Early Morning Buddhist Inspiration - 2/29/2012

"If you love someone but rarely make yourself available to him or her, that is not true love."

~Thich Nhat Hanh

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Early Morning Buddhist Inspiration - 2/29/2012

"If you love someone but rarely make yourself available to him or her, that is not true love."

~Thich Nhat Hanh

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LEAVING, AGAIN

This morning I leave yet again, this time for New York City, where I'll be attending the annual conference of the National Art Education Association and, on Sunday, making a presentation. I have written before about the anxieties that beset me at these moments. I won't dwell on them again. Instead, I'll say that I'm excited at the prospect of a few days in what is certainly one of the greatest cities in the world.

I'll miss Ellie, though. I'm traveling solo this time, and will miss her urge to do everything that can possibly be done in the space of a few days. My tendency, when not prodded, is toward inertia. With Ellie, that luxury is not permitted. We're not allowed to pass up o a single museum or important show. With much to accomplish at the conference in terms of meeting people and making my work more widely known, I imagine that there will be less time to get out and about, but there are several current exhibitions that I'll certainly try to see. And, time allowing, I'll be reporting back home on The Buddha Diaries.

As a footnote, as I prepare to catch my late-morning flight from LAX, I'm glad to have had the time to sit for a half hour and breathe. And I'm particularly glad to have the dharma to take along with me. It adds no weight to my baggage, even as it lightens the mind. I'm fortunate to have discovered it...

TIME TO COME HOME

It's time for us to leave Afghanistan. In the past I have defended our continued American presence there for two reasons: first and most importantly, as a buffer between the brutal, oppressive regime of the Taliban and the people of that historically violated country; and secondly to act as a deterrent to the spread of the kind of terrorism whose proponents would gladly do our own country harm.

In the light of recent events, I no longer believe these reasons to be compelling enough to justify our further presence there. The burning of the Korans was, in the context of Afghanistan, an action that perfectly exemplified our failure to understand a culture so foreign to our own. To say that it was "inadvertent" is to minimize the monumental offense it caused and to misunderstand the fury of the response. No matter how good our intentions as a protective force, we have no adequate answer to the hatred and mistrust. We are naive in assuming our presence to be benign and pacifying.

From everything I have read--and in the light of my own humanitarian beliefs--the Taliban have behaved despicably toward the women and the innocent girls in their society. From my perch in the Western world, I consider their concept of justice and their theocratic authoritarianism to be essentially barbaric. I deplore their hatred of the joys of life--of music, for example, and dancing--which stems from their need to control anything that might threaten their cold-blooded rule. I was appalled by their wanton destruction of those great Buddhas of Banyan, historical monuments of profound human worth. Their brutish history and values have provided me with sufficient reason, in the past, to justify intervention from the outside world. The images of thousands of raging men wielding sticks and casting stones have changed my view. These were not just "Taliban." They were the citizens of a country that has its own social and religious imperatives. I find it hard to understand their motives and their actions, but I'm convinced that we are powerless to change them. My instinct to protect the innocent is offended by this conclusion, but they must sort these things out for themselves.

As for the necessary defense against terrorist intentions, I no longer believe that it can be managed effectively by traditional military means--or even by the modified approach we seem to have embraced in Afghanistan. Our attempts to pacify and improve the lot of a people whose values we are so far from understanding are inadequate to the task. We do need a defensive strategy to forestall attacks like those on the World Trade Center, but it should be based in sound intelligence practices and the restrained, judicious use of force rather than massive military presence in a country where we do not belong. As for the illusion that we'll succeed in training Afghan military and police to take over where we left off, I believe it to be just that: an illusion.

I confess I feel some relief with this change of heart and mind. My new thinking is more in line with the teachings of the dharma. I'll try sending metta instead, to those I do not understand, those with whom I disagree, and those whose inhumanity continues to poison themselves as well as the fellow-humans they oppress. May they find goodness in their hearts. May they find happiness in the practice of goodwill.

Early Morning Buddhist Inspiration - 2/28/2012

"Preventing war is much better than protesting against the war. Protesting the war is too late."

~Thich Nhat Hanh

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Early Morning Buddhist Inspiration - 2/28/2012

"Preventing war is much better than protesting against the war. Protesting the war is too late."

~Thich Nhat Hanh

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Lord Buddha Quotes

Even death is not to be feared by one who has lived wisely.

Just as treasures are uncovered from the earth, so virtue appears from good deeds, and wisdom appears from a pure and peaceful mind. To walk safely through the maze of human life, one needs the light of wisdom and the guidance of virtue.

Hatred does not cease by hatred, but only by love; this is the eternal rule.

Health is the greatest gift, contentment the greatest wealth, faithfulness the best relationship.

Lord Buddha Quotes

Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned.

However many holy words you read, however many you speak, what good will they do you if you do not act on upon them?

Just as a candle cannot burn without fire, men cannot live without a spiritual life.

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.

I never see what has been done; I only see what remains to be done.

In a controversy the instant we feel anger we have already ceased striving for the truth, and have begun striving for ourselves.

In the sky, there is no distinction of east and west; people create distinctions out of their own minds and then believe them to be true.

It is a man's own mind, not his enemy or foe, that lures him to evil ways.

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.

We are shaped by our thoughts; we become what we think. When the mind is pure, joy follows like a shadow that never leaves.

All that we are is the result of what we have thought. If a man speaks or acts with an evil thought, pain follows him. If a man speaks or acts with a pure thought, happiness follows him, like a shadow that never leaves him.
Buddha

All things appear and disappear because of the concurrence of causes and conditions. Nothing ever exists entirely alone; everything is in relation to everything else.
Buddha

All wrong-doing arises because of mind. If mind is transformed can wrong-doing remain?
Buddha

Ambition is like love, impatient both of delays and rivals.
Buddha

An idea that is developed and put into action is more important than an idea that exists only as an idea.
Buddha

An insincere and evil friend is more to be feared than a wild beast; a wild beast may wound your body, but an evil friend will wound your mind.
Buddha

Early Morning Buddhist Inspiration - 2/27/2012

"When you sit in a café, with a lot of music in the background and a lot of projects in your head, you're not really drinking your coffee or your tea. You're drinking your projects, you're drinking your worries. You are not real, and the coffee is not real either. Your coffee can only reveal itself to you as a reality when you go back to your self and produce your true presence, freeing yourself from the past, the future, and from your worries. When you are real, the tea also becomes real and the encounter between you and the tea is real. This is genuine tea drinking."

~Thich Nhat Hanh

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Early Morning Buddhist Inspiration - 2/27/2012

"When you sit in a café, with a lot of music in the background and a lot of projects in your head, you're not really drinking your coffee or your tea. You're drinking your projects, you're drinking your worries. You are not real, and the coffee is not real either. Your coffee can only reveal itself to you as a reality when you go back to your self and produce your true presence, freeing yourself from the past, the future, and from your worries. When you are real, the tea also becomes real and the encounter between you and the tea is real. This is genuine tea drinking."

~Thich Nhat Hanh

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MENDACITY

There was an interesting front page article in yesterday's New York Sunday Times book review about mendacity. "The Fact-Checker Versus the Fabulist" is a review of The Lifespan of a Fact, by John D'Agata and Jim Fingal. The book summarizes the "knock-down, drag-out fight between two tenacious combatants," the essayist D'Agata and his fact-checker, Fingal, an intern assigned by The Believer magazine to go over D'Agata's article about a young man's suicide in Las Vegas. The dispute begins when the conscientious Fingal contacts the author to say that he has "discovered a small discrepancy" in the piece, triggering a tart response from D'Agata: "maybe there's some sort of miscommunication, because the 'article,' as you call it, is fine. It shouldn't need a fact-checker; at least that was my understanding with the editor... I have taken some liberties in the essay here and there, but none of them are harmful."

Not having read the book, I'm in no position to judge of its veracity myself, but the review makes it clear that the "liberties" are numerous and, while not harmful, perhaps, at least egregious distortions of the known facts surrounding the suicide. (I'm assuming the Book Review itself subjects its writers to the scrutiny of fact-checkers, so let's assume that on this front the reviewer, Jennifer B. McDonald, has it right--though she clearly sides with Fingal in the argument.) In any event, D'Agata's imperiously dismissive attitude seems based in his belief that the essay is an art form and that he, as the artist, is obligated to literary rather than factual truth. He insists on his right to blur the line between fiction and non-fiction in the interests of creative freedom and what he perceives to be a higher truth. Fingal, so far as he's concerned, is an irksome nit-picker. "As long as a story 'is believed by somebody'," writes McDonald, quoting D'Agata, "'I consider it a legitimate potential history.'" ("Hogwash," she adds.)

I wonder what a "legitimate potential history" is, anyway. A lie? As an essayist myself, I do not consider it my right to alter simple facts in the interests of mellifluous writing, as D'Agata appears to do. A small example: if there were, as Fingal ascertained, 31 strip clubs in Las Vegas at the time of the suicide, why would D'Agata inform his readers that there were 34? "Because," he writes, "the rhythm of '34' works better in that sentence than the rhythm of '31.'" I do concern myself daily with the quality of my writing, but my own choice would be to find a way to create a rhythm in which "31" worked just fine for my purposes, rather than alter the simple fact to suit my impeccable prose.

There is to my way of thinking a certain ego involved in the belief that what I write and the way I write it is more important than the reality about which I write. D'Agata affirms what the comedian Stephen Colbert memorably described as "truthiness" over truth. What I say is true trumps all other truths because I say it. This is essentially the argument of post-modernist, deconstructive thought. This whole thing, though, would not be of concern to me if it were simply a philosophical argument about literature. I started out life as a poet and slogged my way through a doctorate in Comparative Literature, and I have long since abandoned any delusions I once entertained about my own aspirations to literature as a high art form. I think of myself as a journeyman writer who tinkers away with words until I get them right.

But this mendacity is not just about literature. It's pervasive in our lives in the contemporary world. It has become okay to assert our version of reality as "the truth." It dismays me to think that D'Agata is a professor in the prestigious writing program at the University of Iowa (where I myself graduated, many years ago) and that he is in a position to purvey to students his belief that the "truth" of literature entitles even the non-fiction writer to manipulate the facts in the service of his art. We see the results of such thinking in the "real world" of politics, where candidates find it perfectly acceptable to utter lies, half-truths, and the projections of their own fantasy in the interest of persuading a gullible electorate to vote for them. The words and deeds attributed to Obama in the current election cycle rarely reflect the facts of his presidency. They are simply rhetorical devices, intended to deceive.

We seem to have lost the critical faculty needed to discern the difference. Indeed, if D'Agata is to be believed, we should suppress that faculty: the ultimate implication of his thinking is that we should believe whatever we are told. More and more of us distrust the truth, or are unable to discern it, with the result that it becomes an increasingly rare commodity. Once I learn that there are in fact 31 strip clubs in Las Vegas, why should I trust a man who insists, for whatever reason, that there are 34? Yet trust is the essential glue that holds us all together as a society, as human beings living in relationship with each other, as a global community. It seems to me that we should be working to devise ways in which we can restore it rather than undermine it further with our clever thinking and our fancy footwork, whether literary or political. I work hard to earn the trust of those who read or listen to my words. And I want others to work hard to earn mine.

HUMAN BEINGS

For anyone seeking to know more about their own humanity, and about what it means to be a human being, today's front page article in the New York Times, "Life, with Dementia" is a moving and instructive read. In some parts of our nation prison inmates, often with violent criminal records and serving life sentences themselves, are being trained to treat those of their fellows who are afflicted with Alzheimer's disease--a growing population, given their advancing age, their history of emotional disturbance and frequently neglected physical health, along with the nature of prison life and the absence of loving, supportive communities to care for them.

Care-needers and care-givers, both, are living in an environment where humanity is reduced to its barest of circumstances. As lifers in the prison system, they have a common history of the worst imaginable acts of violence, deeds so inhuman as to warrant their exclusion from the society of humankind. And yet they are brought together, care-needers and care-givers, in a circumstance that requires them to rediscover the humanity they sacrificed. The care-givers, particularly, are offered the opportunity to learn what it means to be a human being. "Thank you," one writes with eloquent simplicity in an evaluation of the program, "for allowing me to feel human."

The victims of dementia need not only care for their most basic needs, from dressing and eating to personal cleanliness and hygiene, but also protection from predatory fellow inmates--and often from themselves. The ignorance, rage and dissonance that led them to commit their dreadful crimes in the first place have now annexed their mind-space in its entirety, leaving them unprotected from the ravages of delusion. One pitiable old man awaits his mother at the prison gate each morning; another sees his brother in the toilet bowl. They are incontinent, subject to sudden fury, disoriented, out of touch with the reality of their lives.

The care-givers, their counterparts, are given the opportunity to explore the compassionate nature with which they had lost touch. They learn what it takes to clean up the shit and piss of another human being; they learn the courage needed to protect their charges from the savage treatment they might otherwise expect from other inmates; they learn about their own capacity for love in the most unforgiving of circumstances; they learn to live with the scorn and envy of fellow-prisoners who despise them, sometimes, as snitches and collaborators. In taking care of those less fortunate, they learn to take care of themselves.

It seems to me that these men, in facing irrefutable truths about the bleak, reductive realities of their lives, have as much to teach us as the Buddha about aging, illness and death. It is as humbling to read about the suffering of those afflicted as about the courage and service of those who work to take care of their needs. The reciprocity of their situation is at once remarkable and inspiring.

Early Morning Buddhist Inspiration - 2/26/2012

"If we are not able to smile, then the world will not have peace."

~Thich Nhat Hanh

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Early Morning Buddhist Inspiration - 2/26/2012

"If we are not able to smile, then the world will not have peace."

~Thich Nhat Hanh

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KEN PRICE

I read this morning with great sadness of the death of Ken Price, the Southern California-based maker of delightful, always eye-challenging ceramic objects, so original in form and concept, so brilliant in color and design that no one has ever dared to emulate them. For most of his life, he worked small--a quality that I admire in a post-war art world where big is too often mistaken for significant. With Ken Price's works, I'm always torn between the intense desire to pick them up and feel their shapes in my hands, and the respect for distance they command in their aesthetic perfection. While I did not know him well and met him only on occasion, I was always struck by his inner sparkle and the rich humanity that shines forth in his work.

Early Morning Buddhist Inspiration - 2/25/2012

"People kill and are killed because they cling too tightly to their own beliefs and ideologies. When we believe that ours is the only faith that contains the truth, violence and suffering will surely be the result."

~Thich Nhat Hanh

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Early Morning Buddhist Inspiration - 2/25/2012

"People kill and are killed because they cling too tightly to their own beliefs and ideologies. When we believe that ours is the only faith that contains the truth, violence and suffering will surely be the result."

~Thich Nhat Hanh

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AT THE CAA

Emily, and my co-exhibitor, Nancy Turner-Smith. Come visit!

Early Morning Buddhist Inspiration - 2/24/2012

"True love always brings joy to ourselves and to the one we love. If our love does not bring joy to both of us, it is not true love."

~Thich Nhat Hanh

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Early Morning Buddhist Inspiration - 2/24/2012

"True love always brings joy to ourselves and to the one we love. If our love does not bring joy to both of us, it is not true love."

~Thich Nhat Hanh

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A DAY WITH LUKA

After setting up at the CAA exhibition hall, ready for a 9AM start this morning, a day with Luka. At home...

In the park...

With a new toy...

A delightful chap!

Early Morning Buddhist Inspiration - 2/23/2012

"Whenever anger comes up, take out a mirror and look at yourself. When you are angry, you are not very beautiful."

~Thich Nhat Hanh

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Early Morning Buddhist Inspiration - 2/23/2012

"Whenever anger comes up, take out a mirror and look at yourself. When you are angry, you are not very beautiful."

~Thich Nhat Hanh

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CAA

As I noted yesterday, I'm attending the College Art Association conference in Los Angeles over the next three days (table #217, exhibition hall. Please stop by!) The event has me recalling my former incarnation as an art school administrator--a stop along the professional path that lasted for a ten-year period from the mid-seventies to the mid-eighties. Had I chosen to continue along that path, I might have by now attained a comfortable retirement with some very nice perks--but I chose not to. I chose instead to pursue what I had always known to be my purpose in life: to write. It was a risky decision, back when I could foresee no reasonable alternative source of income, but one that I have never regretted.

Back in those academic days, I used to attend the CAA conference, and before it the MLA--the Modern Language Association--in a professional capacity, mostly either looking for jobs myself or on the search for new faculty for the college I served. The trips were generally a feast for the ego, a fine way to feel like an important person devoted to a significant career, but that ego gratification was always accompanied by a feeling of being out of place. I never felt entirely comfortable in the academic world. It always felt like I was acting out a part for which I was not entirely suited, as though I were wearing some other person's clothes. The throngs of colleagues around me seemed so much more comfortable than I, so much more knowledgable, so much... well, smarter. To attend a conference was to revisit my school years and the discomforts of adolescence.

I'm attending this CAA as a writer and exhibitor, and sharing my table with an artist, Nancy Turner Smith, whose lovely book I reviewed in The Buddha Diaries some months ago. Our hope is to introduce our creative work to the academic world--to libraries and teachers and, in Nancy's case, to curators of exhibits and special collection. I'll be "showing" Persist and Mind Work, and hoping to generate some interest in my "One Hour/One Painting" series. This involves, of course, a bit of self-promotion, but I'm not uncomfortable promoting ideas and programs that I very much believe in. Indeed, I have come to consider this kind of action to be an integral part of what I do, something I owe my work as a writer. I would, particularly, love to see Persist adopted as a text in graduating ("professional practices") classes for students graduating with BFAs and MFAs from art schools and college art departments, where I am sure it would be helpful. As I have said elsewhere, writing is, for me, an act of communication. I don't do it "for myself." I do it in order to connect with other human beings in the best way I know how, and these are opportunities it would be foolish to pass up.

So I'll be spending the next couple of weeks, at the CAA and, next week, at the NAEA (the National Art Education Association) in New York, in full conference mode. Wish me luck.

Early Morning Buddhist Inspiration - 2/22/2012

"We can smile, breathe, walk, and eat our meals in a way that allows us to be in touch with the abundance of happiness that is available. We are very good at preparing to live, but not very good at living. We know how to sacrifice ten years for a diploma and we are willing to work very hard to get a job, a car, a house, and so on. But we have difficulty remembering that we are alive in the present moment, the only moment there is for us to be alive."

~Thich Nhat Hanh

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Early Morning Buddhist Inspiration - 2/22/2012

"We can smile, breathe, walk, and eat our meals in a way that allows us to be in touch with the abundance of happiness that is available. We are very good at preparing to live, but not very good at living. We know how to sacrifice ten years for a diploma and we are willing to work very hard to get a job, a car, a house, and so on. But we have difficulty remembering that we are alive in the present moment, the only moment there is for us to be alive."

~Thich Nhat Hanh

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College Art Association

A note to readers planning to attend the College Art Association Conference in Los Angeles, starting tomorrow: I have booked table # 217 in the exhibition hall to display copies of Mind Work and Persist and will be there for most of the day on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. I would certainly welcome it if you'd stop by and introduce yourself. See you there!

Early Morning Buddhist Inspiration - 2/21/2012

"What we think, we become."

~The Buddha

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Early Morning Buddhist Inspiration - 2/21/2012

"What we think, we become."

~The Buddha

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PEACEFUL REVOLUTION

We know all these things, don't we? We know about the "peaceful warrior." We know that "War Is Not the Answer" and that we must strive for "World Peace" if our poor planet is to survive the ravages of humankind. We know these things so well that we reduce them to bumper stickers and paste them on our cars. We know that violence begets violence; we know the golden rule, that we should do unto others as we would have them do unto us. We know in our hearts that love serves our common interests better than hatred. And still these things bear repeating, because even though we know them, we have not yet learned as a species to act consistently upon these truths. We persist in making war. We persist in enacting the rituals of violence, and in excusing ourselves with the delusion that this is our nature. We persist in acting against what we know to be our best interests.

So is there a Peaceful Revolution currently in progress, as the author Paul K. Chappell proposes, in his book by that same title? Is there a powerful paradigm shift in our thinking in the early 21st century, one equal in potential impact to the scientific discovery that the earth is round, or that it rotates around the sun, as Chappell argues? A young and conflict-seasoned soldier, a West Point graduate, and now a warrior for peace, Chappell writes from a personal pit of very human rage: born part-Korean, part African-American, part white, to a father whose emotional war wounds led him to violence inflicted on his son and, eventually, to madness, this writer made the journey from childhood innocence into the experience of deep terror and distrust too soon and too abruptly. When he writes of the worst of human suffering, he knows whereof he speaks. When he writes of violence, it is something he has experienced at first hand, and from the earliest age.

Chappell's personal salvation and his dedication to the cause of peace came from what seems at first to be an unlikely source: his training as a warrior at West Point. His argument proceeds from the West Point motto: Duty, Honor, Country. For him, he explains:

duty means taking responsibility for my actions and the problems I can help solve, and knowing I have a duty to serve others and make a difference. Honor means having integrity, being honest with myself and others, and treating people with respect. Country means being committed to and willing to sacrifice for something larger than myself.

Country, he adds, "extends beyond our national borders... In the twenty-first century, our global community has become so interconnected that our country truly is the planet earth." His mission, the reader learns, is to serve that global community on the path to a viable future where war and violence are as obsolete as the concept of a flat earth.

The discipline learned at West Point is crucial both to Chappell's mission as a peaceful warrior, and to his work as a writer. He martials and deploys his material with meticulous organizational skill, around the central metaphor of muscularity. He wants us to understand that to be tough and disciplined in practice in no way conflicts with the compassion and empathy he preaches. His chapter headings--"The Muscle of Hope," The Muscle of Appreciation," "The Muscle of Reason"...--are key to the clarification of his intention: these muscles, like those in the human body, must be conscientiously exercised if they are not to atrophy and die. He leads us toward his central point with finely-honed logic: violence is not inherent in human nature, it must be taught. If we are to save the planet and our species, we need to educate and nurture our natural propensity for compassion, empathy, and love.

Chappell textures his argument richly with references not only to contemporary social science and current research in the still-developing field of neuroscience, but also with quotations liberally culled from the history of human thought and literature, from such great teachers as Jesus and the Buddha to modern pioneers of the philosophy he embraces: Gandhi, Albert Einstein, Albert Schweitzer, Martin Luther King Jr.; from Daedalus to Sir Gawain and the Green Knight; from Aesop's fox and his sour grapes to Chicken Little and the falling sky. A major--well, the major influence on his thinking is the study On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society by Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, an examination of the methods needed to train the mind of a normal human being into one prepared to kill. Soldiers, particularly, need to be taught to override their natural inclination to flight in order to prepare them to fight. Ironically, it turns out, the best tools in this endeavor turn out to be... empathy and compassion: the warrior is induced to fight most willingly if aroused to what Chappell calls "fury" in his instinct to protect. Think "Band of Brothers." Think what your own instinct might be if your family were threatened.

So it's in the appeal to that "fury" that Chappell sees not only the strength of the individual warrior but also the will of our species to transcend old patterns of behavior and enlist in the growing army engaged in the needed "peaceful revolution." His book is a persuasive and inspiring read. As one known to cast a skeptical eye on our national and global politics, I found myself able to connect with the hope that there is, indeed, a shift in human consciousness that is now taking place on the planet, an evolutionary change, if you will, instigated by our instinct for survival, and by our understanding that cooperation and compassion are, in truth, the only viable weapons to insure it.

Chappell's argument is in every way consistent with good Buddhist thought and practice. Toward the end of his book, he hints at a sequel that will explore the methodology and the results of meditation on the path to peace. I look forward to his insights.

Peaceful Revolution: How We Can Create the Future Needed for Humanity's Survival

by Paul K. Chappell

Easton Studio Press

www.peacefulrevolution.com

SERIOUSLY?

I do not normally watch such programs as Face the Nation--not out of disinterest in the political world but because it seems such a terrible way to spend a Sunday morning. I did, however, for some reason watch a recorded version of the interview with the current Republican "front-runner" Rick Santorum. And the only thing I could think to myself as it went along, and as it ended, and as supposedly smart reporters discussed it in retrospect, was: Seriously?

I mean, do we take seriously a man who wants to put an end to public education in America, whether federal or state? He seems to envision a return to the small, local schoolhouse of the 19th century, or to home-schooling, whereby parents make decisions about what is fit to teach and how it is to be taught. Seriously? He makes a thinly veiled attack on President Obama's supposed religious beliefs in the absurdly misplaced context of prenatal testing, no more informed or creditable than those catering to the malign or ignorant doubts about the president's nationality. He accuses the president of promoting abortion--to save money! He trots out the canard about climate change, insisting that it is not man-made, and that to assert otherwise is to "serve the Earth" instead of acting in a "stewardship" capacity--by exploiting it for the benefit of our superior species. His science seems derived from Old Testament teachings, his reasoning ability from pre-Enlightenment days.

Seriously?

And the problem is far greater and more alarming than just this one deluded individual pandering to those on the far right wing of conservatism, and far greater than the fact that he has reached front-runner status amongst Republican voters. The problem, as I see it, is that this kind of nonsense is discussed by our media representatives as though it made some kind of sense. They do it too much honor. I try to respect the Buddhist principle of "right speech," but right speech does not, surely, include condoning those who lie, or speak half-truths, or simply utter palpable delusions. Right speech, as I see it, requires that I expose such things, when I hear them, for what they are--whether malicious or simply ignorant. Right speech does not require me to remain silent in the face of the demonstrably untrue, but rather to speak out.

Seriously.

Early Morning Buddhist Inspiration - 2/20/2012

"Whatever words we utter should be chosen with care for people will hear them and be influenced by them for good or ill."

~The Buddha

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Early Morning Buddhist Inspiration - 2/20/2012

"Whatever words we utter should be chosen with care for people will hear them and be influenced by them for good or ill."

~The Buddha

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