Blogging: The Buddha Diaries

A couple of responses to my entry yesterday (thank you!) set me to thinking, not for the first time, about what I'm doing here on The Buddha Diaries. I have thought about it primarily as a "writing practice," not unlike my meditation practice: something I just do (almost) every day without having to worry too much about what I'm doing or whether I have anything "to say." It has been a great way to be the writer I have been throughout my life, minus the concerns about publishing: where to publish, who the readers are, how much to get paid--most often barely, or not at all. The Buddha Diaries--and The Bush Diaries that preceded it--have given me the opportunity to be the amateur, in that good, old sense of the word: a person free from any and all obligations, who does it simply out of the passion for getting it done.

But yesterday the word "wondering"* came to mind. I like the two associations of the word: To wonder means not only to ask questions but to stand in awe. I have known since leaving academia twenty years ago that I am not a teacher--or only incidentally. I do not set out to tell anyone what I know, or think I know, because they don't know it. I tend instead to marvel at the world and the fact that I have some small place in it and ask my questions not out of existenial angst, I think, but out of curiosity about my own humanity and that of those with whom I share this planet; and out of the sense that, through honest and scrupulous self-examination, I can become a better, perhaps even a wiser human being and thus live a fuller, more rewarding life.

What appeals to me about Buddhism is less what it teaches than what it asks me to learn. I love its practicality and practicability. For me--and perhaps this is why I resist embracing it as a religion--it's not about shoulds and ought-to's, beliefs and tenets, but rather about what works and what doesn't, what produces healthy results and what leads to more unwanted suffering. As I suggested yesterday, there are realities with which I continue to struggle: even though I "know" the answers, I keep struggling with questions. I learn, and something comes along to remind me that I have forgotten what I learned, and I have to learn it all over again. It seems to me that this is simply human.

The Buddha Diaires, then, at its best--for me, at least--offers me a place where I can look out at the world and my own place in it, and ask those questions, and learn those things about myself and about the world, and forget them, and learn them over again. It's a place where I don't want to pretend to "know" anything, but where I can find provisional understandings that serve me for a moment; a process that uses medium (language) to find out what it is I need to say, with the understanding that I may easily contradict myself the following day. It pleases me more than I can say to know that I have friends out there who want to read this stuff and who take the time to think about it and respond. It's the ultimate reward for any writer, and I am happy to have found a place where I can be true to myself without constraint or embarrassment and still find those who are willing to go along the path with me.


*In this context, a note: My nephew, Naftali, now approaching his mid years, has just started a blog called The Wandering Jewish Dreamer. It was originally called "The Wondering Jewish Dreamer"--I suspect a typo, but I liked the confusion of the two ideas, one an old cliche, the other perhaps a truth about the author... Naftali, an Israeli sabra by birth but American since schooldays, has always been a wanderer. At present, he's in Prague, thinking about returning to Israel for a spell, then back to Prague before coming "home" to the United States. I'll be interested to see where his wandering--and his wondering--takes him!

Lunch at the Huntington

I enjoyed an excellent lunch yesterday in the gardens of the Huntington Library, up in San Marino. Well, the lunch itself was… cafeteria, okay. But the company was excellent, as was the conversation. Long-time readers may remember, back in July, when Ellie and I hosted a party for a dozen or so Caians—alumni of my old college at Cambridge, Gonville and Caius, who happen to be living now in the Southern California area...

My host for yesterday’s lunch was one of these, a distinguished professor of philosophy and religion, scholar, editor, writer, and activist in the field of interfaith understanding. Indian-born and educated by the Jesuits in his native country, he embraces the wisdom and the cultural history of both East and West—he calls himself a “Buddhist Catholic”… or was it a “Catholic Buddhist”?—with a blend of infectious passion and curiosity. A great talker, he proved also a good listener and, despite his outstanding credentials and the breadth of his learning, a comfortable conversationalist. It’s rare, these days, to be able to sit down for a couple of hours and penetrate some important and difficult issues in a shared language of understanding and compassion.

We talked first about politics. Not surprisingly, we found ourselves in agreement: for the good of the country, this is a must-win for Obama. My friend had read “Dreams From My Father,” I had read “The Audacity of Hope,” and we agreed that the man is an excellent writer—one who writes from the heart as well as from a wide grasp of the political and historical moment in which we find ourselves. We agreed on the steady mind and the firm hand. We agreed that the alternative would cast a great pall over the future of the planet.

But the real meat of our conversation came when we turned to more broadly philosophical questions about religion and its role in the contemporary world. My friend is a man of thoughtful faith, who deplores the excesses of extremists, no matter whether they be of Christian, Muslim, Hindu, or any other origin. He dedicates a good part of his life to the promotion of tolerance and understanding between religions, and is a board member of Parliament of Religions--an organization for which he serves as the program director for a 2009 conference in Melbourne, Australia. Being attached to no faith, but rather a skeptical follower of the teachings of the Buddha, I was glad to be reminded that the meaning of the Greek origin of the word “skeptic” is “inquiry.” It’s about asking questions, which I personally believe to be the business of religion, and it dismays me that so much of the religion that is practiced inn the world today is about providing dogmatic answers.

Speaking of the intolerance that pits religion against religion, my friend asked what I thought was the source of that intolerance. Without reflecting any too deeply, I came up with the answer: fear. It’s that old, instinctive fear of the unknown, fear of the “other,” fear of encroachment by inimical forces on our camp site, the fear that what we “have” may be taken from us. If that’s the case, he asked me, what is the antidote? And again without too much reflection I answered: self-examination, a study of the fears that can determine the direction of my life unless I understand them and observe how they function. And what’s good for the individual is good for the institution. Religions, too, would benefit from honest, fearless self-examination. We need to understand when fears serve us—as they sometimes do—and when they serve only to stand between us and those who share our humanity but may have different views.

It was good to be prompted gently into some useful and productive thoughts. I see no way, for myself, to come back to the religion with which I was brought up, and which I abandoned as a young man. I do believe that the intellectual and spiritual roots it provided me then continue to ground me in ways unseen and, perhaps wrongly, unexamined. I value that religious education much as I value having learned Latin and other, living languages in my youth; I would be less well equipped as a writer without that solid foundation of etymology and syntax, and I judge that such humanity as I possess is meaningfully informed by the spiritual training I received. I was much more cavalier about discarding it as a young man than I am now. What I learned about Jesus, though, as my friend and I discussed as we ate our lunch in the shade of some very lovely trees, differs very little in substance from what I learn from the Buddha much later in life: the good part is all about love, generosity, and the spirit of compassion—a part that unhappily seems to have been forgotten by fundamentalists and extremists on all sides.

After lunch, we took a pleasant stroll through the gardens to the new (since my last visit, years ago) Chinese garden, with its beautiful pagoda, green ponds and walkways—refreshing even in the current Southern California heat—talking of professional experiences, and personal matters, and books we love. A very civilized way to spend the afternoon…!

(As a philosophical footnote, a new subscriber wrote to remind me of Gary Snyder's dictum: "Just because you're a Buddhist, doesn't mean you have to be a good Buddhist." Hmmm...)

(And, for good measure, as a political footnote, check out this Rap for Obama

Rules

So what is it about the apostrophe? How come so few people know how to use it? And why do I get so irritated by its misuse?

The rules are pretty simple, insofar as I understand them. Rule number 1: "Its" is "it's" when there's an "i" missing, that is, when it means "it is", NOT when it's simply a possessive, as in "the cat lost its virginity" or "my computer needs its screen cleaned." It is = it's. Easy, no? Also there is = there's, as in "Waiter, there's a fly in my soup." And "Who's coming to dinner?" (Not, please, "whose"!) Or, "Where's my umbrella?" Or "Here's a lovely gift for you." It's "is" with the "i" missing. An apostrophe can also substitute for other missing letters, of course, as in li'l' Abner or young 'uns. (actually, that should logically be 'nes, no? But who says the rules of logic apply to the rules of grammar?) Or, "I'm so happy to see you. Aren't we having a wonderful time? Don't you just love this muggy weather?"

Rule number two: possessives. With a plural noun, the apostrophe goes behind the "s"; if it's a singular noun, the apostrophe goes before the "s". Thus, "It's my dog's birthday," or "It's a dog's life." One dog. But, "I forgot to bring the dogs' leashes"--two or more dogs. ("My mother's in the loo," by the way, is obviously rule number 1, above, unless it becomes "My mother's friend is in the loo.") So if you ask yourself, is this noun singular or is it plural?, and act accordingly, you're going to get it right. Usually. I imagine someone will point out some ridiculously obtuse exception.

(While I'm at it, I might as well mention the habitually misused "fewer" and "less". It's a bit like with the apostrophe. "Fewer" goes with plural nouns; "less" with singular ones. Thus, "There is less sugar in this jar than in the other;" but "There are fewer grains of sugar in this jar..." Why can't people get this right?)

The more significant question, of course, is why I should allow such things to irritate me. Language evolves. It's the commonly-made mistakes that determine the way it changes. Those darn Gauls could not speak proper Latin for toffee, so they turned it into French. It took a while, but it was improper use and bad pronunciation that brought about the change. Besides, who needs apostrophes, really? They should probably accompany the copper penny into long overdue extinction. And no one but me gives a damn about "less" and "fewer." They could care... well, less.

So why? I guess a part of it is that I love the English language, and hate to see it being abused. It's such a wonderful instrument, so precise when needed, so beautiful, so poetic, so amazingly flexible and subtle, so rich with meanings, so infinitely utile. It's also easy to abuse, for anyone who does not care enough to use it well--for those who think it's no more than a tool to convey broad swaths of meaning in the crassest possible way. They forget that a slip of the tongue or a change of tone or emphasis can turn what's intended as a compliment into offense. Politicians discover this sometimes to their cost--Barack Obama's "bitter" slip proved bitter, indeed. People forget that words carry more than simple meanings: they carry emotional values, too, and physical heft. Words, and the way they're said, matter more than people think they do--until they discover, as they sometimes do, that something has gone seriously amiss in their communications. (My father learned this once when insisting on showing off his wildly inadequate schoolboy French: having ordered three coffees for the family at a Brussels cafe, he next asked the waitress for the toilet, pronouncing it "twa-ley." When he returned to the table, he found three cups of milk awaiting him, "trois laits;" he should, of course, have asked for the "twa-lette.")

I know that language changes. I acknowledge that it must. But I'll admit to being a bit of a language snob.  It pains me to hear how it's mutilated on the streets, just as it pains me when I see that misplaced apostrophe. There must be some part of me--there IS, I confess, some part of me--that loves the rules. I was too old, by the 1960s, to learn to "question authority"--remember that one?--in that easy, dismissive way that seems to have become a part of our culture. When I question authority, as I actually do quite often, it comes only after an inner struggle with that inculcated habit of respecting it. And obeying it. (To do otherwise, at an English boarding school, was to risk exposing one's rear end to a painful encounter with the cane--or to some other, equally unappealing punishment. At home, little children did what they were told. Rules, my father used to say, are rules.)

And then of course there's that other part of me that hates them, and distrusts whoever is handing them out. The creative part of me, I think, puts both the love and the hate to use. Any poet knows that rules are fun to work with. It's in the tension between their observation and their breach that good things happen, that new ideas are born; between freedom and discipline, the creative imagination and plodding orthodoxy. I'm sure it must be the same with science, indeed with any other intellectual discipline. So I watch my pedantry when it comes to apostrophes and grammatical lapses with both skepticism and fondness. And I continue to wish that people would just speak and write proper, for gods sake, with less mistakes in there (theirs' another one, damn and blast it--don't get me started!) daily acts of casual mutilation.

Peter Saul, Painter

It has been, as predicted, an unusually busy week. I have been working to assemble not one but two hour-long segments in my "Art of Outrage" series for Artscene Visual Radio, and have had a rather hectic schedule of recorded telephone interviews. Yesterday I spoke to two artists and a museum curator, and today I have a follow-up call with one of the artists, Peter Saul, and another museum curator. It's all interesting and lively, but it means that I don't get around to thinking about The Buddha Diaries and the blogosphere as much as I would like.

I have admired Peter Saul's work for many years. In fact, I have lived with an early work of his--a large-ish untitled 1960 pastel drawing--on the wall of my house. Ellie and I first borrowed, then inherited it from her parents, who bought it at a long-defunct Los Angeles gallery probably around the time that it was made. Like all of Saul's work, it is lively, energetic, full of spontaneous humor, and thoroughly engaging to the eye. After at least twenty, and perhaps even thirty years, I continue to explore it with the same pleasure, and never fail to find something new in it to surprise me.

In the line of the German expressionist artist, Georg Grosz, Saul is unafraid to jump into politics and social issues with both feet. He lampoons politicians, plutocrats, exploiters of human frailties of all sorts with unabashed zest. At one level, his work is cheerfully scatalogical, erotic, finger-pointing, satirical, parodic, absurd... all in a joyful welter of color and image that imposes itself rudely on the viewer's eye and skewers his cherished prejudices and beliefs.

What I discovered yesterday, somewhat to my surprise, is that his impulse is not primarily one of outrage. He was clear, in our conversation, that he is primarily a painter, doing what all painters do--that is, indulging their own inner need to put paint on canvas and shove it around to create an object to his own satisfaction. What's likely to come out is what's on his mind, and for Saul that has to do with his observations of what's happening in the world around him. It's not so much a matter of coming up with a political statement about, say, the incompetence and inanities of George W. Bush, as it is of having fun with paint on canvas with George W. Bush featured as its subject. Far from being angry with Bush, as many of us are, Saul expressed his infinite gratitude to the current occupant of the White House for providing him with an endless source of material.


(He had fun from Ronald Reagan, too. I purloined this image from the George Adams Gallery website.)

Talking to him, I found that sense of fun extraordinarily appealing--and refreshing. That attitude does tend to put it all into perspective. When you get right down to it, the important thing is for each of us to do what's given us to do to the best of our ability. Which is why I play around with words in something of the same spirit, I hope, as Saul plays around with paint. It's a matter of each of us using our given medium to find out what it is we need to say.

Believe It

We had an excellent group session with our Tuesday artists last night. The discussion moved right down into a difficult but vital--and very Buddhist--concern with form, form and abstraction, form and meaning, form and emptiness. What made it useful and intelligible was the fact that it all came out of the lived experience of working artists, not out of some abstract world of concept.

Afterwards, to relax, I found myself watching a PBS "American Experience" episode about the Navajo/Puerto Rican dancer Soto Jock Soto. Born on the Navajo reservation in the American Southwest, he seemed like an unlikely candidate for the ballet world of New York City; he made his way there through sheer pluck and determination, and the conviction from the earliest age that this was what he was supposed to do with his life. I was particularly struck by one of the things he said, as a mature dancer, on the point of retirement from the stage (and I may be paraphrasing here, slightly): You have to believe what you're doing. If you don't believe, no one else is going to believe it either.

It's something that I have always thought necessary for a writer, and Soto's words came at a moment when I had been thinking precisely those words earlier in the day, watching (snatches only: I didn't have time for the whole thing) the testimony of Gen. Petreaus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker before the Senate Armed Services Committee. The general, for the most part, seemed to play his cards with a certain measure of honesty: I believed in his integrity--even if I disagreed with what he was saying.


With Crocker, it was quite different. I don't think he believed for a moment what he was saying. He was saying it because his job required him to. The result was a monotone drone, a long series of careful circumlocutions, words built upon words without meaning or conviction. I thought it was a dreadful performance. Ellie described it as "boring." True enough. But I thought it boring precisely because it came from a place of fundamental dishonesty, a refusal to speak the truth about Iraq, the war, the Iraqi politicians, the endless need for American involvement to keep a lid on the seething mess we have created there. (This, clearly, from the point of view of one who watched only very few minutes of the whole debate.)

Back to Buddhism, then: Right Speech means speaking out of integrity, believing what you're saying, telling the truth. In a word, speaking from the heart.

On Misreading

I wonder how carefully people read what I write? At the end of last week, I cross-posted my "Dear Senator Clinton" letter and my entry on "Speaking of Guns" on my Huffington Post blog, and have been amazed by the response--82 of them on the former and 65 on the latter--some quite complimentary, others in disagreement, and a number purely hostile. I've also had something of an exchange, over the weekend, with a reader who objected to what he saw to be an unwarranted attack on Hillary Clinton.

Which all interests me because a surprising amount of this comment simply missed the points I was making: that if the next round of primaries confirms the momentum for Obama, Clinton should not resort to "any means necessary" to secure the nomination by manipulating the political machinery, risking the November election in the process; and that the rhetoric around gun ownership is quick to go over the top after incidents like last week's--though I broadened this argument to speculate that the rhetoric on the right is generally more venomous than the rhetoric on the left.

What many of those who read these two pieces seemed to believe I had written was rather different from what I actually wrote--that I somehow despised or disrespected Hillary Clinton or that she should immediately withdraw from the race; and, of course, that I was a knee-jerk opponent of the "right to bear arms," the gun lobby, and gun owners in general. No. In the first case I was talking about listening to the voice of the people, in the second about the way we talk about the issues, not the issues themselves.

I suspect that in our haste to get things done and move on, we tend not to read but to skim through what's written and grab onto a few "keywords" and a general impression of the writer's position. I know I'm often guilty of that myself, when reading a newspaper or a magazine, or even a book. We don't have time for the subtleties of language. We read what we want to believe the author has written rather than his or her actual words, and then treat our own reading as what has been said. When I stand accused of having "lambasted" Hillary Clinton, for example, I know that my carefully chosen and respectful words have not been heard as they were intended.

The same applies, I'm sure, to the attention we pay when we listen to others. Our attention span is short, we want to get our say, we respond too quickly to what we imagine has been said. And here, as always, the Buddhist teaching is useful and wise. Take a breath. Pay attention. Practice equanimity and Right Speech--and for that matter, Right Listening. Take the ego out of the equation... I don't know about you, but I still have much to learn.

Shakespeare, etc.

What a pleasure to spend the afternoon on Saturday in the company of a quartet of actors performing scenes from Shakespeare. Our friend Fred--a frequent visitor and sometime commenter on "The Buddha Diaries"--had invited us to the show that he and his actor friends had been preparing, and the occasion served to remind me of the extraordinary power and versatility of language. No sets, no costumes, just a row of chairs and four lecterns--and words! Shakespeare had written them, centuries ago, and they proved that the human imagination, with their aid, can easily span the intervening years to experience the joys and fears, the pain and anger of those who are given to utter them. Our actors obviously relished them, and their commitment to the words provided us, in the audience, with a rich tapestry of the human experience and a reminder that the dramas in which we play our individual parts are no more nor less illusory than those enacted on the stage in front of us. Thanks, Fred!

Saturday evening we came home to watch The Tibetan Book of the Dead on DVD. Narrated by Leonard Cohen, it's a two part investigation into the way in which that great text still plays out in the life of Tibetans today, illuminating the meaning and rituals of life and death in a remote part of the world where life is at subsistence level and where people still find solace and guidance in the old beliefs. And beliefs they are: here, Buddhism is clearly a religion, as system of beliefs that gives humankind place in the order of the universe and instructs about the mystery of death and afterlife.

Sunday morning we attended a book launch event for Ken McLeod's "An Arrow to the Heart." (A reminder: my review of the book can be found on The Huffington Post.) Ken offered a wide-ranging historical and philosophical introduction to the text of The Heart Sutra and, after a fine buffet lunch, to his book and the process he engaged in writing it. We began to understand more about the differences between Mahayana and Theravada Buddhism and more, too, about their common ground. Of special interest to me, given my intention to launch my "Accidental Dharma" site in the near future, was one of the interpretations of the word "dharma" as "a unit of experience."

It's precisely the intersection of lived experience and teaching--the more common understanding of "dharma"--that I'm looking to explore. Sometimes the richest lessons in life come wrapped in the most unwelcome of experiences--be it some casual insult, a personal disappointment or, at worst, the death of a loved one in a senseless accident like the one described in the Ram Dass "Rachel letter" to which I alluded in the last entry on this site. More of this in the coming week. I hope you'll bear with me.

The Buddha Diaries: Hows, Whats and Whys

My friend Mark over at Marko Polo invited me to participate in his survey of Buddhist blogs. As I answered his questions, I realized that he'd given me the opportunity to take a quick snapshot of The Buddha Diaries and what it's all about. Here are Mark's questions, and my answers.

Buddhist Blog Questionnaire

1. How did you get acquainted with the teachings of the Buddha?

I grew up as the son of an Anglican (Church of England) minister, and my entire education was in Christian private schools. I was thoroughly indoctrinated in my youth, and abandoned all interest in the church—and in Christianity—by the time I was eighteen. I had no interest in religion of any kind until I was about fifty years old. At the time, my daughter was in the grip of a terrible disease (she has since recovered, thank you!) and I needed some more substantial anchor in my life. A friend recommended Soka Gakkai Buddhism—the branch that is based in chanting—and I was attracted to it because I was convinced that I could never simply sit in silent meditation, and chanting gave me something to “do”. A couple of years later, at an Esalen Institute workshop, I was turned on to Ram Dass, and soon discovered Pema Chrodron, whose book “When Things Fall Apart” spoke loudly to my situation. It was at this time that I first embarked on silent meditation, and soon joined a weekly sitting group to support my early practice.


2. What, if any, religion or philosophy do you associate yourself with currently? Could you describe your faith a bit?

I “associate myself” with Buddhism—but without calling myself a Buddhist. It’s more of a practice than a faith, because it doesn’t require me to believe in anything that I can’t actually put to the test through experience. My skeptical mind shies away from faith. I’m with Missouri: Show Me!

3. Which of the Buddhist teachings do you find most valuable in your everyday life? Why?

Breath meditation. Because it helps me train and stabilize the mind, and find some inner peace. Also the Eightfold Path (see Accesstoinsight.org.) It’s a practical guide on how to lead my life with integrity.

4. Describe your blog. What is your approach to writing? Who is your intended audience? What issues does your blog tend to focus on, be they Buddhist or otherwise?

The Buddha Diaries is a meditation on the events of my life seen through the lens of the Buddhist meditation practice. It covers everything from George the dog to George W. Bush, from books I read and movies that I see to travels and family. It’s a way of examining my life—and the life of the mind—as I continue on my journey through life, and its intended audience is anyone who shares my passion to lead an “examined life.” I’m not trying to convert anyone to Buddhist thought or practice, nor to preach the Buddhist gospel (if there were one.)

My writing, like my meditation, is a practice. I do it virtually every day as a means of remaining conscious and taking stock of where I am. The great adage that I learned years ago and have always followed is an old one: How do I know what I think ‘til I see what I say? Writing is an adventure of the mind, a means of self-discovery, a continuing journey. The fact that, through The Buddha Diaries, I have found many who want to share it with me is a source of endless pleasure and satisfaction.

Kicking Ass

I realize I'm a bit slow in responding to this one, but frankly I was expecting everyone else to. Naive me, I thought there'd be some kind of an outcry when it was widely reported that the man who sits in our Oval Office boasted to the Prime Minister of Australia that the U.S. is "kicking ass" in Iraq.

Now I'm no prude when it comes to language, and "ass" seems to me a relatively inoffensive word anyway. But in this context, it's what it suggests about the attitude of the man who used it that bothers me. On the one hand, it suggests a kind of high school locker room mentality that unhappily no longer shocks with this particular individual. We've heard enough from him to know that his grasp of the subtleties of language is less than one might wish from "the leader of the free world." We've seen enough of his antics to understand that his sense of humor is, well, boyish at best. We have grown used to, if not weary of, his immaturity.

Worse still, though, is the delusional quality of his observation. "Kicking ass," in all its pathetic boastfulness and arrogance, suggests an ease of victory, an ability to impose one's will on others that simply appears absurd in the context of the war in Iraq, where progress--if indeed one concedes such a concept in the first place, has been slow and painful at best. It continues to be slow and painful. Whose ass exactly, I might wonder, are we kicking. The insurgents'? Al-Qaeda's? If so, they show a remarkable resilience to having their ass kicked, since they are still pretty much as virulent as ever. With American troops and Iraqi civilians being killed by the score each day, the concept of our having "kicked ass" in that environment seems wildly off base. Does this man really believe the words he lets so casually slip?

And worst of all, of course, is the fact that he's talking about human lives and limbs. In this context, the casual humor is--sorry, I'm not humorless, but really--inexcusable. What it has to say about the man is deeply troubling, even if it isn't news. The fact that it passes by with barely a ripple of critical response from press or public is a sad commentary on the state to which our society is reduced. (I have not checked the political wing of the Internet yet, but I'm sure that here I might find some of the outrage I'm looking for. Naive me, I just wish that the entire nation would rise up in anger.)

The Buddhist concept of "Right Speech" seems useful to me here. Would that the man who currently poses as our president might have learned a small piece of that wisdom.

And Now For Something...

... completely different--though nothing ever is. As we shall see...

Ellie and I walked down the hill yesterday, late afternoon, to enjoy a glass of wine with our neighbor, the artist Marcia Hafif. A painter in the tradition of minimalist, monochromatic work, she's just completing a new series of bichromatic paintings and has them hanging in her living room. I didn't count them, but I guess there are perhaps a dozen of them, each square divided vertically into two non-equal parts whose graduated width evokes the rhythmic progression of a spare, musical composition as the eye follows the series around the room. The paintings have a silvery, silken glow to them, with barely perceptible modulations on two subdued colors, both difficult to name; one is a kind of subtly mauvish grey, the other a reduced celadon green. They would have the fluffy seductiveness of cotton candy, but for the carefully-structured formal context that lends them a quiet sobriety and depth. In keeping with the history of Hafif's work, their Zen-like reductiveness induces a state of meditative attention and serenity, but there's a gentle quality in the touch that keeps them from being severe. Up close, the artist's hand is everywhere evident in the patient brushwork and this, I think, is where the viewer is invited into the work. This is chink in the formalist armor where we come in contact with the human presence and the human values that give the work its depth of content.

Not an adequate description, perhaps, because such work defies attempts to translate it into language. I was reminded once again of the seeming contradiction in my aesthetic passions: while I'm attracted to the work of artists who persist in looking to the human form and to the landscape that surrounds us, I also get that frisson of recognition, of acknowledgement--that YES!--with reductive, even monochromatic work like Marcia's. It's the response that tells me that what I'm looking at has something vital to tell me about my own humanity.

Outdoors, on Marcia's deck, with a glass of wine, we got to talking about art, and music, and literature--but not in that awful academic way, that one-upman trade of esoteric information and display of intellect. Our conversation came, I think, out of mutual experience and the process in which we are engaged in our creative work, and the ways in which that process is fed by others who have walked the path before. So Marcia could speak easily about Fra Angelico and the painting he had made for himself, in his cell, beside the window, competing with that light source, so that its whiteness--the painting's--became central to its meaning. And somehow this gave another dimension of meaning to the work we had just been looking at, and led to more thoughts about painting and writing, and engagement with the medium as having meaning in itself. And how emotion is conveyed more vitally not by the heavy sighs but by the unspoken subtleties--which brought me back, again, to thoughts about Jane Austen.

All interesting stuff. Thinking back to yesterday's entry, and the anger, and the reticence about giving vent to it, and wondering how "Buddhist" it might be, I realize that the relationship between passion and dispassion is a close one indeed. The idea that passion can be experienced perhaps more deeply through restraint, that equanimity does not imply removal--this idea is one that's worth exploring.

I trust I haven't bored you all today, with my aesthetic speculations. To me, they're anything but abstract, like Marcia's paintings. Very present, very real. See? As the French say, Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose. (Approximately: The more things change, the more they stay the same.)

AND ANOTHER EPIPHANY...

... sent to me by my friend Marsha, also an artist (though spelled differently from the Marcia above; just another of those strange coincidences!) who was reluctant to use the "Comments" button. It's a lovely story, so I append it here. Enjoy...

The lucky thing about my childhood was my father's sense of adventure and his total lack of care as to where we might end up. We went on great trips all over the west, driving for hours, days. I spent all that time looking at the land, the forms, and the horizon line. I think that is where I learned what America really is. Anyway, one summer we were traveling through Navaho country and my father announced that we were going to stay the night at Goulding's Trading Post in Monument Valley. Goulding's was known because some of the great westerns were made there by and with John Wayne, John Ford, etc. Needless to say it was not a tourist destination, as it is today. To get there meant driving miles on a two lane road through the reservation and then off on a dirt road for a while.

We arrived late in the afternoon. A storm was coming in. The place was situated high against red cliffs, overlooking the spectacular valley with its endless flat land and scattered red buttes and mesas rising straight up. It was a working trading post with some out buildings, two of which were the low slung guest quarters and the dining hall.

Once we were settled, I wandered out to where the dirt road began to slope toward the valley. There was another girl standing there looking out. She was a guest too. I don't remember her name, but I do remember being impressed because she was thirteen, which made her a big girl, and she wanted to be an anthropologist. We talked a while, watching the storm move in across the valley as the sun began to set. Then we wandered into the trading post.

It was dark with log walls. Lariats and silver necklaces hung from pegs, sort of glinting because they caught what light there was. At the back of the store in the darkness was Goulding himself, leaning on the counter with his hands spread apart. My new friend said, "It's windy outside". Goulding answered, "That's what spreads the seeds". At that moment I got the big picture. It was as if I could see and feel the whole universe and the interrelatedness of everything. The experience washed over me and was very quiet, very deep. Still is.

The storm arrived after sunset. Lighting strikes, long , skinny ones from sky to earth, lit the valley in high contrast black and white. We were so lucky because we could witness it from our little room against the cliffs.

I never told my parents or anyone about my experience for a long time. I was sort of mute about it. I just felt it and knew what it was, even as a little kid...

A Mile in Her Shoes

I notice that I have been reading more than my usual share of novels this summer, and finding them more than usually pleasant reading. The latest is Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict by Laurie Viera Rigler, which I thoroughly enjoyed. I'll confess I would likely not have picked it out from the bookstore shelves, had I not bumped into the author at a reading a couple of months ago. I'm glad I did, because her book reminded me of the gentle pleasures of reading Jane Austen, of the English countryside and the now somewhat faded elegance of Bath, and of the polite eccentricities of the English character. It also put me in mind, throughout, of a valuable Buddhist teaching.

Rigler's conceit is an amusing one. Our Jane Austen addict, Courtney Stone, a twenty-first century, post-feminist, Los Angeles-based protagonist-- she has her own MySpace website--wakes up one day to find herself inhabiting the mind and body of "Jane Mansfield" in Austen's early nineteenth century England. The ensuing romp through the exquisite agonies and politenesses of that era shed light not only on the nostalgic view of a life more simply defined by a rigorous social code--but also on its too readily forgotten hazards: its awful sanitary conditions no less than its relegation of women to the property of males. Rigler's Courtney observes it all with the cynical eye of a "liberated"--and recently jilted--woman who obsesses not only about her beloved Jane Austen but also about such things as cleanliness and creature comforts of the kind distinctly unavailable in Austen's day.

And then there's "love"--so differently defined and practiced in the two eras that clash together in this book. For Courtney, it's about sexual politics, sexual freedom, the freedom to choose partners, it's about her womanhood, her individuality, her strength--and weakness. And she suffers. For "Jane", it's about financial security and social convention, family, propriety and property. "Love" as we understand it in our century--something to be fallen into--has hardly entered into the social vocabulary of Jane's time, it's there only as a glimmer of romanticism and the freedoms that aesethtic movement had begun to claim. It's there, in Jane's heart, as a hope almost beyond hope to be fulfilled. Sex, so subtly sublimated in Jane Austen's world into the delicate, precise dance of language and social mores, is an omnipresent but forbidden topic, a delicious undertow fraught with fears and inhibitions.

Rigler, herself clearly a Jane Austen addict, has a sure feel for these matters in both "Jane's" world and Courtney's. Venturing into the risky territory of nineteenth century English as a contemporary American whose native language is the vernacular of twenty-first century California, she proves sure-footed amongst the booby-traps--and as a native English English speaker, I'm sensitive to the potential lapses. Her plotting, too, is nicely handled: the reader's attention is engaged by the story line throughout, and the ending--long anticipated, because we're kept wondering how our Courtney is ever going to escape her predicament--is astutely satisfying: it serves at once to resolve and deepen the mystery of Courtney's time-warp, and leaves the reader empowered to speculate on its meaning.

For those who fall into the trap of dismissing Jane Austen's novels as romantic fluff, and might be tempted to do the same with Rigler's, it should be added that Courtney takes her identity crisis seriously even as she seems to simultaneously enjoy the ride and worry about the return trip to her "real self." Along the way, this material girl is required to re-evaluate her own sense of self, and is confronted constantly with that great teaching of Buddhism I mentioned earlier: the "other" mind-body she inhabits requires her to actually experience the conundrum of not-self, "this is not me, this is not mine, this is not who I am." And thus confronted, she sheds some of her narcissism along the way and learns the value of compassion for those who share the journey with her.

A good read, then. I learn from an email from Laurie, received coincidentally this very morning--that she has reached #15 on the LA Times bestseller list for fiction. Here's hoping, for her, for a #1 spot soon!

****s (Four-Letter Words)

Another taboo that D. H. Lawrence challenged in "Lady Chatterley's Lover" was, of course, the use of those four-letter words. They were still able to cause shock waves in society when they led to the frequent arrests and indictments of the comedian Lenny Bruce in the 1950s and 1960s. His famous outloud public listing of them in defiance of his persecutors might mark the moment of their liberation from the constraints that had persisted in conventionally banning them from public discourse.

Today they are as common as pebbles on the beach. You overhear them used in causal conversations in cafes and restaurants. You hear them liberally uttered in movies and on television--at least on channels freed from the controls of those government censors, who still seek to protect the young and innocent from words they hear every day on the streets and in their schools. For the same reason, I suppose, you do not read them in newspapers. The New York Times still boasts that it provides all the news that's fit to print--presumably in appropriately fit language. The family values folks are still that powerful.

But the real news is quite different: words, friends, have escaped their caged and run amok in our society. No matter how we try to put them back, there are too many of them for us to control.

The four-letter words are the names of body parts and body functions. They are good solid words with noble histories. Fuck, piss, shit, cock, cunt... I'm forgetting a couple here, I know. Lawrence, I think, wanted simply to recognize them honestly as words, and rehabilitate them from the bleak, moralistic dungeon into which they had been thrown by those seeking to denigrate the human body and its natural acts as shame- and sinful. Along with the natural beauty and joy of the body we are given to inhabit, he wanted to restore words to their original authenticity and power.

There are, certainly, those who continue to dishonor words by their misuse and abuse. The sad part is that we unconsciously perpetuate precisely that secret shame that Lawrence wanted to unmask by using these noble words in contexts that are disconnected from their meaning. I myself am guilty of those expletives. When I say, casually, Oh, shit! I am not referring to the function that depletes my body of unneeded waste. When I explode, as I am known to do, in traffic, and call someone a "fucking idiot," I am not evoking his skills between the sheets.

And then there are the derivatives--the -mothers and the -suckers--whose common use has different implications. Some might suggest that it has deep undertones of a homophobia and an Oedipal neurosis that say much about our society.

The Buddhist teaching of "Right Speech" is a useful guidepost here. I'm for honest language, language freed from artificial restraints--but also for the use of language that does not egregiously harm or hurt. I have been thinking recently, in this context, of writing about those racial epithets that arouse such controversy... but that's for another entry. As a lover of language, I embrace words in all their manifestations and all their multiple meanings. Expletives have their place, especially when they help us to let off steam. But I do prefer the intentional and conscious use of language over the casual, imprecise variety. I prefer, in the immortal words of Dr. Seuss, to "say what I mean and mean what I say."