Bit of a rush this morning, to have a bite and get out to pick up our rental car for our jaunt through the Pennsylvania countryside from here to Philadelphia. Awoke, yesterday, to steady rain, which cleared off a bit while we had a pleasant breakfast in our B&B dining room. Then off to visit the Mattress Factory, which we had missed yesterday.

Glad we didn't miss it today. The Mattress Factory is one of those wonderful spaces--two entire buildings in fact--where artists are invited to indulge their fantasy in site-specific works. To our surprise, on the top floor of the first building, we found the distinguished--and somewhat eccentric--Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama--using her trademark polka dots to extraordinary effect in two entirely mirrored rooms. Here's Ellie in the first...

... and me, taking a picture of the two of us in the ceiling.

This is the second room, with three naked, red polka-dotted mannequins and a red polka-dotted floor...

... another couple of ceiling pictures...

Here's one small room whose space is filled almost entirely by an imposing concrete structure built there by one of my favorite artists, Jene Highstein--a kind of minimalist scuplpture, hard to capture in a single picture...

... and a whimsical kinetic piece with a chattering stapler by Drew Pavelchak. Again, hard to capture the humor of the thing in a single still picture.

And finally, a room installed by a dual artist team, Victoria Hruska and Latoya Ruby Frazier...

... and odd mixture of European and African-American sensibilities. Here's one of the outdoor installations, in the garden...

From there, we went on to the Carnegie Museum of Art (no pictures!) where we had an excellent lunch in the cafeteria and spent several hours touring the galleries of the museum that our friend now (impressively!) directs. The collections seem especially strong in the modern and contemporary area, and we found some real treasures on the walls. Sorry not to have more on this experience, but I was too absorbed to take the kind of notes I would have needed to say more than these brief words.

From the Carnegie, we walked out into sunshine! It lasted about five minutes, then got cloudy and cold again, but we had a good walk through the university area of Pittsburgh. Here's what they call the "Cathedral of Learning."

On the fine campus of the Carnegie-Mellon University

... we wandered around an incredible, recently-opened Bill and Melinda Gates media building, a magnificent sports arena, and came upon a still-in-progress installation by the LA artist Jonathan Borofsky. A student, ascending...

... under the watchful gaze of a handful of figures, below...

Back to our B&B and out for a final dinner in Pittsburgh.

Afternoon Haiku.

honey dipped leaves flail

bleached refugees flee heavens
pixels dance inside

By James R. Ure

Early Morning Buddhist Inspiration - 9/30/2009

A dog is not considered a good dog because he is a good barker. A man is not considered a good man because he is a good talker.

~The Buddha

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Bad Foot...

... just what I needed on vacation. A sharp, stabbing pain where the heel meets the ground. We like to walk a lot, as we did yesterday. And of course that makes it worse. Ah, well.

We woke up to a gray, drizzling day, looking out over the outdoor patio at our B&B. Not a place for breakfast, clearly, at this time of year. Still, we had a very pleasant breakfast indoors, and left armed with ample instructions for a tour of downtown Pittsburgh.

A twenty-minute bus ride from our B&B brought us right into the center of the city, where we found ourselves in a tree-lined street...

... surrounded by tall buildings, old and new, in a rather pleasing mix. Plenty of pedestrian traffic--notable, always, to those of us mostly deprived of such social interaction in the City of Angels. We spent a good while wandering around the city center streets, before heading down to the Convention Center which received so much publicity last week, with the officials of the G-20 meeting here. We walked down under the building along this pleasant, curving walkway...

... between flowing streams of water to a spectacular view of the river and the city beyond. Here's a view of the Convention Center...

... from one of the bridges, and an artsy composition of old and new...

... by yours truly with this Canon PowerShot. There's a good deal of this contrast in the city, where old, raised rail lines and the rusting steel and peeling facades of structures dating from the great steel days are juxtaposed with modern and contemporary development. I liked this sign...

... for the Association for the Improvement of the Poor. Still plenty of work to be done in that area!

We walked on down Penn Street from the Convention Center, passing up on the Heinz History Center for lack of time rather than interest. Further on, the street becomes a long, straggling food market, with grocery and spice stores, bakeries... and plenty of fish mongers. Our B&B hostess, Liz, had recommended lunch at the Penn Fish Market, so we sought it out and found it rather towards the end of the commercial part of the street, but well worth the walk. At the fish counter...

... I think I have never seen larger shrimp than these (should have put a hand into the picture, to give a truer sense of size!) And here's the small--but crowded--restaurant area. Come here for the fish sandwiches! We had a cod wrap. Excellent!

We walked off our lunch, trudging back along Penn and past the Convention Center to the Andy Warhol Bridge...

... from which we could look back over the downtown area, and forward...

... to the other side, where we found the Andy Warhol Museum, six floors of galleries devoted to the life and work of Pittsburgh's most famous artist son. It's a nice museum, but I came away not much further impressed by Warhol, the artist. (No pictures allowed, I fear.) He seems to me very much the artist of the late 20th century, whose intentional superficiality reflected much about his time. My favorite was the "Silver Clouds" gallery, a small space filled with two dozen inflated, silvery pillows which floated cheerfully everywhere and invited the childish impulse to pad them around like big balloons. Oh, and I also like the stuffed Great Dane--a huge, regal, handsome creature. Among the many artifacts that Warhol liked to collect were the products of the art of taxidermy. Otherwise, plenty of Warhols everywhere, from Marilyns and Elvises and Jackies, to giant skulls, electric chairs and car crashes. You've seen 'em.

The good people at the Warhol front desk were kind enough to call us a cab, and we returned to our B&B later afternoon for a rest. Ellie took some pictures...

We took a twenty-minute walk to our recommended restaurant, the Casbah, had an excellent dinner served by a charming waiter, and returned to the B&B for a good night's sleep.

En Route

PITTSBURGH, PA--I did mention, didn't I, that we were coming here? But you probably forgot. I can't blame you. Anyway, here we are, waking up in Pittsburgh, PA, on a windy, rainy morning--a day the weather man described as "ugly", but which we Californians manage to find quite beautiful. We are not used to clouds, nor water falling from the sky. It has been months since we last saw rain, and it's a welcome sight. But then, we have not yet ventured far from our very nice B&B, the Inn on Negley. (We're in the Arkansas Room. Check it out..)

We had an easy flight from Los Angeles, upgraded with our United Mileage to... First Class! Which meant a wider seat, an obsequious flight attendant, and a choice of salad or sandwich for lunch. And of course unlimited liquor. We could have been as drunk as those proverbial lords by the time we reached our destination--but we abstained.

A cab from the airport brought us along the Ohio River, a glimpse of whose majestic flow reminded me not a bit of the little trickle on a concrete bed that passes for the "Los Angeles River"! Then on through the museum and university area to this nice little area where we are staying with tree-lined streets--deciduous, folks!--and Victorian houses. Very exotic.

We met our friends Lynn and Paul Zelevansky for dinner. They have just moved here from Los Angeles, she from a curatorial position at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art to become Director of the Carnegie Museumof Art-- a fine move for her, in an already distinguished career. Paul is an artist, educator, semiotician, student of images and signs and how they function in our lives. You'll find some of the results of his work at his website, The Great Blankness--well worth checking into and exploring. He manages to be wry, witty, even whimsical without abandoning a basic seriousness of purpose and challenging his followers to exercise their minds. He has promised me a copy of his recent book, 24 Ideas About Pictures, which I'm looking forward to receiving when we're back at home.

A good dinner, then, at an Italian restaurant not far from where we're staying, and thoroughly engaging conversation on a wide variety of topics. Funny how yo start to get to know people when they've moved away...

After Paul and Lynn dropped us off at our B&B, we took a walk through the local streets to wind down a bit from the day. It was for us, of course, still fairly evening. A few minutes of Bill Maher on the new Jay Leno show. I have to admit, Maher's blithely uncompromising liberal expectations of Obama piss me off a bit these days. Still, I did manage to get to sleep...

Early Morning Buddhist Inspiration - 9/29/2009

Those who have failed to work toward the truth have missed the purpose of living.

~The Buddha

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Vietnamese Bat Nha Monastery Raid Update.

From Help Bat Nha Monastery: All the brothers and sisters have been shipped to a temple Chùa Phước Huệ (address: Đường Trần Phú, Bảo Lộc, Lâm Đồng, Việt Nam). Our Brothers Thay Phap Hoi, Phap Sy, and Phap Tu have been taken away to other areas unknown. For their safety, if anyone who is in Vietnam now or knows of anyone there, please gather at Phuoc Hue Temple to give them support and to show that we are united and have no fear. This invitation goes out to especially international practitioners who are there.

We can not be divided. When we are together, nothing can harm us. The temple Phuoc Hue is in Bao Loc on the National Road from HoChiMinh City leading to Dalat City (map). There is large statue of the Bodhisattva of Compassion on the side of the road. (photos of temple) Please be present there. Please help us get the word out through FaceBook, MySpace, or any other means at your disposal.

James: It is clear that the Vietnamese government is crushing the religious experiment in the Communist country instituted by long exiled Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh. It is a dramatic turn-around of events since Nhat Hanh was allowed to return to his native Vietnam after nearly 4o years in exile. During his visit and another recent one in 2007 Nhat Hanh was welcomed by even the Communist authorities and lauded in the Communist state run media of all places. It was a sign by many that Vietnam was easing restrictions on religion.

"The Vietnamese government has won," said Sister Dang Nghiem, speaking by telephone Monday from a monastery in San Diego, California, where Nhat Hanh is visiting. "Their 'victory' is that Bat Nha is completely destroyed. Everything is smashed."

James: My heart aches deeply for not just the monastics and the loss of a foothold in Thich Nhat Hanh's home country for his tradition of Zen but I also grieve for the average people in Vietnam. It is always a great loss when the Dharma is crushed in this manner. That said, it is never fully lost as long as it lives in the hearts of those touched by it during the short time Nhat Hanh's tradition blessed the many seekers in that noble, proud country. I have confidence that the Dharma will return to Vietnam one day to flower into giving Vietnamese Buddhists a full, restoration of the Buddha's teachings. I say full restoration because while Buddhist monasteries are allowed to exist in Vietnam I have been told that they are severely limited in how purely they can practice the Dharma.

~Peace to all beings~

Early Morning Buddhist Inspiration - 9/28/2009

Believe nothing. No Matter where you have read it, or who said it, even if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own common sense.

~The Buddha

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Urgent! Help! Bat Nha Monastery Emergency Happening in Vietnam.

Dear Friends,

Please pray for the monastic brothers and sisters at Bat Nha Monastery in Vietnam right now Sept.27,2009. They are being physically forced to vacate the monastery. Please intervene in anyway that you can!

LIVE REPORT:
WWW.PHUSAONLINE is giving updated information on the situation at BatNha.

9:45 a.m. (VN time, September 27, 09):
*We are on the telephone with Bat Nha Monastery. The situation at the monastery is quite urgent and life threatening to the monastics.
*At the start of this current crisis, attackers gathered at 9:30am then began to destroy properties to this moment.
*Police in civilian clothes have been present the whole time, but they do nothing to intervene. It seems that they are there to direct the attack, and the attackers have been hired to do so?
*The monks are doing sitting meditation on the 3rd floor of their building, sending energy to the people who are blinded by ignorance, praying to the Bodhisatva of Deep Listening to cool the fire of ignorance in their hearts with the nectar of her compassion.
*We are hearing very loud banging sounds over the phone line.
*They are throwing meditation cushions outside the building.
*There are about 150 people attacking and destroying properties up to the second floor of the monks’ residence.

10:30 a.m. (VN time, September 27, 09):
Our communication is having difficulties, but we know that right now:
*The attacking mob has told the Monastic community that they have to leave the monastery within 2 days.
*The monks have been forced to go outside of their dormitories; they stand outside, chanting in the corridor.
*Two monks are in their ceremonial robes doing sitting meditation in front of their room.
*All community and personal belongings of the monks have been thrown outside.

10:50 a.m. (VN time, September 27, 09):
*The police have dragged Brothers Phap Hoi and Phap Tu outside (2 elder monks of the monastic community); they are dragging the monks by force like they would to animals.
*One Buddhist lay woman is being chased by the police; she is running and crying, calling out “We are in danger, dear teacher!”

11:06 a.m. ((VN time, September 27, 09):
*It’s raining in Bat Nha. The monks have to sit under the cold rain.
*The police is calling for large trucks to come and transport the monks away.
*All roads to the monastery are monitored. Lay friends try to come to help, but they are turned around from afar.
*The number of policemen present has increased. They have occupied all the monastic rooms; gathered all the monks to the field outside.
*The police has forced the monks to carry their backpacks outside and wait for trucks to come transport them away. Don’t know where they will be going.
*It’s still calm in the nuns’ hamlets.

11:23 a.m. ((VN time, September 27, 09):
*A large construction truck is heading towards the monks’ building named, “the Beginner’s Mind.”
*The monks are sitting together in circles under the cold rain.
*The attacking mob continues to curse and yell without stopping.
*Bells, Sutra books, clothings, personal belongings… are in disordered piles under the rain.

12:02 pm (VN time, september 27, 09):
*The monks are still being forced to sit outside in the rain, nothing to cover them. It’s still raining and very cold.
*Traffic police (in uniform) are controlling all the roads leading to Bat Nha Monastery. Police in civilian clothes are also on the scene to observe.

12:20 p.m. (VN time, September 27, 09):
*they are breaking all the doors and trying to get all the sisters to outside of the building. It continues to rain here.
*Sisters lock themselves inside.
*The mob, led by the police, are moving towards the sisters’ hamlet “May Dau Nui” (Clouds on the Mountain).
*4 taxi are going towards the main gate; can’t tell who’s inside.

James: Please forward this information to any and all practitioners of Thay, fellow Buddhists, non-Buddhists and anyone who might be in a position to help. We need immediate assistance from the international community, international media, the United Nations, Amnesty International and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations or ASA. I emailed ASEAN/ASA via the email for the Political and Security Directorate at: ps.dir@asean.org If you are apart of any of these groups or a non-governmental organization (NGO) please help in anyway that you can think of. I'm worried that a Burma-like purge of the monasteries associated with Thay in Vietnam is coming and the best way to prevent that is to shine the media light upon this emergency.

So as soon as I finish this I am going to fire off emails to as many organizations as possible. We also need to mail the media--CNN, NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN and FOX news or whatever news agencies you know about in your country. The focused attention of the world is powerful and even if we can't stop these crimes from happening we need to be as loud of a witness as possible. Some of these monks and nuns are mere teen-agers but all of the monastics are innocent, peace-loving people who are devoted to bettering the lives of everyone. Yet they are being treated like criminals and animals for doing nothing more than practicing their non-confrontational religion.

The Communist government has been trying to remove the monks for two months now claiming tension between the abbot and the monastics. However, the monastics say there is no such tension. They say the Communist government is trying to evict them because they are associated with the Venerable Thich Nhat Hanh who recently called for religious controls to end and the religious police be disbanned in that country. This at a time when the U.S. has decided to remove Vietnam from the list of Countries of Particular Concern (CPC) regarding religious freedom!! We need everyone to urge the U.S. to change that status and put more pressure on the repressive government. You can email the U.S. President at www.whitehous.gov. If you'd like to sign a petition on this emergency please click here.

My guess is that the government is concerned with their growing popularity inside Vietnam and thus see them as a threat to their strangle-hold on the people just like the sangha in Burma and Tibet. Please, spread the word so that we can bolster our brave monastics and take up their cause as they are further and further restricted from doing so themselves. As we meditate please take a moment to concentrate upon the freedom that allows you to practice the Dharma. This incident in Vietnam is a timely reminder that our freedoms, joys, sorrows and overall lives in this moment are but a candleflame in the wind that will snuff out just as easily as it ignited.

~Peace to all beings~

A Wonderful Text

In response to my entry a couple of days on "Alms", my friend Paul at Parami Press (note, in passing, the cover of my soon to be published book at Paul's site!)--referred me to a text by Ajahn Chandako at the Vimutti Monastery in New Zealand. It's the story of a "tudong", a traditional walkabout by Thai Forest monks, in the glorious landscape of New Zealand's South Island, without money, food, or even plans. The Ajahn's narrative (scroll down to the entry "Wandering Forest Monks" and hit "Read the full story) is at once a wonderful, sometimes funny, always beautifully descriptive read, well worth he time you spend with it. More than just a journey, it reads with unusual clarity as an introduction to Buddhist thought and practice, and explores some of the key terms in a delightfully approachable manner. Take, for example, this passage on "vedana":

Beautiful, ugly, comfortable, uncomfortable, delicious or yucky—these are examples of the manifestations of vedana, the Pali term for the very basic and quick reactions we have to sense experience at any of the six sense doors (the traditional five senses plus the mind). The sense experience itself is quite simple: merely electromagnetic waves or particles, chemical reactions or mental energy that manifests as color, sound, smell, taste, physical sensations or thoughts. The vedana is then experienced as positive, negative or neutral, depending on basic human nature and conditioned preferences. Seeing an attractive young woman or man will usually give rise to the positive vedana that we call ‘beautiful’ or ‘cute’. Stubbing your toe or smelling a skunk will normally bring on a basic human reaction of unpleasant vedana. Other reactions are more dependent upon our cultural backgrounds and past experiences in life. Beauty is literally in the eye—or mind—of the beholder. Some smells immediately bring up a warm memory even before we think about it. At this basic level of sensory interaction with our environment we can try to maximize the odds of experiencing pleasant vedana, but it is impossible to totally eliminate the experience of the unpleasant in our lives. In fact, the constant pressure to maintain a high level of pleasant experience can in itself become a tiring burden, while a life dedicated to it suffers from hollowness of meaning.

Another important step of the sensory experience is when we recognize the color, shape, sound or feeling and label it. A sight, for example, may be initially neutral until we recognize the shape as a friend. Then it suddenly turns positive. Vedana arising from these perceptions are highly personal. The sight of a furry opossum in New Zealand may bring up a heart warming reaction of ‘cute’ in one person or a gut-tightening hate in another. And then they can argue about it. At the level of sense contact and vedana life is still pretty simple. However, once our minds start projecting perceptions of like and dislike, good and bad, mine and yours, all hell breaks loose. A sight is no longer merely color and shape. We interpret it, judge it, desire or hate it. A thought is no longer merely a thought, but ‘my’ thought, a ‘great’ thought, a ‘bunch of useless’ thoughts, a ‘judgmental’ thought about how something should be different than the way it is, or even a ‘bad’ thought that feeds self- perceptions of unworthiness. This is where we can cause ourselves a huge amount of unnecessary suffering. This is where the tangled pile of knotted string called the unenlightened mind offers us the opportunity to patiently wind it up neatly. And this is where, through acceptance of how things actually are in the present, we can experience some measure of freedom and peace.

The Ajahn's story is full of such asides, the sum of which form a skillful introduction to the wisdom of the Buddha and the ways in which it can be useful to us in the way we choose to live our lives. His month-long journey with an associate, is full of unexpected encounters, all of which lead to new insights and wisdom. I liked especially the story of the ferry-boat haunted by the spirit of its former captain, a liberal drinker who died of a heart attack and, though dead already, seemed disinclined to leave his post--to the dismay of the boat's crew, who called upon the monk's to help them with their problem. While disclaiming expertise as ghostbusters, the ajahn and his sidekick did delve into their Buddhist training for some surprisingly sane and excellent thoughts about ghosts and how to relate to them.

Or there is the story of their encounter with the hostile fundamentalist Christian who wants to convert them to his own beliefs. Here's Ajahn Chandako, again, spinning straw into gold:

I suppose I could have told our Kiwi crusader that I had an undergraduate degree in comparative religion, and that I was not unfamiliar with the Bible and the teachings of popular Christianity. I could have explained that of all the religions I had studied, it was the teachings of the Buddha that touched my heart most deeply and seemed to me to be the most profound. I could have challenged him a bit by saying that I felt the stated Christian goal of everlasting heaven seemed shallow compared with the Buddha’s explanation of enlightenment (Nibbana or Nirvana). Or I could have questioned the common sense behind the ‘gift of grace’ that supposedly condemns good people of other faiths to an eternity in hell, while promising that no matter how much evil you have committed in your life, simply believing in God before you die ensures your place in paradise. And it might have been interesting to see his reaction if I suggested that even if a Christian path did lead to heaven, it offered no lasting solution to the search for eternal freedom and happiness. But that would have likely extended our conversation without much prospect of benefit, so instead I just decided to say, “thank you.”

I respected his right to believe whatever he wished, and I wasn’t about to try to convince him otherwise. However, in my own experience it is not belief, per se, that determines one’s future, but the motivations fueling one’s thoughts, speech and actions. Religious beliefs hopefully lead to positive and harmonious motivations, but all too often lead to their opposites. In Buddhism, mere belief—no matter how strong—has little relevance compared with direct insight into the nature of reality. It is wisdom and kindness, not belief, that is the litmus test for a good heart.

I'm still in the middle of reading this excellent story. I hope you'll join me along the way, and find as much to delight and inform you as I have done. My thanks to Paul for recommending it!

Early Morning Buddhist Inspiration - 9/27/2009

He who loves 50 people has 50 woes; he who loves no one has no woes.

~The Buddha

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A Money Dream

So we found ourselves walking in a vast, deserted plaza in some strange city, tall buildings barely visible in the distance. An escalator led us down to a lower level, this one also vast but not quite so deserted. It seemed that Ellie went on ahead of me and I lost track of her for a while. I came upon a coffee shop and inquired if anyone had seen her, and a young man said, Yes, Ellie Blankfort is over there.

I followed the direction he indicated, into a large adjacent open-air space lined with picnic tables, and found Ellie sitting at one of them. As we walked on, she told me she had taken out another loan. I was furious. We had only recently secured our re-finance, why would we need another loan? We had already borrowed four hundred and fifty thousand dollars, I said (which is not what we owe), why would we need more money? Why had she done such a thing? Ellie answered only, because she could. I demanded to know the details, but she adamantly refused to disclose the amount, the interest, the monthly payments. I told her angrily that she would have to pay the installments out of her own bank account.

We walked on, finding ourselves now in a long, low, barn-like building, dark and musty. George--who was not our George, but some kind of small terrier--unearthed a rat and scrabbled after it. We passed another rat, this one dead, lying on its back, its white belly showing, and I hoped that George would miss it. He did, and we walked on into the end of the dream...

Your interpretations welcome. Thank you.

Early Morning Buddhist Inspiration - 9/26/2009

We are what we think. All that we are arises from our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make our world.

~The Buddha

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Alms

My thanks to Jean, over at Tasting Rhubarb for bringing my attention to this wonderful blog entry by the British Thervadan monk Ajahn Sucitto, abbot of the Chithurst Theravada monastery in the south of England. The ajahn writes about the experience of doing the alms-round ( pindapada), in a small English town. He translates the term as "scrap-gathering" and describes as "the heart of the livelihood of a Buddhist monastic (or samana)." "We are alms-people," he writes, "not 'monks' or 'nuns', and certainly not priests. To rely for sustenance on what arises through bringing one's presence as a Gone Forth person into the market place takes trust in humanity. In fact just being in the market place and yet not a part of it entails the faith that the disturbance of one's presence will generate some positive ripples. So alms-rounds set a lot of nerve endings twitching - for both the samana and the townsfolk. Maybe out of what turns up, one's needs will be met."

Now I have always been curious about this practice, and I have asked Than Geoff (Thanissaro Bhikkhu) about how it feels, as a Westerner trained in the need for self-sufficiency and the impropriety of asking for something, to walk the streets with an alms bowl and to be dependent on the generosity of others for ones very sustenance. Ajahn Sucitto's writing gives me the answer. Very much aware of the response he elicits in the context of a culture defined by very different expectations and mores, he manages to hold his center in the deeper meaning of his action. His gentle response to the citizens who do manifest compassion and concern (most, it seems, avoid contact of any kind) elicits a return in kind, a deeper understanding and respect.

A part of the point of the alms-round, as Ajahn Succito sees it, is precisely to create a ripple on the surface of the social pond. "Just being in the market place and yet not a part of it," he writes, "entails the faith that the disturbance of one's presence will generate some positive ripples. So alms-rounds set a lot of nerve endings twitching - for both the samana and the townsfolk. Maybe out of what turns up, one's needs will be met. And if not, then through being open and upright, one's mind will at least be clear, undistracted and free from craving. Because when you practise this, any craving for food, or even to get away from the public gaze, stands out so starkly as the creator of suffering and stress that you have to let it go. Instead you just maintain presence."

I found this to be a powerful and somehow heartening piece, which tells me a great deal about the courage that it takes to step out of the social norm and question basic cultural assumptions; and a great deal about the inner strength and conviction, the quiet assurance from which that courage springs. I'll be adding the Ajahn's site to my blogroll, and will look forward to following his occasional entries.

Early Morning Buddhist Inspiration - 9/25/2009

It is easy to see the faults of others... it is hard to see our own...

~The Dhammapada

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Cancer, Meat and Vegetarianism. Also, We are Our Own Judges in Buddhism.

Interesting article on the association with meat based diets and cancer:

Although the initiated cells are not considered to be reversible, the cells growing through the promotion stage are usually considered to be reversible, a very exciting concept. This is the stage that especially responds to nutritional factors. For example, the nutrients from animal based foods, especially the protein, promote the development of the cancer whereas the nutrients from plant-based foods, especially the antioxidants, reverse the promotion stage. This is a very promising observation because cancer proceeds forward or backward as a function of the balance of promoting and anti-promoting factors found in the diet, thus consuming anti-promoting plant-based foods tend to keep the cancer from going forward, perhaps even reversing the promotion. consequences.

James: In Buddhism vegetarianism isn't a requirement partly because not everyone lives in an area where vegetables are abundant such as in Tibet. That said, many practitioners are indeed vegetarians especially in the west. I have found that the main reason for doing so is often out of compassion for animals. This is in part because Buddhism teaches that we are all interconnected and interdependent, which includes animals of course. This means that it is very possible that the cow we would eat might have been our mother in a past life. That realization was a big reason I finally made the switch to a vegetarian diet awhile back. I just couldn't look at a plate of meat ever again in the same way once I heard that.

The second reason I most commonly hear for a vegetarian diet is out of health concerns and this report backs that up even more. Just something to think about but no one should commit to something that they aren't ready to do or think is necessary especially out of guilt, which is a big reason I like Buddhism. There aren't many strict "rules" to live by in Buddhism and using guilt as a tactic to get people to do what you want is very much frowned upon from what I have studied. It's a very accepting religion for the most part. It accepts you where ever you are in life as it understands and teaches we are all in different places due to different karmic needs. The Dharma allows people to practice on various levels of commitment and experience, which I found refreshing when I really started looking into Buddhism.

There isn't much need for leaders to "punish" followers as Buddhism doesn't believe in a "God" or a Savior. There is no such thing as "sin" as understood in the Judeo-Christian sense. That is left up to our karma so that in essence we will be our own judges of how well (or how not so well) we lived our lives. It's like an accurate, non-feeling, non-biased computer giving us a read out of how well we accomplished a task. It is void of emotional judgments and simply renders data from the information that was input from outside experiments (Karma--or how we lived our lives. The cause and effect of our past actions whether they were helpful or not to both us and others).

Usually when an issue of reform needs to be addressed in Buddhism it is due to the practitioner seeking out an experienced teacher on their own for advise and advisement on over-coming a problem or obstacle. Outside monasteries it is nearly unheard of from my understanding of monks chastising people for their actions other than to give them general advice in a Dharma discourse on how to live a happy life free of less suffering. Usually this is delivered to many people and individuals in the audience decide if what was said was applicable to them or not and if so how they go about changing is up to them.

However, even in stricter monasteries disobeying rules is done in a very compassionate and open manner by the community of monks so that there is less chance of personal vindictiveness being apart of it. Some might find rebirth a tiresome notion of having to go around and around until they realize total oneness but I find it compassionate. It allows us to make mistakes and learn from them through long experience over incalculable lifetimes rather than saying you only have one life to "get it right."

~Peace to all beings~

Art Gallery Update

Ellie and I had fun yesterday in the gallery complex at Bergamot Station, where we delighted to find an unusual number of shows that really tickled our fancy. Since I'm feeling more than a little pressured for time this morning, I'm going to do more show than tell. All the images, by the way, are grabbed from gallery sites, where proper attribution will be found. So here, in no particular order...


... is Francesca Gabbiani at Patrick Painter Gallery. Hard to see it here , but these large-scale, provocatively baroque images are created entirely out of small elements of colored paper, glued together. I have a very small piece of hers, a yellow-jacket, which amazes me every time I look at it. Her work is getting larger and more daring in this current show. Next door, at Craig Krull Gallery, we found these extraordinary anatomical prints, again large scale, at once studies of the unbelievable beauty and intricacy of the human body, powerful memento mori's, and compelling works of art.

A couple of doors down, Richard Heller shows two artists,,,

... Charlie Roberts (that's a single painting, by the way) and his Norwegian wife, Heidi Johansen...

Roberts offers not only the large, richly-imaged pictures like "The Cave", above, where hundreds of objects and figures jostle for attention, but also dozens of quirky "short-stories"--told in half a dozen sequential images on small sheets of paper. They're funny, slightly bizarre, and some of the affectingly human. Johansen's tiny figures are carved out of balsa wood and tanged in shelves the length of the gallery wall. Amazingly, even though roughly carved, they manage to capture the life of their subjects with both humor and compassion.

Here's Margaret Gallegos...

... who's showing at Fig. With a newly attenuated palette--a good deal of black, white, and gray--she combines zesty abstraction with hints of figurative image, and asked the viewer's eye to join her in a jazzy journey through the picture plane.

You hear a lot these days about the paintings of the Armenian-American artist Gegam Kacherian at Rosamund Felsen...

They're certainly amazing paintings, assembling finely-painted figuration with fanciful abstraction, sci-fi futurism with ancient history, the majesty of the animal world with the absurdism of cartoon... As rich and unabashedly decorative as a Persian tapestry and intense with narrative interest, Kacherian's paintings engage both the eye and the mind a frenzy of activity.

Over at Ruth Bachnofner, I was impressed by the quiet serenity of the work of Seiko Tachibana...



(this is only a partial shot; the space of an entire gallery is filled with these gently floating banners, which bring to mind Tibetan Buddhist prayer flags).



I liked, too, the fine atmospheric landscapes of Yvatte Molina, these painted on aluminum disks.

I was unfortunately unable to grab images from Shoshana Wayne's exhibit of some stunning clay Kathy Butterly, but it's certainly worth a visit to her site, just a click away (be sure to follow the prompt for the entire sequence of pictures.) These small works manage to seem quite monumental on their individual pedestals. Their strange, idiosyncratic and sensually organic shapes suggest at once artifact and flesh, the vessel that contains and the vessel of the body. The polish of their gleaming exterior makes no attempt to conceal or diminish the vulnerability their forms evoke.

Early Morning Buddhist Inspiration - 9/24/2009

As a solid rock cannot be moved by the wind, the wise are not shaken by praise or blame.

~The Dhammapada

Technorati Tags: Buddha Buddhist Buddhism Meditation Dharma Compassion

Pre-Flight Nerves

We leave again for a trip next Monday, and I'm noticing all the familiar signs of pre-travel nerves: restlessness, difficulty in falling asleep, low levels of fear and anger promoting a general sense of malaise. It's not a long trip this time; we're just heading to the East Coast--Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Washington DC, mostly to visit museums and spend some time with friends. You'll be reading about it, surely, on The Buddha Diaries. I'll take the laptop along. I'm looking forward to it with the usual mix of excitement and dread.

There's something in me that wants to stay put. Perhaps we still carry the ancient genes of our ancestors, for whom it was inconceivable to travel more than a few miles from home. Our journey to Pittsburgh, a matter of some four hours from Los Angeles, would likely have taken us four months a century and a half ago; before that, it would have been unimaginable. It's my suspicion that our body-minds have not evolved at the same pace as our technology. I know that mine--my body-mind--recoils from such radical dislocation, and that restlessness and malaise result from its anxieties.

Last night, having gone to bed early, I woke before midnight and couldn't get back to sleep. My mind was racing, and my stomach churned. Beside me, Ellie was also wide awake, suffering from leg cramps and insomnia. A fine pair of travelers. I got up, swallowed down a couple of gulps of Mylanta with a half an Ambien and returned to bed. I slept until morning.

Am I alone in experiencing these symptoms? I'm sure not. I'd love to hear what strategies others might have found, to make those symptoms easier to live with...

Early Morning Buddhist Inspiration - 9/23/2009

As irrigators lead water where they want, as archers make their arrows straight, as carpenters carve wood, the wise shape their minds.

~The Dhammapada

Technorati Tags: Buddha Buddhist Buddhism Meditation Dharma Compassion

The Laughing Lama.

That video was brought to my attention by Budding Buddhist and it has become one of my favorites. I watch it often. Recently His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama visited Taiwan and this was my favorite moment of the event, which I read in this article.

At the beginning of the ceremony, the Dalai Lama asked that a small table in front of his seat be removed. However, as officials were in the process of removing it, it collapsed, to a complete silence in the audience. The Dalai Lama broke the silence with loud laughter, which triggered more laughter and applauses from the crowd.

James: I can't get enough of the DL's smiling, laughing and relaxing demeanor. Every time I see his warm, cheery face I can't help but smile too and the same goes when I see or hear him laugh. His laugh is infectious and sincere like the unstifled belly laughs you hear from kids. They (like he) are usually unencumbered with feelings of low self-esteem or a compulsive neurosis over their laugh and body language. That said, at the same time he's that big brother who has seen a lot and traveled many places both in our physical world and within the dungeons of the mind. The older brother who gives you the exact advice needed without being condescending, mean or grumpy.

In fact I can't think of a time when I've seen or heard of the Dalai Lama being grumpy--have any of you? He seems like the kind of person who can give you criticism with a smile and a laugh to where you thank-him for it. He truly is a great master and I really like that he goes against a common view of a Buddhist master as being stern, cold and always intensely serious. I'm not anywhere near the understanding of the Dalai Lama or Thich Nhat Hanh but I'd say that laughter and enlightenment go hand in hand. It's certainly a great way to reduce stress and suffering and besides that; in the end (as Shinzen said recently)what's their to do but laugh at this silly world?

~Peace to all beings~

This Internet...

I likely would never have known these things without the Internet. A couple of days ago, I unearthed three years' old news that an old school friend had died. This morning, I learned in the same manner that another old friend died--back in 1994! Shreela Ray was a fellow poet and student at the Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa in the 1960s, a member of a small group that met regularly to read poems and talk about them. She was Indian by birth, extraordinarily beautiful and smart, and she wrote poems filled with love and compassion for her fellow humans. How could she have died so young? I was shocked and horrified. And much saddened. I wish I had kept up with her, had read the poems she wrote later in life. Aside from the simple dates beside her name, 1942-1994, I have been able to discover nothing more about her life since we parted ways.

Ellie and I watched the Lifetime special on Georgia O'Keeffe last night...



and I have to say that I was underwhelmed. I tend to think--dare I say it?--that O'Keeffe's work has suffered considerably from overexposure in the poster and postcard market.



I tend to prefer her elegant abstract images...

The Lifetime biography concentrates, of course, on her long and stormy relationship with the pioneer photographer Alfred Stieglitz who championed her work in the New York art world of the early 20th century--and both characters are well played by Joan Allen and Jeremy Irons, who manage to powerfully dramatize the sexual tension between the two vision-driven artists they portray. And their antagonisms were as strong as their mutual attraction. As Holland Cotter, the New York Times art writer points out in his review of a current O'Keeffe show at the Whitney Museum of American Art, "O'Keeffe wanted the power to include sexuality in her art's expressive range. Stieglitz wanted the power to define her art purely in terms of feminine sexuality, and to market it accordingly." Sieglitz, in this version, comes off as the archetypal early 20th century artist--self-involved, demanding, domineering, and pathetically unable to see past his own immediate needs. O'Keeffe, by contrast, is alternately submissive and assertive, constantly seeking to balance her sense of herself as a powerful independent woman and an artist and her love for a man who needed her more as a prop for his own ego than as a partner. Though it managed to capture much of this dynamic, I found the story line of the film to be disappointingly thin, and the truly compelling moments few and far between.

More compelling, for me, was the remarkable appearance of Barack Obama on the David Letterman show last night. Critics, I'm sure, will carp about presidential dignity, about Obama's current media blitz and the dangers of overexposure, but I thought it was a delightful hour. He accepted with a light touch of graceful humor the gift of a ridiculous heart-shaped potato. He spoke with comfortable ease about his family, the summer, the charged political atmosphere of the day, and moved on to discuss weighty issues--the economy, health care, Afghanistan--without resorting to cliches. I like that he listens to questions thoughtfully and answers the question that is asked, not the one he would have liked to have been asked. He actually thinks, and works his way rationally through his thoughts as he comes up with his answers. He is fair-minded, acknowledging other points of view; but at the same time clear about his own. When he doesn't have one yet, he's clear about the need to wait until he has gathered all the information that he needs and heard arguments on all sides of the issue. Isn't that what we would want?

This man, let's face it, is a lot more gracious than the rest of us. We all know his job better than he does, and assail him--more, or often less politely--for not doing things our way. The further we get into his presidency, of course, the more there is to complain about. I have no idea what can be going on inside that calm and self-assured exterior, and I often wish that he'd veer a little bit more over to my side. But I hugely admire that ability to seek the middle way, to listen and bide time, because that's where wisdom lies. Sure, I'd like him to resolve decades' worth of problems in the blink of an eye. And sure, his campaign rhetoric deluded us into believing that he could. Failing that, however, I'll settle for a president who thinks with both his head and heart. Which I still believe he does.