Elvis Presley's Shirt

I think there must have been
something that led up to this, some
forgotten back-story, as they call it,
since I woke with Elvis Presley’s
shirt, neatly folded, in my hands.
It had one of those Nehru necks
and was beautifully embroidered
around the upper chest with pastel
flowers. This was a fund-raising
event, I understood, for charity,
perhaps, or a political cause, since
my friend Michael had brought it
in as a donation. Since Michael
has been a professional musician
in his time, I guessed he once
had played in Elvis Presley’s
band and that Elvis had given him
this flowered shirt as a gesture
of appreciation. It was a mystery
to me why my friend Michael
had decided now to part with it
no matter what the circumstance,
and I woke up thinking, this shirt
must surely have both sentimental
and serious monetary value, having
once belonged to Elvis, how strange
to be sacrificing it in this way;
but then I’ll admit that my friend
Michael was, as indeed was Elvis,
a bit of a mystery to me anyway.

A Visitor

He struts ahead
pompously, chest
thrust forward, head
nodding, nervous, eyes
alert for danger, past
our house. A touch
of self-importance there,
I judge. I have
a question for this
crow: why walk
when you can fly?

And...

Do you think that the US would have more leverage with nations like China, India and Russia on the Burma crisis, had we not blotted our international copybook so badly with Iraq--and with our generally arrogant, world-strutting attitude, these past few years? Just wondering... It's frustrating to see us so weak and ineffectual when monks and other citizens are being beaten and done to death by those intolerable generals and their military minions. Would we have been so completely powerless had we not squandered the goodwill extended to us at the time of the World Trade Center attacks?

Karma Revisited; and a Poem at Five-Thirty

Meditation done,
I sit here wondering
where today
will take me. Where
will it take you?

and...

O.J.'s Karma

So we're back there again. The "loathesome O.J." as Mureen Dowd calls him in her New York Times column today. Such a dreadful, story, filled with so many ironies and complexities. Did he do it? That old question. I wanted, at first, all those years ago, to believe he didn't. He was, after all, a remarkable athlete in his time. He seemed, from everything one saw and read about him, to be a young man of charm and intelligence. Besides, I was, all those years ago, a professor at USC and, by virtual necessity, a USC fan. There was also, I confess, a kind of reverse racist part of me that did not want to think ill of him for nothing better than reverse racist reasons. I think, in this, that I shared a lot in common with those vocal parts of the African American community that sided with him.

Despite all of which, the evidence seemed indisputable: he did it. And his subsequent life--at least so far as it has come to our collective attention through the media--has done nothing to ameliorate his image or soften the gut feeling of hs guilt. He has seemed, as Ellie mildly put it, like a "very troubled man."

And now this further melodrama to distract us all from the war in Iraq, the health care problems that this nation faces--no, refuses to face--the widespread social injustices made worse by the inequality of educational opportunity, an administration beleagured in consequence of its own incompetence, cronyism and corruption, an ignorance and/or apathy that undermines the voting process in what we are pleased to call our "democracy"... despite these and other problems, we have this new melodrama to distract us.

Amidst it all, the word "karma" pops up, on the lips of no less a dignitary than NBC's Matt Lauer, who asks Kim Goldman, Ron's sister, if this is O.J.'s karma, as some, it seems, are saying. She says she thinks it might be karma giving that old Goldman family nemesis "a tap on the shoulder." (I'm with Thailandgal, by the way, on the subject of the Goldmans' publishing of that book. See her 9/14 entry.)

Well, I had a bit of a shudder hearing a word that's important to me used in this particular context. On the other hand, what's so precious about a word? I abuse them all the time, and they generously stick with me anyway. And who knows, maybe this latest episode in O. J. Simpson's ill-starred life is indeed a way of past actions catching up with him. I can't claim access to the secret inner truths of any other person's life. It's hard enough to hold myself accountable for mine.

"Good Fences...

...make good neighbors," wrote Robert Frost, famously, in his poem, "Mending Wall." Or walls, or gates, or hedges. Frost actually attributed the words, in the last line of his poem, to a neighbor. His own opinion, I think, was expressed in that other line: "Something there is that doesn't love a wall,/That wants it down"--although that, too, he attributed to other forces, those, perhaps, of nature.

Anyway, Ellie and I have something of a disagreement. Not really a disagreement, because we both see the other's point of view. A couple of times a week, we walk our hill--the same hill where we have lived, in three different houses, for the past thirty-five years. We take George, the dog, and walk up around the streets, past our former abodes, for a little less than a half hour for the full circuit. It's actually how we found our first (owned) house--walking around the hill from our first (rented) one. George, of course, was not around at the time. In those days, we had a Simaese cat named Tuzigoot, after an ancient Indian ruin in Arizona.

Still, we have been walking this hill for thirty-five years, believe it or not, and we have watched the changes. There has been a good deal of remodeling going on of late--thanks, presumably, to the increase in property values and the favorable interest rates. What I've been noticing particularly in recent weeks is the proliferation of fences--and wall, and gates, and hedges. Take a look at them all, some newly completed, some under construction:
















These are just a few examples that I snapped this morning on our walk. There are more...

But here's our disagreement. Ellie's first take on this is primarily from an aesthetic point of view. She sees it as home improvement, a way of making otherwise dull house fronts more attractive. I have a darker view. I tend to see it as a relfection of the zeitgeist. I see it as being about security, privacy, secrecy, the fear of others and the need to protect oneself from them. I see it in the context of the misnamed Patriot Act, the obsessive secrecy of our current administration, a society petrified that others might spy on them and uncover their secrets.

What's good about this argument, of course, is that we're both right. And lest I begin to think myself too righteous, Ellie took pains to remind me that at our first (owned) house on the hill, I was all in favor of a locked gate at the bottom of the stairs that led up to the front door from the street. I didn't take a picture of that one. In fact, this morning we didn't even pass it. We took a different route.

Opera: Grand and Soapy

Last night, Saturday, Ellie and I indulged in an evening of arias from grand opera at the Laguna Beach "Pageant of the Masters" outdoor amphitheater. The night before, Friday, we had watched the first episode of "Tell Me You Love Me," the new drama series on HBO television. Same theme: sex. Different eras, different media, different modes...

It was good to be out under the stars with friends and community. A good audience, a good crowd. It was good to feel cool, cold, even, as the evening lengthened, after the summer heat waves, which have seemed especially oppressive this year. It was good to be in the post-tourist season. And good to be regaled with the awesome reaches of the human voice, and share in the awesome range of human emotion. Passion is a rare quality in that it embraces the extremes of light and dark, the heights of ecstasy and the depths of grief. It's the human soul's most extravagant expression of the most basic of all drives (with the possible exception of material sustenance): human sexuality.

Because what else is this bloviating all about? Desire, possession, rejection, despair. Expressed in the close-to-heavenly sounds of operatic aria, it does--to use the word my friend used after the performance--"transport." It takes us to a place where feeling is untrammelled by the wonderfully absurd, inherent clumsiness of the mating of two human beings, or by the inadequacies of language. The soul soars in response to the voices, and in response to the ancient music of desire within ourselves. The aria gives us that "tune beyond us, yet ourselves" of which Wallace Stevens wrote in "The Man with the Blue Guitar."

Ah, yes. But I found myself missing some important part of the grandeur of grand opera, in an evening of arias strung together for no other purpose than the aesthetic one. I missed the grand scenes, the outrageous narrative, the over-the-top staging. I'm honestly no great opera buff, and my knowledge of opera music is limited at best. Those moments when I have most enjoyed it have been those when I am swept up in the story-line, "operatic" though it may be, and overwhelmed by the sheer theatricality of it all. The songs are, well, a part of it. The company, last night, did what they could to make up for this missing context with glorious costumes, lighting, rudimentary sets--but I confess I became just a wee bit bored. The songs were not enough, for me, in themselves, strung together like glittering beads on a necklace. And I noticed, not for the first time, about myself, that my sensibility responds more to words and narrative form than it does to music. Still, a truly lovely evening.

"Tell Me You Love Me," by contrast, was almost the dead opposite. Sex without the splendor, and without the arias. Sex, in a word, as most of us come to know it, the grubbier, more insecurity-fraught business of getting our needs met and trying at the same time to meet our partner's. That, and dodging the mines and booby traps of tolerable relationship. As such, this drama--well, this soap "opera"--comes as close as you can get to a reality show. For good reason, surely: the ratings. (My guess--confirmed by a quick Google on the side--is that the term "soap opera" derives from its need to literally sell soap.)

Of its genre, though, I'd have to say that the first episode of "Tell Me You Love Me" was very good. Very good indeed. The drama follows three couples at different stages of relationship: the young, the "passionate," the not-yet-married, simply ravenous for the immediate satisfaction of mutual physical invasion; the older, as yet childless couple struggling with infertility--hers? his?--and the transformation of sex into a different, more clinical-technological process, with potentially disastrous effects on the pleasures involved; and the third, more advanced, with young children whose presence makes such demands on the resources of time, affection, and sheer physical capacity that the sexual drive gets shoved aside or satisfied in moments of solitary, joyless desperation. (A masturbation scene, extraordinarily well done...)

The strong point here is that no one is to blame. No good guys, no bad guys. The couples clearly love each other. They just manage to mess things up, as the rest of us do, in the daily balancing act between love and its ultimate physical manifestation, sex. And the sex, like the love, is problematic--though the protagonists insist (don't we all?) that everything in the bedroom is just "fine." They are more apt to fake a sense of satisfaction than to admit to anything more damaging to the ever-vulnerable ego. The drama works well, too, in its frank depictions of sexual acts, which are real, explicit, not coy, a little clumsy (the word comes back: is this just me??!!) always caught somewhere between the sublime and the absurd and, as sex tends to be, sometimes blissful, erotic, sometimes simply mundane.

Well, you may have guessed that I enjoyed this show immensely. I intend to come back to it this very evening, for the next episode. You might say I'm hooked. Next I'll have to figure out what all this has to do with the Buddha.

Happy Sunday, everyone. What's left of it...

Back in L.A.

Yes, I'm back here in Los Angeles--at least for one night. Then on, this morning, to our Laguna Beach retreat, where we plan to spend the rest of the month, until Labor Day, in glorious stillness and serenity. Understanding, of course, that to make a plan is to invite something quite different to happen. We'll see. I do intend to use this space, in a later edit, to conclude the travelog of our trip up to British Columbia. For the moment, though, this poem arrived at 5:15 this morning. Let's call it...

Restless, Still

Ten days
on the road
and my heart
is still
in transit.
Of my mind
this morning
I ask
stillness;
but my mind
is still
a vagabond,
still filled
with the shfiting
images of pine
trees, inlets
and silver coves,
the salt smell
of seaweed, tide
pools. Here
in the city
sirens, the hum
of constant traffic.
Restless, I wake
too early. I
sit and write
this poem.
I need
to put down
roots, again.

Vancouver--Day 2

Dawn
Our twelfth floor
hotel balcony: a pink
dawn. Down below us, a score
of seagulls drift
and scream incessantly.
Below them,
a screech of brakes:
the city wakes.

Thus, yesterday morning during meditation; thus, too, this morning.

Ah, yesterday! A fabulous day in Vancouver. The sun shone all day. The locals marveled: all last week, nothing but rain, and now two days of nothing but sun.

I crossed the street early for a cup of Starbucks—and in the hope that Starbucks here would carry, as they do down south, the New York Times. Anxious for news of the Tour… No, no Times. But coffee…

We made an early start, walking back down Robson Street and turning down Burrard, as instructed, to the little tub-boat ferry that took us across a narrow stretch of bay—blue, blue water!



—to the huge market on the Granville Island wharfs.


Quite a spectacle, with dozens of fruit and vegetable stalls inside, bakeries and flower shops, and a host of small café counters. Needing breakfast, Ellie opted for a slice of grape bread, I for a small wheat loaf and a pat of butter picked up at a different stand, and we sat out on the dockside with a cup of coffee, feeding bread crumbs to the gulls.

After wandering for a while down the narrow streets behind the market and visiting a couple of rather junky souvenir shops, Ellie found a jewelry stall to her liking and sprung for $15 for a couple of pairs of craftsman-made earrings. Then, venturing on, we began to think about visiting the Museum of Anthropology and discovered, on inquiring from some friendly natives, that it was way out along the peninsula on the campus of the University of British Columbia.

Not to be daunted, we decided on a bus, and found the number 4, (appropriately, on 4th Avenue) which took us out to the edge of the university, where some very serious swimmers were taking advantage of the sunshine, doing laps in a huge Olympic pool. A long walk through the beautifully landscaped campus—trees, lawns, flowers—to the very furthest edge from where we started out, pausing for pictures in a truly lovely rose garden with a view across the (blue! blue!) water to the snow-capped mountains and the (blue! blue!) sky beyond.

The Museum of Anthropology—currently under serious renovation—proved an extraordinary experience. The café was not up to much—and eggs salad sandwich, a bottle of lemonade—but the exhibits were spectacular, from the stunning collection of Northwest totems to the seemingly endless cases chock-a-block with artifacts from all parts of the world: baskets and jewelry, woven textiles, articles of clothing, ritual masks and carvings, weapons, hunting and fishing gears, utensils, musical instruments of all kinds—flutes and whistles, clappers, drums…




An amazing testament to the endless inventiveness and creativity of the human spirit, and one which left us awed—myself even somewhat overpowered with a strange fit of nausea and dizziness—by the pent-up, discarded spiritual power invested in these objects. Strangely, the nausea returns even as I think about them. I recall a poem I wrote a while ago about the incongruity of our "civilization" relegating such objects to the sterile confines of a museum.

On our way back through the campus, we stumbled on the university art gallery and another powerful exhibition—this one of the contemporary African American artist Glenn Ligon, who turns an unrelenting gaze on the issue of skin color and the racism still inherent in our society. Huge canvases, in which loaded texts are spelled out—and left only partially legible—in coal dust. An ironic series of "Runaway" prints, runaway slave posters featuring the artist himself in a variety of inept descriptions. And another series of strong paintings with the texts of numerous, and truly scurrilous Richard Prior "nigger" jokes—his term, borrowed by the artist, not mine, I have not earned that right.

A bus ride back to Granville Island, a ferry ride over to a different point in the city, Yaletown—a renovated downtown warehouse area, now teeming with what appeared to be trendy restaurants and boutiques. A stop to buy a new battery for our digital camera, and another long walk back though the city to our hotel. We discover that there is to be a fireworks display tonight—but are told that our room, regrettably, faces in the wrong direction. I study the map, where the fireworks barge is supposed to be, and think, well, maybe...

A shower, a catch-up on the travesty of the Tour de France—Michael Rasmussen, the overall leader, now fired by his team for not showing up for drug tests, and out of the race—and out to dinner at Cin Cin, an excellent, second-story Italian restaurant overlooking Robson Street, where crowds of people are streaming down toward the site of fireworks. We shared an excellent fig and prosciutto starter, a salad, and a lobster linguini, and enjoyed a glass of wine recommended by the helpful (Chinese, from Calgary!) waitress, then headed back to our hotel. To discover, miracle of miracle, that we had front row and center seats for the fireworks…

A spectacular end to a spectacular day.

For Lady Bird...

I saw, just now
the repeat of
an old televison
interview with
Charles Kuralt &
the late Lady
Bird Johnson
on the subject
of her beloved
wildflowers, their
talk interspersed
with images of
daisies, Texas
bluebonnets &
a thousand other
beauties; & I
thought, they
are both gone,
sadly, these two
human beings,
with Lady Bird
now so lately
departed; & then
I thought, but
not before those
flowers died, all
of them, the
myriad of them,
gone; & then
I thought, yes,
everything is
as it should be,
no? Everything
is just exactly
as it should be.

From Passau

A Sadness


There is a sadness
greeting someone
I will never know.
He stands on the far
side of the Danube,
fishing, early morning
in dark shirt and padded
vest; I on the deck
of a tourist cruise
ship, passing. Raising
an arm in slow salute,
I wave, and he, too,
raises his, in silent
answer, man to man
across the stretch
of water. There
he is; here, I,
fellow travelers
in the flow of time,
just as, between us
the big river flows.
Oh, yes, a sadness,
in the closeness
and the distance
between men and men.


And a frustration, too. It's really hard to get online, and harder still to get the pictures posted. I plan to do what I can with the text, and add in the pictures when it gets easier. Here's the update:


TUESDAY

We woke at the same time this morning, for a change, and Ellie and I got up for a walk together. We had hoped for the canal bank, but today there was no access; and next we found that the spacious upper deck was denied us, too. So we settled instead for a half hour’s meditation on the lower deck, up front, and enjoyed the feeling of the rising sun gradually warming our faces. Not to mention the smell of bacon rising from the galley.

Buffet breakfast, again. They do a great job of it. The only problem is keeping the selection to manageable proportions for the waistline. Then a quick shower—we have discovered that the bathroom is perfectly commodious (to use a favorite word of Ellie’s)—and off to an 8:45 start to board buses for the first leg of the day’s journey. We reached Kehlheim in short order, and were led on a walking tour through the town by a former town councilman whose English was, well, sufficient, but not proficient. A somewhat garrulous but well-meaning gentleman, he offered a little more in the way of statistical detail than we would have wanted, or could expect to remember.

Kehlheim’s history, in other words, proved instantly forgettable, but it was a pleasant little town to visit, quite picturesque, and it was good to take a walk. Our trek led us through to the other side of the town, and our first glimpse of the Danube: distinctly green, not blue, but otherwise quite lovely. We boarded an excursion boat—not ours—and cruised upriver through the spectacular Danube Gorge, admiring the great limestone cliffs on either side, watching herons fly, and enjoying the songs of countless other birds on either bank.

We made a stop, beyond to gorge, to visit the ancient Weitenburg monastery with its thousand year-old brewery. The church proved to be one of the finest examples of Baroque architecture I have ever seen: the altar piece is a magnificent sculptural representation of St. George, patron saint of the monastery, astride a nearly life-sized rearing horse with, to his right, the maiden in distress and to his left the dragon he is about to slay with his great lance. An unusual scene to find behind the altar, and powerfully theatrical in its three-dimensionality. Of special appeal, to me, were the sculptural effects around the base of the cupola, with extraordinary puffy clouds created out of stone supporting the figures of four archangels—not to mention numerous putti. The two artist brothers, architect and painter/sculptor—sorry, I’ve forgotten their names—whose first great project this was, included their good selves in the whole scheme of things, the one in three dimensions, grinning, leaning down over the balustrade, the other a painted portrait, next to him, in the “heaven” of the ceiling.

A good dark beer in the courtyard of the monastery, thanks to the monks, and a good long walk along the river bank to where our buses were parked, the closest road access point to the monastery. A bus ride, then, up to a high promontory above Kehlheim, an a brief photo op stop to catch the view and the great round “Liberation Tower” atop the hill. Then on to Regensburg by bus, to meet up with the Viking Spirit again, now docked for the first time on the Danube.

Regensburg proved to be a delightful town, with steep narrow cobble-stone streets, a thousand squares and courtyards, medieval buildings, and the remains of a massive Roman wall. The Roman had a large encampment at a fortress here, and their heritage is still in evidence. I chose to leave the tour at a certain point in the center of town, seeking connection at an internet café—and finding only frustration. Met up with Ellie again to visit what had once been the Jewish quarter—a contemporary memorial to those lost, and a stairway down to what we heard was an underground city, now accessible only by advance request. We wandered around town a little further, before returning to the boat just in time to escape a welcome rainstorm.

Weaking, I ante’d for an online connection, and managed yesterday’s post—still frustrated because I needed time to organize the pictures and didn’t have time or leisure at my disposal. We had thought about eating out, in town, but the rain helped change our minds, and we settled for dinner on board and an evening stroll, post rain, after eating. Back at the ship and to bed in decent time—only to be woken an hour later by a blinding light from the cabin window. I suppose we were passing through another lock. A nuisance, because it was so hard to get back to sleep. Oh, and during the night, Ellie managed to upset a glass of water over her duvet.

This morning, as I write this, we have just docked at Passau.

Thanks for posting, Cardozo. Sorry I don't have time to read!!! Cheers, PaL

The Aging Suit

They showed it
on television, on their tour
of a commercial aircraft
factory, the “aging suit”—invented
to show their twenty-
and thirty-something young designers
the joys of growing
old. How the weight
of the once strong upper body
sinks to the waist and gathers
there, morphing
from muscle into that other
stuff; how an unwanted
layer of flesh
attaches everywhere, ballast
to replace the missing cargo
of youthful buoyancy.
The aging suit inhibits
those easy twists and bends
of youth and replicates
the constriction of the joints,
the lethargy that beckons us
invitingly to comfortable
immobility and leaves us
breathless after a few steps.
At least those young folks, enviably,
can take the damn thing off.
There’s others, less fortunate—well,
just older—like myself,
who are stuck with it
for life. It won’t come off,
no matter how we wriggle.
It's real to me.
I feel my aging suit, every
minute of every single day.
Come to think of it,
why don’t they design,
for men, at least, the “aging
jock strap”—the one
that induces unresponsiveness
and boredom, causing
that obstinate refusal
to stand up and be counted
when it matters—not to mention
sudden, humiliating collapse,
on stage, in mid-performance.
Young folks
could surely learn from that.
Not to forget, of course,
the ever popular woolly
skull cap in which the brain
will nod and wander hopelessly
when asked to concentrate
and which pea-soups the head
in fog, forever wandering
pointlessly between nostalgia
and vague anxieties
about the unforeseen
and unforeseeable. Next up,
perhaps, the “death suit.”
We could all benefit
from trying that one on.

A Song For Sueng-Hui Cho

I saw the outtakes of your tapes—
the ones you took time out to mail
between shooting sprees.
You had
killed two already and would soon
kill thirty more, before yourself.
Thirty-three people, dead. Thirty-
three families left bereaved
including, grievously,
your own. I saw you brandishing
the pistols you had bought,
in some mad mimicry
of those martyr tapes of terrorists,
arms spread, eyes fierce
and focused on the plan
you had worked out
to wreak your vengeance on humanity.
I heard your rant—those parts
of it the network judged
fit to air—the spew of words
that must have seemed quite logical
to you, in your derangement.
And watching you, I thought
how easily the brain
can slip between that sane
and necessary sense of mission,
for a man, and vainglorious
obsession; how love
and hate are only
two sides of a coin; and how
your peculiar, deadly dedication
and crazed intensity
might well have served, in only
slightly altered circumstances, to save life
rather than destroy it.
Where good-hearted people
stood by to offer help,
your mind saw nothing
other than rejection—no more,
really, than a twist in the hardwiring
of the brain. I saw
a sad boy
desperate to prove himself
a man, and not knowing how,
unless by “killing Dick”—
your own revealing words—
in one ultimate, outrageous
gesture of hatred and defiance.
For this, in rage,
you found fault in everyone
around you but
yourself, and left us
gazing without solace, without
explanation, deep into the murk
of our own human souls.

Accidental Dharma

I'm trying to remember the exact phrase from yesterday's sangha, our Sunday sitting group. Than Geoff, our teacher, has this idea for an article, or possibly a book, about "accidental dharma"--the kind of dharma that occurs to all of us, if we're awake to it, at the most unlikely moments in our lives. I'm not sure that I have the right word--my short-term memory is unreliable these days--but, to use an art term, I understand it to be a kind of "found" dharma, even perhaps, more often than we would like, an "unwanted" dharma--the kind the jumps up and hits us in the face when we'd much rather have gone on with our otherwise comfortable lives. Anyway, we heard that Than Geoff is thinking of a collection of examples, and were encourged to help him out with our own experiences.

In my experience, when I think about it, it's all dharma. Take for example that moment a breakfast, a couple of days ago, at one of our local sidewalk cafes. I was sitting there with George while Ellie was inside putting in our order when I caught a glimpse of this sweet young couple... Later, at home, I wrote down this brief account. It's called, "So Young."


So Young

So I see this
sweet young pair
maybe twenty at
most, so reed
slim, so young, so
in love, they can

barely keep hands
from each other;
I watch them
quietly from where
I sit with my double
latte thinking there
was a once day
when some grey-
bearded seventy
something sat in
my place, with his
coffee, gazing
at me and my then
beloved thinking,
here is this sweet
young pair, maybe
twenty at most, so
reed slim, so very
young, so in love
they can barely
keep hands from
each other. And
thinking that man
who sat there at
that very moment,
watching, can now
no longer be with
us, at least not
in the form in
he then existed.

So what's a budding Buddhist to say about the Oscars? All that glitz and glamor? All that extravagance? All that wealth... those million-dollar, diamond-encrusted shoes? And all that flesh? I watched it. Did you? Betcha did.

First thought: it's easy to condemn such displays of material excess and self-congratulation, especially in the light of a world full of hunger, and violence, and abject poverty; and a world, of course, that we are in the process of destroying to support our common, exploitative greed. The Oscars represent conspicuous consumption at its worst. It's as easy to condemn, then, as the pomp and extravagance of the Catholic Church, say, in the Vatican--or indeed of those gold-encrusted Buddhist shrines. It does seem like a blatant contradiction, to be indulging in this kind of ostentation at the upper echelons, while at the same time extolling the virtues of simplicity and self-denial to the flock.

And yet... I watched. As did a billion other human beings, spellbound by the spectacle of celebrities celebrating each other's celebrity. So then it comes down to accidental dharma. What's the teaching? That it's all karma? That some of us are granted apparent privilege in life, for reasons we can never know, whilst others grovel? That we aspire to the privilege that we imagine others to enjoy? That behind the facade of glamor, likely, hides as much suffering as the rest of us experience in our lives? That everything, including privilege, is ephemeral? That privilege brings with it both responsibilities and dangers, if we are to believe that our actions bring inevitable consequences? Certainly, if we do subscribe to this belief, we must take special care that our actions carry the full weight of intention, that we act in consciousness of consequences...

Okay, I'll confess that I'm a bit bewildered by all this, my thoughts a bit scattered, as was my morning meditation. Perhaps there's just too much stuff here, too much mud in the water to find the clarity. Did you watch the Oscars? I'd love to hear what other thought the teaching was... if any.

Little Pricks

Remember that
little prick in
the bathtub, all those
years ago? Your
cousin's? Donald's? It
was all wet and
shiny, and he
popped it up, out
of the soapy water, like
it was a lighthouse
and he rammed
his bath boat into
the rocks, sinking it. He
was not ashamed
of his, as you were
of yours, it was
just fun for him. You
were amazed and a bit,
yes, shocked, and you hid
yours under the suds,
shyly, despite his
invitation to join in
the fun. So how come
my mind recalls
this with such intense
clarity from no more
than six years old, today
as I wake, the big
fan motionless above
my head, against
the white boards of
the bedroom ceiling?

4:53 AM

4:53 AM. Above
the ceaseless night
hum of the city,
a siren's shrill,
distant; then
another, closer.
I lie here
thinking: some
person's disaster,
some person's
agony, some
person's death,
perhaps. Send
metta: may
this person be
spared the pain
and suffering.
May this person
not be deprived
of the good fortune
he has attained.

A Movie... and a Hike

About halfway through "BABEL" I wondered what I was doing there. By the time the film ended, I understood why I had stayed. It's a wrenching movie, with violence at its core. Knowing little about it before seeing it, I was ready for some harmless escapist fare.

What I got was something far more difficult. It's about human beings caught in the act of being human--in the most dire of all imaginable circumstances.

It's about bad things happening to good people, and about bad people's cold indifference to them. It's about the consequences of mindless action, about random acts of violence and calculated cruelty. It's about love and hatred, the results of fear and anger and mistrust, about guilt and innocence, official heartlessness and individual compassion.

It's about the agony of loss and grief, and the mad, occasional ecstasy of letting go all inhibitions. It's about the joys and fears around human sexuality, about defensiveness and vulnerability. It's about the difference between races, cultures, and religions--and about their interdependence. It's about the shared identity of the human species.

It's about being out on the edge and the fear of falling off it, about the brutal imminence and randomness of death in the midst of life. It's a film brimming with the everyday tragedy and folly of human existence--what Balzac called the "Comedie Humanine." It's about the way we butt up against each other in the strangest and most difficult of ways, how we stroke each other--and rub each other the wrong way.

It's also about language (the "babble" of human voices) and the ways in which we communicate with each other, about the limitations and the failures of communication that produce sometimes dreadful results.

"Babel"'s director, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarrita, has done a powerful job in confronting us with the complexity, the contradictions, and the suffering of ordinary people in the world. He also celebrates the nobility and selflessness of which we are capable at times of stress. An outstanding movie.

*

After watching "Babel" on Saturday night, a completely different experience on Sunday morning: our sangha took that silent meditation hike I mentioned earlier. We gathered first at Eva's home, where we meet for our usual Sunday morning sit, and carpooled inland some forty minutes through the endless suburban developments of Orange County, finding ourselves finally beyond it all in the wilderness area of the old Irvine Ranch now protected by the Nature Conservancy. After a few words of introduction to the flora and fauna of this natural environment, we double-filed on our four-mile, silent expedition into the back country, ending our trek--a small group at a time--at the dark, lovely grotto that is aptly named Dripping Springs. Here, water sifts over decades through the rock before reaching the mossy surface of the grotto, where it makes myriad small, intricate paths down between leafy ferns and the exposed roots of trees to drip, finally, in a musical pattern of gentle sound, into a clear pool tinged with an otherworldly violet hue. I thought of a Chinese landscape painting reinvented in glistening resin by the artist Jacci ten Hartog and then reclaimed by nature as her own...

A couple of poems. The first is "High."

HIGH...


(With thanks to Jerry and Eva and our other guides for all the joy you brought us...)

... on the limestone
canyon wall, a pair
of turkey vultures roosts
on the dead branch
of a tree that clings,
forlorn, to the rock
face. One languid flap,
two, and the first
is airbourne, drifting
out over the canyon.
The second follows,
circling in behind, Soon,
above, new arrivals:
two red-tailed hawks,
soaring, undercarriage
catching the light against
an azure sky, speculating
the territory. Then,
out of the leafy, dark
undergrowth below,
a shower of golden
sycamore leaves, caught
by a sudden gust, flung
out into the light. They,
too, catch the updraft,
like the birds, spiraling
as they rise easily
a hundred feet, more,
flashing, high. All
nature seems heaven-
bound this morning:
we humans only stand,
rooted, and gaze in awe.


The second, shorter:


Thanks, motorcyclists,
for teaching me, from far,
what silence is about.

Viva Voce

(Un)Intentional Haikus

by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
as written down by Peter Clothier
January 28, 2007




the fear:
more dangerous
than the tiger

*

learn
to perceive your anger
as dangerous

*

be aggressive
not out of anger
but out of strategy

*

what made me angry
today? why? what
was the issue?

*

your anger starts
speaking; its reasons
not so good

*

in case of possession, spread
lots of metta
to the spirit

*

give these things
space; think of it
as possession

*
we all
have multiple
personalities

*

"as excited
as a Chinese person
during a fire"

*

the Buddhist approach:
dealing with anger
spread lots of goodwill

*

next time you get
angry, remember: you look
really ugly

*

remind yourself:
I'm not seeing straight
right now: be quiet

*

let loose, or
bottle it up: neither
of these is healthy

*

forty years
of bottled-up anger? Put it
in little bottles and sell it

*

use the energy of anger
without the blindness
to work it out

*

what could I have said
differently, so that person
would not have blown up?

*

think: often
the opening words
are the important ones

*

how to deal with peole
that you hate? analogies
change your perception

*

when we're angry
we think we're in a position
of total power

*

seeing goodness
in other people
nourishes ourselves

*

when you're thirsty
and trembling, you need
what water you can get

*

this person does have
some good; let's
forcus on that first

*

if you spend your time
hating that person
you consume yourself

*

acknowledge their power;
let's see
if we can work together

*

standing here
I haven't seen
anybody

*

that's us; we need
the goodness of other people
to nourish our own goodness

*

when you're in the human
realm, there are going to be
injustices

*

if we take injustices
personally, we've got
a problem

*

why is this
happening to us? We're
human beings

*

shame and compunction;
when they're gone
you're left without defense

*

with anger, there's
a surge of power; but it's
a false power

*

if he keeps acting
in that way, he causes
trouble for himself

*

the sword
coming out of the pillar of fire:
what was that about?

*

may you learn
to do those things
that lead to true happiness

*

am I speaking
out of kindness, or
vindictiveness?

*

who made you
the National Bureau
of Standards?

*

you're getting upset
about the normal course
of human events

*

equal to the great earth;
try to make your goodwill
that big

*

the Buddha is not
teaching us to be
doormats

*

you can defend yourself
but without hatred
for that person

*

if you have an attitude
of goodwill, more of your mind
is available

*

there are times when fear
is skillful:
it helps you

*

when your fear gets tied
with anger and delusion,
that's when it's dangerous

*

your big fear: to do something
unskillful. I'd rather
go down honorably

*

we tend
to spot fear easily
in each other

*

the state of your mind:
more valuable
than your body

*

you've got
something nobody
can touch

*

it takes an act
of will to maintain
that attitude

*

when we grow up
as a country
we have to live with danger

*

a stingy person
cannot attain nirvana; you've got
to be generous

*

if you're talking about
our basic nature, well,
we need food

*

the Buddha
never mentioned
Buddha nature

*

when people asked
certain questions, the Buddha said
don't ask

*

it takes time
to become a Buddha:
it's your choice

*

a false assumption:
that you can go out
and save somebody

*

at some point in their life
people will want
to find a way out of their suffering

*

even this wonderful state
is not
the ultimate freedom

*

is the mountain
heavy? Not
if you don't try to lift it