"Choose to be optimistic, it feels better."
~His Holiness The Dalai Lama XIV
~His Holiness The Dalai Lama XIV
Saturday, March 31, 2012
Early Morning Buddhist Inspiration - 3/31/2012
"Choose to be optimistic, it feels better."
~His Holiness The Dalai Lama XIV
~His Holiness The Dalai Lama XIV
A MAN OF MEASURED RESPONSE
(Cross-posted at Vote Obama 2012.)
It would be comic if it were not intended as an insult to hear Barack Obama mistaken for a Muslim. He proclaims himself, unostentatiously, a Christian. I see him as having all the fine qualities of a good Buddhist. Equanimity is one of them.
At least from what we see through the lens of the media, biased as it may be this way or that, he manages to remain calm in every situation. His conduct of our foreign relations seems guided by an equanimous view of every crisis that presents itself. He has refused to be moved to hasty action in the Middle East, where our country's actions in the recent past have led us into a quagmire of troubles. Our military actions in the course of his presidency have been undertaken with careful deliberation and meticulous planning. A good Buddhist would surely call our drone strikes into question, as well the assassination of Al Qaeda leaders; but such dire acts may be the inevitable consequence of hostilities directed against our own country or endangering the lives of innocent people elsewhere in the world. I personally despise violence, but I am not a pacifist. Given the hatred, tyranny and oppression that still to this day abound on our planet, I conclude unhappily that force is sometimes necessary. It's my belief that Obama is judicious in his use of it.
On the political front at home, it seems to me, he is equally judicious. His positions are carefully thought-through in advance and presented with reasoned arguments. He listens respectfully and patiently to opposing views and takes them into account. This past week, he has been restrained, in public at least, in his response to the legal arguments against the greatest legislative achievement of his presidency, the health care bill, and the threat of its nullification by the conservative majority on the Supreme Court. One gets the sense that, should this hard-won victory be overturned, he would simply roll up his sleeves and get down to the exploration of another avenue of approach.
The President's response to the media's clamor for his reaction to the racial and political storm around the "Stand Your Ground" killing of that young black man in Florida was a model of compassionate equanimity. Rather than seize the opportunity to vent about the clear injustice of the situation, he chose instead to back away from the political and racial issues and simply express solidarity with the family in their grief and to model the understanding, compassion, and restraint that serve us better, as a nation, than anger, finger-pointing, and hate.
Most remarkable, in my view, is the President's ability to laugh off the increasingly personal attacks that question not only his religious faith but also his good faith as president. As I was saying earlier this week, despite my many disagreements with George W. Bush and, frankly, some barbs I sent his way in my blog, "The Bush Diaries," it never occurred to me to attack him as "UnAmerican," or to suggest that he was working intentionally to destroy this country, as Obama's detractors do. Their hatred seems to know no bounds of reason or common decency. And yet the lies, half-truths and innuendo used by his right-wing opponents seem to faze him not a bit, no more than the attacks that come from the other side of the political spectrum. When he does respond, it is with an even hand, with humor, and entirely lacking in rancor or vindictiveness. He does not allow himself the indulgence of becoming anyone's victim.
I for one appreciate his ability to muster a measured response to everything that besets his presidency, particularly in contrast to the rhetorical excesses and the liberties his current opponents feel free to take with truth. They attribute to him, with apparent impunity, words he never spoke, deeds and intentions he never contemplated, beliefs he never held. That he responds to these attacks with reason and good humor speaks well of him. Another four years in the White House, especially if he gets the support of the more Democratic congress he deserves, will afford him the opportunity to prove the historical importance of his presidency.
Friday, March 30, 2012
Early Morning Buddhist Inspiration - 3/30/2012
"Know the rules well, so you can break them effectively."
~His Holiness The Dalai Lama XIV
~His Holiness The Dalai Lama XIV
Early Morning Buddhist Inspiration - 3/30/2012
"Know the rules well, so you can break them effectively."
~His Holiness The Dalai Lama XIV
~His Holiness The Dalai Lama XIV
Thursday, March 29, 2012
STRAIGHT BACK
It has been a while since I did this practice, but it came back to me this morning while I was thinking-without-thinking about a passage for the book I'm working on, "Slow Looking." (Given that it's about my "One Hour/One Painting" sessions, my friend Michael suggests "Slow Art," by analogy with "slow food," rather than the slow looking/slow cooking word play I had started out with. Any thoughts?) Anyway, I was thinking about the straight back. I have noticed that this is one of the challenges for my small groups of fellow-lookers, and I know that it has to do in part with the physical circumstance, sitting on chairs in a museum or gallery and having sometimes to dodge around heads and shoulders for an unobstructed view. Still, we tend to associate the slouch with comfort, when in fact the opposite is true.
So I was thinking back to a straight-back technique I learned many years ago. It goes like this: start out with a comfortable posture on the floor, if you're so agile, or your chair. Once your eyes are closed and your attention is solid, think of a cord that reaches from the base of your spine down to the center of the earth, and anchor it there. Now think of another cord that reaches from the top of the spine, at the back of the head, all the way to the farthest point you can imagine in the universe; and anchor it there. And now think of gently tightening the two cords in both directions until the spine is straight. It's a pleasant sensation, and one that allows you perhaps to feel the individual building blocks, the vertebrae, parting fractionally to make space for the healing breath energy, so that the familiar stress in the spine disappears.
I spent my half-hour this morning meditating on the spine. I thought of the powerful, warm energy arising from the core of the earth and flooding the body from below; and of the cool, infinitely spacious energy of the universe flowing down along that cord and into the body from above. And I thought of those two energies meeting in their paths along the spine in an explosive, but still somehow gentle encounter. From there, they radiate out through the entire body, filling it with pulsating warmth and light.
The half-hour passed with surprising speed, and by the time the harp tone on my IPhone sounded, I was thoroughly re-energized and feeling more in tune with myself than I have for quite some time. It's a practice I can warmly recommend to a fellow meditator whose practice has, as it sometimes does, gone a little slack and tedious. Glad it came back to me, this morning.
Have a great day, everyone! And metta to all!
Early Morning Buddhist Inspiration - 3/29/2012
"Remember that the best relationship is one in which your love for each other exceeds your need for each other."
~His Holiness The Dalai Lama XIV
~His Holiness The Dalai Lama XIV
Early Morning Buddhist Inspiration - 3/29/2012
"Remember that the best relationship is one in which your love for each other exceeds your need for each other."
~His Holiness The Dalai Lama XIV
~His Holiness The Dalai Lama XIV
Wednesday, March 28, 2012
LUKA-LESS WEDNESDAY
A couple of months ago we opened a college fund for this little chap, and we'll be saving a little bit each month to help with the cost of his education--no small sum these days already, even at the state colleges and universities! The way things are going, he'll need to be a millionaire in eighteen years time. And won't be able to expect much help from the "government"--if there's any such thing left. Ah, well.
Speaking of government, yesterday was tax preparation day. Having in put in the necessary time to get all the information together, I drove down the coast to visit our CPA for our annual chat and working session. Since Ellie and are are both independent contractors, of a kind, we carefully save up the records of all our business-related expenses to offset the income. I have been doing it for years, in a rather messy but moderately meticulous way, and each year I promise myself that I'll keep the records as we go along so that I won't be left with a box full of receipts to sort out into piles and envelopes, labeled appropriately but all needing still to be added up and totaled. And each year I manage to break that promise to myself.
It's a pain. And yesterday I came to the realization, along with Chris, our friendly CPA, that it's probably not even worth the effort. After all that work, it seems that our carefully collated "itemized deductions" barely make a difference to the whole tax picture anyway. I have been giving myself needless work, perhaps for years, in the stubborn belief that since this is the way I have always done it, this is the way it needs to be done.
How we do cling on to our beliefs! They give us, perhaps, a sense of security--albeit a false one. No matter how much I cling to my old habits, the world will change, along with the circumstances, even when it comes to taxes. What was true and necessary ten years ago is neither true nor necessary today. But I keep acting as though it were. I guess the best thing I can do is have a little laugh at my expense(s!)
Shall we talk about the Supreme Court and its hearings on the individual mandate to purchase health insurance? No, we'd rather not. Except to bemoan the fact that our country seems no more adept than myself in contemplating the need to adapt to the changing circumstances of our rapidly expanding universe. I hate to embarrass myself in public, folks, but--dare I say it?--the Constitution, like the Bible, is just a piece of paper.
Early Morning Buddhist Inspiration - 3/28/2012
"If you think you are too small to make a difference, try sleeping with a mosquito."
~His Holiness The Dalai Lama XIV
~His Holiness The Dalai Lama XIV
Early Morning Buddhist Inspiration - 3/28/2012
"If you think you are too small to make a difference, try sleeping with a mosquito."
~His Holiness The Dalai Lama XIV
~His Holiness The Dalai Lama XIV
Tuesday, March 27, 2012
MEN OF INTEGRITY
My good friend Doctor Noe reminded me in a comment on yesterday's blog entry about Dick Cheney's heart that we lost a man of immense heart just a few days ago. His name is Joe Cryns. Here's a tribute to him, written by Bob Peterson, one of those fine men who introduced me, many years ago, to importance of the examined life and of finding strength in integrity.
I'm thinking back, now, to my first contact with what is now the ManKind Project in the early 1990s. It was a time of great turmoil in my life, and I was casting about for ways to get back on track; I was aware that there were things I needed to change about myself and the way I was living my life, but had no idea how to go about it. Then, improbably, I signed up for the New Warrior Training Adventure. I say "improbably" because everything about it--especially its name--was calculated to turn me away. A weekend with men? An "adventure"? "Warriors"? Come on, be serious... But I was called, irresistibly, to sign up anyway.
It proved to be the most intense, most difficult, most challenging weekend of my life--and it was, indeed, life-changing. Joe Cryns was a part of it, as a staff man. So was Bob Peterson, who wrote that tribute. So were a handful of other men, whose unrelenting demand for an integrity that matched their own both terrified and challenged me. I learned that to be responsible for my life, I would need to be accountable to both myself and others, and that the prevarications and denials that I had been using to protect myself against the world were no longer good enough. I learned, too, that my words and actions, both, are more authentic and more powerful when guided by a direction guided by an inner sense of purpose, a mission. What I learned at that weekend has guided my footsteps every since.
I did not know Joe Cryns outside those few weekends when we coincided as staff members, following that initial training. I knew nothing of his personal life. But his presence at the weekends was the model of the kind integrity that spares no one, least of all himself. For the first few trainings at which I served on staff, I quite honestly feared such men, intimidated by what appeared to be their self-assurance and their strength. It was, however, through working alongside such men that I came to value and trust my own integrity. Hence my gratitude to Joe, my sense of great sadness on learning of his death at the still youthful age of fifty-four, and my respect for his commitment to the service of his fellow man. He brought something of great value into the world, and had the generosity to share it with those who, like myself, needed the model of what it meant to draw upon both the strength and the vulnerability of an authentic man.
Early Morning Buddhist Inspiration - 3/27/2012
"Happiness is not something ready made. It comes from your own actions."
~His Holiness The Dalai Lama XIV
~His Holiness The Dalai Lama XIV
Early Morning Buddhist Inspiration - 3/27/2012
"Happiness is not something ready made. It comes from your own actions."
~His Holiness The Dalai Lama XIV
~His Holiness The Dalai Lama XIV
Monday, March 26, 2012
Early Morning Buddhist Inspiration - 3/26/2012
"On a long journey of human life, faith is the best of companions; it is the best refreshment on the journey; and it is the greatest property."
~The Buddha
~The Buddha
Early Morning Buddhist Inspiration - 3/26/2012
"On a long journey of human life, faith is the best of companions; it is the best refreshment on the journey; and it is the greatest property."
~The Buddha
~The Buddha
Sunday, March 25, 2012
GETTING TO THE HEART OF THE MATTER
I have written before about former Vice President Dick Cheney's heart. I read in today's New York Times that he now has a new one. Having heard in the past about how a donor's characteristics can be passed on, through transplant surgery, to the recipient, I'm wishing for Mr. Cheney that his donor was a gentle, peace-loving soul who lived his life on earth in the spirit of love and generosity. I hope he--or she! wouldn't that be wonderful!--did not take pleasure in shooting birds for sport. Or going to war. And in the spirit of the dharma, may this new recipient find true happiness in the remainder of his years.
The other piece that caught my eye this morning was Maureen Dowd's column, How Oedipus Wrecks, based on an interview with the writer/director Mike Nichols about father/son relationships. While I find the Nichols--basically Freudian--argument simplistic, I have done enough shadow work with men to know how the relationship plays out powerfully, sometimes disastrously, in their lives. Whether it's the need to live up to the father's expectations or role model, or having to compensate in some way for an absent father--no matter whether through the agency of addiction, emotional detachment, divorce or abandonment--the all-too-commonly experienced tough relationship with dad is a primary factor in the way men live out their lives. Too many of them simply never grow up because they are unable to resolve it. We live under the sway of too many ungrown little boys, from businessmen to presidents. Our world, I believe, would be a better place if men would simply learn how to mature. We could use a good review of the power of the initiation rites that ushered boys to manhood in older--and in some ways wiser--cultures than our own. And fraternity hazing doesn't cut the mustard; doesn't even come close.
Dowd's article provoked an emotional response, for me, because the closest I came to resolving that relationship with my father was on his deathbed. Close, because I think I never quite achieved it, man to man. My father already had one foot in the next world, and was unable to match my desire to come to resolution. I brought with me, at the time, the recent, rich experience of a men's training weekend and a new enthusiasm for authenticity, which led me to confess to my disbelief in those things to which he had devoted his life's work as a minister, and my disappointment that we had never been able to allow ourselves to reveal to each other the love that we undoubtedly shared. Looking back on it, I'm not sure that I achieved anything with my honesty, other than to add another cut to the poor man's agony at his life's end. It was a little late for the teenager's rebellion.
Having been raised in England in the English manner, I remained dangerously disconnected from matters of the heart and soul until my middle years. My parents, raised in the same manner, were not attuned to the child's need for the expression of love, whether in terms of physical intimacy--of which the hug is the simplest and most available example--or in words. I am not alone in this, I know. But, as I have written elsewhere, my relationship with my father was modeled on that between the human being and God. He was the all-wise, the all-knowing, the all-powerful. He was the high priest at the altar in the church to which my mother brought me and my sister to worship every Sunday. He read the Gospel from the lectern, delivered the sermon from the pulpit, celebrated communion in the holiest of holies. I was the little boy who wiggled and squirmed, and who needed a pee at the most inopportune of moments.
Still, as I said above, I would think it remiss to interpret my whole life through the lens of these memories, and to use this narrative as the explanation for all my weaknesses and failures. In a different context, I was citing the resounding words about love--or charity (depending on whether you prefer King James to later versions)--from Paul's First Letter to the Corinthians, Chapter 13. Towards the end of that magnificent passage, Paul reminds us: "What I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things." As I was saying, it took me a long time to grow up. I think I may be close to it at this point in my life. But I see a great number of men who have not yet managed that transition, and they do great damage in the world.
Which brings me back to Dick Cheney, and his heart...
Early Morning Buddhist Inspiration - 3/25/2012
"You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection."
~The Buddha
~The Buddha
Early Morning Buddhist Inspiration - 3/25/2012
"You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection."
~The Buddha
~The Buddha
Saturday, March 24, 2012
Thai Buddhist Monk: The Hands of Change.
Those tattooed and weathered hands and arms have seen a lot of change and yet they are still relaxed. They are a testament that the Buddha's teachings stand the test of time. The tattoos speak of the wisdom his body has absorbed from a lifetime of practicing the Dharma. If those hands could talk, I'm sure they'd have quite an inspiring story to tell!!~I bow the Buddha within all beings~
Early Morning Buddhist Inspiration - 3/24/2012
"To share happiness.
And to have done something good
Before leaving this life is sweet."
~The Buddha
And to have done something good
Before leaving this life is sweet."
~The Buddha
Early Morning Buddhist Inspiration - 3/24/2012
"To share happiness.
And to have done something good
Before leaving this life is sweet."
~The Buddha
And to have done something good
Before leaving this life is sweet."
~The Buddha
Friday, March 23, 2012
THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY
My friend Marco Sassone asked me to take a look at some new watercolors. They are astonishing. And, I must add, they lead to some somber reflections about the way we see the world and our place in it; and about that ultimate and least avoidable of all realities, death.
The dark side of our human existence is a legitimate subject for the artist to address; and artists have answered that call, over the centuries. But it is also one that many of our artists in the contemporary world prefer to skirt. They consider it, perhaps, gloomy. Or, in the clamor for popularity and commercial success, a risky enterprise. It takes some courage to look into the face of darkness without blinking, and our culture has preferred, generally, avoidance.
How strange and interesting, then, that Sassone chooses the transparent medium of watercolor to gaze into this fearsome opacity! I for one tend to associate watercolor with friendly landscapes. My English compatriots, used to cloudy skies, have admittedly been experts in the medium, but their clouds—at least in the way my fantasy evokes the English watercolor—are somehow fluffy, airy, filled with the promise of light, life-giving rain. Their landscapes are lovely, delicate, green…
Not so Sassone’s watercolors. They are, in the first place, city-scapes. They teem with the dark energy of city life at night...
Marco Sassone
Bloor Street Night, 2011
Watercolor on paper
21 x 29 inches
(All images courtesy of the artist)
... the streets, the traffic, those tall business and residential structures, gleaming with electric and electronic energy, and the artificial canyons they create. People—human beings—if at all, are dimly perceived; or their presence is merely implied, in vehicles or buildings, in “the heart of darkness.” Their creations, their fabrications, have taken over their lives.
Marco Sassone
Moment, 2011
Watercolor on paper
30.5 x 22 inches
There’s but a fine line between the control of “civilization” and the potential for chaos that roils not far beneath its surface, and this is the same line, I’d argue, that Sassone walks in the way he works with his medium. Watercolor, it would seem to me as a non-practitioning observer, is perpetually on the edge of disaster, of losing its clarity and turning into a sea of impenetrable mud, and this artist seems ready to risk everything in pursuit of his vision. That he ends up with glittering, rain-streaked streets, illuminations that glow with sudden clarity, gleaming reflections and unexpected points of light that contrast with the darkness—a kind of beauty, then...
Marco Sassone
Nocturne 2, 2011
Watercolor on paper
20.5 x 29 inches
All this is testament to the skill with which he works.
For years, Sassone made a reputation on the basis of his sunny paintings, bringing with him to (sunny!) California from his native Italy a brilliant sense of color and a feel for the pulse of life. The passion for life that permeated those earlier works is not lost in these new, darker ones; it is simply seen in the perspective of a harsher reality, less comfortable, perhaps, and less comforting. We perceive it “through the glass, darkly.”
And, once reminded of that phrase from Paul’s First Epistle to the Corinthians that echoes through the centuries and into my own childhood memories, I recall that for years, too, Sassone has made a point of coming to know the less fortunate denizens of our contemporary cities, the homeless. He has spent time with them, has painted their portraits and shared images of the poverty in which they are constrained to live. If they are nowhere visible, they surely haunt these paintings with their presence. Which calls to mind the point of Paul’s great exhortation: that love, or “charity” is the greatest of all values. “And now these three remain,” he concludes, resoundingly: “faith, hope and charity. But the greatest of these is charity.”
So these dark paintings are, after all, not primarily about the darkness that pervades them, but about the light that manages to shine through. And that, as I see it, is astonishing.
Early Morning Buddhist Inspiration - 3/23/2012
"It is better to do nothing
Than to do what is wrong.
For whatever you do, you do to yourself."
~The Buddha
Than to do what is wrong.
For whatever you do, you do to yourself."
~The Buddha
Early Morning Buddhist Inspiration - 3/23/2012
"It is better to do nothing
Than to do what is wrong.
For whatever you do, you do to yourself."
~The Buddha
Than to do what is wrong.
For whatever you do, you do to yourself."
~The Buddha
Thursday, March 22, 2012
Early Morning Buddhist Inspiration - 3/22/2012
"You are the source
Of all purity and impurity.
No one purifies another."
~The Buddha
Of all purity and impurity.
No one purifies another."
~The Buddha
Early Morning Buddhist Inspiration - 3/22/2012
"You are the source
Of all purity and impurity.
No one purifies another."
~The Buddha
Of all purity and impurity.
No one purifies another."
~The Buddha
Wednesday, March 21, 2012
(NEARLY) WORDLESS WEDNESDAY
You won't be hearing much from me today. It's a Luka Wednesday in our household... Looking forward to spending time with our miraculous grandson--now four and a half months old. We see remarkable changes every week. Such a privilege to watch this small human being change and grow!
Early Morning Buddhist Inspiration - 3/21/2012
"Emotions come from frustration. The meaning of emotion is frustration in the sense that we are or might be unable to fulfill what we want. We discover our possible failure as something pathetic, and so we develop our tentacles or sharpen our claws to the extreme. The emotion is a way of competing with the projection. That is the mechanism of emotion. The whole point is that the projections have been our own manifestations all along."
~Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche
~Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche
Early Morning Buddhist Inspiration - 3/21/2012
"Emotions come from frustration. The meaning of emotion is frustration in the sense that we are or might be unable to fulfill what we want. We discover our possible failure as something pathetic, and so we develop our tentacles or sharpen our claws to the extreme. The emotion is a way of competing with the projection. That is the mechanism of emotion. The whole point is that the projections have been our own manifestations all along."
~Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche
~Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche
Tuesday, March 20, 2012
TRAYVON: GUNS AND RACE...
... a deadly mix.
Obviously, the man who shot Trayvon has not yet been tried and convicted, so he is protected by the presumption of innocence. Still, given the bare bones of the story, it's virtually impossible to construct the events in any light that's favorable to him. To argue "self-defense" would be a stretch in the case of a man who makes a judgment on the basis of a hoodie and a black face, who pursues the victim despite the instruction of the police dispatcher not to do so, who chooses to get out of his vehicle with a loaded gun and provokes a dispute. None of this was necessary for his defense.
Again, I do not know all the facts surrounding the subsequent events, but the outrage is provoked by the fact that the assailant in the case has not been arrested or charged. The suggestion is that he was handled in a friendly manner by police and favored by a new Florida "Stand Your Ground" gun law that allows greater latitude for the definition of self-defense. The aggressive language of the law's title is, to my mind, in itself provocative to the mind already prone to aggressive action.
The question posed by Ed Schultz on his television talk show last night is a telling one: Would the police have been more aggressive, he asked, had the victim been white and the shooter black? I don't think there could be any doubt about this. I can't help but think that a black assailant in an otherwise identical circumstance would have been quickly arrested and thrown in jail.
Will this prove one of those watershed events that change hearts and minds and raise the level of consciousness in the matter of gun possession? Given the insane laxity of our current laws, the apparently iron grip of the gun lobby on our legislature and the almost daily news reports of senseless gun violence, I can only hope so. There seem to be serious efforts under way not to let the racist aspect of this incident go unnoticed. Could it be that mass demonstrations will result, across the country? It's the kind of trigger that could release a great deal of barely suppressed anger, the kind that was provoked by the murder of Dr. Martin Luther King. These days, however, it seems likely to me that any mass protest would be peaceful--and I for one would welcome such a show of solidarity.
Early Morning Buddhist Inspiration - 3/20/2012
"Instead of being hopeful, you develop another attitude, which is that of the warrior. If a warrior lives within hope, that makes him a very weak warrior. He is still concerned with his success. If the warrior no longer has the hope of achieving success, he has nothing to lose. Therefore enemies find it very difficult to attack him. The warrior will also regard a defeat as a victory, since he has nothing to lose.
This approach is called "luring an enemy into your territory." You lure enemies into your territory by giving in to defeat constantly. The enemies finally find that there is nothing to attack, and they feel they have been fooled. They keep on conquering more territory, but their opponent places no value on the territory and does not put up a struggle. This eventually causes the enemies to lose heart."
~Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche
This approach is called "luring an enemy into your territory." You lure enemies into your territory by giving in to defeat constantly. The enemies finally find that there is nothing to attack, and they feel they have been fooled. They keep on conquering more territory, but their opponent places no value on the territory and does not put up a struggle. This eventually causes the enemies to lose heart."
~Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche
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