"We are formed and molded by our thoughts. Those whose minds are shaped by selfless thoughts give joy when they speak or act. Joy follows them like a shadow that never leaves them."
~The Buddha
~The Buddha
Sunday, July 31, 2011
Early Morning Buddhist Inspiration - 7/31/2011
"We are formed and molded by our thoughts. Those whose minds are shaped by selfless thoughts give joy when they speak or act. Joy follows them like a shadow that never leaves them."
~The Buddha
~The Buddha
Saturday, July 30, 2011
Early Morning Buddhist Inspiration - 7/30/2011
"Unity can only be manifested by the Binary. Unity itself and the idea of Unity are already two."
~The Buddha
~The Buddha
Early Morning Buddhist Inspiration - 7/30/2011
"Unity can only be manifested by the Binary. Unity itself and the idea of Unity are already two."
~The Buddha
~The Buddha
The Conference
Well, we're off to a good start at the First Annual Buddhist Conference. I had a dreadful drive in rush hour traffic out to the tiny camps of the University of the West in Rosemead--a great opportunity to remember the dharma. And, at registration, right away ran into Clyde Grossman of "Do No Harm," an organization that gives away free stuff reminding us of that most basic of all Buddhist principles. Until I traded in my old Prius for a new Prius last year, I had one of his bumper stickers on my car, and posted a picture of it on The Buddha Diaries. I was particularly chuffed because Clyde told me that he had read the entry in my blog that very morning, and that I had managed to put his own feelings about attending the conference precisely into words.
I hung with Clyde for a while, finding a shady spot from which to observe the geeks tribe assemble--over a hundred of us in all, including a good number of young people. Staved off the pangs of hunger with a handful of carrot sticks and a couple of broccoli spears, and had the good fortune to meet up with Ken McLeod, of Unfettered Mind, on the way into the lecture by Shinzen Young. A good, brief opportunity to compare paths, his leading him more than ever into writing; I interested more than ever before in teaching.
Shinzen spoke about his "happiest thought"--the idea, if I have it right, that science and religion will finally put their heads together to create an exponential growth curve in human consciousness, speeding us ever upward into a better world. As readers of The Buddha Diaries may recall from a recent entry, his thinking jibes more with my sister's than my own. I tend to be more pessimistic about human nature. I liked Shinzen's metaphor of the chicken and the egg. It's not the usual conundrum, "which came first?" Shinzen sees the chicken as the teacher, the egg's shell as the delusions of the ego that constrain the student, who pecks away from within to break out into freedom, while the mother hen helps by pecking from the outside. Outside the egg is the world of pure potential. Expanding on this metaphor, he sees not just the student, but humanity itself confined, as yet, inside the shell. The Buddha, then, is perhaps the teacher who will help us escape from the imprisonment in our delusions.
It's a nice thought. There's a good number of us pecking away as best we can, and I suppose that the Buddhist Geeks Conference, as much as anything, is about how we can make the most of the amazing technological power at our disposal to accelerate the action. But it's a tough shell to crack. I drove back home to hear the latest news about the current Washington fiasco, and I regret to say that my hopes are not so high as Shinzen's. Mindfulness and compassion seem to be in pitifully short supply still in our country--as they are, indeed, in the world beyond our borders.
Friday, July 29, 2011
Buddhist Geeks
Today I go a-geeking. I signed up months ago for the first annual Buddhist Geeks conference in Rosemead, California, dreamed up, as you might imagine, by Buddhist Geeks. I woke this morning without the usual flutter of excitement about attending such events; on the contrary, the truth is that I'd rather be in my own little retreat down in Laguna Beach, enjoying a summer off. I don't feel like much of a Buddhist, still less a geek. My technological skills are limited pretty much to doing my blog and answering the endless flood of email. Geeks, I judge, are made of far more computer-literate stuff.
I do have a regular meditation practice, though. And I write The Buddha Diaries--which fact perhaps led me to imagine when I signed up that I might qualify as a Buddhist geek. I sometimes worry that it's impertinent of me to invoke the Buddha's name when my blog is certainly far from preaching the religion. What I try to do--what I hope the blog does--is to explore the vagaries of my mind, following its journeys as a way to live a life examined; and a life, insofar as possible, lived in accordance with what I understand of the teachings of the dharma. With what little I have managed to gather of wisdom along the way, I believe them to be the wisest and most fully human instructions that exist for a life well lived.
So I ask myself what might be playing out in my mind, that I so lack enthusiasm for this worthwhile and interesting event. There is, I think, a genuine fatigue factor. This past week--what with helping our daughter to get moved to her new home and the sadness caused by the death of my friend, Magu--has been filled with activity and fraught with emotion. Then, too, I look back--gratefully, be it said--on a year filled with travel and speaking activities, along with a good deal of writing. My body-mind, a creature of habit, has been looking forward to the annual retreat that normally begins in mid-July, but this year has been postponed until a few days into August.
There's also an absurdly unjustified fear factor that eats away at me somewhere below the level of consciousness. I learned the habit of hiding myself away as a handy means of self-protection as a child, and have never completely unlearned that habit. I do not find it easy to step out into a crowd of strangers--all of whom, I imagine, are much smarter and better informed than I. Better Buddhists. Better geeks. I should "know better" at my age. Ken McLeod, who will be speaking at the conference, writes of these "reactive patterns" that stand between us and the happiness and clarity we seek. I find it helpful to bring them into conscious view by writing them out, as I am doing now.
So I'm headed out this afternoon to attend the first evening's keynote speech by Shinzen Young. I did a couple of my earliest retreats with this excellent teacher, and it will be good to hear him speak again. His topic is "Towards a Science of Enlightenment." I'm sure there is a lot to learn. I wish I could take all of you with me...
Early Morning Buddhist Inspiration - 7/29/2011
"The wise ones fashioned speech with their thought, sifting it as grain is sifted through a sieve."
~The Buddha
~The Buddha
Early Morning Buddhist Inspiration - 7/29/2011
"The wise ones fashioned speech with their thought, sifting it as grain is sifted through a sieve."
~The Buddha
~The Buddha
Thursday, July 28, 2011
REBELS IN PARADISE:
The Los Angeles Art Scene and the 1960s
by Hunter Drohojowska-Philp
I arrived in Southern California in the summer of 1968, in time for the last year of the 1960s decade. A poet, newly appointed to teach Comparative Literature at USC, I'd had little contact with the world of contemporary art--and therefore no idea at all that I had arrived here on the cusp of the transformation of Los Angeles from hick town at the opposite end of the country from the serious center of post-war art (New York) into a contestant for an estimable place in the international art scene. It was not until after the seminal Ferus Gallery had closed that I slipped sideways into this effervescent action as a writer in the early 1970s.
So I missed the 1960s, at least the years that Hunter Drohojowska-Philp writes about in her new book. Since my wife and her family were much involved, however, I soon caught on to the excitement of the recent past and the hopes for a thriving future. I sat down at the family dining table with Ed Kienholz and Claes Oldenburg, and met many of the charismatic leading characters from the pages of this book. Many of them (us!) are still around and still active on the scene--some of them, at this point, septa- and octogenarians. Hard to believe! In Drohojowska-Philp's narrative, they all seem so young--as indeed they were.
Those were heady times, and the author captures them in a swift-paced, cheerful romp as she guides us through the decade, pausing long enough to make her entertaining story at once human and informative; she fleshes out the often cocky, combative personalities of her major players, evoking their friendships and their sometimes intense rivalries. The artists, some native to Southern California, others attracted by the promise of beaches, gorgeous girls (or, in David Hockney's case, the boys!) and, principally, of freedom from all the old ways of doing things, are at the center of everything. We know them through their work: the Eds--Moses, Kienholz and Ruscha--Robert Irwin, Craig Kauffman, Billy Al Bengston, Joe Goode, John Altoon, Wallace Berman, George Herms, Lloyd Hamrol and many others, including, later, John Baldessari, whose influence has been more powerful than theirs in succeeding generations; and through the generally familiar lore of the Ferus Gallery, Barney's Beanery, Artforum, the Pasadena Art Museum, Chouinard and Otis, and so on. So far as contemporary art was concerned, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art was barely past its birth throes.
Drohojowska-Philp highlights the L.A. artists' drive for independence, from each other and, importantly, from the New York establishment and East Coast artists like Oldenburg, Johns and Rauschenberg, and also Andy Warhol, whose career was effectively launched by the efforts of Irving Blum at Ferus. While there was some early interface between galleries here and there, it seems true that even the most important of Los Angeles artists have received scant attention from New York, and instead have more successfully leap-frogged "the pond" for more friendly reception on the European continent. A motif of Drohojowska-Philp's narrative is the macho posturing of "the studs", and the struggle of women like Judy Chicago, Miriam Shapiro and Helen Pashgian against the tide of powerful masculine energy.
The other players are the curators and the gallery dealers: Walter "Chico" Hopps and Henry Hopkins, Irving Blum, Virginia Dwan, Nicholas Wilder--again, the names are familiar. And the handful of pioneer collectors, among them Fred and Marcia Weisman, Stanley and Elyse Grinstein, Ed Janss, and my own in-laws, Dorothy and Michael Blankfort, whose excellent adventure with the Yves Klein "Immaterial" is accurately recorded in Drohojowska-Philp's book.
The author's research is meticulous, even exhaustive. Even for one familiar with much of the material, there's plenty here that's new, refreshing, and often titillating, particularly when it comes to shifting personal relationships and slightly scurrilous detail. Still, she does manage to balance out the purely entertaining "who slept with whom" scuttlebutt with a useful chronology of biographical and other factual information. She establishes the context of a cultural scene in which rock music--and its musicians--and entertainment industry notables like Dennis Hopper freely intermingle with the city's artists. We learn about the when and where and how of key art works like Kienholz's "Back Seat Dodge" and those famous soup cans, much of the information gleaned from the author's numerous first-hand interviews with key players. How much of the latter is colored by nostalgia, self-interest or simple forgetfulness is anybody's guess, but it certainly makes for a lively read.
Since the 1960s, of course, things have not been a smooth progression from those halcyon days in the Los Angeles art community. The promise seemingly established by the roaring sixties has been only sporadically fulfilled. Important galleries have come and gone--some of them to New York. Think Gagosian. Collectors have teased our institutions with the gift of their collections, only to withdraw them. Artists have experienced the frustration of neglect by major national galleries and art publications. The hegemony of the New York art machine has proven hard to shake.
And yet the legacy of the pioneers Drohojowska-Philp writes about is an enduring one. Their cheerful rebellion against all things authoritarian opened the door for the wonderfully diverse and constantly shifting art scene that thrives in Southern California today and is recognized throughout the world as perhaps the most important center for innovative artists and their work. This book does us all a favor in recalling that history with a panache that matches its own.
Early Morning Buddhist Inspiration - 7/28/2011
"The only real failure in life is not to be true to the best one knows."
~The Buddha
~The Buddha
Early Morning Buddhist Inspiration - 7/28/2011
"The only real failure in life is not to be true to the best one knows."
~The Buddha
~The Buddha
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
NORWAY--AND THE FATE OF THE HUMAN SPECIES
I have been thinking about those dreadful events in Norway and following their aftermath with the same kind of horror I felt when the World Trade Center was attacked, now nearly ten years ago. When you think of it, proportionate to the population, the death toll was even greater for that country than ours. From this distance, those small Scandinavian countries have seemed like peaceful Edens, protected from the turmoil taking place in the rest of the world. Now that illusion has been shattered, TOO, even for those of us so far removed from that corner of the world.
The poison of extreme right-wing conservatism, it seems, is seeping into every part of the global body. We have seen its effects here in the U.S., not only in the mass-murderous bombing in Oklahoma City 1995, but also in more recent acts of violence, like the attacks on doctors at abortion clinics. On a less murderous though still inordinately destructive scale, it now pervades the US Congress and threatens to mindlessly destroy the country's already fragile economy. The right, of course, has no monopoly on violent or other extremist tactics, but it does seem that the current manifestations come from that direction. Even the religiously-inspired fanaticism originates in fundamentalist rather than progressive thought.
But the phenomenon runs deeper than its political or religious pretexts. The toxicity of extremism is produced, as I see it, by human fear. We fear the Other, just as we fear what we don't know. For this self-appointed Norwegian executioner, it was the fear of immigrants, fear of Islam, fear of multi-culturalism--a fear that morphed easily, it seems, into its dark side, hatred. We have been hearing and reading about the spread of this particular poison on the European continent in recent years, and about the alarming return of right-wing conservatism. "Return" is perhaps not the right word, because this is something different from the territorial nationalism the produced the scourge of Nazism; this conservatism is pan-national. It is sadly as rife in my own "old country", England, as it is in France, Germany, the Netherlands and other European nations. And it is inspired chiefly--if I have it right--by the rising tide of immigration from the south and east, from Africa, and the Middle East, from Pakistan and South East Asia.
I'm no expert in the migration of populations, but I believe that our species is witnessing a major, millennial evolutionary shift in this regard. To support the exponential growth in our human population, we have exploited the planet, its climates and its resources to the point where the inhabitants of vast areas of the globe can no longer find the means for survival in their ancestral location. In desperation--and, interestingly, as in ancient times--many are forced to migrate in order to ensure their own survival, and in increasingly alarming numbers. There is a seemingly unstoppable population shift under way; people with different mores, different religions, different cultures, different dietary habits are moving in mass into areas that do not understand or welcome them. The resultant friction can turn, as it did in Norway, into a volatile explosive force.
Is it possible for us to turn an instinctive fear into tolerance and acceptance soon enough for the species as a whole to survive? Do we have that wisdom and that will? This is a serious--well, a deadly serious--question. On this score, my sister is more of an optimist than I am. In our past conversations--she in England, I in distant California--she has expressed her belief that we're in the midst of a great, paradigmatic shift in human consciousness which might lead--and here I extrapolate--to a more spiritual orientation and a more mutually tolerant world. If she is right, we could envision a world where wealth and health, material well-being and the resources to support it would be more equitably shared.
I tend to be less of an optimist. It's clear that, if it is to survive, humanity will have to re-think itself and the systems it has developed for its safety and survival. Capitalism, as a financial system, is creaking at the joints and shows signs of collapsing in unmanageable national debts and deficits and no longer "fair" but wildly unbalanced trade; and communism is all but dead. Traditional political systems are likewise failing under pressure: the distinction between liberal and conservative has become, depending on how you look at it, either non-existent or so vast as to be unbridgeable. Social systems are similarly no longer as functional as they once were in organizing societies and providing a network of security; the definition of "classes" is blurred beyond recognition, and what once were sturdy barriers no longer hold. Even the concept of "family" is changing, with divorce now as commonplace as the extended and, more recently, the non-traditional marriage.
No wonder there are those of us who are clinging desperately to the past and seeking its reinstatement. But there's no going back. These changes--good or bad, no matter--have taken place, are taking place before our eyes. To deny them is to deny reality, which is unhelpful. When I say we need to re-think ourselves, I'm envisioning the need for adaptive changes so radical as to be almost unthinkable. The current stalemate in "the greatest country in the world" suggests to me that we are approaching a no-exit situation; that we shall all, increasingly, find ourselves at loggerheads, unable to find our way around our own prejudices and certainties. I have to say that given what I know about human nature, I see no good outcome short of wars and famines, climatic disasters, and other thus far unimaginable catastrophes.
The planet, of course, will survive with or without us. It may be better off without our troubled and meddlesome species. It would be a shame, however, to squander all the extraordinary achievements we have made in our arts, our science and technology, just because we have failed to learn how to manage our small selves a little better. It's past time for us to look our fear in the face and acknowledge that it is capable of bringing about our imminent destruction.
Early Morning Buddhist Inspiration - 7/27/2011
"The foot feels the foot when it feels the ground."
~The Buddha
~The Buddha
Early Morning Buddhist Inspiration - 7/27/2011
"The foot feels the foot when it feels the ground."
~The Buddha
~The Buddha
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
HONORING MAGU...
I learned yesterday morning that my friend Magu had died. It's only a week since I posted a tribute that I wrote at the request of his family, as a part of their effort to raise funds from the sale of his work--in part to help defray mounting medical costs, in part to assure the safe-keeping of his legacy. I was saddened, of course, but not surprised by the news. When I visited him last week in hospital he was in palliative care and, at one point announced with a deep, heartfelt sigh that he wished only for it to be over.
Magu chose his own way, maintaining his dignity and his integrity to the end. Curiously, we did not know each other very well in any normal sense. We met only infrequently along the way, and never spent a great deal of time together. It was about six months before his death that we re-connected; I drove over to his studio in Pomona and we spent several hours pondering his art and mutual thoughts about the art world in a conversation I recorded, thinking perhaps to use it for an "Art of Outrage" segment. Afterwards, he treated me generously to lunch at his favorite Mexican restaurant in the neighborhood, where he was well known, and greeted as though he were the mayor.
I've been trying to come up with an explanation of the bond I know we both felt, despite our very obvious differences: he from East Los Angeles, proud of his Mexican heritage, Latin to his core and I, Anglo-Saxon both by birth and upbringing, much more contained in everything I think and do... I hate to admit it, but I don't even speak Spanish. Absurdly, for one who lives in Southern California, I speak fluent French and German. I should have started to learn the language when I arrived in these parts, still young enough to learn fairly easily. But I didn't. Spending time with Magu, I wished I had and felt somehow disrespectful for the neglect.
Writing briefly yesterday to Magu's son, I came up with the word "recognition." Our common ground was that feeling when you look into another person's eyes and think, "I know you and you know me." Way beyond our superficial differences, I saw the integrity and the humanity in him, and I like to think that he saw mine in me. It's a rare feeling in my experience, and one to be treasured for its rarity. I am sad that we did not spend more time together, and sad that we have lost him at too young an age--he was only seventy at the time of his death. But I feel like a better person to have known him.
I spent the day yesterday on the task of converting my tribute into an obituary. I'm not sure, yet, where it will appear, but you'll certainly find it in due course at Magulandia. Please join me, as and how you can, in honoring the memory of this man and his gifts to the community of artists everywhere.
We are losing artists. Just a couple of days ago I learned of the death of Lucian Freud. And a short while ago, there was Cy Twombley...
Early Morning Buddhist Inspiration - 7/26/2011
"Teach this triple truth to all: A generous heart, kind speech, and a life of service and compassion are the things which renew humanity."
~The Buddha
~The Buddha
Early Morning Buddhist Inspiration - 7/26/2011
"Teach this triple truth to all: A generous heart, kind speech, and a life of service and compassion are the things which renew humanity."
~The Buddha
~The Buddha
Monday, July 25, 2011
THE TOUR
The Tour de France came to its familiar conclusion on the Champs Elysees yesterday, and I was delighted that Cadel Evans won. Happy, too, for his compatriots down under. Australia must be hopping like a kangaroo. (Odd that I should hear from an Australian reader of The Buddha Diaries that same day.) It was a well-deserved one, and one this rider has been working for these many years. It was nice, too, to see the two brothers Schleck share the podium with him, in second and third place. I was rooting for them over the dour Spaniard, Alberto Contador, who has already walked away with the Tour three times.
So, yes, I did watch. I had some hesitation about watching this year, after all the doping scandals that have undermined the sport and tainted so many of its great champions. The jury is still out on some of them--including Contador and, sadly, Lance Armstrong. But like a good addict, I allowed myself to get hooked again and watched every grueling stage from start to finish, twenty one of them in all. Thanks to the marvels of modern TV technology, I did speed through the commercials and the boring parts--which consists, usually, of the first couple of hours, when a breakaway group speeds up ahead of the main peloton without, usually, much expectation of still leading at the end. The peloton is a curious, shift-shaping, amoebic creature, a hundred and more cyclists in a meandering but somehow purposeful bunch, and more often than not they swallow up their prey before the finish line. It's the last few minutes of each stage that are gripping, with individual riders vying desperately for the glory of winning a stage.
It's all rather complicated, but fascinating to watch the strengths and weaknesses of men emerge when they are put to the test. You have to admire the grit that takes them up long, steep mountainsides, sometimes between dangerously pressing ranks of cheering spectators. (What is it, I wonder, that compels men with pot bellies to shed most of their clothes at the top of icy mountains and run alongside the riders shrieking wildly? Is it the beer?) There is no other sporting event, I think, that demands so much of its athletes. They need every last ounce of their energy each day, simply to survive.
I was glad, too, that the American team of Garmin-Cervelo turned in the best team performance. They had made much of their strict, exemplary anti-doping policy, and proved a point when they finished with three riders in the top twenty, even though they had lost their team leader, Dave Zabriskie, to an earlier crash. The New York Times published an article yesterday, "A Doping-Free Tour de France?"--with a question mark at the end of the title. At least one rider was disqualified for breaking the rules on this score.
It did seem that efforts to control this problem have paid off. Still, if only because of the past history, I watched the most astounding feats of strength and stamina this year with a regretful touch of skepticism. The spectacle of Alberto Contador, a champion whose performance had been frankly indifferent thus far this year, streaking up ahead of the pack on the infamous Alpe d'Huez, left me unhappily suspicious. The same, even more sadly, with the incredible time-trail performance of Cadel Evans, which won him the Tour. The pleasure is tainted with the edge of suspicion: did they or didn't they?
It all comes down to a matter of trust. And professional cycling is not alone in having undermined our trust in the fairness of the playing field. Nor, indeed, are sports in general, despite the particular attention they receive. Can we really take the good faith of business on trust any more? Can we trust the media, responsible for providing us with the information that we need? Can we trust the fairness of the political election process? I fear that as we humans continue to overpopulate the world and find ourselves in increasingly vicious and competitive battle for survival, we become more ready to cheat others in our struggle for primacy. It's a matter of doing whatever it takes to win. In this, the Tour de France is not some deplorable exception, but rather simply a mirror of our culture.
Early Morning Buddhist Inspiration - 7/25/2011
"On life's journey faith is nourishment, virtuous deeds are a shelter, wisdom is the light by day and right mindfulness is the protection by night. If a man lives a pure life, nothing can destroy him."
~The Buddha
~The Buddha
Early Morning Buddhist Inspiration - 7/25/2011
"On life's journey faith is nourishment, virtuous deeds are a shelter, wisdom is the light by day and right mindfulness is the protection by night. If a man lives a pure life, nothing can destroy him."
~The Buddha
~The Buddha
Sunday, July 24, 2011
Early Morning Buddhist Inspiration - 7/24/2011
"In a controversy the instant we feel anger we have already ceased striving for the truth, and have begun striving for ourselves."
~The Buddha
~The Buddha
Early Morning Buddhist Inspiration - 7/24/2011
"In a controversy the instant we feel anger we have already ceased striving for the truth, and have begun striving for ourselves."
~The Buddha
~The Buddha
Saturday, July 23, 2011
Leave the House? Oh, no!
I smiled, of course, when I read MandT's cheerful response to my "cobwebs in the attic" post yesterday. "Don't clean out the attic...," it read. "Just leave the house... :)"
But I have to admit it bugged me a bit, too. It lodged uncomfortably in one of those odd crannies in the brain and kept nagging at me all day. When I thought about it, I realized what my problem was. The only "house" my mind has is this body that I walk around in--and I have no intention of leaving it just yet if I can help it. Yes, it creaks and groans a bit, but it's still serviceable enough, and I have things I still want to do.
Besides, I know there's real value in the work of cleaning out the attic. It's good to discover what I'm storing away in all those old boxes and steamer trunks, because then I'm in a good place to let it go. I'm much more likely to hold on to it if it's hidden away, because then I have an excellent excuse: after all, I wouldn't want to trash stuff that might turn out to be valuable--like my grandfather's mint copy of Martin Chuzzlewit or that stamp album from my boyhood replete with Victorian penny blacks. And I hope it's obvious that I'm not talking about the material stuff and its monetary value; like the attic itself, I mean this as no more than a metaphor for things of deeper and more lasting significance.
There are things packed away in there, too, that could have a hold on me without my even knowing it--that old emotional baggage that tends to get stuck in often ignored corners of the mind and gum up its smooth operation. It behooves me to bring them out into the light and examine them before I trash them, because otherwise who knows what messy remnants I might leave behind.
So, no. Assuming that I'm going to hang out on this planet a bit longer, better to keep working on the only house I have. And I do realize that this is not exactly what MandT had in mind when offering that kindly, presumably tongue-in-cheek advice! For which, and for these further thoughts, I thank them...
Early Morning Buddhist Inspiration - 7/23/2011
"I do not believe in a fate that falls on men however they act; but I do believe in a fate that falls on them unless they act."
~The Buddha
~The Buddha
Early Morning Buddhist Inspiration - 7/23/2011
"I do not believe in a fate that falls on men however they act; but I do believe in a fate that falls on them unless they act."
~The Buddha
~The Buddha
Friday, July 22, 2011
Early Morning Buddhist Inspiration - 7/22/2011
"He who experiences the unity of life sees his own Self in all beings, and all beings in his own Self, and looks on everything with an impartial eye."
~The Buddha
~The Buddha
Early Morning Buddhist Inspiration - 7/22/2011
"He who experiences the unity of life sees his own Self in all beings, and all beings in his own Self, and looks on everything with an impartial eye."
~The Buddha
~The Buddha
IN THE ATTIC
Ellie returns from up north today, and George and I will both be happy to see her. George has been very subdued these past few days, mostly hanging around by the door as though awaiting her return. He looks at me questioningly sometimes, and sleeps close at night. Don't try telling me that dogs are less intelligent than we humans are. It's just intelligence of a different kind. In some respects, they are way ahead of us.
He had to spend a good deal of the day yesterday on his own, while I was out helping our daughter, Sarah, with the packing to get ready for her move on Sunday. It's amazing how much junk we manage to accumulate in our lives. I found myself wishing that she'd just throw a lot of it away, or at least have a giant garage sale when she gets to the new house. It's a lot more spacious, but it can still get cluttered really quickly if she doesn't take care.
Not my business, I remind myself. But it reminds me of all the clutter in my own life; and not only the material stuff, but the clutter in my mind. This morning, as I sat in meditation, I could not help but notice how full it was, like an old attic nobody has visited for years, where I have simply thrown the stuff I was too lazy to take care of and chose, instead, to store away somewhere where I wouldn't have to see it. It's all now covered with layers of dust and draped with stringy cobwebs. I try to pick my way through it, appalled at all the boxes that I dread to open and the stacks of ancient and decaying books.
Have I mentioned that I have returned to working on the book that I shelved a few months ago, in favor of something more like a sequel to Persist? It is called, tentatively, This Is Not Me, from my favorite mantra, "This is not me, this is not mine, this is not who I am"; and the subtitle might be "Shedding Delusions." It's about, precisely, clearing out that attic I'm talking about--clearing out those old parts of myself that I no longer need, but insist on clinging onto like that clutter in the attic. It's about looking for clarity, for that clear, bright mind that I hear spoken of, but have never quite managed to find.
Thursday, July 21, 2011
FOOD
I'm actually rather pleased with myself. I stepped on the bathroom scale this morning and confirmed that I have lost ten pounds of excess weight since returning from the Midwest a couple of weeks ago. I came back five pounds heavier than my already unacceptable high, so this is progress.
The why? I suppose there's an element of vanity in it. I have not been happy with what I see when I happen to glance into a mirror--that growing protrusion below the rib cage. I have caught myself looking at men of my age, or younger, and wondering whether they are doing better in this department, or worse than I. I have taken heart when I judge them to be girthier than myself, thinking, well, I'm not yet that bad. I have envied those who do not seem to share my problem at all, whose bellies are flat and whose shirts fit tightly over them.
Then there's the comfort factor. It's measured in part by the way I fit--or sometimes no longer fit--into my clothes. The pants are noticeably tighter at the waist. I have a row of perfectly good shirts in my closet that I no longer wear because they button too tight around the middle. More important, though, is the discomfort I register when I wake up in the morning and feel weighted down by those extra, unneeded pounds; or, walking--my favorite exercise--with the heavy awareness that I'm stressing my body with the addition of one of those ten pound weights I toy with in the gym. Even when I sit in meditation, I am aware of the downward pull of gravity, and it distracts me with self-deprecating thoughts.
Besides appearance and comfort, there's the health consideration. I do not think of myself as obese. Far from it. I have always presented as a rather lean man, and have thought of myself as such. The weight has accumulated very gradually, pound by pound, over twenty years without my being motivated to do much about it. It has crept up on me. Now, as I approach my seventy-fifth birthday next week, I can ignore it no longer. If I wish to live in reasonably good health for my latter years, however many--or few!--they be, it behooves me to cast off some of this heavy burden. I have done well these past couple of weeks, and am motivated to continue the good work.
The how? No special "diet." I have been consciously eating less. I have been limiting my bread intake to one item per day--an English muffin or a single slice. I have been avoiding such things as potatoes and pasta. I have avoided wine: a glass of the stuff seems to add immediately to the bloat. (An evening shot of vodka does not seem to have the same effect.) Most of all, however, it's simple consciousness. I think about what I eat before I eat it, as I eat it, and again after. I make better choices. Last night, for example, with Ellie out of town (she's working with artists up in Portland, Oregon) George and I went out to a local restaurant--one where I could find a table outside so that George could sit with me--and I studied the menu much more carefully than I might have done before. I chose a tabouleh salad with grilled salmon on the side and, as a treat, a glass of chardonnay.
I left feeling virtuous. My bill was $14.14, and my step was light as I walked back to the car. And was rewarded, this morning when I stepped on the scale, with another pound swept away.
Early Morning Buddhist Inspiration - 7/21/2011
"Do not overrate what you have received, nor envy others. He who envies others does not obtain peace of mind."
~The Buddha
~The Buddha
Early Morning Buddhist Inspiration - 7/21/2011
"Do not overrate what you have received, nor envy others. He who envies others does not obtain peace of mind."
~The Buddha
~The Buddha
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
Early Morning Buddhist Inspiration - 7/20/2011
"Chaos is inherent in all compounded things. Strive on with diligence."
~The Buddha
~The Buddha
Early Morning Buddhist Inspiration - 7/20/2011
"Chaos is inherent in all compounded things. Strive on with diligence."
~The Buddha
~The Buddha
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
MAGU
I have a friend in need of help. You can read about him below. He's a man who has made an important contribution to the world through his art, his personal inspiration and his service to the common good; and who now finds himself caught up in the pernicious web of our national health disgrace. You can find out more about the effort to preserve Gilbert "Magu" Lujan's legacy at Magulandia; and see a selection of his artwork here. In the meantime, here's the piece I wrote to support that effort at the request of family and friends.
Not many men are given to be notable cultural pioneers as well as prolific and endlessly inventive artists in their own right. Count this one man, Gilbert “Magu” Lujan, among them. He is first and foremost an artist. Visit his studio, and you’ll be witness to the spectacle of a teeming, vibrant output of art works in a stunning variety of media—from assemblages of sticks and twigs to whimsical ceramic sculptural objects and a plethora of prints and canvases. This is the heart of Magulandia.
What’s remarkable about this work is the energy with which it gathers a rich texture of cultural history and intensely personal symbol in its extravagantly colorful embrace. It’s a feast for the eye—but especially also for the mind. Magu’s wealth of imagery merges the traditions of art brut and folk art, Meso-American mythology and ritual, the Chicano culture of low-riders, murals and graffiti, the religious imagery of New World Catholicism and the political and sociological imperatives of socialism—along with the savvy self-awareness of contemporary American art since World War II. And if that’s a mouthful, so be it. Such is the range of Magu’s vision and creative reach.
All this, for the artist, is living tradition, genetic information as vital and fluid as the bloodstream. So let it be clear that this merger is embodied first and foremost in the actuality of each discreet object of Magu’s creation, whose seductive, often humorous, sometimes bawdy, always joyful allure is just the doorway into a complex of deeply human meanings and emotions. As with all good artworks, though, once we have exhausted those meanings we always return to that point where we look at them and just say, Yes.
The pioneering social work for which Magu is widely known proceeds from his creative energy, the art work. His efforts as an emerging artist and student in the master’s program at the University of California, Irvine in 1960s and the early 1970s changed the course of art history. Famously, at that time, he brought together Los Four—along with himself, the artists Carlos Almaraz, Frank Romero and Beto de la Rocha—who breached the sober, Euro-centric walls of academia and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art with the exuberant artistic energy that had been gathering on the streets—and particularly the walls—of East Los Angeles. A fervent, dedicated theorist and organizer, Magu was soon recognized as the fulcrum for burgeoning chicanismo, tirelessly promoting an alternative view to the dominant Western aesthetic and re-invigorating it with both a renewed social conscience and Latin passion.
Meet Magu in person and you’ll find him endlessly garrulous, spirited in his arguments, as eager to share his own ideas as he is to hear those of others. A born educator, he has the gift of inspiring those with whom he comes in contact. It is this quality, surely, that has made of him a leader in his own community of artists—a mantle that he nonetheless wears with modesty and circumspection.
In the constellation of our contemporary culture, Gilbert “Magu” Lujan occupies a unique and vitally important place.
Early Morning Buddhist Inspiration - 7/19/2011
"People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle. But I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin air,but to walk on earth. Every day we are engaged in a miracle which we don't even recognize: a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a child -- our own two eyes. All is a miracle."
~Thich Nhat Hanh
~Thich Nhat Hanh
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