genkaku

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Although I am not sure what, exactly, is peculiar about it, still there is something peculiar in it....

I suppose there was an element of seriousness and determination involved when I built the zendo in the backyard in about 1998. A permanently split left thumb nail gives enduring testimony to the nail-pounding that more than once went awry. I spent the money for the lumber. I consulted with better-informed carpenters about how to create the foundation and, hardest for me, got the angle on the roof beams right.

Anyway, at some point, the place was as good as it was going to get and I could begin putting the place to the use intended -- zazen or seated meditation. Some people came to join me, but mostly they did not ... no matter, this was a place for zazen.

Then yesterday, as if my efforts here represented some institutionalized accomplishment, I got an email from a local college inviting me to join them as they counseled their students in spiritual matters. The letter was full of wording that suggested my thumb-bashing little hut had turned into something serious ... in the less serious, more institutional sense. I could send my representatives to meetings at the college. I could fill out a form and be on their volunteers list. I couldn't cuss up a storm because that's not how things were being organized.

Since I don't have any 'representatives' and since this small house in the backyard hardly resembles the intricacies of some Vatican, I sent a polite note saying that if individual students wanted to talk over their spiritual endeavors (with or without the Buddhist overlay) I'd be happy to lend a hand, but otherwise I was basically small potatoes.

And the idea of going to meetings made me remember Richard Feynman's response when asked what winning the Nobel prize (physics?) meant to him. "It means," he said, "that I don't have to go to meetings." I guess some meetings can help solve some problems, but I also think it can help confuse them worse ... and they sure are boring.

In zazen, you sit still and straight and confer with ... no one, more or less. It's true that that stillness will have to venture out if it hopes to come to fruition, but in the meantime well, just nourish the buds. No beard-stroking sincerities can do as much, but maybe you have to stroke your beard for a while before that becomes clear.

Anyway, it felt sort of weird that this putt-bang zendo would receive a wink and a nod. True, I did write a letter to the local newspaper when there was a story about the college's planning to cut back on its religious component, but that was some months ago and it was just an expression of my opinion ... it wasn't trooping down from Mt. Ararat to people the plain.

It makes me feel a little like Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels who observed aptly that if you said anything often enough, people would come to believe it. If the zendo sits there long enough, someone will get up a head of solemnity: It must be true, it's been sitting there, making its statement for 10-12 years.

Ah well, it was all a small matter. Peculiar. And made me titter a little.
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It occurred to me that in spiritual endeavor ...

Winners always come in second.
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By MITCH STACY
GAINESVILLE, Fla. (AP) - The leader of a small Florida church that espouses anti-Islam philosophy said he was still praying about whether go through with his plan to burn copies of the Q'ran on Sept. 11, which the White House, religious leaders and others are pressuring him to call off. Complete article

Fervor is such a strange commodity. It lights up the distant horizon like the Blitzkrieg, and yet, come dawn, its wonders are somehow changed ... not necessarily diminished, but less colorful, perhaps, in the dawn's early light.

The fervor of others can be pretty spooky, but my own fervors seldom make a similar spotlight. They are my fervors, of course, and don't carry the same elements of crazy I can invest the fervors of others with. Burn the Q'ran? That's nuts in a hundred ways. It pisses people off without doing much more than pissing them off. It doesn't change any minds. Its self-congratulation would be funny if it weren't so dangerous.

Burn the Q'ran.
Burn the Bible.
Burn the Tripitaka.
Burn the Upanishads.
Burn the Vedas.
Butn the Torah.
Burn Beavis and Butt-Head.

And then ... and then ... don't think of a purple cow.

In the basement here are the complete and molding works of Swami Vivekanada. There are a pair of cufflinks (real gold, not the chintzy latter-day kind) that belonged to my father and might be passed to my son. And there is s first-class sheep-skin coat, three-quarter length that may be heavy but would keep out the most bitter of prairie winds.

The all have meant something to me in the fervent times and yet now ... I'm barely sure of where they are, even if I did want to root out an old fervor. Vivekananda's in a box, I think; the sheepskin is in a trunk, I think; and woven in with Vivekanada is some recognition that religion and spiritual life was a fervent concern that is now spilled carelessly somewhere or other in my life...not at all the neatly-packaged Q'ran burning of the past.

Can fervor stand alone ... without any company to applaud or hiss? I sort of doubt it: Even where there is no one else around, still there are the scenarios of the mind, cheering and chiding. Fervor pushes actions along, but after a while its high octane seems to dissipate: Whatever anyone is fervent about turns into a simple aspect or facet of this life.

You like God? OK, no need to get your tail in a twist. The edges just soften over time like some small wave in the bay ... rolling along and sometimes singing. Sharing it in any real sense never did make much sense.
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Spending for House and Senate seats has risen to a record $1.2 billion and a report shows that the U.S. expects to spend about $6 billion annually in Afghanistan even after the U.S. troops withdraw.

What a lot of money. I wonder what sort of bang we can expect for the buck ... positive bang. It's hard to see and hard not to think:






A lot of people are unemployed and cannot feed their families.
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Somewhere, George Orwell mentioned more or less that there was no such thing as a philosopher without a full stomach. I imagine what he had in mind was to point out the disparity between rich and poor -- the rich have the comfort and luxury where the poor have more mundane matters to attend to: Food, drink, shelter, etc.

Does it take a certain level of comfort to make it possible to consider the discomforts of this life? I think it does and I think that comfort is manifested, for example, in the go-along-to-get-along conformity institutionalized churches/temples exhibit. It takes some peace and quiet -- and a full stomach -- to consider what Buddhists sometimes call unsatisfactoriness or uncertainty. And who better to provide that peace and quiet than a well-armed state? Philosophy and religion may be smooth as dish soap to the touch but there is payment to be made for that dish soap.

As true as any of the above may be sociologically -- and I'm not claiming it's a perfect analysis -- what interests me is how this plays out in individuals who may be seeking some peace of mind: Gotta have some comfort in order to assess discomfort. Or, as my buddy John once put it, "How many people do you know who claim poverty and still drink bottled water?"

I just think it's something to keep an eye on: Who is this one who assesses and wrestles with judgment and bias and attachment and all the other aspects of human existence that convene towards unhappiness? Is that one judgmental, biased and attached?

Have a Big Mac and think about it.
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On television, The History Channel tends to be top-heavy with clips of World War II and thin-tea approaches to Nostradamus/Apocalypse/Revelations/Anti-Christ/Doom-'n'-Gloom.

But yesterday, during a channel-flip, something caught my ear on The History Channel. I probably got it wrong, but how wrong, I'm not sure.

What I heard was that up until the Zoroastrians, Christians and Jews started promulgating their faiths, the notions of good and evil were joined at the hip so to speak -- kin whose separation was impossible. This accords with anyone's common sense and yet the dream/belief/hope that there might be some light without darkness was so compelling that common sense was swept aside in a bolt of pure light ... or pure darkness, I suppose.

Pure goodness surrounded by imaginative tales of how evil entered the picture. No longer kin. No longer brother and sister. No longer fruit of the same loins.

And to the extent that I got this notion right, all I could think was, "No wonder things got so fucked up." Not that it's not human and understandable, but rather what a good pointer to return to a common sense that points more assuredly to understanding a peace.

Anyway, what I found interesting in what I only half-heard and perhaps heard badly was the delicious public relations to be found in good and evil. It's so damned attractive that it takes some real courage to get beyond Disneyland -- courage and patience and doubt.

What would man's good be without man's evil? And what would man's evil be without man's good? It is fertile ground for the weaving of tales (tales I have woven and so perhaps have you), but for the serious student, it is also idiotic and half-baked, a stumbling block made particularly dangerous by the vast social agreement it can invite.

If so-called good and so-called evil are separated, isn't this the same as taking the wetness from water? How good could a man possibly hope to be good without the capacity to purify evil? How good could he be if all he could do was to point out evil as distinct from good? How could God be God if God were not God?

It's not tricky of philosophical or religious. It requires no books and no hierarchy and no convincing. It just requires common sense and a willingness to pay attention.

Still ... what a great p.r. gimmick: Good and evil, separate and distinct. If you have any doubts about great p.r., just check out the size and membership of some of the megachurches in the Midwest.

If only it assured peace.

If only it worked.

PS. As a footnote, someone posted this oldie-but-goodie elsewhere:

A teacher asked the children to draw a picture. Checking on their progress the teacher asked one little girl: "what are you drawing?" the girl answered: "a picture of god". The teacher pointed out that no one knows what god looks like.
"They will in a minute," replied the little girl.

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Virtue that is not put to the test can hardly be called virtue at all. Purity of motive and heart cannot be created on the tip of the tongue.

And so we test our spiritual endeavors again and again by putting them on the line -- possibly to be lost forever -- and embracing the fear we may feel at the idea of straying from or losing our virtues.

Courage is tested. Honesty is tested. Responsibility is tested. Attention is tested. And there is no book or institution that can assure the outcome. Only we can to that.

Let's be good.

But not too good.
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It is traditional to hang out the flag on Labor Day, the first Monday of each September -- a holiday born out of strife between the haves and the have-nots. First celebrated in 1882 in the U.S., the holiday is generally a time that also marks the end of summer vacations and provides an opportunity to fire up the barbecue one last time before cold weather sets in.

To hang a flag upside down is not a mark of disrespect. It is a mark of distress, an SOS for those in difficulty. It has nothing to do with the patriotism of those hanging it. Others whose love of country goes no further than an American-flag lapel pin may see things differently.

Since there is trouble in my country with something like 16-plus million either unemployed or underemployed, dismay seems appropriate. 9.6% unemployment is not much to write about in, say, Zimbabwe (94% in 2009), but many Americans do not imagine themselves as living in Zimbabwe.

Third-world status creeps in slowly. It's a dirty little secret: If we don't mention it, it's not true. "Mildred! Where is my American-flag lapel pin?!" The greatness of American principles is belied by its haves and its have-nots.

I will try to figure out how to hang my flag upside down.
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Following what I admit is more or less a nightly ritual, I watched first the BBC news tonight and then changed the TV channel to something called "The Nightly Business Report" on America's National Public Radio.

It's not that I am conversant with economics of any kind, but I feel it's important to know something of the day's financial concerns when so many are feeling the economic pinch. But tonight as I watched the business report, I realized what was missing from the 30 minute program: A laugh track.

Everyone involved on the program was at pains to put a positive spin on stock, bond jobless and other financial movements. There was not one word of negativity ... except, for example, to pooh-pooh such things as a "double-dip recession," i.e., moving from the recession we are currently in to an even deeper recession.

Those producing the show and, I guess, watching the show, wanted to hear that they could still make money and the rest of us should trust that things were, in fact, getting better. The program, like the government in a hundred different ways, has asked that the public trust the very banks and other institutions that put them in the soup in the first place.

I confess I was wrong about laugh tracks. There is a place for them.

When the banks got in trouble and the real estate bubble burst, public money was poured into their coffers to assure that they would not fail. Meanwhile, the public coffers -- the people whose money makes banking and Wall Street operate -- were left to fend pretty much for themselves. Take apart the smooth talk from the president on down and ... well, the only thing missing is a laugh track.

I hate laugh tracks almost as much as I hate malls, but in this case I really think a laugh track is warranted ... contrived laughter to balance out the contrived optimism and applause.

Is it any wonder that under-educated people like Glenn Beck can magnetize the disenfranchised, even with patent idiocies. Washington can't lead, Wall Street can't lead ... so we're stuck with Glenn Beck or Sarah Palin or some other half-baked demagogue. However bitter and saddening it may be for what once was a great country, we deserve a little time to laugh.

However un-funny things may be.

Bleah.

End of rant.
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My younger son got his driver's license yesterday.

The result was that there were a hundred places he needed to go -- shopping at WalMart, blowing up the tires, picking up milk for dinner, putting gas in the tank ... all told, I wouldn't be surprised if he put 75 miles on my car.

And each outing was followed by a blow-by-blow description of the experience. Connecticut drivers were the pits ... and he had an example to prove it. The gas pump didn't seem to work, so he went back into the convenience store to get the clerk to reset the mechanism.

He was a peacock and I was enjoying it.

Who doesn't like to be a peacock from time to time?

If he wants to drive me around, that's more than OK with me as well.

Who doesn't want a chauffeur from time to time?
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