Obama: A More Complex Understanding

Thanks to Thailandgal for alerting me to this interesting site, Reality Sandwich. I found a usefully cautionary article about Barack Obama there, an excellent analysis of the candidate's position elaborating on what I have described before as a "we" rather than the "I" approach that we heard in Hillary Clinton's promise, "Elect me, I'll get it all done for you." As Douglas Rushkoff, the author of this article, writes,

Obama alone (well, actually he, Kucinich, and Biden) presents a more complex understanding of the challenges facing America. It's a "GenX" sensibility, really, that depends less on emotionality and choosing sides than on a post-ideological clarity, and an ability to embrace seeming paradoxes. One can disagree with certain things Reverend Wright says while still embracing his message and influence. To the post-boomer audience, this is not weakness but strength.

And,

The best thing about Obama is what appears to so many people to be his hesitancy. For many, it tarnishes his brand. As I see it, this is not lack of resolve at all but his greatest strength. He stutters and stumbles - but usually because he's trying to answer a question in a way that doesn't make himself out to be the answer to an abstract and collective problem. He understands that the presidency is itself a social construction, and that agreeing to "play" president is a mutual agreement - not a genuine ascendance. TV's West Wing may have done more damage to the Left than we know. It gave us undeserved solace during the darkest Right wing presidency in history, and created false hope of how much the White House could accomplish with the right leader in the Oval Office.

Amen. The bottom line is that Obama's election is not enough in itself to assure the change he's arguing for. We can't simply project it all onto him. It will require our work, our participation, our willingness to sacrifice. If those pieces are lacking, it really won't matter who's president any more.

Oh, and...

... while we're at it, it pays to take a moment to look at these wonderful photographs from Africa by the Spanish photographer Ana Yturralde on her whimsically entitled blog, Where My Owl Flies Free and the Lion Roars Wild. For those of us who know little of the continent besides what we read in the press and see on our television screens, these portraits provide and intimate and dimensionally human view of her subjects, and her notes provide an interesting context. Well worth the visit. I found Ana in the comments at I AM KATIA.

The Buddha Diaries Travels--and Comes Home...

... to the blogosphere.

I find these days that there are many things that are hard about traveling. Many joys, too, of course. But one of the hard things is leaving, and another is coming home. I come home with the hope of finding a still point, where the traveling stops, somewhere the spirit finds a familiar place to rest and take its ease.

All of which is a part of my experience--the good part. The bad part is finding a mountainous stack of mail to be sorted, bills to be paid, junk mail to be thrown out. It's trying to play catch-up with dozens of neglected emails, getting back to jobs that were left unfinished, tying up the loose ends of the journey, finding a place for all those airline stubs and credit card receipts, the brochures you've picked up along the way and now can't quite bring yourself to discard because they may secrete some important piece of evidence that your memory will surely lose by the time you come to need it. It's finding the house in small but annoying states of disarray, things not there where you're absolutely sure you left them, light bulbs mysteriously blown in your absence and needing replacement, that little pile of termite droppings you had never noticed in the past...

And yes, the neglected tasks you like to think of as your "work." I have fallen far behind in my commitments, and find myself faced with the prospect of scrambling to fulfill the most essential and letting go of those "shoulds" the plague the conscience. While traveling, even though I managed to keep up with the writing of these pages, I neglected my not-quite-daily rounds of other blogs, the community of like-minded scribblers whose efforts are a constant source of surprising information, humanity, and fun.

I dove back into the blogosphere for a while yesterday and surfaced, as usual, with some pearls. Like Primordial Blog, whose subtitle is the delightfully Bushian "Making the World a Little Less Stupider." Nothing less Bushy than this blog, however, which is the brain-child of a reformed "BibleThumper and Young Earth Creationist"--now, thankfully for the rest of us, "a proud member of the reality-based community." Try this entry for a taste of post-religious fervor.

For a more than slightly salacious---but literate! and witty!--take on life, visit the irrepressible Glamourpuss at The Pole Affair. This pole-dancer/trapeze artist does... er, swing! And how's this for an astutely-phrased oedipal insight: "School was a complicated place for me. My father expected me to do better than everybody else, except him. " Puss falls a lot, it seems, but is always ready to bounce back and learn. Her other blog is the surprisingly lyrical Clairvoyance.

And finally, for today, there's The Dragon's Eye, where you'll have fun, as I did, with Kiyotoe, who has a sharp eye for a photograph with a story to tell--and tells his own story to accompany it in a few funny, sometimes poignant, always precise words.

I wouldn't call these exactly Buddhist blogs. But bring a Buddhist mind to them and I think you'll be surprised how much they have to teach.

Better Than That

New, on The Buddha Diaries' blogroll.

We have been updating our blogroll these pas couple of weeks, and in the process have come across quite a number of wonderful, previously unexplored blogs. Here are a couple more recommendations:

Check out this sculpture by Juan Munoz at Tasting Rhubarb, and its inspiration in a painting by Gentile Bellini, a wonderful correspondence between a modern artist and the Renaissance. (Sadly, Munoz has now left us, much too soon...) Jean, at the London-based Rhubarb site, has a fine ear for language as well as a truly refined eye for works of art. She comes up with some highly individual photographs, too. A recent post indicates that she's off on vacation for a couple of weeks, but I for one am already looking forward to her return.

Also from England--and a small town near the village where I myself grew up--Mike Cross posts at Errata--a blog with the provocative subtitle "Who Turned Freedom Into Its Opposite?" (I can think of a candidate or two.) Mike brings a subtle intelligence to bear on Zen Buddhist concepts and linguistic constructs, inviting us into the space where mind and body co-exist and examining the thoughts of masters ancient and modern with astutely skeptical and self-critical humor.

Katia, at IAMKATIA, is a must-see, must-visit photojournalist, whose compassion for the homeless youth of Seattle, Washington reaches way beyond the sharp eye of her camera and into the streets themselves. I believe her absolutely when she describes the young people in her pictures as her teachers. Her photographs are mine. Teachers, that is.

Every time I wander off into the blogosphere, I'm struck by the intelligence and goodness and humanity that I find there. I know there's plenty of mean-spiritedness, too. I come across it in the political blogs. But even many of the political blogs are evidence of people getting together to talk out some of the urgent issues of our time. It suggests to me that there's still hope for "democracy" in this world, despite the rhetoric of politicians and their subterfuges. I like the sentiment that has cropped up like a flutter of hope in the current presidential campaign: We're better than that...

The Buddha Diaries Recommends: A Little Off Kilter

TBD Recommends: A Little Off Kilter
Author: Citizen of the World

[Before going ahead with this review, we'd like to draw immediate attention to one of the cutest puns in the blogosphere. Click here (we won't spoil it).]

Here at The Buddha Diaries, we're asking ourselves, how did we miss this one for so long?

A Little Off Kilter has a great deal to recommend itself to TBD and its readers: serene nature photography, a healthy dose of skepticism, a profound appreciation for life, a taste for controversy, and (perhaps best of all) an oft-expressed willingness to make fun of Christmas! (or, to be more precise, of the commercialization and silliness of the modern American celebration thereof).

Juggling work and motherhood in the wake of a fairly recent separation, Citizen of the World clearly thrives on her blog as an emotional release valve. This verve shows in the care and candor she puts into her frequent entries, and into the assiduous development of her online community. This entry, a full-throated defense of her right to blog, is a fascinating example of how the internet can open doors of intimacy, to others and to one's own best self.

Despite frequent discussion of tough emotional issues, the author's playfulness bubbles up like a force of nature in this blog, which she maintains might be a result of her frequent exposure (as a psychologist) to the intense psychological suffering of her patients.

A Little Off Kilter offers a fine example of how the internet (as a kind of "stage") can polish and highlight the impressive artistic talents of those who don't desire to make their living through their art. It comes highly recommended.

"God for Harry...

... England, and St. George!" Shakespeare's blood-summoning rallying-cry from his famous depiction of the start of the Battle of Agincourt comes to mind as we hear about our present-day Harry warrioring over there in Afghanistan. To judge from television interviews, he seems like a very decent young man in search of not only of adventure, but also some measure of independence, some sense of himself independent of the heritage of his birth. It must be a weight to have to carry around, along with all the exposure to the public that goes along with it.

I have not explored the political blogs, but I imagine there must be considerable backlash against The Drudge Report for outing Harry. It seems like an ungallant thing to have done, when the young man himself was exhibiting a gallantry of his own. Clearly, the revelation has put both him and his comrades at risk, setting him up as a juicy target for the Taliban, and this morning I hear that he will likely be withdrawn from the fighting lines at the front. More's the pity, if only in the sense that his presence there put the families of our American rich and powerful to shame. There are many things that I have admired about John McCain, and one of them is that he stands apart from virtually every other member of Congress in this respect, allowing his own family to stand in harm's way, as he himself did in his younger years.

(That said, let me quickly add that I oppose everything McCain proposes in the way of policies for the future; and that I note, sadly, that he has turned away from his purported principles on many important issues--even torture.)

Back to Harry and Afghanistan. Obama's right. It's here that the "war on terrorism" should have been pursued from its earliest days. The reported resurgence of the Taliban and its Al Qaeda allies is a frightening reminder that we are very far from winning what, as it's currently conceived, is an unwinnable war. I heard on at least one report that they have regained a full one-tenth of the territory which they once ruled--thanks to our intervention in their struggle with the Soviet Union--with ruthless barbarity and medieval religious fervor.

And once again, I find myself in a distressing moral landscape. I despise war and violence, I despise the imposition of one person's will upon another, one country's will upon another; and yet when I see oppression of the kind once exercised by the Taliban against their own people, when I see the threat of ethnic cleansing and genocide, I find myself unable to embrace the full meaning of pacifism. I have to concede in such cases that armed intervention can become the desirable option.

As a recovering Brit, I take note of some silly remnant of national pride in that our prince Hal is fighting the right war. Even though I can't believe that "God" is for anyone, even Harry, England, and St. George, something in me admires the warrior in him. I could wish his warriorship might be manifest in actions other than the old-world, violent kind; but along with many others, I suspect, I am frankly pissed at Drudge for interposing what I judge to be his own self-importance into matters more weighty than his trivial report.

Slightly confused Metta to all this Friday! May we all find true happiness and peace in our lives.

Sailing 'round and 'round (toward God?)

The Buddha Diaries Recommends:
Sailing to Byzantium
(posted by Cardozo)




"You don't have the right to be here," Kullervo, author of Sailing to Byzantium, writes in the introduction to his blog. In the same introduction, Kullervo goes on to say he will "block users or IP addresses who detract from rather than add to what I'm trying to do here."

Those who choose to sail along with Kullervo despite such plainly-worded threats will quickly discover why those threats might be necessary. In some respects the blog is agonizing. It is the faithful record of the author's spiritual journey - a journey with an ostensible destination (the truth about God, as far as I can tell) but which is ever circling around, drifting, and spasmodically changing course. Mormonism, Christianity, Druidry, Buddhism, Hinduism, Atheism, and Agnosticism are explored and re-explored. Its kind of like watching a goldfish swim around in its bowl - its always going, but where?

So we can understand why certain frustrated web-surfers (not known for their patience) might lash out against Kullervo's meandering journey with comments along the lines of "For God's sake, PICK SOMETHING already!" But we also understand why Kullervo would want that frustration weeded out of the mix, why he continues to write, and why he wishes to do so in a community of fellow seekers.

Because while the canonical chroniclers and mediators of western culture - from de Cervantes, Dickens and Austen all the way to Spielberg - would have us believe that journeys always move forward eventually (otherwise why turn the page?), the truth of our human experience is usually far more circular. As a result of staying so true to the achingly slow trajectory of the real-life individual human search for meaning, Sailing to Byzantium is perhaps a little pathetic. ("Sometimes I don't feel like believing in Jesus," Kullervo writes in one characteristically vague yet stubbornly truthful passage.) But it is pathetic in the ways so many of us are pathetic. No one likes to think, for example, that they are repeating the same mistakes they made in college, carrying around decades-old emotional baggage, or (as in Kullervo's case) still struggling with their faith. But, in all likelihood, they are.

Which is why, despite its unsatisfying lack of emotional closure and its suspicious attitude toward new visitors, Sailing to Byzantium is one of the more refreshing and interesting personal blogs on the web. We highly recommend a visit there.

[Incidentally, we don't mean to suggest in this review that Sailing to Byzantium is simple-minded for all of its circuitousness. We simply chose to focus on what we took to be the most interesting aspect of the blog's overall impact. But...you'll see for yourself. ]

"Mapping the Dharma"--A Book Review

I have a book for you, if you happen to be just little a bit like me.

Maybe, like me, you have a decent, serviceable mind, but you don’t possess that enviable sort of brain that snaps to and remembers everything that comes to its attention. Maybe you have a more than passing interest in Buddhism, have read some of the literature and have even attended a couple of retreats. And maybe you’re just as muddle-headed as I am when it comes to all those lists—the four of this and the seven-fold that... and so on.

If you are just a bit like me in these respects, there’s help for us in the form of a neat little book called “Mapping the Dharma: A Concise Guide to the Middle Way of the Buddha,” 2007, by Paul Gerhards. Gerhards sets out to provide “a visual guide to the teachings—more a map than a text,” with the recognition that “The Buddha said that a map is not a territory; it is merely a tool of discovery.”

As Gerhards points out in his Introduction, the Buddha left his followers with a lot of these lists. His purpose, at a time when human wisdom and knowledge were passed from generation to generation in strictly oral traditions, was surely to organize his teachings in such a way that they could more easily be memorized (at least by those gifted with the sort of brain that many of us lack! There were probably more of them back then: they didn’t have calculators to do their sums, or cell phones with speed dials to induce in the human brain a terminal condition of mental sloth!) It was, in fact, centuries before the Buddha’s teaching were written down, so we must be thankful that he had the foresight to work things out this way.

This book is wonderfully helpful to those who, like me, could use both a handy map and a refresher guide, for quick reference when one of those darned lists crops up in reading or a teaching session. First, it succeeds remarkably well in schematizing and simplifying the relationship between the key lists with which the Dharma abounds, starting with the “Three Jewels” that provide the “refuge” for Buddhists of every persuasion: the Buddha himself, the Dharma (his teachings) and the Sangha (originally, the association of monks who followed him; today, used more loosely, everything from monastic orders to small groups of practitioners.) Then come the “Four Noble Truths” that form the basis of all Buddhist teaching, the “Eightfold Path” the Buddha prescribed as the true path for those who seek the end of suffering and a shot at enlightenment, the “Three Characteristics of Existence;” the “Five Aggregates;” and so on. (Sorry. It’s not my purpose, here, to explain. That’s the book’s job.)

Gerhards does an excellent job of drawing this map, and of providing a reliable reader’s guide to the monuments along the way. His explanations of the basic principles are clear and accurate, and as uncomplicated as is possible with so profound a system of religious tenets. As with all maps, of course, it provides us with the abstract rather than the experience: a AAA route from Los Angeles to San Francisco provides a useful guide to those looking for simple directions from here to there. It’s clearly not the same as the experience of the long tedium of Interstate 5, the inland route, or the delights of the coast road winding along the cliff’s edge through Big Sur. Nor does the recipe for a good ratatouille give the slightest clue as to its taste.

Maps, however, do serve a purpose. They do help you find your way around. That's what this one does, with clarity and precision. So, as I say, if you're a little bit like me, you'll appreciate the orientation that Gerhards has to offer.

The Buddha Diaries Recommends

To learn more about what is planned as a collaborative site, please check out our just-launched Accidental Dharma: The Gift Wrapped in Shit, presented by The Buddha Diaries. You'll find the site's intention described there, along with several examples of the kind of story that we're looking for. We're hoping to receive your stories to post, if and when you feel moved to send them to us at AccidentalDharma@mac.com. While we can't promise to include everything we receive, we'll post every story that is in harmony with the spirit and intention of the site. The process of writing, as all bloggers know, can serve to shed light on our experience, so we're hoping that this site will prove enlightening to contributors and readers alike.


Also... there's a terrific piece of writing over at Adgita Diaries, which we discovered when we checked in there yesterday. A review of the History Channel's 1968 with Tom Brokaw, it takes the long view of those of us who participated in those times and laments the loss of their promise. Here's a short piece of what MandT have to say, a paragraph that particularly resonates with me:

Brokaw’s ‘suit’ vision of his own youth in the center of a watershed year in contemporary history is profoundly blind as he states in conclusion: “"If there is one enduring lesson for me, it is that we survived as a nation and as a culture.” Not true-- so very not true. 1968 was the year America entered in earnest its entopic decline. The Vietnam War was clearly revealed for what it was---a profiteering corporate militaristic fantasy of long lasting fatal results. The old Democratic Party died with Jack Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy, Martin Luther King, the failure of Lyndon Johnson to hoist The Great Society, and perished in Daley’s thug Chicago amid killings, riots, the ghosts of a murderous Kent State and the future charismatic machinations of the Clintons. The First Amendment became a lethal attraction, the Bush administration----its newly dug grave.

Here's one fellow blogger who concurs with their dissent from Brokaw's conclusion. It is "so very not true," indeed, for the reasons that they eloquently elaborate. I also love their vision of the blogosphere: "The reality community never sleeps, and the Internet has become our Paul Revere."

I do love to read the views of the young and idealistic--represented in MandT's entry by the wonderful song that accompanies it. I also love the voices of those who have managed to maintain the idealism of their youth and temper it with the wisdom and compassion of respectable years! Thanks, MandT, for this good piece.

Over at Nick's Bytes, always a fun trip, there are a couple of interesting memes. I like the one about writing a letter from your now self to yourself as you were when you were 13 years old. Mine would go something like this: "Dear Peter, Don't worry, you'll get out of this alive. Boarding school is hell and everyone knows you're the easiest tease around. Try not to get mad, and feel free to have a good cry once in a while, where the others won't see you. Oh, and that little thing down between your legs. I know it's giving you a lot to worry about right now, but once you get over this 13-year old hump it'll do just fine. You're not the freak you think you are, I promise. Lots of love, Old Peter."

At one plus two read the heartbreaking story of two little girls in dire straights at Christmas time. Though it shouldn't matter, should it, whether it's Christmas or not?

The Buddha Diaries Recommends

Click here to read The Buddha Diaries review of "An Arrow to the Heart: a Commentary on The Heart Sutra" by Ken McLeod.

Thanks to this article by RJ Eskow in the current Tricycle (I think you have to subscribe to the online magazine if you want to read the whole article, but the magazine itself is a wonderful investment: consider this a plug!), we at The Buddha Diaries have been thinking a bit about Buddhism and blogging, and whether the twain should meet. Before The Buddha Diaires there was The Bush Diaries, the political blog that Peter started---like RJ Eskow--immediately following the 2004 re-election, and for the same reasons. Something had to be done, and the only thing I knew how to do was write. You'll find some further thoughts on the matter--and on the Democratic presidential race on Eskow's Huffington Post blog. It's an interesting debate, and one in which I engage every time I feel moved to respond, in these pages, to political events.

Cardozo, meanwhile, my trusty sidekick, turned up this wonderful site, where a bona fide warrior with a conscience fights the good fight against the senseless spilling of blood. Cardozo writes:

Pen and Sword

Jeff Huber, a retired U.S. Navy Commander, has been blogging about the Iraq War and other misadventures of the Bush administration since 2005. The voluminous archives of Pen and Sword exist as a compelling database of the illogicalities and deceptions that have characterized Bush II.

As Huber wrote in the blog's introductory post, by pursuing a "fist-first approach to shaping the rest of the world in our image, [we may] collapse under the weight of our own hubris..."

Pen and Sword is driven by a passion born from patriotism, and tempered by an encyclopedic knowledge of national security issues. The blog url (zenhuber.blogspot.com) hints at a connection to Buddhist thought, but we could find no confirmation of this apparent influence within the posts themselves. Perhaps Mr. Huber leaves it to the reader to draw the natural link between Buddhist teaching and his unflinching critiques of the neo-cons' propagation of war and U.S. global dominance.

Please drop in at Pen and Sword to pay a visit to this military man with two boots planted firmly on the ground.

To which Peter merely adds, Amen.

The Buddha Diaries Recommends

Guilty With an Explanation

We're not quite sure what the author means by this title, but we think it is a perfectly apt description of her readers, who are undoubtedly guilty of spending much too much time perusing her addictive site.

The explanation (uttered to disgruntled spouses and employers, perhaps?) is that HeartInSanFrancisco (HSF) wows her readers day after day with original content, surpassing in breadth and humor almost every other space on the web.

Much of the fun of Guilty with an Explanation stems directly from vitriol, in which the reader laughingly indulges because HSF has spent so much time assuring us of her underlying compassion and sensitivity. When miffed, HSF pulls no punches, which is bad news for those who, say, ram into her with their cart at the grocery store. Her lambasting is often so articulate and spirited that it evokes a deeply satisfying sense of vicarious revenge. This, from 2006.

My neighbor is a hooker. A street ho. A strumpet, harlot, trollop. A tart. I finally figured it out after I saw her in black bra and tiny shorts draped around a lamppost in the Mission, an area which has not yet been gentrified. I doubt she was in the neighborhood for the discount fabric store, as I was.

But I don't hate her because of her morals. I hate her because she's a vile neighbor.

Fans of David Sedaris will enjoy HSF's unsparing portraits of her past. In these entries, HSF's childhood self emerges in hilarious and heart-breaking detail, as the reader becomes privy to those poignant, tragicomic moments characteristic of so many of our childhoods.

And in addition to all of this fun, HSF entertains with legitimately interesting encounters with notable historical figures such as Gracie Slick and Che Guevara.

Bottom line, this blog has something for everyone, and we encourage you to visit.

The Buddha Diaries Recommends

What's happening in Africa?

The question is enough to make our heads spin. What other continent (indeed, what other word?) evokes such mental chaos? Poverty, Imperialism, slavery, ethnic strife, genocide, AIDS, famine, blood diamonds...no wonder we are wont to turn our attention elsewhere.

But is this any way to behave? Considering the tragedy and the promise of a continent currently experiencing the worst side-effects of our increasingly inter-connected world, aren't we obliged to pay more attention?

As is the case with every important issue, it is up to individual innovators and visionaries to make the subject digestible to those who are new to it. That is why we appreciate The Nata Village Blog.

The Nata Village blog may be one of the narrowest on the internet, in that it purports only to describe the struggle against HIV/AIDS in one tiny village in Botswana, in southern Africa. It by no means seeks to answer the question posed above ("What's happening in Africa?") but it offers us an important entry point into that discussion.

Updated frequently with plenty of photographs and personal anecdotes, the Nata Village Blog paints a vivid portrait of Nata. Through the posts, we learn about the villagers themselves as well as the people (African and otherwise) who have arrived at ground zero of the HIV/AIDS epidemic to offer their sweat and expertise.

The overall effect on the reader is to reduce the discomforting geopolitical trends concerning African development into a much more digestible equation: Caring outsiders + expertise + empowered locals + money raised through the internet = a better quality of life for impoverished, afflicted villagers.

While global institutions like the IMF and World Bank struggle to assist developing nations (while protecting the profit-motives of developed nations, of course), it is refreshing to be privy to a grassroots effort that, over time, has begun to make a real difference in the lives of these villagers. For those of us who feel the need to know "What's happening in Africa?" the Nata Village Blog reminds us that - in the absence of effective global leadership - we have to start somewhere.

The Buddha Diaries Recommends

Thailand Gal

I just spent the morning steeped in the archives of Thailand Gal...and now my head is spinning!

Thailand Gal is a journey deep into the heart and mind of ThailandChani, a self-described Caucasian Thaiphile. Her love (and practice) of Thai culture - and her intention to relocate to Thailand once she can raise the funds - is the blog's most prominent recurring theme. But her reasons for this lifestyle choice take her posts far and wide...into nearly every conceivable area of her "unusual life."

Shucking brevity and bravado, Thailand Gal is a breathtakingly honest exploration into Western culture - the albatross around ThailandChani's neck, her "culture of birth (as opposed to culture of choice) which is dedicated to individual success at all costs, assertiveness that often comes across as rude or pushy, competition and focus almost exclusively on 'self-esteem'."

While many blogs attempt to address the ills of Western society, the majority of those do so by tearing down those who embody the opposing viewpoint, as though "winning the argument" might lead to a mass conversion of the wrong-headed. Others adhere strictly to faith-based perspectives.

ThailandChani, conversely, is that rare cultural dissident who dwells insistently on the horrific personal consequences of a broken culture. Many of her posts are heartbreakingly brave...and conscientiously stripped of self-righteousness. At the same time, she fiercely protects a firmly-held belief in the goodness of herself and of humanity - of each individual human.

Her posts rely on raw personal experiences as material for well-written and nuanced evaluations of cultural norms. The posts are under no illusion that changing our patterns of thought and behavior (ultimately destructive to ourselves and the community, she argues) will be easy. There are no villains and no heroes in the world of Thailand Gal...only truth-seekers and truth-obscurers.

For a good intro into what Thailand Gal is all about, read two of the first posts (here and here) from September, 2006. Happy reading!

The Buddha Diaries Recommends

Lindsey in Lawrence

Imagine: Steinbeck-like, you decide to embark upon a journey to find America. You hop in your car and drive straight through the middle of the country, on interstate 70. Desperate for an experience that will make you feel connected to that elusive “America,” you pull off the freeway in Lawrence, Kansas. “What are Kansans like?” you wonder. You park your car somewhere, anywhere….a mall. You are standing almost exactly in the middle of the country.

You stroll into Pier 1, which looks distressingly similar to the Pier 1 on Hollywood Boulevard. Same scented candles, same funky lamps. Feeling a little sheepish for having driven halfway across America to browse through Pier 1’s impressive selection of tea light holders, you catch the eye of a young, cheerful salesperson. You think you see a spark there, something to suggest a tremendous wealth of insights and stories behind that twenty-something smile.

This is it - your moment of truth. But…how will you possibly break the ice?

Fortunately, you don’t have to. This young woman - who represents, in many ways, modern Middle America - has a blog, and many of those stories lurking behind that engaging smile are posted there in living color. All you have to do is point and click.

With its depth, breadth and regularity, Lindsey in Lawrence stands out among an assortment of other excellent blogs authored by Lindsey’s friends (such as Marko Polo and Memory Palace, which we hope will continue to update) all living in one or another of the Great Plains states. Lindsey’s posts trace an earnest, light-hearted quest for self-fulfillment, grounded in her everyday experiences as a student, Pier 1 employee, and camp counselor. The force of Lindsey’s spirited “Buddhist-Christian” existentialism helps the blog transcend the merely mundane. One of our favorite posts describes a visit to the dentist, which becomes a funny, stream-of-consciousness example of the absurd mental states sometimes experienced by those trying to achieve a constant state of mindfulness.

Quirky and humble self-analysis is the hallmark of Lindsey’s best entries. In a June post she dives into her own acknowledged materialism, concluding that, “It isn’t the things themselves that I want…I want the experiences that go along with [them].” She implies, interestingly, that our society has welded “things” and “experiences” together, and therefore to deny one’s materialism also may require an unhealthy degree of asceticism.

Lindsey’s posts are also refreshingly creative in terms of format and content. Photos, poems, stories, dialogues, and even musical posts make Lindsey in Lawrence a fun and interesting grab bag of a blog. As with all the sites recommended on this page, we encourage you to check this one out. We think you'll learn a great deal about life in Kansas, as well as a whole host of other topics. Who knows, maybe you'll decide to take that trip down I-70 after all.

The Buddha Diaries Recommends

Dharma Bums
The Buddha Diaries is offering a free "virtual" stay for all of our readers, at the magically ordinary Washington State country home of Robin and Roger, authors of Dharma Bums. To redeem your prize, simply click here…read the posts, take in the pictures and stories, and be transported.

Having become rather attached to the Dharma Bums’ lovingly portrayed corner of the world, we are anxious (though perhaps not as anxious as they) about their impending departure to places unknown.

The current house and its surroundings, you see, is as much a part of Dharma Bums as the authors themselves. Perhaps more. Roger and Robin’s wonderful observations on Buddhism, current events, nature and philosophy are nearly always sprung from the everyday minutiae of daily life on and around their beautiful property…we cannot imagine any family to be more intimately familiar with their habitat. In this July post, “the incongruity of seeing deer at an extreme minus tide…” leads to ruminations about the elusiveness of outrage, which seems to be an ever-present challenge for this pair. The idyllic scenes unraveling all around them threaten to obfuscate the current political realities that they find so abhorrent.

Thankfully, the posts at Dharma Bums are as well tended to as the prolific garden, which regular readers know intimately by now. There is much else to love about the world (the life) Robin and Andrea share with us: the charming and often educational non sequitur (“The new hi-tech way to spread bark mulch is to have it blown in.”); the surprisingly frequent animal rescue (see chipmunk trapped in garden hose caddy); the carefully chosen photographs that always illuminate or amuse (see photo of a sea star with 19 arms that does both!).

The great danger of the internet is that its pull becomes so strong as to isolate us from each other even as it brings us -- in some ways -- closer together. Dharma Bums removes the double edge from that sword. In bringing loving, honest attention to a small corner of the world that many of us will never see, it strengthens the notion that we are all connected though we may be far apart and living under quite different circumstances.

Please do take a look.

For the Love of Blogs

Without wanting to seem presumptuous, I have been thinking about making a practice of including occasional “reviews” of other blogs in "The Buddha Diaries". I know I get lazy about checking in with those I have come to think of as my valued colleagues, even if we have no contact other than the occasional comment on a post, so I’m trusting that this plan will help to remind me to stay abreast of what might be on the minds of the like-minded! And then there’s the obvious selfish reason: I’d love for them, likewise, to keep checking in with me. So here’s the first in what I intend to be a regular event in "The Buddha Diaries"—though the choices, be it said, represent no ordering or priority.


Pax et lux

I decided, yesterday, to contact Liberata at Pax et lux. I was sure that she would be aware of the scheduled execution of Troy Anthony Davis, set for today, Tuesday, but I thought I could wangle her signature for the petition (see yesterday’s entry) just in case she had not already signed it. "Pax et lux" is a wonderful read for anyone who is as outraged as I am by the suspension of Habeas Corpus and the extra-legal, often brutal treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo (and elsewhere) under the false pretense of protecting America and its democracy. Liberata, as I understand it, is a Quaker, and she takes her non-violence and her dedication to social justice seriously. She is eloquent in her passionate denunciation of the Iraq war and other Bushian follies, and is notable for the simple human decency of her approach. We need more like her, who are prepared to put in the effort that it takes to make her feelings known.


Integral Options Cafe

Next, try reading Bill’s recent holistic thoughts at Integral Options Café about obesity and fitness in America and see if it doesn’t strike home. It does with me. Along with too many others, I eat more than I need to, with a resulting bulge in undesirable places. Bill is not only a smart blogger with a decidedly Buddhist bent (I found his site originally because of its selection as “Blog of the Year”—or some such honor—on one of those sites that brings us all together) but also a fitness instructor. I’d sign up to work out with him tomorrow if he wasn’t so far away, and I don’t suppose it can be done too easily online. I have to admit I’m a little intimidated by the picture on his bio page (take a peek!), but I’m trusting that it’s not Bill himself who’s pictured there.

Here's what Bill says about himself on his bio page: "We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thought. With our thoughts, we make our world." ~The Buddha. And I love the Theodore Roethke poem he posted today!

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So that’s a start. I actually love this blogging business. I have found that it enhances every other piece of writing that I do, professionally: the ideas and words flow easier than ever before, and I'm sure it's thanks to this daily practice of simply showing up and letting it out. I trust that my references to colleagues will bring offense to no one, and will succeed only in drawing attention to excellence in the art of bloggery.

By the way, in case some readers were not aware of it: I'm not sure about others but I suspect that we all immensely value comments. I confess that I was surprised and sad, the other day, when I posted what I thought was a beautiful short poem in memory of Lady Bird Johnson and heard only the echo of my own voice in the silence of the blogosphere. My sitemeter reports good news about an internationally expanding readership. It would mean a great deal to me to hear from time to time a word or two from readers out there in far parts of the world. Asia? Down under? It's wonderful to know that people in those parts are reading my few words, and I'd love to hear from them. Consider this a request…

As a footnote: I'm much relieved to hear that Troy Anthony Davis yesterday was granted a reprieve from his scheduled execution date, today. Would it be too much to hope that the State of Georgia might rethink its death penalty policy before October, when the review of the Davis case must be concluded?