM

Toronto, Canada 3:40PM

Oakland, California 3:50PM

San Diego, California 3:58PM

Thornhill, Ontario, 4:12PM

With the expectation that at least a couple of these will not show up, here are two runners-up:

Lisbon, Portugal, 4:21PM

Gillingham, (Yorkshire?) UK, 4:27PM

I'm happy to send these books out, if you'll just lay claim and identify yourself. Please let me hear from you. And thanks to all!

WORK TO DO

2012-01-19T07:06:00.000-08:00

I have work to do. And I don't mean just the pile of busy work that continues to accumulate on my desk. There's no shortage of that. I mean inner work. And not the kind of inner work that was performed upon my body yesterday, though that might be useful model. To be reduced to a hunk of meat on a table with somewhat revolting innards on display on a video monitor is a humbling experience. And that probe does certainly go deep in its inner journey, exploring the highways and byways of the intestinal tract.

No, the kind of inner work I have to do involves not the body but the mind. I have been confronted unpleasantly, and not for the first time, with the pain and suffering brought upon me by my apparently indomitable ego.

Let me explain. I was flying pretty high on the wings of delusion. In this case--as most frequently--the delusion was Peter the great writer. For the past few days, as readers of The Buddha Diaries know, I have been taking special pleasure in the anticipation of our 200,000th visit. I have invested a good deal of ego in my world-wide readership--mistaking it, perhaps, for the more laudable sense of "gratitude." And yesterday, to my great pleasure, we flew past that number. Oh, important me!

And then there was the appearance, finally, of "Mind Work." Having invested huge amounts of time and energy in its preparation and production, I was thrilled to hold a copy in my hands. It looked great, with that cover image generously loaned by my friend Gary Lang--a distinguished artist of established reputation. Turning the pages, and reading my own words for the hundredth time--I can't tell you how many times I read through the entire text in the editing process--I was pleased with the content. The essays, to my perhaps deluded mind, still seemed fresh, well written, meaning-ful. It was, is, I thought, a wonderful book. Impossible to think that people would not rush to buy it. Ah, ego!

Aside from the production of the book, there was the considerable time and energy that went into my dedicated efforts at pre-publication promotion. Together with Emily, my trusty assistant, I developed what I thought would be sure-fire strategies to give the sales an initial boost, through the pages of The Buddha Diaries and its "world-wide readership," through contact with my extensive flock of "friends"--that word has achieved a whole new meaning in the past few years--on Facebook, Goodreads, LinkedIn, and elsewhere. I could not but imagine that our efforts would be met with at least moderate success.

Ah, delusion! On my return from the distinctly humbling experience of the colonoscopy at the hospital, I opened my email to come upon the even more humbling first sales report from Paul Gerhards, my publisher at Parami Press. To say that the results were dismal would be too kind an assessment. My ego, having flown so high, was immediately--and cruelly!--deflated. It has been nursing its wounds ever since, waking up this morning to a wave of gratifying self-pity.

It's funny, no? We work and work, and there's still work to do. You would think--well, I would think--that I might have learned something about attachment after all these years of flirtation with the teaching of the Buddha. You would think--well, I would think--I had learned a thing or two about persistence, having previously written a whole book of essays called "Persist." That I might have learned a bit about the creation and destruction of expectations. About the value of patience. All out the window!

So I have work to do. The colonoscopy is a fine and timely, if uncomfortable metaphor for the work that's needed. It's about exploring the intricacies within. I need to take a good look at the attachments and the delusions that my ego so readily creates to fortify itself against feelings of unworthiness and impotence in a world that is so much greater and more powerful than myself.

If this sounds like fun, I invite you to join me. Oh, and yes, please buy my book.

THE PROCEDURE

2012-01-19T07:00:00.000-08:00

The gown

open to the rear.

The IV slowly

dripping fluid

into the vein

on the back of my hand.

The nurses, busy.

Gurneys shifting

here and there

on silent wheels.

Voices, everywhere.

Soon, twilight.

I wait and wait.

My turn next?

A friendly wave

from across the ward.

He's done. I'm

yet to go.

YOU DON'T WANT TO READ THIS

2012-01-18T07:39:00.000-08:00

One of life's great privileges when you reach my age is being able to look forward, every few years, to the colonoscopy. Mine is today. The "procedure," as it is delicately called, involves inserting a camera at the end of a long, flexible probe into the rectum and sending it on a winding journey through the colon. The probe is equipped, as I understand it, not only with a camera but also with a device that will snip off any harmless little polyps it encounters along the way and collect a biopsy sample from anything that looks more threatening.

It's a good thing. Last time I went through this, I watched the whole thing live, in real time, on TV. Great entertainment, as you might imagine. Well, I was in one of those drug-induced twilight zones where nothing seems to matter very much--and there's no pain. It was a curiously compelling visual experience, to watch this journey into the interior of the body. It's at once rather revolting and strangely beautiful--and it's certainly a fine lesson in non-attachment to the physical being. A good meditative study. That time, the doctors discovered a small tumor on the duodenum, which needed to be removed by surgery. It proved to have been benign, but could have developed into something nastier, so it was good to get rid of it.

This time... well, I'm not looking forward to it. There's always that mortal concern that hovers somewhere in the mind's hinterland. Another useful lesson. And last night I endured the preparation. If you haven't done this, it involves downing an eight-ounce dose of unpleasant-tasting liquid at intervals of ten minutes until your huge gallon jar is empty. It takes hours. The purpose, of course, is to completely clean out the colon and leave it spic-and-span for the examination.

Why am I telling you all this? I'm quite sure you don't want to hear it. Habit, I guess. And writing it down is my way of processing it, as with every other experience, to help me integrate it into all the other aspects of my life. It's a way of not letting things pass me by without paying attention and listening to what I need to hear. It's all Mind Work, isn't it? (Sorry, I couldn't resist the opportunity for a commercial plug!) All grist for the slow, relentless mill of learning. Soon, who knows, enlightenment! See you tomorrow...

WE HAVE A WINNER (if we can find him/her!)

2012-01-17T15:04:00.000-08:00

We just made it to 200,000! I know the visitor is located in Surrey, British Columbia and that he or she checked in at 2:58 PM California time, referred by a search for a review of the book, "Sarah's Key." Beyond that, I have no way of knowing the identity of this good person. If you are she or she, or if you know who he or she might be, please pass on this information. I will, as promised, send out signed copies of "Mind Work" and "Persist."

Should that identity not be established within a couple of days, I'll look for the next in line,

OH, AND...

2012-01-16T09:01:00.001-08:00

I'm anticipating that we'll pass that 200,000th reader mark on The Buddha Diaries on Tuesday morning. And, by interesting coincidence, the 300,000th "page view" mark at almost the same time. Whatever that means. But it does make half a million... Hmmm. Emily and I are watching the Sitemeter.

ONE MORE DAY...

2012-01-16T08:00:00.000-08:00

... for the"buy my book" sales pitch. Tomorrow, with luck, I'll get back to the usual business of The Buddha Diaries. Meantime, another small stone...

SUNDAY AFTERNOON

The New York Times

crossword. The book

review. A Sunday

cigar, out on the patio:

my vice. Well, one of them.

A light breeze stirs

the leaves of the ficus

tree, and the Buddha

fountain weeps

for human suffering.

No other sound than

the slow drip of falling

water. Ah, serenity!

TODAY, SUNDAY...

2012-01-15T08:44:00.000-08:00

... I repeat my plea for support, for the benefit of those readers who might not have checked in for the past couple of days. Sorry to keep harping on about this, but I feel I owe it to the work I do. Please order your copy of "Mind Work." Please help me spread the word...

By way of small compensation for my importunity, may I offer a couple of "small stones":

Soap popsickle

on the bathroom shelf--

a Christmas gift

three weeks ago

from grandson Joe,

as yet unused, and likely

never to be used.

How many air miles

between Laguna Beach

and Harpenden, U.K.?

Far, far too many.

and...

Doing the chores:

cleaning out

the ashes from the grate

from last night's fire;

fetching wood

in from the woodpile

alongside the house;

laying out the logs

for this evening's blaze.

Dog watches, sleepy-eyed.

All's well at our place.

May all be well

at your place, too.

DO IT NOW!

2012-01-14T06:57:00.001-08:00

Please do it now. Here's how it goes with me: I form a good intention, I give myself a little grace time, I postpone, I get distracted, I forget. Please don't be like me...

You'll find today's entry at Fiona and Kaspalita's site, Writing Our Way Home. It's an ode to the art of writing.

OH, AND ONE OTHER THING...

2012-01-13T10:08:00.001-08:00

... you can write--and publish--a review on Amazon!

SHAMELESS SALES PITCH

2012-01-13T07:45:00.000-08:00

Okay, here it comes--and I'm not even going to apologize for it!--the shameless self-promotion and sales pitch. First, if you're a regular, or even an occasional reader of The Buddha Diaries, thank you. I've said it before, but never too often. I hugely appreciate your readership.

Now I'm asking for your help. "Mind Work" is off the press and copies are available. I'm not expecting a big commercial success; indeed, the financial return (if any!) is no great motivation for me. But I do want to get copies into circulation, and this is a challenge, coming from a small independent publisher. It's hard to get book stores to order copies unless real people come in, asking for it; and those many readers who might well get something important from the book will never know about it if they don't see copies on the shelves of their local bookshop.

So here's what I'm asking, as recompense for those many delightful hours you have spent immersed in The Buddha Diaries!

1) The best thing you can do is to order a copy at your local bookstore, and give it a good mention to the people there.

2) The next best thing is to order online, through Amazon or Barnes & Noble; or directly from Parami Press.

3) You can give the book a mention in your blog; or email the link to your list of contacts, with your personal recommendation.

4) You can read the book and give it a review, or forward your recommendation to a person who might write one.

5) You can talk it up amongst friends, suggest it as a read for your book club, and so on. The buzz is enormously important.

Thank you for any and all help you can give me. It will be much appreciated. Meantime, a couple of stones...

THREE MORE SMALL STONES...

2012-01-13T07:33:00.000-08:00

A SMALL STONE TO COMPENSATE FOR THE BAD REVIEW I GAVE AN UPSCALE RESTAURANT LAST WEEK

At the Napa Valley Grille

in Westwood: good bread,

good wine, good food,

and yes, good service--friendly,

but not obnoxiously

nor obsequiously so. As the French

so nicely put it: comme il faut. Exactly

as it should be.

ELLIE'S SMALL STONE, SAME LOCATION

Buzz of voices.

Not knowing

what they say.

AND LATER, IN THE THEATER LOBBY

In the theater lobby, people-

watching, wondering

why it is

that people choose each other. Such

a mystery, such strange couples,

everywhere, not

unlike ourselves...

200,000

2012-01-12T13:32:00.001-08:00

Just a note to say that we're approaching the magic number more rapidly than we had anticipated! We are now beginning to watch our sitemeter more closely. I promised the first signed copy of Mind Work to the 200,000th reader and it will be inscribed as such. Also, getting ready for the next promised 10 copies of Persist. Stay tuned!

A VERY SMALL STONE

2012-01-12T11:13:00.000-08:00

Cleaning the algae

from the fountain bowl. Birds

watch and sing.

CHRIS BURDEN'S "METROPOLIS"

2012-01-11T15:24:00.000-08:00

Anyone who was once a child--or is still a child!--will get a huge kick out of the installation of Chris Burden's Metropolis at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. At yesterday's preview for the media, the enchantment was evident all around. And why not? It's a "small world,"

room-sized fantasy city of the future, complete with monumental high rises, apartment and office buildings, old-fashioned trolley cars and trains, sedate in their movement along small-guage tracks when compared to the headlong dash of computer-directed automobile traffic.

As Burden posited in his brief preliminary remarks, city traffic in the future may well all be remote-controlled, fast and driverless, as commuters head each in their separate vehicles to their destinations. The artist's vision, here, is a mind-bendingly intricate system of roller-coaster tracks, where closely serried, undulating lines of tiny, colorful Tinker Toy cars are hoisted up long, steep ramps...

(The pictures, and the regrettably poor quality video below, are all mine. In this instance, LACMA did not object to photography. Visit LACMA's site, linked above, for better images and videos.)

... and released at the top to whizz downhill at breakneck speed...

... each at its own pace. I saw no parking lot or unloading area where cars could come to rest for even an instant, so the impression is of uninterrupted mechanized mania, where actual human beings are hidden from sight in their vehicles, behind the steel and glass exteriors of office towers, or in their tall apartment buildings. Metropolis seems to exist for no other purpose than its own unendingly busy existence.

In a contemporary art world where so much of what is shown in galleries and museums requires being in on the conventions and the current trends, Chris Burden has consistently produced work that, at one level at least, invites even the uninitiated to participate--sometimes, indeed, with anger or revulsion; but often, as in this case, with the kind of pleasure that we all felt as kids--the pleasure involved in putting things together, building with blocks and racing cars or running model trains. In this respect, Burden speaks to the child in all of us who loves to play. At the purely emotional level, his work evokes an immediate response from these depths of memory.

At another level entirely, and again like much of Burden's work, Metropolis invites the serious intellectual engagement of the adult mind. It asks us to reflect on the way in which we live our lives in the contemporary world, the constant blur of beehive noise and speed, the architectural environment of the modern city...

... with all its seductive activity, its peculiar beauty--and its nightmare potential for alienation of the human soul. It asks us to reflect, also, on the way we are now trending toward a future that holds not only promise, but also dread. The vehicles, here, have no destination: they simply follow, mindlessly, their predestined tracks. Humanity is lost in the labyrinth of the structures of its own creation.

Intriguingly, I also found in Metropolis a fascinating model of the nature and workings of the mind. Perhaps its the Buddhist in me. Its intricately assembled solid structures suggest, to me, the way in which we build prejudices and fixed ideas; its multiple, confusing and conflicting tracks, the patterns of our thoughts; like those little cars...

... they assemble in some dark recess of the mind, a hundred disparate thoughts and memories, rise up slowly into consciousness, then scatter precipitously every which way, racing through the mind before disappearing once more into forgotten passages and tunnels. To contemplate the piece was to watch the human mind at work, and to recognize its delusions and futilities.

There is, clearly, much more to be said about "Metropolis." It opens itself generously to each new visitor's responses. Enough to say here that it's a visual delight, a kinetic sculpture of great fascination and originality, a painting in constant motion, a conceptual work that, along with the eye, engages heart and mind in its epic sweep. Worth a visit.

(The result of years of work, and originally installed in the artist's studio, "Metropolis" will now be installed long-term at LACMA. It's important, for obvious reasons, to see the piece in operation: times are limited because it requires a full-time, skilled attendant, so visitors should be forewarned to check the museum's site ahead of time for the schedule, to avoid disappointment.)

SMALL STONE 1/11

2012-01-11T15:00:00.000-08:00

Dishwasher

beeps forlornly in the kitchen.

Readout says error number

U3. What the bleep?

STUART RAPEPORT: SKEWERING THE ART CROWD

2012-01-11T06:30:00.000-08:00

I'm still catching up with the events of Ellie's birthday. I published her "birthday stone" the other day; you heard about her surprise party and about the dinner at Campanile. The final act of the day was a stop at the Caporale/Bleicher Gallery on La Brea to see the installation by our friend Stuart Rapeport. He calls the show Critics, Collectors, Curators and Grapefruit. We have known Stuart's work for many years--Ellie even showed him, way back when, in her Ellie Blankfort Gallery days.

In a low-key, insistently modest way, Stuart has been poking fun at art world pretensions for all these years--both the insanely trendy fads and fashions and the practitioners of same. A cartoonist, animator, painter, three-dimensional installation artist and... what shall we say? an embedded agent of cultural subterfuge all these years, he brings a wry humor and a subtle intelligence to his work, whose sometimes whimsical, sometimes faux-folk art appeal is a whole lot less naive that it might seem at first glance. Here are some images of earlier works, pirated shamelessly from his website (don't sue me, Stuart!):

And here's his portrait of our George, a generous gift:

Stuart likes dogs. What he has been up to recently, it seems, is gently skewering those of us who have been privileged to make a modest (or, some of us, a grand) name for ourselves in the art world. The modest ones include Ellie and myself, seen here in our younger days ...

His rough cut-out figures 0f, well, "critics, collectors and curators," in laminated layers of plywood and veneer are stacked with artful carelessness against the gallery walls...

... like so much cord wood, so many discards from a not-yet-quite forgotten past. We are reduced, in a casually fond gesture, to the hangers-on we actually are when stripped of our pretensions; and yet, in a strange way, honored, too, if only for being included in the support system that artists need. In a strange way, too, there's an uncanny likeness to each of the figures, the result surely of Stuart's practiced skill as a cartoonist. Here's the eminent (and, for my money, unduly influential) New York School critic Clement Greenberg...

... seated with somewhat smug assurance beneath a Jackson Pollock grapefruit tree. Oh, yes, the grapefruit, those slightly absurdist members of the citrus family. You may be wondering about them, as I did... Included in the show alongside the art crowd are those who do the real work in our culture, shown here as the peons, the fruit pickers..

... in a word, the workers upon whose labor we all depend but whose radically underpaid status we barely stop to recognize or acknowledge in our busy and important lives. Manifesting its own process, Stuart's art asks us to think about the actual, manual work required for its creation, subliminally equating the artisanal status of the artist with that of the lowly farm laborer. That, at least, is how I choose to see it! Beware: behind the gentle humor, there's a radical social(ist) agenda!

Subverting this subversion, Amy Inouye, Stuart's partner--in life and in their Highland Park gallery, Future Studio--invades his space with her own crafty intervention: an installation of plump, knitted "grapefruit" that dangles unobtrusively from the ceiling, parodying the theme of the show with good-natured mockery. (Amy calls this, delightfully, "yarn-bombing.")

(For those who might not yet have come across Caporale/Bleicher, the gallery is right next door to Jack Rutberg Fine Arts on La Brea. You can catch Stuart Rapeport's show and stop next door to see the eminent Hans Burkhardt and Claire Falkenstein at the same time.)

MIND WORK DISCUSSIONS

2012-01-10T15:22:00.000-08:00

Today I have instigated a couple of new discussion groups on Facebook, Goodreads, and Linkedin. Hoping to stimulate some conversation around issues that I think are of vital interest to creative people. I love writing the Buddha Diaries but I love conversation just as much. I hope you might consider joining in.

You can click on the links above or go to:

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Mind-Work/130615360380853

Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/group/show/60484.Mind_Work

Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/groups/Mind-Work-4230423?trk=myg_ugrp_ovr

EATING EXPENSIVELY: NO GUARANTEES

2012-01-10T07:00:00.000-08:00

S0... after the surprise party about which I wrote yesterday, we had arranged to go out for a birthday dinner with our friends Sharon and Donald, and had chosen Campanile because it is on La Brea, not far from the gallery where we planned to end the festivities of the day. It had been quite some time since we had last eaten there. We do not go out to eat very often these days and, when we do so choose, we do not usually opt for the more expensive restaurants. We knew that dinner at Campanile would set us back a bit; but after all it was Ellie's birthday, no?

Well, it's no pleasure to write bad reviews. Does it contravene the Buddhist principle of Right Speech, I wonder, to write negative comments about a dining experience? Is it important to tell the truth? Or better to remain silent? In this case, "The Buddha Diaries" exercises the right to tell the truth. So here goes, our "Fawlty Towers" experience...

The first sign of trouble came with the choice of wines. Our waiter dutifully--as required, I'm sure--recited the list of excellent wines "we have just recently tasted," sparing us never a hint of raspberry or peach, nor the lingering aftertaste of chocolate flavors complicated with tinges of coconut. I tend to respond negatively to the pretensions of the wine connoisseur, but this was pretension carried to absurdity. We resisted the temptation to giggle and inquired, politely enough, about the cost of these elixirs. Two hundred fifty, three hundred dollars a pop. The least expensive of the house recommendations, as I recall, was a mere one hundred and twenty. We consulted, instead, the wine list and found, buried amongst its more expensive siblings, a merlot that would have sold in a decent wine shop for, say, fifteen plus dollars, but retailed here for more than forty. Ah, well, it's an expensive restaurant...

Okay, we ordered. Salads and--we were thankful for this, because pasta plates are generally more than we can reasonably eat--appetizer portions of a variety of pastas. The salads arrived, a bit precipitously we thought, in the hands of a pair of sub-waiters, who had no idea which one of us had ordered what. A game of musical salads ensued, which would have been amusing had this not been, I remind you, an expensive restaurant. Incredibly, exactly the same performance was repeated with the arrival of the pasta dishes...

A sous-manager arrived at our table to inquire if everything was to our satisfaction. We exchanged glances across the table: the food was for the most part fine--not great, actually, but okay, except for Ellie's salad, which she had to send back because it was so salty that even I, a salt addict, could not eat it. But should we tell the truth, or go ahead and enjoy our meal? We decided, unwisely, on the truth. This, we believed, would surely be what a good manager would want to hear, in order to improve things for other patrons in the future. We started to explain. Now a full-fledged manager arrived, as if summoned by telepathy. The two of them listened to our remonstrations--polite enough, on both sides. Not a huge deal. They nod, we imagine gratefully, and leave.

Next thing we know, our waiter is at our table-side in great distress, wanting to know why we were so dissatisfied with his service that we had complained to management--and incidentally creating a scene that was acutely embarrassing in the presence of fellow diners at the neighboring tables. Did I mention that this was an expensive restaurant? That the manager had passed on our complaints to the waiter--this was not about him, but about restaurant policy and training--and left him to return to publicly question us was, we thought, ungracious and inappropriate in the extreme.

Do I sound like a snob? I hope not. But I do want to be treated honestly and with respect, for both my intelligence and my pocket-book. We could not but feel sorry for the poor waiter, whose part in this whole fiasco was a relatively small one. And in a less pretentious eatery, obviously, there would not have been an issue. A supposedly sophisticated restaurant in a major urban center like Los Angeles, though, should surely have handled this matter with more aplomb, and would have made some effort to compensate for their patrons' less-than-gratifying experience. When time came for dessert and we declined, our waiter told us after the fact that this was a pity because they were going to "to buy us one." He might have mentioned this when he brought the dessert menus. No consideration, either, when the bill came. Had I been the manager, I would have insisted on some concrete gesture of apology. A deduction for the wine, for example, would have allowed us to leave feeling we had been treated with concern for our patronage.

Is all this important enough to have explicated in such detail? Looking back at what I've written, it all looks a bit trivial in retrospect. But it seems to me that a good restaurant that asks high prices for its fare should want to maintain its reputation, for both the quality of its food and the graciousness of its service. That, after all, is what we customers pay the big bucks for, and what brings us back again. If I were Campanile, I would consider it a gift to be taken seriously enough to warrant such a write-up.

Also, a stone for the day...

WAITING FOR IT TO HAPPEN

Soon the telephone
will ring. Soon the niece
will arrive from England
at the airport. And the bird
perched on the eucalyptus tree
will take flight, soon,
into the California sky.

OH, AND...

2012-01-09T14:31:00.000-08:00

... a small stone, one that did not for some reason get posted last week. Oh, yes, I remember. I was busy. Anyway, after a visit to the doctor...

Saw doc. Everything
okay. Waiting
for Ellie, also in
for the physical. TV
in the waiting room
plays unknown kids'
drama. My fellow
waiters consult
their cell phones,
hoping for news.
Breathe. I consult
my own cell phone
for email, messages
word from the world
out there. No luck.
In the office, paper
spools out from
a printer. The wheels
of medical bureaucracy
grind on with grim
necessity. Yes,
breathe, breathe.

Ellie's Birthday Surprise

2012-01-09T10:10:00.001-08:00

I have been neglectful of The Buddha Diaries for these past few days. They have been busy ones, and I have a backlog of events I've promised myself to write about. It will likely take more than a couple of entries to catch up. First, though, comes Ellie's birthday.

I did post her birthday stone yesterday, but did not take the time to give it context. The day, actually, was Saturday. I had been plotting all week with Emily to arrange for a surprise party, to give her the chance to introduce little Luka to some of her closest friends. Then, when the day arrived, I was up early to write some carefully chosen words as a birthday greeting and have them ready for a reading at the cake-cutting ceremony that afternoon. So when I brought her the usual morning cup of tea, I was card- and poem-less--much to her disappointment, which she was not hesitant to express. It was a good day, I thought to myself unkindly, to learn a little more about the benefits of patience...

The morning passed otherwise uneventfully. We had arranged for a birthday brunch with Sarah, Ed and Luka at a local vegan restaurant down on Sunset that Sarah likes...

Ellie (happy birthday girl, above!) was looking forward to the excellent buckwheat pancakes she had been promised—but alas, we arrived five minutes too late: they stopped serving brunch at 1PM, so she had to settle for a salad, I for a bowl of soup, which we much enjoyed. Little Luka, who has reportedly been a cranky cuss for the past few days, behaved like a little angel from start to finish, nursing a little and dropping off to sleep in Sarah’s arms.

Emily, in the meantime, was executing our surprise birthday party plan; she had picked up the food and beverage necessities the day before, and stopped by on her way to the house to pick up the cake that I had ordered. She was to bring in flowers and set up the table, and guests were invited to arrive at 2:15 prompt so as to be ready for our 2:30 return to the house. The ostensible plan I had made with Ellie was to drive up to Pasadena to pick up the book I had ordered for her at the Norton Simon Museum book store—a book about Indian tantric art that had proved incredibly hard to find. She had been talking for days about the Pasadena expedition, and was excited not only about the book but also the plan to stop by a department store to find the slow cooking pot she has been intending to buy. So, the pretext was that we would drive home after brunch to pick up our car (Sarah and Ed drove us to the restaurant) and head out up the Pasadena freeway. Instead…

… we opened the front door to the house to see the candles already burning on the cake...

Or rather, I saw them. Ellie was headed off first, hurriedly, to the bathroom, and I had to propel her forward instead, to her surprise, into the dining room. Then she saw the cake and candles, the flowers, the nicely arranged table, not quite understanding what was going on… until our friends emerged from where they had all been hiding in the kitchen, singing that familiar old son!

Well, to my great satisfaction, the surprise was complete...

and thankfully a pleasant one...

No heart attacks. The candle blowing-out ceremony went off without a hitch, and I read my “Ellie’s Birthday Stone”—the one she had fussed about missing earlier in the day.

Ellie cut the cake...

... I poured the Proseco and the mineral water for the non-imbibers, and we began to celebrate with a toast for Ellie, little Luka and, not least, Emily, without whose furtive help none of this would have been possible. It was a lovely afternoon, sunny, but not too hot, and the party drifted out on to the deck with its wonderful view of Hollywood. Luka was quite naturally the center of attention, for the most part bright-eyed and watchful...

... unalarmed by all the action. Widely admired—and for good reason—he was passed around peaceably from arm to arm, and seemed entirely content to be held and rocked by strangers.

Here he is with Emily...

And here's a nice picture of his Mom...

A great party, then. At the end, as everyone was finally leaving, a late arrival, Ellie’s friend Tressa, proved one more surprise. By the time she left, it was almost time to leave for the restaurant where I had made dinner reservations. But that’s another story… As is the report on the opening we attended later in the evening. In between times, though, I did manage to get Ellie to take a few minutes to rest...

George, as you can see, was happy to join her.

Ellie’s Birthday Stone

2012-01-08T08:02:00.000-08:00

Today’s your birthday. I will not say

the number; only that if we reverse

the digits, you would still be

in high school—not the happiest

of memories, I’ve heard. Instead,

let’s honor the number as it stands,

a noble one, in gratitude for birthdays

spent joyfully together; in gratitude

even for those birthdays spent in pain,

since all of them were spent in love,

together. And in gratitude for those

birthdays still to come. May they be

many, joyful ones, and always spent,

no matter how the numbers grow,

in love.

200,000

2012-01-06T07:30:00.000-08:00

As I mentioned just the other day, we are fast approaching our 200,000th visit on The Buddha Diaries. I am immensely grateful to have discovered this outlet for my ambles off into the reaches of the mind, and for the interest and support of so many people around the globe.

Emily and I are beginning to watch the Sitemeter in the attempt to identify that 200,000th visitor. We will then make every effort to contact that person with the gift of signed copies of both Persist and Mind Work. A bit gimmicky perhaps, but a genuine, if small gesture of appreciation. In addition, we will make every effort to make good on that offer of a signed copy of Persist for the ten subsequent visitors. It all depends a bit on being able to identify readers by time of visit, location and website of origin, but we’ll do our best... More on this as things develop. Meantime, a small stone for the day, below.

ONE SMALL STONE

2012-01-06T07:26:00.000-08:00

Cacophony. Tuning up

in Disney Concert Hall.

The distinguished gentleman

with immaculately shaped

silver hair and beard

strokes his violin;

the kettle-drummer

kettles, abstractly;

the tuba player empties

spittle from the bowels

of his instrument. Soon,

la musique...

NEWS FLASH!

2012-01-05T14:14:00.000-08:00

I'm delighted to let you know that I will soon have copies of the new book, Mind Work: Shedding Delusions on the Path to the Creative Core. Stephen Schettini, author of The Novice and the blog The Naked Monk writes that Mind Work is "a first had account of what it is to be a human being in pursuit of greater attention, clarity, and compassion." I myself tend to see it also as a practical path to the source of creativity, as the subtitle suggests.

Mind Work is already available for pre-order at Parami Press (see link on the right hand sidebar, with a spectacular cover image by the artist Gary Lang!)

I hope that you won't mind that I ask for your help in spreading the word about the publication by forwarding to like-thinking friends these links to the Facebook page and the Goodreads group we have set up to promote ongoing discussion of the ideas in both Persist and Mind Work. I’m guessing that you will share many of the specific concerns I’m bringing to the fore, and I believe that we all need to have discussions of this kind to keep the creative fire alive in today’s challenging cultural environment.

I do very much appreciate any help you might be able to give me in putting out word about Mind Work and, even more, your participation in the conversation.

TWO SMALL STONES...

2012-01-05T06:55:00.000-08:00

... to add to the river. Have you been writing yours? I really recommend it. All you need is to stop for a moment during the day and pay attention. Then use a few words to capture the essence of the moment. Your consciousness will add to the river of consciousness that's flowing, this month, throughout the world, thanks to the effort and inspiration of Fiona and Kaspa at Writing Our Way Home. They don't have to be great literature, just "small stones." I wrote two yesterday:

One small, plastic
Buddha--relic
from an abandoned
key-ring--squats
imperturbably
beside the microwave.
One more
cup of coffee,
steaming. Equanimity?

And:

Dead birds
of paradise
in the flower vase,
their heads brown,
skeletal. In offended
dignity, they await
removal to the trash--
the green bin.

There. Simple. Done in no time at all. A tribute to a moment valued, not ignored like too many of our moments. If you're not writing a small stone a day, maybe you should be. Give it a try. The world will thank you.

IOWA; AND TODAY'S SMALL STONE

2012-01-04T08:53:00.000-08:00

Red lights
glare on the freeway.
Traffic ahead.
Grimly, I work
on my patience.
Not much luck.

So we drove back to Los Angeles yesterday, leaving Laguna Beach reluctantly in glorious sunshine and arriving here in time to get back into the office and take measure of what needs to be done. It feels like a lot, with all the work involved in putting out word about the new book. And at such moments, there's some part of me that rebels against the task ahead and wants simply to withdraw from engagement with the world.

It's right now nearly nine o'clock in the morning, first day back. I was out early, for a blood test at the Kaiser lab in preparation for an annual medical appointment tomorrow. I go early to avoid the crowds. Then back to bed to watch the news from Iowa. Having lived in the state myself for four years in the 1960s, I have a fondness for the place and have been distressed by the far-right versus the far-far-right battle between Republican candidates there. Admittedly, I lived in a little corner of the state which, at that time at least, remained firmly liberal: Iowa City is the home of the University of Iowa. But I believe that the Republican voters in that district, this year, went for Ron Paul.

It was a nasty race, with candidates at each others' throats; but also at President Obama's. The misconceptions and outright lies promulgated in the past few weeks about his performance in office have been outrageous and, for the most part, unanswered. Uttered with glib assurance, they seem to command credence with remarkably little resistance. It's apparently what people want to hear. To watch the candidates on the television screen is to try the patience even more than that drive on the Los Angeles freeways. I usually end up yelling back at the the screen, for all the good that does.

It occurs to me that the old individual-before-government America for which these people are so nostalgic--the America they proclaim they want to "get back"--worked fine so long as most individuals could be counted on to be trustworthy, decent people with the common interest at heart; people, then, who would not so readily exploit their customers in order to maximize their personal gain. Your banker, in those mythical times, was your friend and ally in all things financial, not your extortioner. It's the mutual trust and common interest that seem to have evaporated, and without them that quaint version of America that (perhaps) existed in the days of yore. Our "values," instead, have come to be equated with opposition to the rights of our gay fellow citizens, and to abortion, even in the direst of cases.

As for the God these candidates call upon with such outspoken confidence that He supports them and assures their victories--and, presumably, their defeats--I personally hard it find to believe that, if merciful and all-knowing as advertized, He would approve one half of the policies they propose. Naively, perhaps, I imagine Him more compassionate than they. Still, it's a sad prospect that one of these candidates will undoubtedly become the Republican nominee for the presidency; and could actually end up in the White House. Heaven (if heaven exists) forfend.

THE BLUES: AND A SMALL STONE

2012-01-03T07:03:00.000-08:00

There is always a feeling of slight dread as the moment approaches for our return from our wonderful, quiet retreat in Laguna Beach to the perpetual noise of Los Angeles. And I mean noise not only in the literal sense. It's busy-ness, mind noise. I've noticed that feeling coming on in the past couple of days, and particularly this morning, on waking--and remembering that today is the day. After a two-week stay, a good part of the morning will be spent with the organizing and the packing, and then loading the car. With luck, we'll be on the freeway by eleven.

It's an exciting moment to be headed back to the office, though. I heard yesterday from Paul Gerhards at Parami Press to say that the first copies of "Mind Work" will be arriving in a week or ten days, and that he already has them on pre-order at his site. My work, in the next few weeks, is to get word out as far and wide as possible, and I'm hoping that I'll be able to ask readers of The Buddha Diaries to help me. I'll write more about that, and about the book itself, when the time comes. I know that I'm walking a fine line between legitimate information-sharing and making a nuisance of myself, so I hope you'll feel free to let me know if and when I cross that line!

Meanwhile, yesterday's small stone:

Late sunlight
slants low-angled
through the windows,
gilding the white marble
of the kitchen countertop.
On the I-Pod, Leonard Cohen
intones his melancholy
"Tower of Song." In
the teapot, Yorkshire Gold.

Oh, and as a special bonus, here's a link to a lovely story, sent to me yesterday by a friend. It's Judeo-Christian in origin and spirit, but I think it speaks as powerfully to those of us of a Buddhist persuasion! What do you think?

MONEY: A SMALL STONE

2012-01-02T07:44:00.000-08:00

In this dream I had
one hundred thousand
dollars in cash, all
in these flimsy, white
paper notes. They kept
flying from my grasp
in the wind; I tried
hard to control them.
Then I found this green
plastic bag and used it
to stuff them inside,
and stuck the whole
package down inside
the front of my pants.

Actually this is cheating a bit. It's not properly a small stone. It's a small poem. Or not even. Once you call something a "poem," there's a risk of wanting it to be "literature" instead of "writing." My preference is for "writing." To write a small stone you have first to stop and pay attention, take note of what's happening in the here and now, and write down the words that result from that act of consciousness. A dream, of course, is a gift from the unconscious mind, and hardly qualifies as a purposeful act of consciousness. In this sense, a small stone would look more like this:

Thick, offshore
morning mist. George
on a leash. My footsteps
ring hollow on the pavement.
Far off, the dull crash
of waves on the shore;
closer in, a voice, human.
I wear my warm bear shirt
against the chill. Homeward
bound, George stops, first
for a pee, then a crap. It's
nearly breakfast time.

Consider this another invitation to find your own small stone, feel its weight in your hand, and skip it off into the flow of the whole river of stones that is, I hope, gathering momentum in the world.

As the Beatles sang, memorably, long ago: we all want to change the world. If enough of us would pause for long enough in the rush of our lives to simply pay attention, even for a moment, we could become the wellspring for a small stream, then a river, then an ocean of consciousness and compassion. But then, of course, you may say I'm a dreamer. Which is where I started out!

TODAY...

2012-01-01T09:18:00.000-08:00

... marks not only the beginning of the New Year (Happy New Year, everyone!) but also the start of my commitment to participate in the River of Stones project, initiated by my friends Robyn and Kaspa at Writing Our Way Home. In brief, the idea is to stop at some point during the day, every day in January, and pay attention; then write down the observation, a "small stone" to add to the river. I started yesterday:

Sound of the clock

ticking; last

day of the year.

Breath comes

synchronous

with the beating heart.

Time, now,

to awake.

It's a world wide effort to have us all wake up and spend a conscious moment in the here and now. May it create many ripples, many eddies in the river's flow.

For today:

First light. Her

body, his body,

tangled in the bedsheets.

Warmth

of the familiar.

Good morning love.

Thanks, Robyn and Kaspa, for this wonderful idea.

"PHENOMENAL"

2011-12-30T15:24:00.000-08:00

A post-Christmas drive took us down to San Diego, to visit the Museum of Contemporary Art for an exhibition in the Pacific Standard Time series, Phenomenal: California Light, Space, Surface installed at both the downtown gallery and the original MCASD space in La Jolla. A big enthusiast for this great period in the history of California art, I had been planning to get down there for some time, but had been postponing the trip for a variety of reasons. It proved worth the drive.

Before heading for the museums, though, we made a stop at Ellie’s sister, Susie’s house in the heart of San Diego, just to deliver our holiday greetings in person and wish her well for the coming year. Susie is an ardent and knowledgeable fan of “mid-century” architecture and interior design, and has a great eye for quality when it comes aesthetic choices. Her present abode is filled with delightful objects—art works, pottery, textiles…—that make it a real pleasure to visit. It’s a hobby, a lifestyle, a passion that obviously brings joy into her life and helps her to create an environment that manages to be at once spare and rich in meticulously chosen detail. Good for her, in a world where so much is hasty and utilitarian, to devote herself to simple elegance and beauty.

As I've said, I’m a sucker when it comes to California Light/Space art. I arrived in California in 1968, when the movement was still at its height. (I tend to see it as a logical historical development both from the impressionistic “plein air” tradition of the early years of the 20^th century; and of the hard edge color abstraction of the forties and fifties.) At the time, I had little exposure to the work of contemporary artists, and this work intrigued me particularly because it had avowedly to do with the phenomenology of perception—how the mind/eye perceives the world about it, how this phenomenon itself can be brought into service as a medium for the artist, and how our perception can in turn be changed and enriched by the artist’s vision. I came to California as a poet; this art did not ask me to bring my intellectual, verbal self to “understand” it; it offered itself instead to my openness to the experience of the moment.

Larry Bell, untitled, ca. 1970, Inconel coated glass in 5 panels. Courtesy of the artist and the Hendrickson Family Collection. © Larry Bell. Photo by Philipp Scholz Rittermann.

I have to say, the show in the downtown galleries left me initially disappointed. I brought those high expectations with me and the work seemed somehow tired, not the sparkling display of vibrant light and energy I was looking for. Perhaps it was the installation: the lighting was low, and seemed dull to me. I found myself agreeing with Ellie’s assessment: “old chestnuts”—not exactly what you’d want to be saying about California Light and Space. Even the sheer, perfectionist beauty of some of the work...

Doug Wheeler, DW 68 VEN MCASD 11, 1968/2011, white UV neon light. Courtesy of the artist. Photo: Philipp Scholz Rittermann.

James Turrell, Stuck Red and Stuck Blue, 1970, construction materials and fluorescent lights. Collection Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, Museum Purchase, Elizabeth W. Russell Foundation Funds. © James Turrell. Photo by Philipp Scholz Rittermann.

... seemed a bit jaded, no longer quite so exciting to the senses as it once had been. (Actually, they look pretty brilliant in these images!) But I did find that excitement in an unrelated gallery, the one devoted to a huge installation by Jennifer Steinkamp, a digitally- generated heir to Light and Space, where layered, constantly moving images of flowers and blossoming trees evoked the random, ceaseless motion of the subatomic world writ large, expanded to the scale of three aircraft-hanger sized walls, as visually intriguing as they were awe-inspiring in their beauty and their shifting patterns of relationship.

The La Jolla galleries devoted to “Phenomenal” did much to restore my disappointed love. Several of the artists seemed to shine. What a pleasure to see Helen Pashgian stand out so well, with several stunning works in cast polyester resin—particularly a group of three small spheres...

Helen Pashgian, Installation view of three untitled works, 1968-69, Courtesy of the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, Museum purchase, International and Contemporary Collectors Funds; Pomona College Museum of Art, Claremont, California; Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena California, Gift of the artist. Photo by Pablo Mason.

.... affording a long view through their gleaming irises; and a couple of fine, illusory two-dimensional “paintings” in the same translucent material. And I have more than a soft spot for the mysterious, high-polished, monochromatic planks and other geometric forms by the late John McCracken...

John McCracken, Blue Block in Three Parts, 1966. Lacquer, polyester resin, fiberglass, plywood. Collection Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, Museum purchase with funds from Ansley I. Graham Trust, Los Angeles. (c) The Estate of John McCracken. Courtesy David Zwirner, New York. Photo by Philipp Scholz Ritterman.

... they remind me of the monolith at the start of Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey"—presences that seem to have arrived, unexplained and inexpicable, from outer space.

Then there’s the long, narrow, neon green corridor installation by Bruce Nauman...

Bruce Nauman, Green Light Corridor, 1970, painted wallboard and fluorescent light fixtures with green lamps, dimensions variable. Collection Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. Panza Collection, Gift, 1992. Photo by Pablo Mason. (c) 2011 Bruce Nauman / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

....which you can navigate only sideways, at snail’s pace, through eerie green light; when you emerge at the far end, everything is suddenly violet, slowly changing into pink. And you find yourself released into a gallery with a Robert Irwin work, installed long ago, in which the artist simply removed certain geometric sections from the slightly tinted windows, looking out over the deep blue Pacific Ocean, creating in each case a “hole in space” that reminds us how often we fail to see clearly, because we do not pay attention unless invited or compelled to do so.

And finally, the wondrous black hole created by the late Eric Orr—a room so dark that it seems, as you feel your way in from the entry, completely devoid of light. Once inside, you stand in total darkness, never imagining it to be penetrable in any way. Stand there for three or four minutes, though, and the eyes, amazingly, adjust. The silhouettes of other visitors start to emerge, black against the barely detectable glow of light, coming from you know not where. A few minutes more, and you begin to be able to see detail, soon quite clearly, as the darkness recedes. It’s an amazing, slightly dizzying experience, and one that works on the mind in somewhat the same way as the anechoic chamber works with sound—or the absence thereof. You watch yourself becoming aware.

All in all, "Phenomenal" is an ambitious show, and a welcome resurrection of a piece of the unique history of art in this part of the world—an area so singularly blessed with natural sunlight that it inspires its artists to investigate that property in their work; and seemingly so receptive to creative freedom that they readily dispense with convention and received ideas about what art should or should not be. It becomes whatever the human mind is capable of perceiving and experiencing with delight, whatever expands our vision and potential. Which makes it a special privilege to live and work in Southern California.

"PATIENCE": A BOOK REVIEW

2011-12-28T17:24:00.000-08:00

I have just finished reading Patience: The Art of Peaceful Living, by Allan Lokos, the founder and guiding teacher of the Community Meditation Center in New York City. It’s a timely read for a season in which the stresses seem to multiply in direct proportion to the peace and joy we’re supposed to be feeling—and too often don’t!

In many ways, the book is a very readable course in Buddhism 101, a primer in Buddhist thought and practice for those who will value the introduction; it is also an important refresher course for those of us who have been practicing for a while—and who recognize that it’s still, and always, about “beginner’s mind.” Patience is at the very heart of Buddhist practice: without it the noble Eightfold Path would be impracticable for even the most ardent of its followers. A wise and, yes, patient guide, Lokos leads his readers through the benefits of patience with, first, ourselves and then with others in our personal and professional relationships. He offers the inspiration of notable exemplars, and includes not only the words of wisdom of great teachers in the Buddhist tradition, but also simple, do-able exercises and practices to help us along the way.

Patience is not an easy virtue, particularly in today’s world where we rush about our daily lives and readily succumb to the siren call of multi-tasking—at the cost of our peace of mind and happiness. I observe the suffering I create for myself when the traffic backs up on the freeway, when my computer fails to perform in conformance to my expectations or needs, when those around me make demands on my time and energies that I am reluctant to share. I watch the feelings of anger and frustration that arise when I don’t get what I want exactly when I want it. (Lokos includes appendices with useful lists of keywords to identify those fleeting feelings and other sources of stress; being mindful of them is helpful way to avoid the reactive patterns that contribute to our suffering without our knowing it.) When spoken in impatience, my words not only cause others to suffer, they do nothing to alleviate my own. Impatience takes a heavy toll, on my body, too, manifesting in the form of headaches or belly aches, fatigue, and general physical discomfort.

“Patience” is a thoughtful and always interesting book, and one that engages our attention. It challenges many of the assumptions and misconceptions we have about ourselves and the world we live in, reminding us that there is always another side to every view. It invites us to do the hard work of continuous mindfulness, and offers us the means to find release from self-inflicted (and other-inflicted) pain. As its subtitle and its final chapter suggest, “peaceful living” is indeed an “art” that can be learned through mindful practice—a valuable lesson to all who seek surcease from the stress we bring, often unconsciously, upon ourselves. As the Beatles sang, memorably, many years ago, “we all want to change the world.” “Patience” would be a terrific place to start--not to mention an excellent New Year's resolution!

PICTURES....

2011-12-28T08:45:00.000-08:00

... have now been added to yesterday's post, as promised.

CHRISTMAS... AND BOXING DAY!

2011-12-27T06:26:00.000-08:00

It has been, for The Buddha Diaries, a long silence. Time to catch up on an amazing week that culminated, yesterday, in a disaster. But let's start with the good part...

It was the "holiday season," as those of us who wage a joyfully vindictive war on Christmas like to call it. (I actually have nothing against Christmas per se, but I do have it in for what has come to be the yearly celebration of crass commercialism in the name of religion; and the abandonment of virtually every value that religion espouses in favor of the acquisition of "stuff." But let's not get into that.) Our daughter, Sarah, arrived last Wednesday with her now seven-week-old son, Luka...

who brought with him nothing but joy and wonder at the miracle of new human life.

Ellie and I spent a good part of the week in preparation for his arrival, and for the large number of guests we expected to join us for dinner on Christmas Eve. There was plenty of food shopping to be done--on numerous expeditions because, of course, something was always forgotten or something new was needed. There were what seemed like hours of chopping and dicing: I am the sous chef, Ellie the menu preparer and the main chef. We made casseroles and salads, soups and stuffed peppers, cakes and muffins... food for an army: Ellie does not like the prospect of running short or anyone going hungry. In between times, we entertained our grandson...

... while his mom enjoyed the luxury of some quiet moments for herself, and took long walks with the baby in the stroller. He also went downtown with us to do some last-minute gift shopping and a visit with Santa...

I found him a fine Laguna Beach baseball cap...

Our Christmas Eve dinner was a great success. Sarah's friend Azalia and her sister Jan arrived in the early afternoon, followed shortly by Ed, Luka's dad, fresh from work; and soon thereafter by Ed's brother, Stan, and his girlfriend, Kelly...

... and finally Stan Hudecek senior...

We drank our traditional family toast in the champagne that Ed had brought with him, remembering not only those close at Christmas, but also those in more distant parts of the world, from Iowa to England and the Czech Republic, where Stan senior was born and where his family still live. And sat down for the feast at our Christmas table...

Much merriment at the table, along with the appreciation for the excellent--and, in honor of our daughter preferences, exclusively vegetarian--fare. With many of our guests leaving after dinner, the rest of us settled down to a game of team Scrabble, in which Ellie and I gloriously--and decisively--defeated the Hudecek brothers and their mates.

Christmas Day, Ellie and George and I were up at our usual early hour, abducting our grandson for a walk...

... down to the cafe near the beach where we often go for breakfast. We sat with a cup of coffee and a muffin in the beautiful, warm sunshine, thinking that life could not get much better than this. Then back home for our traditional brunch with, this year, the substitution of buckwheat pancakes for our usual English scrambled eggs, along with lox and bagels and a mixed fruit salad. No one, again, went hungry. Not even George...

After brunch we did the Christmas stocking bit--usually an early morning event, but postponed beyond its normal time in honor of Ed, who is a night person, and rarely puts in an appearance before noon! When Sarah was no more than a tot, one of the graduate students I worked with made her this enormous Christmas stocking...

... which has proven quite a challenge, in succeeding years, for Santa to fill. Somehow he manages each year, and our now not so little daughter still delights in the ritual...

... as do her parents. Many wonderful gifts, then, all around, and much pleasure in the spirit of generosity with which they had been found, wrapped, and given.

I had discovered earlier that there was to be an unusually low low tide at four in the afternoon, so we headed down to the park around the Montage hotel for a walk on the beach. We were surprised by the traffic and the crowds, and had a hard time finding a parking spot; but soon headed down the path in front of the hotel and transferred Luka from his stroller to a sling carrier before crossing the beach to the water's edge.

A glorious late afternoon, with the sun heading down to the horizon over Catalina Island, reflecting pearlescent colors in the breaking waves as they reached the shore...

Out beyond the breakers, to our delight, a school of dolphins leapt and played, while cormorants and pelicans dive-bombed for fish in the fading light. It was all almost too beautiful to be true--a superb ending to one of the most wonderful holidays in memory.

Sarah and Ed and Luka left for Los Angeles later in the evening, and Ellie and I were looking forward to a day of rest and relaxation Monday. Alas... (Now for the bad part!)

I had noticed, Sunday evening, a suspicious little puddle gathering around the clean-out valve for the drain that leads from our cottage to the city mains, and called in the morning to arrange for the plumber to come later in the week and do the semi-annual roto-rootering necessitated by the insistent growth of our neighbor's tree roots. We had decided to postpone our scheduled visit by a month--a decision that was to prove foolhardy this Boxing Day. With some chairs to return to their place in the basement storage area, I opened the door to Ellie's studio under the cottage and was greeted with a foul stink and hideous mess: the raw sewage had backed up from the drain and exploded through sink, flooding the studio and soaking books and sketch pads along with everything else in reach.

The plumber graciously responded to an emergency call and arrived to clear the drain. But the mess that remained behind him required hours of painstaking clean-up—not to mention the loan of a neighbor’s industrial power fan to help air out the space and drive out the stench.

What kind of karma was this, we wondered, following so close on our week of love and generosity? No doubt, in retrospect, it will seem a lot funnier than it seemed yesterday. And I guess it will make for a good story. Still, no way to spend a Boxing Day…

HEART-TO-HEART

2011-12-22T07:29:00.000-08:00

It's a great feeling, to have a good heart-to-heart with another human being. I had one just yesterday afternoon with my grandson. No words, of course. He's only seven weeks old, tomorrow. But his mom and grandma went out shopping, and Luka was left in his grandpa's care for an hour or so. At first he was quite restless, squirming away in my arms. I though he was maybe wanting to get a bit of exercise, so I laid him out on the couch; but no, he didn't like that. So I picked him up again and bounced him around, walking back and forth in the living room, and before long he was fast asleep. We sat down on the rocking chair together, heart-to-heart, communing at some level way below language...

... until his mom came home.

Then, a little later in the evening, we all watched "The Cave of Forgotten Dreams"--Ellie and I, for the second time in as many weeks. Which gave me the opportunity to reflect a bit on our many thousand-year past, and on this tiny bit of human future I had been holding in my arms.

200,000

2011-12-21T12:08:00.000-08:00

Around the first of the year, or soon thereafter, we expect to have our 200,000th visit on The Buddha Diaries--that's not counting the 300,000 plus "page views," whatever they may be. It seems only the blink of an eye since we passed the 100,000 milestone. On that occasion, I promised a signed copy of "Persist" to the 200,000th visitor, a person I'm able to identify at least numerically on Sitemeter. I can also tell where in the world that person happens to be, but not the particular individual. My plan was to contact him or her via email if contact information was available, and get a street address to send out my thank-you gift.

Well, okay, a bit gimmicky. But why not? This time around, my offer is this: the very first, brand new, hot-off-the-press, copy of "Mind Work" to go out from its author, signed and dedicated to the actual 200,000th visitor; or, if that individual is not traceable or responsive, to the first successor in line. AND, for the first ten in succession thereafter, a signed copy of "Persist." Between us, Emily and I will do our best to reach out and identify recipients, and let them know of their, um, good fortune. I value every one of my readers, and this is but a small--and admittedly rather random!--way to say so.

In the meantime, the holiday season is upon us, time is short, and family comes first. I expect to be more remiss that usual with my posts--but then I often surprise myself with an entry at the busiest of times. In just a while, our daughter Sarah arrives on the train at Irvine Amtrak station with little Luka! I've no doubt I'll be reporting on the first Christmas for this wonderful new arrival in our family; as well as on missing the other grandchildren, celebrating the occasion at their own home in England. If I don't see you before, have a blessed holiday!

A DAY OF TIME

2011-12-20T07:50:00.000-08:00

It's a strange feeling. We have just bought ourselves a day of time. Our plan had been to leave in good time this morning for the drive down to San Diego, for a visit with Ellie's sister and an opportunity to see the two-part Pacific Standard Time show at the two branches of the San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art. But late afternoon yesterday, we changed our minds. There is so much stress around the holidays already, we did not need this extra demand upon our resources; easy enough to postpone until next week. Tomorrow, our daughter arrives with our new grandson, to spend the rest of the week; and, on Christmas Eve, Luka's dad and an unknown number of his family. There are dishes to be planned and prepared, presents to be wrapped--and, in some cases, still to be shopped-for and bought. Enough, we decided, was enough.

So now we have a whole unanticipated day of time. What a luxury! Thus far, we have relaxed in bed with the New York Times and George, the dog. George is, of course, unaware of his reprieve: he will not have to spend the entire day by himself, and will likely get his customary play time up in the park. He is sleeping blissfully. I will probably, eventually, bestir myself and head down to the gym for an hour's workout. I plan to finish reading the book that has been sent me for review. Outside the bedroom door that looks out onto the patio, the sun is shining in a pleasantly blue sky; the weather is cool and clear. It looks like a good day to have bought some thus far unencumbered time.

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS: ATHEISM

2011-12-19T07:14:00.000-08:00

I was moved by the death of a countryman, Christopher Hitchens, last week. I am not a big fan of swagger, whether physical, moral, or rhetorical--and from where I sat, not knowing him personally, Hitchens had them all and made a very public practice of them. He was, in debate, something of a bully, cocksure, intolerant of the opinions of those who disagreed with him. Some interpret this as laudable strength and conviction, and deplore the lack of it in those who tend more to listen well and include the views of others in their thinking. I see it rather as a cover-up for a deep inner insecurity and doubt. Whichever is true, it grieves me that a man of formidable intelligence--and one who contributed to the national dialogue with verve, insight and humor--should have died at so young an age.

What interests more above everything else is his virulent and outspoken atheism. I, too, am an atheist. I do not believe in any of the gods our species has invented over these past many centuries, not even the One God most of us seem to have arrived at in our present culture--though there is disagreement, obviously, over which One is the True One. Still, I remain uncomfortable with the certainty of disbelievers. Only death itself will bring any clarity about what reality, if any, exists beyond this life; and death is the ultimate problem that all religions seek ultimately to address. There must, we humans long to believe, be more to it than this brief life we're given to lead on earth.

I arrived at something of a breakthrough in my own thinking yesterday, and wrote about it in The Buddha Diaries. Earlier in the day, before our weekly sit in sangha, I had been reading the New York Times piece about Hitchens and his atheism by the Roman Catholic conservative columnist Ross Douthat. "When stripped of Marxist fairy tales and techno-uptopian happy talk," he wrote, "rigorous atheism casts a wasting shadow over every human hope and endeavor, and leads ineluctably to the terrible conclusion of Philip Larkin's poem, 'Aubade’--that 'death is no different whined at than withstood.’"

I disagree with both of them. It's not merely a belief in God that justifies "every human hope and endeavor." We can still strive to better ourselves and our common condition with other beings without the expectation of eternal reward. Is that not the essence of “hope” and “endeavor”? And, Larkin notwithstanding, there is an alternative to either whining at death or, in the words of his fellow poet, Dylan Thomas, to opting for the other path: to “rage, rage against the dying of the light.” As we can choose to learn from the wisdom of the Buddha, if we’re willing to put in the work it takes it’s equally possible to find a place in our heart where we can address death calmly, with equanimity, and to prepare for it as the ultimate experience of life—the next adventure. But this is not belief. It’s practice. I cannot claim to have reached that point in my own life yet, but I’m working at it.

Is it possible, I wonder, that the deep insecurity Hitchens chose to convert into swagger was hidden precisely in the swaggering atheism he chose so loudly to preach?

REBIRTH, REVISITED

2011-12-18T14:49:00.000-08:00

A wonderfully useful discussion at sangha this morning, after our hour’s sit. It being the holiday season, and there being so few in attendance, I was about to leave right after the hour of silent meditation, but Bob—one of our three Bobs in the group—held me back with a thought about rebirth. He had brought a copy of Than Geoff’s “The Truth of Rebirth”, and knew that I had always found this a sticking point. What, he wanted to know, was my question about it?

Well, I have read the first twenty pages or so of Than Geoff’s book, with a good sense, I thought, of his argument: that the Buddha’s word about rebirth, contrary to much Western thinking about “Buddhism without beliefs”, are in fact central to his teaching. The principle of karma, Than Geoff argues, is critical both on the micro and the macro scale; and it makes fullest sense only if it works life-to-life as well as in this one life we are currently experiencing. It leads him to what I interpreted as a kind of Pascalian bet: no matter whether God—and heaven and hell—exist, we have nothing to lose and everything to gain if we bet in His favor.

I (mis)understood the Buddhist belief in rebirth to be the same kind of bet. And it’s true, there is some shared ground between the two. What Bob came up with that was truly helpful to me was the formulation of a “working hypothesis”: the insight to which he led me was the realization that I don’t have to see it as one thing OR the other. True OR not true. So it doesn’t have to be the “leap of faith” I had always imagined. As always, it seems, the Buddha was inviting our consideration of the hypothesis, challenging us to test out his idea to see how well it would work. It’s not a question of some absolute concept in which I am required to belief as an article of faith; it’s a proposition that may—or may not—prove valid in the light of lived experience.

Now, I am well able to watch karma in action in the one life that I know: my actions lead to demonstrable results. The skillful ones result in less suffering for myself and less suffering for others; ergo, my own greater happiness and greater happiness for others. The unskillful ones contribute demonstrably to greater suffering for all. But there are instances of karmic action that have no such immediate or comprehensible outcomes—and, of course, instances of outcomes that have no apparent relation to karmic action. Why, asks that unanswerable question, do bad things happen to good people? And why do people who do terrible things often seem to reap great rewards rather than appropriate comeuppance? In the light of such considerations, the theory of repeated rebirth makes much more plausible sense. AND it can still remain a hypothesis.

THE ONE PERCENT

2011-12-16T07:07:00.000-08:00

There are plenty of people, it seems, who are willing and able to bid in the hundreds of thousands of dollars for baubles from the late Elizabeth Taylor's jewelry chest. I read in yesterday's New York Times that the Christies sale had brought in a record $116 million, no problem, many times the pre-auction estimates. Bidding, as they say, was brisk. I keep hearing the name Kardashian these days, in the context of outrageous ostentation; I have no idea who they are or what they do to make them rich and famous, but apparently they are the darlings of the media. One Kim Kardashian shelled out a cool $64,900 for three jade and diamond bracelets; the pre-auction estimate was $8,000.

Thanks to the Occupiers, the "One Percent" have acquired a certain notoriety--a fact that does not appear to discourage them from their conspicuous consumption. Ellie and I were chatting with an art dealer on our gallery rounds the other day. She had just returned from Art Basel-Miami Beach, the annual December mother of all American art fairs, proximate offspring of the granddaddy of them all, Art Basel. With a glee not unmixed with a certain horror, she told us that her hand was still sore from writing out invoices. She and her two associates, she said, had expected a little fun time at the fair; instead, the three of them were kept busy without a break from opening to closing time each day. We heard much the same from several other dealers. Most were not only delighted at the fair's success, but also aghast at its social implications. Art dealers are people, too. They represent artists who, for the most part, are gifted with a social conscience.

You have to wonder a bit, though, about art folk like the dealer Larry Gagosian and his milk cow (one of them!) Damien Hirst--he of the formaldehyde shark and diamond-encrusted skull fame. Hirst had the inspired idea to take over every one of the eleven palatial galleries in Gagosian's global fleet, in order to showcase his early "spot paintings"...

(photo purloined from the New York Times, with apologies to Andrew Testa)

... many of them already sold into prestigious collections and reassembled for the occasion. Some will undoubtedly be available for resale--at many times their original price. Do we dare to hope that Hirst is using the occasion to make a grand statement about the venality of the art world?

And then, the crown jewel of the moment... Thanks to an article that caught our attention in yesterday's Times, we tuned in to watch a show called Selling Spelling Manor on House & Garden Television. Poor Candy Spelling, an empty-nester who also found herself a widow after her husband, TV producer Aaron's death in 2007, came to the heart-breaking decision that it was time to down-size and move to smaller quarters. The modest, 56,500 square foot family home was on the market. Asking price: $150 million. She had to settle for $65 million less. (You'll find some of the details on the site above. Curiously, the Beverly Hills realtor who did the deal turned out to be the same woman who negotiated our daughter's purchase of a tiny, starter home just off the San Fernando Road in Glendale years ago--for a hundred and some odd thousand! We still get her Christmas cards...)

Well, let's not forget that billionaires are people too. Does Candy Spelling suffer any the less than the rest of us, for all her wealth and social connections? She freely boasted having designed every last detail of her mansion, and supervised its construction. With her designer,

THE HUMAN CLAY

2011-12-15T10:48:00.000-08:00

"To me," wrote W. H. Auden, "Art's subject is the human clay,/And landscape but a background to a torso;/All Cezanne's apples I would give away/For one small Goya or a Daumier." Well, I don't go all the way with Auden on this one, but I do believe that what we should expect from art is that it tell us more about our own humanity. An abstract painting, though, can do this just as well as figurative work. So, no, I wouldn't give away Cezanne's apples. On the other hand, there was for years an unfortunate tendency in modern and contemporary art--and in writing about modern and contemporary art--to dismiss the figure as no longer relevant; it still persists, in some quarters. And with that, I disagree. Profoundly.

Still, it's also not much use for an artist simply to repeat today what has been well done in the past, no matter how skillfully. Not that I can get anything less from Goya and Daumier for having seen their work before; as my friend Tony de los Reyes told his high school class last week, we never look at the same painting twice. We bring a new and different self each time we look at it, just as the context in which we approach the painting changes. But to be interesting and challenging, new art must tell me something new about my humanity, something I may recognize and assent to as what I have always known in some profound part of my being, but have never met in quite this form before. I must feel that Yes! resonate in my heart and soul, and must come away a more fully formed--and in-formed--human being.

All this as a preamble to a few words about "eyehand: Selected Sculpture from 1975- 2011," the current Peter Shelton show at LA Louver Gallery. I have known Peter's work for years and have admired it for its ability to evoke in me precisely the response I describe above. A "sculptor"--that word seems a little inadequate these days--he works primarily, though not exclusively, with the human figure. He works at it from the outside and from within, showing us what is recognizably our anatomy. But Shelton is no literalist. His vision takes the literal anatomy and makes it his own...

Peter Shelton

reddress, 1998-2011

red paint over fiberglass

62 x 77 x 55 in. (157.5 x 195.6 x 139.7 cm)

Courtesy of L.A. Louver, Venice, CA

A limb or a torso may be elongated...

Peter Shelton

birthbone[, 1991-92

mixed media

113 x 19 x 7 1/2 in. (287 x 48.3 x 19.1 cm)

Courtesy of L.A. Louver, Venice, CA

... or otherwise distorted; an internal organ may be inflated or distended...

Peter Shelton

twobiglobe, 2011

mixed media, fiberglass

68 x 75 x 38 in. (172.7 x 190.5 x 96.5 cm)

Courtesy of L.A. Louver, Venice, CA

... sometimes with unsettlingly humorous results as we are confronted with the radical strangeness of these bodies we are given to walk around in, their vulnerability, and our self-consciousness about them. I recall the cultural critic, Leslie Fiedler's thesis that we all experience ourselves in some way as freaks--as children, for example, at the earliest moments in our lives, comparing our small selves to the giants who surround us. As adults, we fuss about our waistline, our stature, our physical defects, comparing ourselves constantly to others or to imagined standards of normalcy.

It's this feeling, for me, that Shelton's work taps into most deeply, confronting us with dream--or nightmare--visions of what it means to be a physical being in the world. That he asks us, eye and mind, at the same time, to join in the play of paradoxical relationships between weight and lightness, inner and outer, space and volume adds to the rich texture of associations he engages. The word "avoirdupois" comes pleasurably to mind. We experience a kind of gravity, in both the physical and the metaphorical sense, a heaviness of actual weight combined with a lightness of being. The work asks us to take measure of our own weight and height as we stand in its vicinity; and it manages to be somehow alarmingly monumental and almost painfully intimate at the same time. It intrudes itself upon our physical as well as on our psychic space and leaves us, yes, more fully aware of what it is to be a human being.

As a footnote, this (unofficial, non-gallery!) picture shows me having a little irreverent fun with Shelton's sculpture. I happen to think that it also says something about that element of absurdity that creeps into the work, its friendly grotesquerie...

And, as a bonus, my own snapshot of the installation...

SICK...

2011-12-14T12:54:00.000-08:00

... with a cold. It started yesterday, blossomed overnight, and leaves me in bed this morning. And much distraught. Tomorrow, then...

OCCUPY "THE BUDDHA DIARIES"

2011-12-13T08:07:00.000-08:00

The Buddha Diaries has not made a practice of posting entries by guest writers--not because I would not welcome them but rather because, when I have solicited other voices, they have not chosen to make themselves heard. So today is unusual. My post is a piece by a young friend, Azalia Snail. I know her as an accomplished musician and a friend of my daughter, and I was happy to receive her offer of a piece about her experience with Occupy LA. As a 99 percent-er, I support the goals of this much needed expression of popular outrage against a system of politics, government and finance that is by now indisputably rigged against the vast majority of Americans. My excuses for not being out on the streets myself are pretty poor ones; so I'm glad that Azalia stepped up, and that she is here to report on her experience.

MY OCCUPY by AZALiA SNAiL

When I first heard about a bunch of people flocking to a park in downtown Manhattan, hoisting up tents and waving signs with messages protesting the bankers and the corporate elite, I thought, "bloody damn time already." Somebody had to (finally) rise to the auspicious occasion and demand that the bankers take responsibility for the monetary (or lack thereof) mess that we're in. A few days later, I got an e-mail from Sarah, one of my very best pals (and on that day of October 1, 2011, 8 months pregnant) that she and her partner Ed were going to City Hall for Day 1 of our very own Occupy L.A.! Hooray! I could easily ride my electric scooter downtown and meet them there. It was a beautiful day, the lawn was filled with eager citizens, some de riguer protest types, and some fresh young ones, many with handmade signs and devoted agendas. I had heard that Los Angeles was going to arrange for their own Occupy, but I didn't yet have the details, until that fateful e-mail from Sarah. I came with digital camera and photographed the proceedings on the grounds of City Hall, which would come to be known as Solidarity Park and the OccupyLA encampment.

I was thinking: why occupy? I researched as much as I could about the occupy movement over the next few weeks.

So here's some paragraphs that I copied and pasted from a few sources, added my own thoughts, and edited down to an easy-to-digest read.

"The idea of taking a square to try and do a replica of the society you would like to see."

"We need to get back to what America was, and what it should be, and what it can be. Occupy Wall Street is no longer just a place called Zuccotti Park --- Zuccotti Park is everywhere. You can try to pen us in, you can beat us and arrest us, you can mace and tear-gas us , and you can try to "permit" us to death....but you can't kill an idea. You can't keep down people’s hopes and dreams for a better life.....a life with dignity and freedom....for us... and for future generations."

More power to Occupy Wall Street, as it spreads to every town and city - because OWS is us, and for us, and by us. It comes up from the grassroots, and it lifts us up in turn. With OWS, America has found its voice, and that voice demands fairness and justice. This land IS our land! And we want it back! We want our lives back! We want our future back! ....So why not find a quiet place and consider this: We only have one brief life...one chance...and many choices. It’s time to choose, and to act. If not now, then when? If not you, then.....

"We want to set off seven days and nights of unpredictable, creative mayhem in hundreds of cities around the world," an early Adbusters "Tactical Briefing" email quixotically declared. "We want to catalyze a global flash point -- a sudden, unexpected moment of truth -- the birth of a 'slow' revolution that, over the next few years, will radically alter the way the world is run." The event was said to feature "everything from holding mass hummings in shopping centres/commercial areas to standing naked in front of our oppressors in banks carrying signs that say 'What more will you take from us now?'"

One such event was the reality of the Arab Spring, which has shown the world an example of people power not seen in ages. But still more importantly, in my mind, is the fact that Adbusters's call to action intersected with other forces. Occupy Wall Street was, in fact, preceded by "Bloombergville," a similar camp out of activists, mainly young people, who decided to sleep in lower Manhattan in July to protest the escalating budget cuts in New York City. With limited exceptions, the media didn't even bother to show up to be snide about Bloombergville -- but New Yorkers Against the Budget Cuts, which helped organize Bloombergville, was early to take up the Occupy Wall Street initiative and give it some foot soldiers.

Back to our L.A. Story: Of course the cops came and took the camp down, mercilessly, strategically, after having dissected the situation with their own undercover cops posing as Occupiers, per instructions from their supervisors and ultimately, the Mayor. They claimed it was a "peaceful" bringdown. I've heard directly from some of the arrestees that it was not. The media was permitted only on the sidelines, so they didn't see the terrible treatment the arrestees faced on the busses and in their jail cells. I watched it go down on the night of eviction. It was menacing to witness the congregation of 1400 cops coming at them from all sides, including suddenly bursting out from inside City Hall.

We need the Occupy movement desperately. How else to combat the steadily growing downfall of our economic system? The overwhelmingly negative slate of political affairs? Corporate greed and corruption? How about the NDAA bill, one of the worst measures we have been faced with in our lifetimes? A bill that could sacrifice our very freedoms, which we take for granted as that thin fabric becomes ever so transparent.

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/12/senate-military-detention/

I'm astounded by the apathy of most of my peers and acquaitances. I've posted several times on Facebook about the National Defense Act and what it could mean to our future. Only about 3 people commented, out of over 1300 "friends." This is a very drastic measure that virtually would take away the principles of American freedom. It's a sham and a shame.

I only feel sorry for those who unfairly criticize the Occupy movement . For they are the stallers and the mockers and the ignorant, and we could all be damned. But I will prevail in my commitment to show them what they are missing. And maybe there still is a reflection of hope in the drowning lake of que sera, sera.

Oh yeah, I once posted on a NYC wall a sort of "art piece" with the following blown-up words: "Each and every day they are killing me. But I'm not dead yet." That, in a nutshell, is how I feel about the importance of the Occupy movement.

THE CAVE OF FORGOTTEN DREAMS

2011-12-12T07:00:00.000-08:00

We kicked ourselves for not having sought out a theater to see Werner Herzog's Cave of Forgotten Dreams in 3-D when it first came out. As is so often the case, we waited too long--trusting that it would be around for a while... until it wasn't. Now that the film is available on Netflix, we settled for a television screen. Even in much smaller scale and in 2-D, it is an amazing experience to venture with Herzog and his tiny crew into the only recently (1994) discovered Chauvet cave in the Ardeche area of southern France, and to see the work of some of the earliest human artists--dating back as much as 30,000 years.

I use the word "artist" advisedly. The paintings in the Chauvet cave are not the work of those who have been disparaged, in the past, as "primitive." These are sophisticated works of art...

.... powerfully representational, almost naturalistic in their depiction of animals, like the horses above. The attitude of the head, the curve of a neck, the flick of an ear and the line of the profile---these are executed with a skill and a confidence all the more astounding for having been painted in the dark recess of a cave, presumably with nothing more than the flickering light of a burning torch. There are, too, rhinos...

... and lions...

... along with cave bears, hyenas, and antelopes, all drawn with comparable evocative skill.

It's not known how many hands were involved in the making of these images, nor by how many centuries they may have been separated. It is known, however, that the cave was protected by a centuries-old collapse of the cliff face, burying it deeper in the mountainside and far from destructive light and other degradation. Still, the survival--and perhaps most of all the discovery--of this trove of ancient human artistry is astonishing. One wonders how much more about our evolutionary history remains undiscovered.

It's curious that, as in other ancient cave paintings, there is no sign of human portraiture or figuration. The artists' skill in depicting animals seems not to have carried over into a wish to portray their own kind, even though they chose to leave the signature mark of their human presence in the form of handprints on the walls. In the Chauvet cave, there is also the image of an exaggerated female vulva...

... with spindly legs below and the upper torso and head of a bison painted on a phallic rock projection--clearly a significant departure from neighboring images and ritualistic rather than depictive.

We'll never know what motivated this extraordinary artwork, but we can at least we grateful that it was discovered; and that we have a film maker with the vision of a Werner Herzog to document it with such scrupulous care. That artists were already painting masterpieces such as these thirty thousand years ago says much about the creative spirit the defines our humanity. It's good to remind ourselves, too, that there were no Christie's or Sotheby's back then, and no commercial galleries whose dominance tends to distort the intentions and purposes of those who make art. Did their skill assure them some special, perhaps shamanic place in their clan? It may be just as well that we have no way of knowing. That way, the mystery of these marvels stays intact, far beyond the reach of our rational minds. We can be awed simply by their beauty and by the unfathomable depth of their meaning.

A RIVER OF STONES

2011-12-11T11:23:00.000-08:00

A while ago I ran across a small book called A River of Stones, and was so enchanted that I wrote about it on The Buddha Diaries. A couple of months later, while visiting my sister in an English town not far from where the book's editors live, I wrote to see if they'd meet me for lunch--and indeed, I sat down together with Fiona and Kaspa over lunch in Cirencester a few weeks later. They're fun to spend time with, dedicated to their work as writer/teachers, and to the great idea they have been promoting with considerable success online.

The idea--if I have it right--is to encourage people throughout the world to stop for a moment in their busy lives, to sidestep all the distractions, and to pay attention to a singular moment in its passing. And then to write it down: a "stone"--a short, precise, haiku-like construction in words that conveys the essence of the moment they have experienced. And then, of course, to add their stone to the "river" hosted by Kaspa and Fiona at their site, Writing Our Way Home. They call it "helping to connect the work through writing."

Their latest invitation/challenge is for January 2012, to write a daily "stone," whether privately in a notebook or journal or for publication on a website or blog (they have some suggestions) or eventually, perhaps, in a second edition of the book that originally attracted my attention. They offer quick-and-easy or more detailed instructions for anyone who wants to take part in the month-long celebration of paying attention and writing, and hope to inspire the world to join them in their vision of greater awareness and greater compassion amongst all us human beings. The whole project, it seems to me, is a slightly greater stone dropped into the pond of our common human experience--a pond that we have for too long muddied with our inattention to its fragile ecology and its often ignored beauties.

I'm planning to join up. This is a challenge for me. I remind myself how busy I'm going to be in January, preparing for the release, the following month, of my new book, Mind Work (site under construction, but a nice cover, no?) If I look a little closer, though, I discover darker reasons: my often unchallenged laziness, for example; my fears about returning to the medium with which I started out as a writer; my easy judgments about "good" and "bad" poetry, including my own. Still, I find it good to have a challenge that will ask me not only to do the work, but to explore some of those inner reservations and find, perhaps, their origin. If I manage to release my attachment to results, I will find myself at home in the flow of the "river of stones."

Here's one small stone, from last night:

One twenty
A.M. Wide
awake, brain
busy with those
trivial pursuits
it deems important.
Oh, for God's
sake, shut up
and let me
sleep.

Please check out Fiona and Kaspa's project and consider joining in. You'll do yourself a favor, and the world.

VERY BRIGHT YOUNG MINDS...

2011-12-09T07:02:00.000-08:00

What a great pleasure, yesterday, to spend time with a group of bright young people, talking about art. My friend, the artist Tony de los Reyes (the link is to a past gallery affiliation, but it will give you some idea of his work) had invited to me to meet at the museum with his class of students from Windward School--a private school with a fine reputation on the west side of town. With only half an hour to work with--it turned out to be closer to forty-five minutes--I adapted my "One Hour/One Painting" session to the occasion.

I have written about "One Hour/One Painting" in these pages before, but a reminder might be useful. I started offering it years ago, when I caught myself walking through museums and galleries and spending more time with the label than with the painting on the wall. I had also taken note of the easy habit of looking at works of art--and making judgments about them--without having really paid attention to what was there in front of me. Instead of looking at the art work, I was looking into a mirror and seeing everything I brought in with me--my likes and dislikes, my prejudices, my expectations about what a work of art should look like. Rather than allowing the work to tell me what it was, I was telling it what it ought to be, and judging it accordingly.

At the same time, I was beginning to experience the enormous benefits of meditation, learning to pay attention to an object--the breath, ambient sounds, the body--and working hard to set aside the distractions of the always busy, always occupied brain. I thought it would be a good idea to put these things together, and started inviting small groups of people to sit with me in front of a single painting for a full, uninterrupted hour. I avoided talk "about" the artist, art history, critical analysis, interpretation. It was, is, just about looking at what's there. Part silent, closed-eye meditation, part open-eyed, intense contemplation of the object, the experience asked participants to drop all prejudices and expectations, and to join me in a leisurely visual walk through the painting. Most had never experienced an art work in this way before, and I learned a lot, along with everyone else, at each event of this kind.

It has been a while since I last offered a "One Hour/One Painting" session. For this one, I went to the museum to seek out a suitable painting for the class, with good sight lines, an interesting art work, and a location spared the heavier traffic patterns. I discovered Pablo Picasso's "Man & Woman."

Having chosen the piece, I had some initial worries about its very explicit sexual content. I need not have been concerned. These teenagers took it all in stride. At their age, I would have been hideously embarrassed. Times have changed. I was a bit worried, too, about asking them to close their eyes, and about the brief introduction to meditation--necessary to get things started. But this too they handled without question, or the kind of embarrassment I have noted often in adults when you ask them to do something a little out of the ordinary. I did a very abbreviated "One Hour"--about fifteen minutes in all, and chose then to spend a while talking with them about the experience, and about what they had found in the painting. I was astonished by the precision and clarity of their observation, and by their ability to articulate complex responses. The only question they were reluctant to respond to was my final one: what had they discovered about themselves in looking at the picture? Even then, when asked if they had, indeed, discovered something, but would not want to talk about it, most hands went up. This was something they preferred to keep private.

As I say, it was a delightful experience for me. It was also a little sobering. There is, of course, the knowledge that these are truly privileged young people, whose parents can, for the most part, afford to send them to an expensive school. But in other ways they are surely not different from others of their age: I could not help but think, as I left the museum, of those many teenagers, just as bright, whose education does not prepare them for, nor afford them such opportunities. I wish it were otherwise, but I am glad to have had the opportunity to encounter these wonderful young minds.

MY TWO SONS

2011-12-08T07:30:00.000-08:00

Happy birthday, yesterday, Jason...

And here's Matthew on his way out for a carol concert...

Can't help but brag a bit! READ ON for today's post, below...

POLITICS

2011-12-08T07:05:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I recovered from my computer's trash bin--I have no idea why it was sent there in the first place--a forward from a friend with whom I agree on most political fronts, but disagree on the Obama presidency. It's two weeks since my friend sent these two articles from New York magazine. They were initially published on November 20th, but they so nearly, and so cogently express my own feelings about the two political parties and the president that I wanted to offer others the opportunity to read them, if they have not already done so.

The first is an article by the conservative Republican, David Frum, When Did the GOP Lose Tough With Reality? The second by the liberal-leaning commentator, Jonathan Chait, When Did Liberals Become So Unreasonable? Frum's piece is a thinking man's repudiation of the extremism that has driven conservatism to the point of its current insanity. Chait's is a fascinating historical study of the way the Democrats have treated their presidents--a pattern of disenchantment and rejection that repeats itself and has reached its counter-productive climax with Obama.

These are both substantial articles; they require a little time and attention. But I found them to be absorbing, well-considered, thoughtfully critical and refreshingly intelligent. I hope that you might want to read them, too.

SURVIVAL

2011-12-07T10:30:00.000-08:00

I stepped into the shower yesterday afternoon, after the luxury of a good sweat in the sauna, and thought about the book I'm currently immersed in as I shampooed my hair and rinsed off in a steady, constant flow of warm water. I watched the water gather in the shower pan and gurgle down the waste drain, thinking about those things I take for granted in my life--things like a clean body to walk around in, as much reliably clean water as I need to drink--and about how those things are not available to many people in this world, and how fortunate I am to have them.

These thoughts were prompted by the realization of what this simple, daily routine would have meant to the men I have been reading about--men captured by the Japanese military in World War II and held in prison camps in unimaginable circumstances, with barely a few grains of rice to eat, a thimbleful of foul water each day, scant items of clothing or bed covering even on freezing winter nights, their filthy, decaying bodies tormented by lice and fleas. And these scarcely survivable living conditions were nothing when compared with the brutal sadism of certain of their captors and guards, the vicious daily beatings with clubs and fists, the torture, the beheadings... That men did survive such circumstances, in some cases for years, is testament to the human spirit and the astounding resilience of the human body.

The book I have been reading is Unbroken, by Laura Hillenbrand, the author of the earlier bestseller, Seabiscuit. It's the story of the pre-war Olympic athlete, Frank Zamperini, a competitor in the 1936 Berlin Games, whose finely-tuned body was capable of extraordinary feats of speed and strength. His great ambition before the war was the four-minute mile, a feat considered by many at the time to be impossible for any human being--and was well on his way to achieving that goal. Then came Pearl Harbor (I happen to be writing down these words on the very day, December 7,) and the entry of America into the global conflict. Zamperini was trained as a bombadier, flying missions over the Pacific in the notoriously unstable B-24 bomber. His trial by ordeal unfolds in Hillenbrand's book in four dramatic and meticulously described acts: the terrors of aerial combat and assault by Zeros; a record forty-seven days in shark-infested seas aboard a life raft with two other crewmen; twenty-seven long months in a succession of Japanese prison camps; and years of painful struggle with the demons of that experience following his return home. That Zamperini survives to this day, now in his nineties, is a remarkable tribute to the spirit of the man.

The story Hillenbrand tells—the result of years of research and ample documentation—is a truly harrowing one. It’s almost impossible for a reader like myself who has not experienced combat to comprehend the courage it took for Zamperini and men like him to step aboard those airplanes in the full knowledge that some—many—would never return, shot up by Japanese defenders in the air or downed in the vast Pacific Ocean with little hope of discovery or rescue. Equally hard to comprehend is the will to survive the pitiless, blistering sun, the hunger and thirst, the raging seas and the unrelenting attacks of powerful sharks for a month and a half, lost at sea aboard a tiny raft. Still less the stark, humiliating cruelty with which they were treated as prisoners of war by an enemy that apparently ignored all rules of civilized behavior, including those of the Geneva Convention. There were, of course, a few particularly sadistic perpetrators involved; but the stories of slave labor, forced prostitution and generally brutal mistreatment of military captives and civilians alike are too widespread and too well documented over the years to gloss over institutional responsibility for a deeply shameful period in Japanese history.

Remarkable, too, is the story of Zamperini’s recovery—impossible, in this telling, so long as he held on to the pain and anger. He found release only after furious resistance and a prolonged, self-destructive battle with alcoholism; it came eventually for this one, deeply wounded veteran through the agency of the evangelist Billy Graham, into whose tent he was dragged reluctantly by his despairing wife, as his life and marriage threatened to disintegrate. Zamperini’s embrace of Christianity brought him to the threshold of forgiveness for his torturers and, at last, compassion. It also opened the door for the discovery of a new mission in life, as a teacher, a mentor, and an inspirational speaker.

In the wake of the mistreatment to which Zamperini and his fellow veterans were subjected, forgiveness and compassion were understandably hard to come by. Many were never able to find it in themselves, and Hillenbrand’s final chapters include the tragic evidence of lives poisoned by the toxicity of unhealed wounds. With a tenacity as strong as that needed by an endurance athlete like this Olympian, the will to hold on must have especially powerful, especially hard to break. It tells us a great deal about the human spirit that this one man managed to find an end to the suffering he endured by finally releasing himself from that attachment, with surely just as much courage as it took to live through its cause.

As I thought to myself as I turned off the shower, those of us who have never had to withstand such assaults on our very being are fortunate indeed. Unhappily, there are many on this planet, even today, whose lives are subjected to the inhumanity of their fellow men in circumstances not dissimilar from those horrifically described in Unbroken. Hasten the day, then, when we will all finally learn the value of compassion.

NOW DIG THIS! ART & BLACK LOS ANGELES, 1960- 1980

2011-12-06T11:06:00.000-08:00

I was writing the other day about Charles White and the art of social and political engagement—an art the mainstream of 20^th century Modernism chose largely to sideline or ignore. Now Dig This! Art & Black Los Angeles, 1960 – 1980 is a valuable, indeed indispensible reminder that a commitment to social justice and related issues remained very much alive in a thriving community of African American artists, whose mutual support systems provided a bulwark against the neglect of the establishment. Time and again, as the excellent exhibition catalogue usefully reminds us, it took solidarity, protest, even defiance to make black voices heard.

The Watts rebellion of 1965 was, of course, the watershed event. Much of the creative energy in “Now Dig This!” was released at that historical moment and much of the work in the exhibition springs, Phoenix-like, not only from the ashes of Watts but also from the epicenter of the Simon Rodia Watts Towers, which survived as both the cultural heart of the community and the aesthetic model for many of its artists.

Which is not to say that there were no black artists working before that moment in Los Angeles. The show starts out with those it identifies as “Frontrunners,” Melvin Edwards, Willam Pajaud, Betye Saar and the aforementioned Charles White. Accomplished artists, teachers, and in the case of Pajaud an important champion of black art to corporate (Golden State Mutual Insurance) and private collectors (Dr. Leon Banks,) they are properly honored for their dedication and persistence at a time when “Art & Black” in Los Angeles could be a discouraging mix. It is an absolute pleasure to see their work given a place of prominence in the Hammer installation, with enough examples to establish its depth and breadth. White’s powerful images exemplify his unique combination of paint and graphic virtuosity; Edwards’s dense, dark welded metal sculptures remind us that even overtly abstract work can be put to work as urgent social signifier; and, on the feminine side, Betye Saar...

Betye Saar. Black Girl’s Window, 1969. Assemblage in window. 35 ¾ x 18 x 1 ½ in. (90.8 x 45.7 x 3.8 cm). Collection of the artist; Courtesy of Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, LLC, New York.

... weaves personal and social history in with magic, astrology, the voodoo arts to bring us back in touch with African and Caribbean roots, the soul that no amount of slavery could steal from its victims. Of the four, Pajaud is certainly to date the least known of the Frontrunners and is, here, the least fully represented—but enough to recognize a talent with watercolor as significant as an Arthur Dove or a John Marin.

If the Watts rebellion left things torn apart, much of the creative energy that tumult left in its wake was concerned with re-assembling them; and there stood, at its center, the great exemplum of assemblage art, the Watts Towers, a soon thriving center for education and creative activity that attracted writers and artists, videographers and filmmakers, dancers and musicians, all dedicated to the proposition that black is beautiful and that the African American artist has something of particular and urgent importance to say. Black, it has been noted, is not only a color but a social signifier. Black, too, was the color of the charred remains left behind in the wake of the rebellion. It is hardly surprising, then, that black is the predominant color in the spacious Hammer gallery devoted to the work of the next generation of artists who found their voices in the post-rebellion years—artists like John Outterbridge...

John Outterbridge. No Time for Jivin’, from the Containment Series, 1969. Mixed media. 56 x 60 in. (142.2 x 152.4 cm). Mills College Art Museum Collection. Purchased with funds from the Susan L Mills Fund.

... and Noah Purifoy...

Noah Purifoy. Untitled(Assemblage), 1967. Mixed media. 66 x 39 x 8 in. (167.6 x 99.1 x 20.3 cm). Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. Museum Purchase, the William A. Clark Fund and Gift of Dr. Samella Lewis. 1993.3. ©Courtesy the Noah Purifoy Foundation.

... who scoured the rubble for their raw material and, as teachers, inspired others to affirm their black identity and celebrate their black experience. From this moment on, in the story told by “Now Dig This!” we often find pride and defiance in equal parts, reflecting a social shift from the civil rights movement to the demand for Black Power and the assertive anger of the Black Panthers, now channeled into work that can be confrontational, challenging, uncomfortable, raw.

Next, a whole section devoted to artists who recognized that creative energy and production were not, in themselves, enough. Impatient with a gallery scene dominated by commercial imperatives and unresponsive to the work of African American artists, they opened their own galleries and collaborative spaces, curated exhibitions, and generated their own posters, flyers and literary and critical publications in order to bring their work and that of their colleagues to public attention. Such artists as Alonzo Davis and Dale Brockman Davis...

Dale Brockman Davis. Swept, 1970. Mixed media. 30 x 40 x 6 in. (76.2 x 101.6 x 15.2 cm)Blocker Collection c/o Rick Blocker.

... Suzanne Jackson and Samella Lewis also devoted their considerable energies to creating much needed supportive communities and shouting-out about the vitality and quality of black art to anyone they could persuade to listen. Their contribution was a critical one. The surprise is that they also managed to find time for the studio.

Under the subtitle of “Post/Minimalism and Performance,” the exhibition includes artists who appropriated strategies of mainstream media, or found in new media like video and performance the vehicle for their individual vision. Fred Eversley’s magnificent, gleaming discs...

Fred Eversley. Untitled (Blue Cylindrical Piece), 1973. Cast Polyester Resin. 20 x 20 x 7 in. (50.8 x 50.8 x 17.8 cm). Collection of the Artist. Photography by Ed Glendinning.

... stand out as compelling examples of what came to be called the art of “Light & Space”; Maren Hassinger’s unraveling, twisted ropes and metal cables...

Now Dig This! Art and Black Los Angeles, 1960-1980.Installation view at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles. October 2, 2011-January 8, 2012. Photography by Robert Wedemeyer. (Maren Hassinger.)

... are not only powerfully minimal abstractions, they also resonate with the brutal history and the tools of enslavement; David Hammons...

David Hammons. America the Beautiful, 1968. Lithograph and body print. 39 x 29 1⁄2 in. (99.1 x 74.9 cm). Oakland Museum, Oakland Museum Founders Fund.

... best known, perhaps, for his work in assemblage—also collaborated in non-traditional media with Hassinger, Sengo Nengudi and the videographer Ulysses Jenkins...

Now Dig This! Art and Black Los Angeles, 1960-1980.Installation view at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles. October 2, 2011-January 8, 2012. Photography by Robert Wedemeyer. (David Hammons & Ulysses Jenkins)

... in performances that addressed societal issues in sometimes confrontational ways. The documentation and videos included in “Now Dig This!” are a reminder of the desire among artists of the time to expose raw truths about repression and injustice, and to engage audiences in significant ways in the creative process.

Lastly, in a generous gesture, the exhibition acknowledges in each of its segments the contribution of “friends”—artists from other cultures and of other ethnic backgrounds who “got” what their African American colleagues had to say and supported it with their technical expertise, their collaboration, or their clout with gallery dealers and collectors. They include names both familiar—Mark di Suvero, Gordon Wagner, John Altoon—and obscure, but the inclusion of examples of their work invites us to consider the broader context of this important moment in art history. The Hammer Museum does us all a service, as we celebrate art in Southern California in “Pacific Standard Time,” in dedicating its gallery space and its prestige to the mining of a creative vein that is a vital part of our common history; and in producing a handsome, informative and comprehensive catalogue that will stand as the lasting document of an era. Let's not forget that today's prominent African American artists--Kerry James Marshall, Mark Bradford, Mark Steven Greenfield and many others--stand on the shoulders of those who went before.

A HERO?

2011-12-03T09:05:00.000-08:00

I saved a life yesterday. Seriously. Does that make me a "hero"? The word is used pretty loosely these days, so maybe I qualify. I'll tell you the story and you tell me what you think. First, some background...

You may have seen pictures of the fish pond in the little Buddha garden off our bedroom. I have posted them before, when I wrote about the problems with the electric fence we've had installed around the perimeter, to keep the raccoons from their nocturnal fishing expeditions. We inherited the fish--most of them--from the previous owner of this house, who had them in a bath-tub-sized pond on the upper deck; but when we took possession of the house--and of course the fish--we moved them down to this bigger pond outside the bedroom. To the original five, two speckled koi fish, one gold and two white fish, we added a sixth, a tiny goldfish we brought home from one of those dinner parties where they do things like use goldfish in plastic bags for table decoration and party favors. I'm sure that most of the poor little creatures got flushed down the toilet, but we brought ours home and he has been flourishing with his new friends ever since. He has grown from a tiny sliver into a fish of respectable size, and competes greedily with the bigger fish for food.

So these six fish have been living happily in their pond, protected from predators and fed on a near-daily basis; even when we are out of town, we are sure that someone will be on hand to give them a sprinkle of their fish food. They reward us with their silent serenity and their gentle, unhurried, gliding motion in the water—an appropriate and welcome presence in the Buddha garden. They do not have names. Indeed, we would be unable to tell the two koi fish apart; they could be identical twins. One of the white ones, though, disappeared recently. She was a strange one, small and pot-bellied, distended you might say. We thought when we first noticed this, a good long time ago, that she was pregnant; but no little fish have ever appeared in the pond, and she never lost her pot belly. We worried about her a bit, but she seemed happy enough otherwise. When she disappeared, we were never quite sure whether the raccoons might have got her despite the electric fence, or whether she just died a natural death and sank to the bottom of the pond, hidden by the rocks. Anyway then there were five…

Back to the story. A couple of nights ago, I noticed that the timer for the low-voltage lights in the Buddha garden was out of sync; we have had power outages because of the recent Santa Ana winds, so I assumed that was likely the cause. As is my wont, I kept postponing the task of navigating the rocks and undergrowth to get to the timer box, but yesterday morning I decided the time had come. I reset the timer and left the box open to test it, intending to return in a half hour, to ensure that the trigger mechanism had worked. A lucky decision it turned out to be. I did, in fact, remember that I needed to go out and check, and was about to climb back over the back of the pond and through the undergrowth, when I was shocked to stumble upon the prone body of one our speckled koi fish, now quite large, laid out on the side of the pond, beyond the electric fence.

Of course, immediately, I yelled out for Ellie. This was a totally unexpected disaster to befall our household. My first thought was for those raccoons. But hardly, in the light of day, in the half hour it had been since I went out to fix the box. Then I thought about the electric fence. Could the poor creature have electrocuted itself, jumping out of the water for a morsel of the food, still floating at the surface? It lay there, literally a fish out of water, and to all appearances lifeless, until… I noticed the small movement of a gill! Quickly, I caught him by the tail and flipped him back into the pond. For a few moments he floated, unresponsive, on the surface. Then, a small movement, a weary flip of the tail; and soon, yes, a definite sign of life, a wiggle of the body, a dive to deeper water…! He was alive! His friend, the other speckled koi, seemed to welcome him back, even nurse him a bit, nudging him along as he regained strength and watching his recovery. You'd swear that even fish can show compassion. It was not long before they were both darting around again, in a celebratory fish dance that was quite touching, actually, to watch.

So here I am, the hero of the day. A life-saver. As the saying goes, it warms the cockles of the heart.

PENNY DREADFUL

2011-12-02T06:58:00.000-08:00

I’m cheap. I buy my entertainment books at the local library used book stand, and donate the ones I’ve read. It’s a good system for all, and it does a bit supports the library, I suppose, in hard times. It does mean, though, that I come by my thrillers way past their publication date—truthfully, well past their publication year. I don’t much mind, though. Unless they’re really old, they read pretty much the same. No burning issues. I've loved the genre since browing up with the greats--Leslie Charteris, G.K. Chesteron, Daphne DuMaurier, Ngaio Marsh--and, of course, Agatha and Sir Arthur. You know who I mean...

Anyway, there are certainly no burning social or philosophical issues in The Night Gardener, by George Pelecanos, which I just finished last night. It's a change of pace from Than Geoff! Pelecanos writes TV escapist fare--cop shows--and that much is evident here. The action is fast-paced, the street dialogue cryptic and convincing. Not too much gore, but murders aplenty and a hint of the currently topical theme of sex abuse. Characters are engaging, vulnerable, each broken in some way, some sufficiently well explored to be sympathetic.

The book is a page-turner. For a reader who, like myself, gets hooked on story and is impatient to know how it unfolds , The Night Gardener is guaranteed to keep you up a bit longer than you’d planned. My quibble: I do get tired of the macho exchange of tough cop talk between, mostly, guys who have a lot invested in their guy-ness—football, booze and sex. Otherwise, if you enjoy this kind of nonsense as I do, I say go for it.

NOW DIG THIS: CHARLIE WHITE

2011-12-01T07:45:00.000-08:00

Charles White. Birmingham Totem, 1964. Ink and charcoal on paper, 71 7/16 x 40 1/16 in. (181.5 x 101.8 cm). High Museum of Art, Atlanta, Georgia; Purchase with funds from Edith G. and Philip A. Rhodes and the National Endowment for the Arts. Photo credit: Robert Wedemeyer.

One of the successful strategies employed by the mainstream modernism of the 20^th century to marginalize anything that threatened its hegemony was the myth of “art for art’s sake.” Art was supposed to be “about” nothing but itself, an internal system of references that seems, in retrospect, to be shamefully smug and self-congratulatory. This was one of the thoughts that leapt to mind as I walked into the exhibition Now Dig This: Art & Black in Los Angeles, 1960 – 1980, and found myself in a gallery surrounded by the powerful work of an old friend, Charles White. I have a story to tell about Charles White and racism: my own.

I arrived, as Dean, at what was then Otis Art Institute of Los Angeles County (now Otis College of Art & Design) in 1976. Charlie, as he was universally known, had been there for some years as the leading teacher in the field of drawing. I had known nothing of his work before I met him, but soon we were good friends, enjoying a Mexican lunch together a couple of times a week across the road from the campus—along with the usual three lunch-time martinis. Nobody thought to question the artist’s intake of alcohol in those days. In the course of those lunches, Charlie proved not only a good friend; he was a confidant and a loyal ally at a time when the school was threatening to fall apart.

I learned to respect his work slowly, and to learn a bit about his history; and on both of us leaving Otis at the same time—he for health reasons—I managed to snag a Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship for a book-length Charles White monograph. Setting out on a program of academic “research” as I had always known it—libraries, museums, prior critical reviews, and so on—I soon discovered that, in Charlie’s case, these resources were virtually non-existent. I instead spent many hours with the artist, in what turned out to be the last weeks of his life, creating an oral history to fill in some of the gaps. Then Charlie died (too young!), and the only recourse was to head out with my tape-recorder to locations all over the country, to talk to many of the people he had mentioned.

Though they were prominent in the history of mid-century African-American art, I was surprised—and not a little ashamed—to learn that I had never heard of them: artists, curators, historians, critics, archivists and museum personnel, they occupied a place below the level of what I had somewhat arrogantly presumed to be my knowledgeable purview. Their stories were universally fascinating, their accomplishments impressive, their integrity unquestionable. I had begun to discover the real meaning of what I had read about in Ralph Ellison’s justly renowned novel: invisibility. And I, a nice, white, liberal-minded person who had never conceived of having the smallest racist blemish in my nice, white soul, was forced to recognize that I had long been a collaborator in a kind of institutionalized, systemic racism that asserted the superiority of a mainstream that by and large excluded serious consideration, let alone inclusion, of the work of people of color.

Charles White was such an artist. From the beginning, his interest was in the various causes of social justice, especially in the cause of racial equality, and he chose to make his work as an artist “about” just that. His greatest works are those that celebrate the beauty and dignity of the African-American, heart, mind and soul, and honor the contribution of many in the relief of human suffering. Like "Birmingham Totem" (above) they also memorialize key moments in history. But they were figurative at a time when figurative art was summarily dismissed by the mainstream establishment; they unabashedly promoted a social and political agenda when art was not supposed to do that. And, let’s be frank and truthful, they were marginalized. When my book was finished and submitted for the consideration of agents and publishers, the responses I received had nothing to do with its quality; rather, they tended to cite a lack of sufficient public interest, an absence of clear commercial viability. I got the message. Be it noted that I did not have the same problem with my book about David Hockney, not long after.

I’ll have more to say about “Now Dig This” in a future post. Suffice it, by way of introduction, to say that it did my heart a lot of good to find Charlie’s work honored in its proper historical context. He was not only an extraordinarily gifted artist who produced powerfully moving and timely works of art; he was also a important pioneer who inspired a generation of young black artists to believe that they, too, had something of urgent importance to say, and that their voices warranted a hearing.

REBIRTH, REVISITED

2011-11-30T07:25:00.000-08:00

Let’s see if I have this right. I’m struggling through the first pages of Thanissaro Bhikkhu’s “The Truth of Rebirth.” Like all of Than Geoff’s writing, it is dense with knowledge and profound thought. He writes with great clarity, but his subject matter is not easy to grasp; and I continue to struggle, of course, with my own skepticism.

As I understand it, then, Than Geoff is disputing the easy path of “Buddhism without belief”—the familiar Western choice to embrace Buddhism as no more than essentially a sound guide to a life well lived and a fine model for psychological health. But not as a religion. This is the choice I myself have made, in my reluctance to move beyond reason into faith. I am, I confess, one of those who in Than Geoff’s words “have felt burned or repelled by the faith demands of Western religion” and who “would prefer a Buddhism that makes no faith demands.” Because faith would require that great leap beyond what can be rationally tested and proven into the belief in rebirth.

For Than Geoff, though, this belief is integral to following the Buddhist path. As is his custom, he turns to the Buddha’s words for instruction—or at least those words as they are reported by the followers who first set them down. He cites the three knowledges described by the Buddha in recalling the night of his awakening: the knowledge of “manifold past lives, i.e., one birth, two… five, ten… fifty, a hundred, a thousand, a hundred thousand, may eons of cosmic contraction”; the second knowledge, the “vision of how living beings at large are reborn after death”: and the third, the understanding that the “same causal pattern” of events—karma, then—operates in both the macro experience, life to life over eons of time, and the micro, “events immediately present in his own mind.”

All of which gave rise to the Four Noble Truths, because each life brings with it suffering, and the Buddha’s great teaching and his goal for all living beings was the end of suffering—and the end, then, logically, of the continuing cycle of death and rebirth, the attainment of the “deathless.” (Bear with me, I’m trying to work my way through this…) After identifying the existence and the cause of suffering, and establishing that there is an achievable end to it, the fourth Noble Truth lays out the path to follow if we wish to reach that goal.

Than Geoff argues vigorously—and with meticulously researched scholarship—against the historical revisionism that is used by those who seek to adapt Buddhism to a twenty-first century world by attributing the Buddha’s thoughts on rebirth to a long-discredited, pre-scientific cultural context. He sees the Buddha’s insights as a radical departure from then current thinking, when theories of the after-life were either “annihilationist” or “eternalist.” Much like the atheism of today, annihilationism denied any form of survival after death. In this view, death puts a full stop to everything, body and consciousness alike. Eternalism argued, on the contrary, that some part of our being survives after death, but without agreement as to exactly what. It hinged on “the metaphysics of personal identity”—the definition of what a “person” actually is. Some seemed to propose the existence of that kind of vital essence that Christians today believe in as the “soul”—the tradition in which I myself was raised and have subsequently abandoned.

In this context, the Buddha’s revolutionary contribution was to take the matter out of the power of extra-human hands—whether deities or metaphysical systems—and return it to the individual human being and his actions, thus empowering each of us to take responsibility for our own suffering and its cessation. Knowledge of his own past lives, revealed in the course of his awakening, convinced the Buddha not only of the truth of rebirth, but also of the causal connection between action and its consequence: what was true on the macro level, from life to life over eons of time, was also true of the micro experience of this lifetime: that wholesome, skillful, well-intentioned actions result in greater happiness for myself and others, while thoughtless, unkind, ill-considered actions bring the opposite results.

Once this responsibility is acknowledged, then, the matter of rebirth comes down to a pretty simple proposition. We can choose to either believe in it or reject it. Our choice may be guided by something akin to the famous bet that Blaise Pascal offered in the 17th century on the belief in God: if I choose to believe in the truth of rebirth, the Buddhist bet suggests, my good actions now will assure me a good destination in the “heavenly world.” If there is no world after death, those same good actions will assure me greater happiness and less suffering in this one. If the bet is a win-win, I can only benefit from making the choice to believe. Conversely, I have nothing to gain—and everything to lose—if I refuse it.

So, yes, this remains a leap of faith. The Buddha offers no proof, just the example of his own experience, the challenge to think it through, and a way to go about it. I'll be reading further and reporting further on is challenging and, to me, quite difficult book.

MY HEAD

2011-11-29T08:15:00.000-08:00

I'm having problems with my head. Perhaps, noting the title and content of my last entry in The Buddha Diaries I've been thinking too much! The physical symptoms are disorientation and dizziness, a brain stuffed with cotton wool, a sense of emptiness and disconnection. Otherwise, I'm gloomier than usual, and lacking motivation. More disturbing, I find myself lacking in my usual confidence. I normally have a kind of clarity that guides me as I write, a reliable sense of direction, a trust in the words and where they lead me. The past couple of days, I have been so filled with doubt that I have not wanted at all to sit down and write. It's certainly not subject matter that I lack. Indeed, the opposite is true: I'm backlogged with promises I have made to myself. And yet yesterday I took not one but two long naps. I read a really mindless thriller. I watched stuff on television. I avoided anything that looked like work. This morning, I tried getting back to the question of rebirth; the results are, so far, pitiful. I dislike this feeling of incompetence. The best thing I can do, I suppose, is to wait it out, with a mix of curiosity and tolerance; and, please, without self-pity! Have a laugh about it. Breathe. Surely, as all things change, it will go away!

I'M THIINKING...

2011-11-28T06:49:00.000-08:00

... I'm thinking. Best thanks to those who responded to my entry yesterday, either by comment or by email. Please come back when I've found out what it is I need to say.

AFTER-LFE

2011-11-26T08:24:00.000-08:00

With my new book, "Mind Work," now finally copy-edited and ready for the publisher, I'm thinking of engaging a topic that has been on my mind for quite some time--perhaps because I'm already well on the path toward the end of life. The question as to what happens to us living beings after our physical bodies give out is a fascinating and, I know, unanswerable one. One reasons I have given myself for not having been able to fully embrace the Buddhist faith is that the full embrace seems to necessitate a belief in rebirth--a concept I have found incredibly hard to wrap my head around. But I am not entirely happy, either, with the belief that the end of life as we know it is nothing more than a full stop. It makes the most rational sense, I know--but reason is not everything. Far from it. Why insist that our earthly, scientific wisdom is unbounded? There's every reason to believe that, indeed, it is extremely limited.

This train of thought has to do, in part, with the arrival of our new grandson, Luka Yves. I loved the suggestion of a fellow-blogger, when I first wrote about his birth, that I should ask the newborn where he came from. She thinks there might be a small window of opportunity when the baby still remembers; and, holding baby Luka and looking into his glowing little face, I did myself think about this very question. Indeed, quietly, I asked him. But I had no idea how to communicate the question other than in thought, or to understand his answer if there was one. I am not possessed of the requisite intuitive skills--or, if I am so possessed, have no idea how to put them to use. But my friend's suggestion reminded me of a workshop I once took with a Huichol Indian shaman, who said that in their tribe the custom is not to "give" a newborn child a name as we do in our culture, but to wait and ask the baby, "Tell me who you are." I like the idea.

Last week, a new book came into my hands, by Thanissaro Bhikkhu. It's called--surely not coincidentally--"The Truth of Rebirth." I'm looking forward to finding out more about this subject from the Theravadan point of view. Meantime, I also plan to revisit other teachings about the after-death, including the Christian ones with which I was brought up. I'll be thinking about my own mother and father, their ashes resting side by side in the grave plot close by a tiny church overlooking the Cardigan Bay, in Wales. I'll be reflecting on my own, single, but intense experience with the vision of past lives. And, to take things a little more lightly, I'm sure I'll be thinking about archy and mehitabel.

So this morning I'm wondering if there might be anyone out there, any reader of The Buddha Diaries, who has either thoughts or experience in this matter. Do you have your own personal convictions or theories? Do you know of past lives? Of communications from realms other than our own small world? I'd love to hear about them, and to incorporate them in my own thinking along the way. It can be done privately: my email address is PeterAtLarge@mac.com. Best thanks in advance to anyone who can help with this.

A LIBERAL SAVIOR?

2011-11-25T11:48:00.000-08:00

Like most liberal-thinking people, I suspect, I'm a big fan of Elizabeth Warren. She speaks with refreshing, forthright honesty and what she has to say about the financial sector and the inordinate power of lobbyists in government needs to be heard. I have contributed modestly to her campaign for a Senate seat, and think she has a good chance to be elected. I would like to see her defeat the incumbent, and take over where Ted Kennedy left off. (Speaking of whom, I saw a brief clip from a speech Ted Kennedy gave the other day and realized how much I miss the clarity of his vision and his powerful voice. We could use that voice in Washington today.)

I caught up with the article on Elizabeth Warren by Rebecca Traister in last Sunday's New York Times magazine, belatedly, in the gym this morning. I liked, particularly, Traister's last two paragraphs:

The key is not just emotional investment in election-year saviors but also an engagement with policy. A commitment to organized expressions of political desire — like those that have been harnessed so effectively in recent years on the right — have been absent for far too long in Democratic politics. Now, with labor protests, campaigns to block voter suppression and personhood measures and the occupations of cities around the nation, there seem to be some small signs that liberals are remembering that politics requires more of them, that they need movements, not just messiahs. But their engagement must deepen, broaden and persist beyond last week’s elections and well beyond next year’s elections if there is any chance for politicians like Warren to succeed.
Because while she might provide her supporters and her constituents a voice that, if properly tuned, will rattle doors that are now gummed shut, what Elizabeth Warren cannot do is fix this mess herself.

The same words, of course, are true of the whole story of President Obama, who has proved--not to my surprise--unable "to fix this mess" himself. Unless and until the support of liberals becomes more unified and less easily distracted into the narrow channels of self-interest and personal issues, we will continue to entrust our future to "saviors''--and will continue to feel let down by them.

THANKSGIVING

2011-11-24T07:31:00.000-08:00

We are particularly thankful this Thanksgiving, of course, for our new arrival, Luka, three weeks old tomorrow. We'll be joining him and his parents for dinner later in the day. But I woke this morning thinking of our other wonderful reasons to be grateful. We're sad that they live so far away, in England, and we miss seeing them as often as we'd like to. Here's Alice...

... growing up much too fast, but probably not as fast as she would like to. And the twins, Georgia and Joseph...

Here's Georgia...

And here's Joe...

Gorgeous children all, and smart, and talented. They play a startling variety of musical instruments, they sing, they draw, they write. They do well at school. We are amazed, and proud, and thankful.

Metta to all on this Thanksgiving Day!

EXCITED...

2011-11-23T06:53:00.000-08:00

I'm working on the final edits for my new book and giving it a final read through before sending it back to the publisher. The cover is shaping up very nicely, with an image generously shared by the artist Gary Lang. If all goes smoothly, the book will be available early February. More news to come. For now, excuse my haste...

BLAME

2011-11-21T07:28:00.000-08:00

I made this mistake, this morning, of glancing at the New York Times headline before sitting down to meditate--which pretty much ensured a prolonged battle with futile thoughts before I managed to get the mind settled down. The headline read: "Lawmakers Trade Blame As Deficit Talks Crumble." That this was the predictable outcome was obvious from the start. No surprise there. But what bothers me is the implication of blame on either side.

Our current economic slump, as I understand it, has two proximate causes: the huge tax cuts in the early days of the Bush administration, and two protracted, unfunded wars. Reaching further back, it is the result of several decades of blind adherence to a trickle-down theory of economics which should have been long ago discredited by anyone with a fair and rational mind, but has been adopted as an article of faith by Republican loyalists; and by a program of deregulation that has given increasing responsibility for the fox to guard the financial hen house.

To attribute equal blame for this mess is to ignore history. These are right-wing actions and policies that have brought us to this pitch. It is right-wing intransigence that denies us a fair and rational solution. To address the clearly non-functional tax code is not the only part of the solution, but to refuse adamantly to consider it is to ignore reality in favor of a demonstrably misguided ideology. Yet this is what Republicans are doing. From what I have read and heard, I have reason to believe that Democrats have been prepared to yield ground on matters of profound importance to them--perhaps too readily. But their willingness to compromise has not been matched on the other side.

Blame, then, in my view, is not equally distributed. Both historically and in the present context, it lies heavily on the shoulders of Republicans. Yet one of their apparently successful strategies, mimic'ed in knee-jerk fashion by the media, is to purvey to the American public that there is equal blame on either side.

The Democrats are not faultless, obviously. They participate in an electoral system that requires them, if they wish to retain their seat, to pay heed to the corporate masters and their lobbyists. In the course of these past decades, they have surrendered more and more of the democratic principle for which they are supposed to stand. They have trembled in their boots before their Republican opponents and the moneyed interests they represent, and have yielded mile after mile of the territory they were supposed to occupy on our behalf. The name of the "Occupy" movement is no accident.

So yes, in the long perspective, there is perhaps shared blame for the current impasse. But don't try telling me that the blame is "equal." It's not. The anger and frustration that such thinking inspires is hard to shake when I sit down to meditate. Both reason and emotion get engaged in this internal battle that I know to be unwinnable but find hard to resist. I keep reminding myself to pay attention to the breath, but my rebellious brain is having such great time that it is reluctant to surrender to the wiser mind.

There was a striking difference, on last night's 60 Minutes, between the interviews with Grover Norquist, gatekeeper of the absurd Republican loyalty oath on taxes, and Christine Lagarde, the new head of the International Monetary Fund. Norquist impressed me as small-minded, smug, tendentious, self-important; Lagarde was modest, thoughtful, open-minded, with a broad view not only of the financial crisis but of humanity in general. At the end of her interview she reminded us, gently, that our seemingly great problems recede into insignificance when seen in the greater perspective of life, and death, and love...

LUKA

2011-11-20T14:22:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was a Luka day...

You can see that Grandpa is pretty much besotted. And for good reason...

We had read earlier that even very young babies imitate, but I found this hard to believe... until I tried sticking out my tongue. Luka watched carefully and then, very deliberately, put his tongue out.

I swear this was not coincidence; it happened several times, and you could see him actually working at it. I was amazed. Our photographic record did not catch the exact moment, but you get the idea.

And so to sleep...

... with Grandma...

HANDEL

2011-11-18T09:57:00.001-08:00

(With apologies to Handel enthusiasts.)

No disrespect, of course. But please remind me not to attend another all-Handel concert ever again. When we went to Disney Hall last night, I was quite excited about the prospect--in all my musical ignorance and forgetfulness. I imagined we were going to hear something elegant and inspiring. We got the elegance alright--too much of it for my taste. The inspiration, though...

Let me be sure to say that I blame myself, not the composer or the orchestra. As I suggested, I am ill-informed about music, and my ear is to say the least of it unschooled. I will say, though, that the music seemed to me formulaic, mind-numbingly perky--and unfailingly polite. I ended up longing for a big, rude musical fart, anything to intrude on the cucumber sandwich and Earl Grey tea party, the sheer 18th century Englishness of it all (and yes, I do know Handel's German; he must have spent too much time in Queen Anne and King George England). Court music. It summoned up images of unearned privilege, a decadent and perfumed aristocracy with wigs and garters. (Was this why the conductor, an energetic French woman of obvious talent and unwavering enthusiasm, wore that strange skirt with a bustle at the bum? Again, please, no disrespect!) So... Much too much teacake, not enough bangers and mash.

Already long before the intermission, I caught myself trying to establish a reliable count of the number of musicians who wore eyeglasses, just to keep my own eyes open. I was aiming for a more or less accurate percentage, in the interests of scientific research. But then I realized that some of them must be wearing contact lenses, so it wouldn't be a fair count anyway. So I turned my attention back to the bustle. That kept me occupied.

YES, BUT

2011-11-17T08:28:00.000-08:00

I was listening to one of Ajahn Geoff's always-inspiring dharma talks yesterday morning, as an introduction to my daily sit, when I found myself having one of those "yes, but..." moments. The subject was our need to strengthen the mind in preparation for that time when that strength would be put to the test by aging or illness, perhaps in the isolation of some nursing home where we might well expect to be left to our own inner resources. And I found myself jolted by one of those "yes, but..." thoughts that jump at me and hold me hostage for a while.

This time it was yes, but... what happens if I lose my mind? All very well to have a good, strong mind as a bulwark against the suffering of age. I see that, and of course I see the value in doing all I can to get it ready for that moment. But people do lose their minds. I have seen it happen. I think, for example, of Ellie's stepmother, a fine, strong woman who took great pride in the power of her mind, only to lose it toward the end. She watched it going, with increasing anger, bitterness and despair. She just could not hold on to it. Had she been of sound mind, in my judgment, she would have suffered a great deal less. It was heart-breaking to see.

Is there a difference, I wonder, between the loss of intellectual brain-power and the loss of the mind? I know that my own brain capacity is much reduced from its sharper years. Memory is but one aspect of the loss--though an important and particularly salient one. Reactions slow down, too. I see it in my driving habits, for example, and make adjustments in the way I handle the car to allow for that slowing-down. But, watching it in the course of a meditation, say, I believe that my mind is still strong as it observes the breath energy coursing through the body. I can still be, at my best, quite fully aware. It's rather the opposite, in my experience: the mind seems to be growing stronger--which would be the desired result of practice.

But what happens if I lose it? Not for want of effort on my part, but simply due to physiological changes, the onset of senility or Alzheimer's disease? I heard just yesterday from the brother of a man I have known for many years, in response to a mass email I sent out to update my contact list. He told me that "an accident" had left my friend "mentally incompetent," and that he was now in process of "rapid change." This is a man of substantial wealth thanks to a long song-writing career, whose work has seen a sudden, late-life renaissance, and who seemed just a year ago to be enjoying the best of approaching age. From what I understand, he has "lost his mind," and is incapacitated.

I understand that a strong mind can overcome the ravages of physical incapacity, even pain. But what if that mind is simply no longer working? What if it has shut down? The thought is a disturbing one. Or perhaps, I wonder, does the mind indeed continue to function behind the curtain of non-communication? Could my friend be observing others taking care of him, lacking only the ability to share his understanding? I suppose it's possible.

Does anyone have any thoughts or insights on this question? I'd love to hear whether others struggle with it, or what their experience might be.