Homeless Tom

Same as it ever was: The meaning behind the lyrics of "Once in a Lifetime"

2011-01-06T11:07:00.000-08:00

[a work in progress]

The video
The lyrics
The meaning

The viddy

"Once in a Lifetime"

And you may find yourself living in a shotgun shack
And you may find yourself in another part of the world
And you may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile
And you may find yourself in a beautiful house, with a beautiful
Wife
And you may ask yourself-well...how did I get here?

Letting the days go by/let the water hold me down
Letting the days go by/water flowing underground
Into the blue again/after the moneys gone
Once in a lifetime/water flowing underground.

And you may ask yourself
How do I work this?
And you may ask yourself
Where is that large automobile?
And you may tell yourself
This is not my beautiful house!
And you may tell yourself
This is not my beautiful wife!

Letting the days go by/let the water hold me down
Letting the days go by/water flowing underground
Into the blue again/after the moneys gone
Once in a lifetime/water flowing underground.

Same as it ever was...same as it ever was...same as it ever was...
Same as it ever was...same as it ever was...same as it ever was...
Same as it ever was...same as it ever was...

Water dissolving...and water removing
There is water at the bottom of the ocean
Carry the water at the bottom of the ocean
Remove the water at the bottom of the ocean!

Letting the days go by/let the water hold me down
Letting the days go by/water flowing underground
Into the blue again/in the silent water
Under the rocks and stones/there is water underground.

Letting the days go by/let the water hold me down
Letting the days go by/water flowing underground
Into the blue again/after the moneys gone
Once in a lifetime/water flowing underground.

And you may ask yourself
What is that beautiful house?
And you may ask yourself
Where does that highway go?
And you may ask yourself
Am I right? ...am I wrong?
And you may tell yourself
My god!...what have I done?

Letting the days go by/let the water hold me down
Letting the days go by/water flowing underground
Into the blue again/in the silent water
Under the rocks and stones/there is water underground.

Letting the days go by/let the water hold me down
Letting the days go by/water flowing underground
Into the blue again/after the moneys gone
Once in a lifetime/water flowing underground.

Same as it ever was...same as it ever was...same as it ever was...
Same as it ever was...same as it ever was...same as it ever was...
Same as it ever was...same as it ever was...

Purpose and Meaning

2011-01-04T15:06:00.000-08:00


	Quote is from Geerat J. Vermeij's new book The Evolutionary World

Water, a molecule consisting of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom, is utterly unlike the two component elements. It is a liquid rather than a gas at room temperature, it expands rather than contracts in the solid state, and it is an exceptionally good conductor of heat. The properties of water seem irreducible, much as our complex brain might appear to be irreducible to its many constituent parts; but in fact they arise through the interaction — the working together, or synergy — of components. Likewise in music, chords and melodies convey patterns and evoke emotions that single tones cannot. Sentences, paragraphs, and books have meanings that individual words and letters do not. Living things, too, work together to add dimensions of value, function, and meaning. Survival and propagation are themselves expressions of emergence and synergy common to all life-forms; but we humans are motivated and enriched by more than these lifewide aspirations. We perceive a greater purpose — through love, curiosity, a social conscience, helping others, and perhaps above all, through aesthetics — a deeper meaning that makes our individual lives worthwhile to others. Without that added significance, and without the intentionality that enables us to create a future according to our tastes and values, life would be empty; we would descend into apathy and callousness. Purpose and meaning, however they come into our lives, are as real and as essential as the evolved imperative to survive and reproduce.

The Wild Geese

2010-12-27T12:37:00.000-08:00

The Wild Geese

Horseback on Sunday morning,
harvest over, we taste persimmon
and wild grape, sharp sweet
of summer's end. In time's maze
over the fall fields, we name names
that went west from here, names
that rest on graves. We open
a persimmon seed to find the tree
that stands in promise,
pale, in the seed's marrow.
Geese appear high over us,
pass, and the sky closes. Abandon,
as in love or sleep, holds
them to their way, clear,
in the ancient faith: what we need
is here. And we pray, not
for new earth or heaven, but to be
quiet in heart, and in eye
clear. What we need is here.

~ Wendell Berry

(Collected Poems 1957-1982)

Blogisattva Finalists have been announced

2010-12-09T10:57:00.000-08:00

The Blogisattva Award Finalists (with “honorable mentions” in most categories included) were announced by co- administrator Kyle Lovett at The Blogisattva Awards website yesterday to some fanfare.

As founder of the awards, and administrator during its beginning spell of three years honoring English-language Buddhism blogging, I, of course, have a keen interest in the splendid resurrection of the awards, done by administrators Kyle Lovett and Nate deMontigny. [AND with spiffy new design features contributed by Anoki Casey.]

The first thing I noticed as I read through the list of finalists was the women! Wooho! In the first three years of the awards the noticeable absence of woman’s voices [texty key tapping?] in the ‘competition,’ and, perhaps, in the Buddhoblogosphere, generally, was a point of controversy. In 2006, 2007 and 2008 [honoring blogs, bloggers and posts of the prior year], woman were little represented.

I can’t pull together data to prove it, but I think that it was both a fault of the Awards in the ought-years, and that there was, genuinely, a paucity of women dedicated to blogging at that time. I think it is known that guys had been overwhelming dominant in the Internet and that this situation is much more level, with, well, nowadays, everybody, pretty much, hooked on the web.

Many of the stalwart blogs of the awards in the ought-years have passed from the scene, changed the focus of their blog, or just aren't contenders this year. A notable exception is The Buddhist Blog -- which continues to be to the Buddhoblogosphere what Kellogg’s is to cereal [nope, that’s not it]. General Motors is to vehicles [nope, not right]. I’ve got it!: The Buddhist Blog is to the Buddhoblogosphere what Buddha is to Buddhism!

James Ure’s TBB is a finalist in three categories and the recipient of three honorable mentions, which, with a total of six, makes him/his blog tops on the Kudos Count, both this year and, probably, all time [I'll have to run the numbers].

The reason the awards lapsed after 2008 was difficulties I was having, and am having, including easy access to the Internet. I haven't yet had time for the delight of going through the Finalists List and reading the posts and blogs that have been honored. But I do see that the quality is there, and for that the administrators and judges should be congratulated.

I am delighted to see nominations for Smiling Buddha Cabaret, one blog I have followed somewhat in the past few years. And, ditto, for cheerio road and thinkBuddha.org — long-time blogs that I follow on my RSS reader.

Congratulations to all the worthies and their nominations.

BUT, it would be no fun if I didn't share at least one disappointment. Awards are like that; controversies are a part of the thought process that makes us think about what is good. I confess to being disappointed that Marnie Louise Froberg's "A Comment on Dharma Wars: Ignoble Silence, Transcendental Egotism and Getting Straight with the Truth" wasn't nominated for Best Post.

Awards! Are they a Barrel of Joy, or what!!?

Blogisattva announcements on Dec 8 & Dec 12

2010-12-06T13:58:00.000-08:00

The Octobuddha, preparing the awards.

A post at The Blogisattva Awards website tells us that the finalists for the 2010 Awards will be announced in a post on December 8 and that winners will be announced on December 12.

The post also thanks us for our patience. [What patience?]

LET THE HONORS ROLL OUT!! LET THE FUN BEGIN!!

Categories for the 2010 Awards are…

Blog of the year, Svaha!
Best Post of the Year
Best Achievement in Skilled Writing
Best Achievement Blogging on Buddhist Practice or Dharma
Best Buddhist Practice Blog
Best "Life" Blog
Best Blogging on Matters Philosophical, Psychological or Scientific
Best Achievement in Kind and Compassionate Blogging
Best Achievement Blogging Opinion Pieces or about Political Issues
Best Engage-the-World Blog
Best Achievement in Design
Best Achievement in Wide Range of Topic Interests Blogging
Best Achievement with Humor in a Blog Post

What does it mean to be human?

2010-11-04T10:03:00.000-07:00

What does it mean to be human?

An essay in the Arts section of the Unte Reader blog, titled “A New Way to Act,” by David Doody, tells us that acting/performing has moved beyond the Method method to something new because what it means to be human isn’t now what it was.

It’s a weird essay on the face of it: A declaration that being human has changed, yet that provocative statement is sublimated to the idea that acting must now be done differently.

Acting as it is, and shouldn’t be, declares Doody, is one of mimicry. A performance like that of Marlon Brando in Streetcar Named Desire is [quoting Sheila Heti],

… a version of the human as a deeply individual, emotionally rooted being, with psychological depth, continuity of self, and a past that profoundly affects present behaviour and relationships

Doody tells us, citing Heti, that humans today

… have moved from the Freudian era toward cognitive behavioral therapy, meaning that “we are not determined by our past experiences….We are now in an age in which to be human means, in part, to be able to choose what sort of human one wants to be.” As Heti sees it, our actors have not followed the trend, but rather are still attempting to act the way Brando did. Even the best of this acting, Heti sees as bad, as it is only “high mimicry.”

So, is Doody [really, Heti] right? Has the nature of being human changed because of the new trend? Was the old Army ad perhaps wrong then, but right, now? We can “be all ~~you~~ we want to be?” Or do we still drag the ball-and-chain of our prior conditioning in a continuity of self?

At the end of his essay, Doody fully bails on Heti, who is inspired by sight of the next leap in how acting should be.

So what, exactly, would Heti want to see replace the form of acting so commonly used today? She gives one example: the artist Ryan Trecartin’s videos. The characters in these videos have “no personality at the core” and “[t]here is no sense that [they] have what we consider an emotional history, or have lived days and years prior to the moment they are currently living on screen before us.” Other than that, she pretty much offers only a call to duty for screenwriters and actors to discover what the next stage of acting will be.

It’s all very odd, but surely there is some truth to the idea that human society/relationships/'senses or self' go through radical changes over the course of ages [and maybe, now, decades] that we find hard to fathom.

The acting in the 20s and 30s seems wholly artificial to us. While it can be pleasurable to watch an old Bette Davis movie, her performance doesn’t fell like it is representative of a real person. Ditto Marlon Brando; he’s archly theatrical and emotionally unstable. His performance seems like “acting,” not being real.

I know from reading books about how people used to think in ages past that the sense of ‘what being human is’ changes. Living in a “world” that is really only just within a few miles of where you were born is profoundly different than knowing the news of what goes on everywhere on the planet. Reading the newspapers or going online makes us different, and that difference isn’t necessarily better or ‘more knowing.’

Before the Renaissance period [say, befor 1450AD], people had no real conception of history. Things changed so slowly that people didn’t think in terms of change. They thought everything was very much like it had always been. History was recorded in a jumble; there was no timeline. There was no sequence of events to tell a story of advancement or change or 'reason why/how things changed or could change.'

What meaning life had was necessarily found in religion, since there was little else. Whereas today we can see the planet being in a world of dangers [global warming; terrorism] and adventures [longer lifespans; new technological gizmos; constant profound and surprising scientific discoveries], in the past, life was almost wholly one of duty.

But how are we today? WHO are we today?

Maybe we’re journeying to a place where living vicariously in the movies is feeling phony. Maybe we’re benumbed by not knowing who we are or what we’re supposed to be.

Maybe the prior paragraph in this blogpost is phony. Maybe I don’t know what to think or write to conclude things, here. Maybe it’s annoying that I’m getting all postmodern about now, losing my seriousness and thinking more about what I want for lunch rather than being respectful of all you blog readers. [Hmmm. Hannah’s Deli!? Mmmmm.]

Affirming the intrinsic worth of all conscious beings

2010-10-25T15:27:00.000-07:00

There are certain kinds of events that take us out of ourselves, that allow us to transcend or break out of the egocentric circle of concerns that all too often binds our thinking life. A possible beginning is a romantic episode in which another conscious being becomes a passionate object of interest. The being of the other assumes an intense importance that, if it lasts long enough, can mature into an appreciation of the other as a kind of hero, struggling against existential limitations to which they are ultimately destined to lose. This mature appreciation of the other would be an ugly narcissism if focused on the self; but focused on the other, it can be a model for, eventually and personally, affirming the intrinsic worth of all conscious beings.

Written by Joe Frank Jones, III, from "Introduction to The Pluralist symposium on Ralph D. Ellis's 'Spiritual Partnership and the Affirmation of the Value of Being'.(Critical essay)." in the Fall 2006 issue of The Pluralist, preceding Ellis's long essay "Spiritual Partnership and the Affirmation of the Value of Being"
---
Update 10/26/10: I note that today the splendid William Harryman posted sentiment that one should be compassionate with oneself in his Integral Options Cafe blog: "Om - Create Time for Self-Compassion."

The issue rages on, for me. Are there times, or people, for whom being compassionate with oneself is appropriate? Are there others of us that are better 'served' by always batting our ego down in whack-a-mole style!? I guess we each need to choose for ourself, BUT the choice we are inclined to make is, perhaps, not the best for us.

Unselfishness is at the core of solving world problems

2010-10-18T10:00:00.000-07:00

The big evolutionary idea that I think is going to transform our thinking in the social sciences in the next 10 years is group selection. What this means is that we actually have all kinds of mental equipment for suppressing self-interest, for working for the common good, but only when we are basically at war with another team. We can be unselfish, we can be cooperative, but that is activated by intergroup conflict.

If we are attacked by space aliens, I think we humans will unite pretty well. But until then, it’s just very, very difficult for us to solve any sort of dilemma that requires people to sacrifice for the greater good—unless it’s the greater good of their team versus another’s.

So it’s really a shame that global warming has become so politicized. We are capable of solving some things, like taking lead out of gasoline. There are some regulatory changes that have been made that weren’t so politicized. But once it becomes politicized, it’s very difficult to achieve global cooperation.

Quoting Jonathan Haidt, from a recent discussion with Michael Bergeisen, posted at the Greater Good website. Haidt is best known for his 2006 book The Happiness Hypothesis. "His [forthcoming] book focuses on the psychological foundations of our moral and political views, exploring how recent discoveries in moral psychology might help us get past the culture wars and create more civil forms of politics."

Steiner is dead

2010-10-15T09:12:00.000-07:00

This is the third quote I've posted from Sebastian Junger's amazing new book, War. The first quote is found here; the second here.

The story here is about how close Steiner came to death. Writes Junger:

The book's back cover.
Steiner lay there unable to see or move, wondering whether the things he was hearing were true. Had he been hit in the head? Was he dead? How would he know? The fact that he could hear the men around him should count for something. After a while he could see a little bit and he sat up and looked around. The bullet had penetrated his helmet to the innermost layer and then gone tumbling off in another direction, looking for someone else to kill. (The blood on his face turned out to be lacerations from stone fragments that had hit him.) The other men glanced at Steiner in shock — most of them thought he was dead — but kept shooting because they were still getting hammered and firepower was the only way out of there. Steiner was in a daze and he just sat there with a bullet hole in his helmet, grinning. After a while he got up and started laughing. He should be dead but he wasn’t and it was the funniest thing in the world. “Get the fuck down and start returning fire!” someone yelled at him. Steiner laughed on. Others started laughing as well. Soon everyman in the platoon was howling behind their rock wall, pouring unholy amounts of firepower into the mountainsides around them

“It was to cover up how everyone was really feeling,” Mac admitted to me later.

Three Humvees drove down from the KOP to pick up Steiner, but he refused to go with them — he wanted to stay with his squad. When the platoon finally started running up the road toward Phoenix [the name of an outpost; not the Arizona city], Steiner found himself floating effortlessly ahead of the group despite carrying sixty pounds of ammo and a twenty-pound SAW [stands for Squad Automatic Weapon, a light machine gun]. It was one of the best highs he’d ever had. It lasted a day or two and then he sank like a stone.

You start getting these flashes of what could’ve been,” Steiner said. “I was lying in bed like, ‘Fuck, I almost died.’ What would my funeral have been like? What would the guys have said? Who’d have dragged me out from behind that wall?” Steiner was doing something known to military psychologists as “anxious rumination.” Some poeple are ruminators and some aren’t, and the ones who are can turn one bad incident into a lifetime of trauma.

“You can’t let yourself think about how close this shit is,” O’Byrne explained to me later. “Inches. Everything is that close. There’s just places I don’t allow my mind to go. Steiner was saying to me, ‘What if the bullet —' and I just stopped him right there, I didn’t even let him finish. I said, ‘Bit it didn’t. It didn’t.’”

Combat brings consequences

2010-10-14T13:47:00.000-07:00

This is the second quote I've posted from Sebastian Junger's amazing new book, War. The first quote is found here.

The sentiment here is in ways similar to the prior quote, but says some important things about what we impose on the brave soldiers we send into tough situations to fight for us. Writes Junger:

The book's back cover.
Combat was a game that the United States had asked Second Platoon to become very good at, and once they had, the United States had put them on a hilltop without women, hot food, running water, communications with the outside world, or any kind of entertainment for over a year. Not that the men were complaining, but that sort of thing has consequences. Society can give its young men almost any job and they’ll figure how to do it. They’ll suffer for it and die for it and watch their friends die for it, but in the end, it will get done. That only means that society should be careful about what it asks for. In a very crude sense the job of young men is to undertake the work that their fathers are too old for, and the current generation of American fathers has decided that a certain six-mile-long valley in Kunar Province needs to be brought under military control. Nearly fifty American soldiers have died carrying out those orders. I’m not saying that’s a lot or a little, but the cost does need to be acknowledged. Soldiers themselves are reluctant to evaluate the costs of war (for some reason, the closer you are to combat the less inclined you are to question it), but someone must. That evaluation, ongoing and unadulterated by politics, may be the one thing a country absolutely owes the soldiers who defend its borders.

There are other costs to war as well — vaguer ones that don’t lend themselves to conventional math. One American soldier has died for every hundred yards of forward progress in the valley, but what about the survivors? … Ultimately, the problem is that they’re normal young men with normal emotional needs that have to be met within the very narrow options available on that hilltop. Young men need mentors and mentors are usually a generation or so older. That isn’t possible at Restrepo [an outpost in the Korengal Valley in Afghanistan abutting Pakistan], so a twenty-two-year-old team leader effectively becomes a father figure for a nineteen-year-old private. Up at Restrepo a twenty-seven-year-old is considered an old man, an effeminate Afghan soldier is seen as a woman, and new privates are called “cherries” and virtually thought of as children. Men form friendships that are not at all sexual but contain much of the devotion and intensity of a romance. Almost every relationship that occurs in open society exists in some compressed form at Restrepo, and almost every human need from back home gets fulfilled in some truncated, jury-rigged way. The men are good at constructing what they need from what they have. They are experts at making do.

As for a sense of purpose, combat is it — the only game in town. Almost none of the things that make life feel worth living back home are present at Restrepo, so the entire range of a young man’s self-worth has to be found within the ragged choreography of a firefight. The men talk about it and dream about it and rehearse for it and analyze it afterward but never plumb its depths enough to lose interest. It’s the ultimate test, and some of the men worry they’ll never again be satisfied with a “normal life” — whatever that is — after the amount of combat they’ve been in. They worry that they may have been ruined for anything else.

War is Exciting

2010-10-10T16:04:00.000-07:00

I'm going to post a few quotes from Sebastian Junger's amazing new book, War. The book is highly informative and brilliantly written. War, like the condition of being homeless, is something the public should know a lot more about. Writes Junger:

War is a lot of things and it's useless to pretend that exciting isn't one of them. It's insanely exciting. The machinery of war and the sound it makes and the urgency of its use and the consequences of almost everything about it are the most exciting things anyone engaged in war will ever know. Soldiers discuss that fact with each other and eventually with their chaplains and their shrinks and maybe even their spouses, but the public will never hear about it. It's just not something that many people want acknowledged. War is supposed to feel bad because undeniably bad things happen in it, but for a nineteen-year-old at the working end of a .50 cal during a firefight that everryone comes out of okay, war is life multiplied by some number that no one has ever heard of. In some ways twenty minutes of combat is more life than you could scrape together in a lifetime of doing something else. Combat isn't where you might die — though that does happen — it's where you find out whether you get to keep on living. Don't underestimate the power of that revelation. Don't underestimate the things young men will wager in order to play that game one more time.

The banality of evil

2010-08-04T08:55:00.000-07:00

Someone who sees no resemblance between himself and his enemy, who believes that all the evil is in the other and none in himself, is tragically destined to resemble his enemy. But someone who, recognising evil in himself, discovers that he is like his enemy is truly different. By refusing to see the resemblance, we reinforce it; by admitting it we diminish it. The more I think I’m different, the more I am the same; the more I think I’m the same, the more I’m different … .

From Facing the Extreme: Moral life in the concentration camps, by Tzvetan Todorov

Move afoot to fire-up the Blogisattva Awards

2010-06-14T11:30:00.000-07:00

An interesting development this morning: Buddhobloggers Kyle Lovett [of The Reformed Buddhist and Progressive Buddhism fame] and Nate DeMontigny [of Precious Metal: the blog fame] expressed an interest in getting the Blogisattva Awards going again.

I said Hooray!, of course. And already things are churning.

Nate has put up a post at the Blogisattva blogsite, "Blogisattva is making a comeback!" And has updated the top-of-the-sidebar scrolling marquee to read:

The Blogisattva Awards are on
the way back.

We are in the process of
selecting an independent
committee to judge and award
the submissions.

Categories will be announced
soon and then the nomination
process will begin!

The Blogisattvas had been awarded early in the years 2006, 2007 and 2008 to honor Buddhism blogging for the prior calendar years.

Top winners from the past:

Blog of the Year, Svaha!

Blogpost of the Year

2006 "Katrina's Charities"; Wonderings on the Way; Jeb
2007 "Vesak and the Art of Changing Tyres"; This is This; Cliff Jones
2008 "Addressing Comments from the Meditation Thread"; Tricycle Blogs Jeff Wilson; Jeff Wilson

The Wordsmithing Award

2006 F Kwan; foot before foot: the photoblog
2007 Will Buckingham; thinkBuddha and willbuckingham.com blog
2008 Ed Brickell; Bad Buddha [6/14/10: Ed now blogs Run with Mu]

It will be great to see the awards revived, with new blood and new ideas brought forward. You go, guys!

BTW, a discussion is going on about reviving the awards in a Tricycle group, "Resurrect the Blogisattvas?"

Two civil lawsuits

2010-05-15T11:09:00.000-07:00

An article in the Bee today is of some interest to me, since there are two civil suits that I am aware of that have many identical elements.

The alike elements are these:

A civil suit was filed for wrongful death, filed by the decedent's daughter.
The plaintiff attorney is Ed Dudensing.
The defendent is Horizon West Healthcare.
The decedent is an old woman with dementia who cracked a bone and died from an infection she incurred while staying at a facility run by the defendent.

Differences in the two suits include these:

Suit #1 went to trial and a jury awarded the daughter $28 million, which, according to the Bee article, is "the largest personal injury award in [Sacramento] County history."
Suit #2 is in litigation.

Suit #1 The deceased woman is Frances Tanner and the daughter is Elizabeth Pao. (Two people I'd never heard of.)
Suit #2 The deceased woman is my mother Mary Criner and the daughter is my sociopathic sister Carol Armstrong. (Two people I know best in the world.)

Howl

2010-01-20T17:06:00.000-08:00

Kiped from theworsthorse: Clips from "Howl," opening at the Sundance Film Festival, tomorrow.

Compassion for oneself

2009-08-29T15:45:00.000-07:00

The issue of self-directed compassion has been coming up in a variety of ways lately -- in my reading [in Compassion: Conceptualisations, Research and Use in Psychotherapy and in Transcending Self-Interest: Psychological Explorations of the Quiet Ego]; in sermons at the mission; and in discussion at Loaves & Fishes.

As a longtime believer in ego reduction, I come at this with bias against being soothing toward oneself [or, as I term it, "the dastardly deed of giving yourself a pass for doing a bunch of stupid shit].

But studies this century on ego have changed the terminology and a sense of what the ego might be and what stable egos might be like. Now, perhaps, ego at its "best," is either quiet or silent, and that it might be good, for some, if not all, to direct compassion toward oneself.

Input from the mission

While matters of outwardly-directed love and compassion come up rarely at the mission [either in the milieu of Homeless World or in the preachers' sermons], they do come up in rather weird ways. One usually-hate-mongering preacher said something I've been mulling over: "God doesn't love you (and everyone else, equally) because of who YOU are, but because of who HE is." The line got hardy approval from the congregants. [Congregants DO hear of how they are much loved, but not about how they should themselves love.]

My immediate reaction was "What the hell!? If He doesn't love us for who WE are, individually, but wholly because He is who He is, then He must love us conceptually, and not for ourselves. And, truly, one can only love a being for his/her unique constituent of qualities; otherwise, it ain't love."

[But, then, God being God, knowing us from the inside, as the Christian preachers claim, He may ONLY be able to know us as particular persons and NOT as conceptions. He knows the numbers of hairs on the head of each of us, it says in the Bible (Matthew 10:30 & Luke 12:7.)]

Later thoughts of mine on the matter were even less damning: We can evoke love of others. We have that power. We can direct ourselves toward loving our enemies (as Jesus famously instructed), for example. At least we might if they are not so narcissistic that they are constantly game-playing. [I don't think a mentally healthy person can love someone whose authentic self is fully shielded. "There's no there there," as is said by psychiatrists about sociopaths.] Still, I insist loving the particular person is necessary for it to be love; people (as opposed to God) cannot love someone conceptially.

From what I understand, when Jesus said "love thy neighbor as thyself," one interpretation is that he meant "love they neighbor instead of thyself." For him to have meant "love thy neighbor in the same manner as one loves thyself" -- which is the usual interpretation -- presents curious problems. For one thing, we don't know ourself in the same way we know others. While we may think of ourself in the third-person, we never experience ourself in the third-person. Our relationship with ourself is radically different than the relationship we have with others. We can't bestow love to ourself in the same way we can to others; the two "loves" are wholly, radically, spectacularly different beasts.

It's a more than a little like comparing making love to masturbation. These are greatly different experiences because you can't be "the other" to yourself.

To my way of seeing things, compassion necessarily comprises an element of ignorance that we don't have about ourself. [While we are ignorant about things relating to ourself, when we are compassionate toward ourself, the same "ourself" that is bestowing the compassion is receiving the compassion, thus it is fully informed. Compassion we give to ourself is directly, overtly twisting what we immediately beforehand had seen as the truth.

Compassion toward another is given from a different viewpoint, different worldview and from a base of different data about the situation than what "the other" is going by. Compassion, because of its otherness, is enlarging. Compassion you direct at yourself is skewing and screwy and very much NOT a second opinion, from another perspective.

Beyond the self

In their paper "Beyond the Individualistic Self" by Drs. Korsgaard and Meglino in Transcending Self-Interest, the writers/researchers tell us that those who attempt to be both self-regarding and other-regarding end up with conflicted decisions and end up choosing self over other. Thus, only those who are "Other Oriented" benefit from full-throttle compassion.

		Other-Interest
		Low	High
Self-Interest	Low	Mindlessness Thanatos	Other Orientation Quiet Ego
Self-Interest	High	Rational Self-Interest Noisy Ego	Collective Rationality Phobos

In the chart at right, you can see the four types of egos that result from different combinations of high or low interest in self or others.

Mindlessness is a category that includes individuals who are low in both self-and other-interest. This mode of behavior is posited to involve functioning in obedience to commonsense rules. Behavior has been documented extensively in research on automaticity [Bargh & Chartrand: "The unbearable automaticity of being."] and mindlessness [Ellen Langer on Mindlessness, or, see her 1989 book Mindfulness].

Rational Self-Interest [High in self-interest; Low in other-interest] is egoism in its most-rigorous form (i.e., the "noisy" ego). Individuals pursue only self-serving goals. This type of reasoning underlies classical economics [unfettered capitalism!] and value expectancy models of attitudes and motivation [Ajzen: "Nature and operation of attitudes"].

Collective Rationality [High in both self- and other-interest] Individuals engage in rational judgment. While trying to maximize outcomes for both self and others, self-oriented goals triumph according to studies [That is, a self-serving bias wins out [Bazerman et al:. "Why good accountants do bad audits," in Harvard Business Review.] [Also, see DeDreu et al: "Motivated information processing, strategic choice, and the quality of negotiated agreement."]

Other Orientation [Low in self-interest; High in other-interest] Individuals are focused on benefitting others and apply principles or norms of behavior to meet these goals, obviating the need to consider personal consequences. [The "other" may involve a pair or group within which the self is subsumed.] This is the 'extreme' in quieting the ego. [See Meglino & Korsgaard "The Role of Other Orientation in Reactions to Job Characteristics" in the Journal of Management.]

But another view comes from Dr. Kristin Neff [in her Transcending Self-Interest paper "Self-Compassion: Moving Beyond the Pitfalls of a Separate Self-Concept" and from Dr. Paul Gilbert, editor of Compassion: Conceptualisations, Research and Use in Psychotherapy.

Writes Neff, "Self-compassion can be thought of as a type of openheartedness in which the boundaries between self and other are softened -- all human beings are worthy of compassion, the self included. In this way, self-compassion represents a quiet ego, because one's experience is not strongly filtered through the lens of a separate self."

I'm not sure I understand Neff, nor that she makes a good case for self-compassion, generally, but in case histories in Paul Gilbert's book I can see how some individuals are aided in overcoming trauma by soothing themselves with inward-directed compassion. For most of us, though, I have to think that loving ourselves is necessarily non-compassionate because of the self-other conflict that ensues.

At her website, Self Compassion, Dr. Neff writes, "When individuals feel self-pity, they become immersed in their own problems and forget that others have similar problems. They ignore their interconnections with others, and instead feel that they are the only ones in the world who are suffering. Self-pity tends to emphasize egocentric feelings of separation from others and exaggerate the extent of personal suffering. Self-compassion, on the other hand, allows one to see the related experiences of self and other without these feelings of isolation and disconnection."

Well, maybe so. Certainly Dr. Neff has researched the matter extensively. But I cannot see that people applying what they want to be compassion toward themselves doesn't become, really, self pity. One's relationship with oneself is, necessarily, self-oriented so only self pity occurs when one feels sorry for his- or her-self. Feeling sorry for others is the 'road in' for having compassion for others. Feeling sorry for oneself always, it seems to me, becomes self pity.

Homeless Tom honored by Progressive Buddhism blog and Four Honest Scrappy blogs

2009-08-10T16:37:00.000-07:00

This blog was honored in a blogpost two days ago, "My Twelve," in the much esteemed Progressive Buddhism blog as one of the "best Buddhist blogs by individual practitioners." Thanks to Kyle Lovett for his very kind commendation.

With only a couple exceptions [ones I was unaware of], the blogs Kyle cites are excellent Buddhism blogs I have long read and admired. Those blogs I was unaware of are ones I am now aware of, have read them, seen they are mighty fine, and added them to my reader.

Of Homeless Tom [the blog], Kyle wrote,

Tom Armstrong is one of the most strong willed men I know. He has been through a lot of hardship in his life and he still has managed to be a powerful voice for all Buddhist bloggers with his annual administration of the Blogisattva awards and his Zen Unbound project. He also is a tireless advocate for the homeless and still finds time to write some very insightful and compelling stuff. He says what he thinks, and doesn't back down from talking about any subject.

Kyle also commended the individual blogs of several of his co-contributors to the Progressive Buddhism group blog. Again, these are some of the outstanding Buddhism blogs in the Buddhoblogosphere.

----

I am embarrassed to say that I had not acknowledged til now [and mostly didn't know about] kudos this blog has received from other Buddhobloggers in the expansive "Honest Scrap" awards. "Honest Scrap" winners are tasked with bragging about receiving the award, naming seven blogs they find to be awesome and inspiring and then listing ten honest things about themselves.

The magnificent and kind TMcG, blogger of Full Contact Enlightenment [formerly TMcG buddhablog ], wrote in her blogpost "Honest Scraps being handed out..." of May 23, 2009,

I’ve been reading Tom’s blogpost from the days of Zen Unbound and his journey on the path has been one which gives a strong first person account of the voice of homelessness. He’s whip smart, creative and a fresh voice and I believe he needs to get a book deal - STAT. I learn so much from him.

NellaLou of enlightenment ward was magnanimous in her Honest Scrap blogpost of April 30, 2009, "Yikes! Honest Scraps Makes a Visit Here," writing about Homeless Tom [the blog],

I have followed this blog since it’s inception and often been challenged by Tom’s astute viewpoint. I don’t always agree but I always pay attention here.

Monkey Mind blogger [and minister at Rhode Island's largest UU Church], James Ford, was generous in his May 7, 2009 post "Honest Scrap Comes to Monkey Mind":

Homeless Tom is Tom Armstrong's project. Tom is a Buddhist thinker and Dharma bum who is currently homeless in Sacramento. He is a first rate writer and a very interesting thinker.

Nathan, who has a fondness of squirrels and is an Honest Scrap winner for his blog Dangerous Harvests, wrote kind words about Homeless Tom [the blog and the fellow] in his May 13, 2009, blogpost "Blogosphere Awards":

http://homelesstom.blogspot.com/ is such an eclectic experience. This guy writes about so many things, from homelessness in Sacramento to zen, to Christianity, even the Talking Heads.

I am grateful to Kyle of Progressive Buddhism, TMcG of Full Contact Enlightenment, NellaLou of enlightenment ward, James Ford of Monkey Mind and Nathan of Dangerous Harvests – nice and talented people, each, who ride herd on wonderful blogs. Tomorrow, or in a day or two, I will properly meet my Honest Scrap obligations. I bow.

On Jail, part I: Warehousing the Rabble

2009-08-05T16:25:00.000-07:00

The following is from the beginning of John Irwin's classic study of jail existence, The Jail, published in 1986 and still considered relevant and keenly insightful. The blockquote is a rather long chunk of text – sorry 'bout that – but I believe worthy of your attention.

In a legal sense, the jail is the point of entry into the criminal justice system. It is the place where arrested persons are booked and where they are held for their court appearances if they cannot arrange bail. It is also the city or country detention facility for persons serving misdemeanor sentences, which in most states cannot exceed one year. The prison, on the other hand, is a state or federal institution that holds persons serving felony sentences, which generally run to more than one year.

The public impression is that the jail holds a collection of dangerous criminals. But familiarity and close inspection reveal that the jail holds only a very few persons who fit the popular conception of a criminal – a predator who seriously threatens the lives and property of ordinary citizens. In fact, the great majority of the persons arrested and held in jail belong to a different social category. Some students of the jail have politely referred to them as the poor: "American jails operate primarily as catchall asylums for poor people." Some have added other correlates of poverty: "With few exceptions, the prisoners are poor, under-educated, unemployed, and they belong to minority groups." Some use more imaginative and sociologically suggestive labels, such as "social refuse" or "social junk." Political radicals sometimes use "lumpen proletariat" and argue over whether its members are capable of participating in the class struggle. Some citizens refer to persons in this category as "street people," implying an excessive and improper public presence. others apply such labels as "riffraff," "social trash," or "dregs," which suggest lack of social worth and moral depravity. And many police officers, deputies, and other persons who are familiar with the jail population use more crudely derogatory labels, such as "assholes" and dirt balls."

In my own research, I found that beyond poverty and its correlates – under- education, unemployment, and minority status – jail prisoners share two essential characteristics; detachment and disrepute. They are detached because they are not well integrated into conventional society, they are not members of conventional social organizations, they have few ties to conventional social networks, and they are carriers of unconventional values and beliefs. They are disreputable because they are perceived as irksome, offensive, threatening, capable of arousal, even protorevolutionary. In this book I shall refer to them as the rabble, meaning the "disorganized" and "disorderly," the "lowest class of people."

I found that it is these two features – detachment and disrepute – that lead the police to watch and arrest the rabble so frequently, regardless of whether or not they are engaged in crime, or at least in serious crime. (Most of the rabble commit petty crimes, such as drinking on the street, and are usually vulnerable to arrest.)

These findings suggest that the basic purpose of the jail differs radically from the purpose ascribed to it by government officials and academicians. It is this: the jail was invented, and continues to be operated, in order to manage society's rabble. Society's impulse to manage the rabble has many sources, but the subjectively perceived "offensiveness" of the rabble is at least as important as any real threat it poses to society.

From my experience – a year in Homeless World Sacramento and forty days in Sacramento county jails – I believe Irwin is right, except that the radical fringe has withered and there are no longer protorevolutionaries in our midst.

I do believe, whether it is overt or blithering, a lot of effort is made in Sacramento to hide or impair the homeless in jails and in VOA's terrible Winter Shelter (an extra-legal jail) that violates people's freedom and keeps good people from re-entering polite society. It is a tragedy; something straight out of Chuck Dickens and Vic Hugo. [Oliver Twist and Les Miserables]

It is all especially sad because leaders in our homeless-help organizations are participants [albeit unwitting, I hope] in keeping the underclass corralled and under thumb and eerily tranquilized.

Homeless Lit: The Scarlet Letter

2009-08-04T11:07:00.000-07:00


	Title page, first edition of The Scarlet Letter, 1850.

This is the third in an ongoing series of posts looking at homelessness in literature. Prior posts in this series: Cannery Row [1/30/09] and The Tenants of Moonbloom [3/18/09]

In an NPR program last year about Hester Prynne, the heroine of The Scarlet Letter, one of the co-hosts commented, "one of the first things you learn about Hester Prynne is that she is drop-dead gorgeous."

Indeed and how! And it's far NOT a trivial factor at understanding the book and the journey Hester has in it. From the book's text:

The young woman was tall, with a figure of perfect elegance on a large scale. She had dark and abundant hair, so glossy that it threw off the sunshine with a gleam; and a face which, besides being beautiful from regularity of feature and richness of complexion, had the impressiveness belonging to a marked brow and deep black eyes. She was ladylike, too...

Also of significant importance in understanding this brave woman of literature is that from the beginning of the book she suffers a double whammy of homelessness. She was sent away from her homeland, England, to the wooded outland of a new continent, America, to a newly birthed town called Boston. Her husband, who was to follow her there, is presumed lost at sea since he had not arrived in over two-years' time. And, she is in jail with no abode to return to. As if she doesn't have enough problems, a babe is in her arms and the letter "A" is embroidered in scarlet on a patch at her bosom, an indicator of sin of some sort that readers of the book are left to guess at. Adultery, you think?

We are told, in the book's fifth chapter, that upon release from jail, Boston's leaders allow Hester use of an abandoned "small thatched cottage" on the outskirts of the community. From the text:

In this little lonesome dwelling, with some slender means that she possessed, and by the licence of the magistrates, who still kept an inquisitorial watch over her, Hester established herself, with her infant child. A mystic shadow of suspicion immediately attached itself to the spot.

Thus Hester, in fiction alas, became America's first known beneficiary of transitional housing.

Though it most readily seems the scarlet sin had made her at outlier, it was the homeless "sin" that best fits the depiction of her alienation from the whole of the Puritan society where she was. Most Homeless World Sacramento folk will feel the sting of the words that follow, from the text:

In all her intercourse with society, however, there was nothing that made her feel as if she belonged to it. Every gesture, every word, and even the silence of those with whom she came in contact, implied, and often expressed, that she was banished, and as much alone as if she inhabited another sphere, or communicated with the common nature by other organs and senses than the rest of human kind. She stood apart from mortal interests, yet close beside them, like a ghost that revisits the familiar fireside, and can no longer make itself seen or felt; no more smile with the household joy, nor mourn with the kindred sorrow; nor, should it succeed in manifesting its forbidden sympathy, awakening only terror and horrible repugnance. These emotions, in fact, and its bitterest scorn besides, seemed to be the sole portion that she retained in the universal heart.

BUT, Hester is a very, very resourceful homeless person that all of us aware of the homeless condition have to applaud! First off, despite her sad circumstance, she is a very very good mother to her young daughter, Pearl. And Pearl is this wild and intelligent child that is beguiling and a delight. The Hester-Pearl relationship is one of great benefit to each, as we would hope for any mother-child relationship.

Early in the book, clergymen consider taking Pearl from her disgraced mother for the benefit of the child. Somewhat ironically, it is Arthur Dimmesdale, the child's secret father, who voices the Puritan wisdom of why mother and child should be kept together such that they can stay together and do stay together. Wise words, these! Every homeless-family agency in Sacramento should mark these words, which follow (from the text):

"God gave her the child, and gave her, too, an instinctive knowledge of its nature and requirements--both seemingly so peculiar--which no other mortal being can possess.

... [Hester] recognises, believe me, the solemn miracle which God hath wrought in the existence of that child. And may she feel, too--what, methinks, is the very truth--that this boon was meant, above all things else, to keep the mother's soul alive, and to preserve her from blacker depths of sin into which Satan might else have sought to plunge her! Therefore it is good for this poor, sinful woman, that she hath an infant immortality, a being capable of eternal joy or sorrow, confided to her care--to be trained up by her to righteousness, to remind her, at every moment, of her fall, but yet to teach her, as if it were by the Creator's sacred pledge, that, if she bring the child to heaven, the child also will bring its parents thither! Herein is the sinful mother happier than the sinful father. For Hester Prynne's sake, then, and no less for the poor child's sake, let us leave them as Providence hath seen fit to place them!"

Of course, Buddhist heathen that I am I don't personally buy in to the Providence idea, but it is interesting and likely sound Christian reasoning.

To Hester's great credit she quickly gets to work laboring to fund the effort to take care of herself and her treasured Pearl. She begins a cottage industry, becoming a successful entrepreneur at her art, needlecraft. From the text:

By degrees, not very slowly, her handiwork became what would now be termed the fashion. Whether from commiseration for a woman of so miserable a destiny; or from the morbid curiosity that gives a fictitious value even to common or worthless things; or by whatever other intangible circumstance was then, as now, sufficient to bestow, on some persons, what others might seek in vain; or because Hester really filled a gap which must otherwise have remained vacant; it is certain that she had ready and fairly requited employment for as many hours as she saw fit to occupy with her needle. Vanity, it may be, chose to mortify itself, by putting on, for ceremonials of pomp and state, the garments that had been wrought by her sinful hands. Her needle-work was seen on the ruff of the Governor; military men wore it on their scarfs, and the minister on his band; it decked the baby's little cap; it was shut up, to be mildewed and moulder away, in the coffins of the dead.

Hester becomes more and more of a success as a person such that she makes major contributions to other poor people in the Boston community. Poor as she is, she is considerate and compassionate toward others. It comes to pass that the staunch Puritan society comes to appreciate Hester's many able aspects and basic good character.

Hester never put forward even the humblest title to share in the world's privileges--further than to breathe the common air and earn daily bread for little Pearl and herself by the faithful labour of her hands--she was quick to acknowledge her sisterhood with the race of man whenever benefits were to be conferred. None so ready as she to give of her little substance to every demand of poverty, even though the bitter-hearted pauper threw back a gibe in requital of the food brought regularly to his door, or the garments wrought for him by the fingers that could have embroidered a monarch's robe. None so self-devoted as Hester when pestilence stalked through the town. In all seasons of calamity, indeed, whether general or of individuals, the outcast of society at once found her place. She came, not as a guest, but as a rightful inmate, into the household that was darkened by trouble, as if its gloomy twilight were a medium in which she was entitled to hold intercourse with her fellow-creature. There glimmered the embroidered letter, with comfort in its unearthly ray. Elsewhere the token of sin, it was the taper of the sick chamber. It had even thrown its gleam, in the sufferer's bard extremity, across the verge of time. It had shown him where to set his foot, while the light of earth was fast becoming dim, and ere the light of futurity could reach him. In such emergencies Hester's nature showed itself warm and rich--a well-spring of human tenderness, unfailing to every real demand, and inexhaustible by the largest. Her breast, with its badge of shame, was but the softer pillow for the head that needed one. She was self-ordained a Sister of Mercy, or, we may rather say, the world's heavy hand had so ordained her, when neither the world nor she looked forward to this result. The letter was the symbol of her calling. Such helpfulness was found in her – so much power to do, and power to sympathise – that many people refused to interpret the scarlet A by its original signification. They said that it meant Abel, so strong was Hester Prynne, with a woman's strength.

There is much much more to the novel -- about the men in Hester's life and the moral of the tale. And things come to a quick resolution of sorts that is somewhat dissatisfying. But all that is not our concern here. As a homeless person, Hester had spunk! She boldly took on the challenges in the unfair predicament she was in and always always forged forward, finally making a better life for herself while facing up to her responsibilities as a parent and as a compassionate member of a community.

Right on, Hester!

I'm baaaaack!

2009-07-30T13:55:00.001-07:00

Howdy, y'all. Just a word to let you know I have returned from the hoosegow and am now, again on patrol of the homeless-, sacramento-, and buddho-blogospheres – to the extent the probation departmento of the Sacramento justice system allows.

The county jail facility in the city of Elk Grove where I've been for the past 32 days was interesting. I hope to blog about it soon. My biggest complains are that the dorm was noisy as hell much of the time which was nerve rattling and cognitively impairing; that cops/guards were excessively meanspirited, though I recognize they have a tough job, sometimes; and that the culture of black twentysomethings seems to be in particularly bad shape. Among many positive surprizes: My fellow inmates [and certainly including those who were black twentysomethings] were overwhelmingly interesting and sociable people; there were many acts of kindness coming from my brother inmates; and the level of chess playing was very advanced.

One thing I come away from my experience not understanding is the purpose of jail. I come away wondering what theories there are 'out there' on what jail is supposed to achieve.

Sure, basically it should be punishment. Is it proper, then, for inmates with the means to be able to buy items from the commissary, and have phone use, totalling more than $600/month, whereas poor inmates must make do with welfare, which consists of small quantities of basic toiletries, two stamped envelopes, two sheets of paper and a stubby pencil? Shouldn't punishment be wholly a function of time served and be equal, as can be otherwise, comparing one inmate with another?

6/29 Bleak House update

2009-06-29T12:01:00.000-07:00

[FYI, Bleak House is the name of a Charles Dickens novel about a very long running legal dispute. I've snagged the title for my own very long running legal imbroglio.]

I'm scheduled to go to jail on Monday, today. Good friend Steve Curless has kindly offer to take me to Rio Consumnes Correctional Center.

You can click the link below to see the case record.

At the bottom of the record, you can see the sentence: 60 days; three years formal probation. And then there's what you don't see: Lots and lots of fees and charges. The sentence or trial is likely to be appealed.
https://services.saccourt.com/indexsearchnew/CaseNumberList.aspx?SearchValues=ARMSTRONG,THOMAS,EDWARD,4160766

Update: I wasn't accepted into The Sheriff's Work Project. I was told that this was because I was living at the Union Gospel Mission. I was given a time to report at the Rio Consumnes Correctional Center: 6/29 @ 2pm. I will serve for 32 days only, so long as I'm not cited for causing any problems. The reduction in time comes from eight days served when I was initially picked up on a warrent last July, before being released on my own recognizance. And a 20-day reduction, which is the standard 1/3rd-time reduced for good behavior.

To send me mail [after July 1 and before July 20], you should use this address:

Thomas Edward Armstrong, Xref 4160766
Rio Cosumnes Correctional Center
12500 Bruceville Road
Elk Grove, CA 95757

Remember, I'm only going to be there for thirty-two days, so I won't really need anything. And, not to worry, anybody, I will certainly be OK -- much as I am OK in Homeless World. If you write me, kindly send paper and a stamped return envelope so that I can write you back. Here's info on what the jail will allow inmates to receive.

I'll be offline until ~August 1. Til then, y'all.

Happiness is virtue itself

2009-06-25T12:15:00.000-07:00

I thank my always-great friend Steve Curless for pointing out a blogpost in Bill Harryman's splendid Integral Options Cafe which discusses a modern view of karma via an article by the excellent David Loy that was in Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

I've snagged a snip from the article that greatly appeals to me, that is both central to the article and relates to the sermon by Jimmy Roughton last night at the mission.

As Spinoza expressed it, happiness is not the reward for virtue; happiness is virtue itself. We are punished not for our "sins" but by them. To become a different kind of person is to experience the world in a different way. When your mind changes, the world changes. And when we respond differently to the world, the world responds differently to us. Insofar as we are actually not separate from the world, our ways of acting in it tend to involve feedback systems that incorporate other people. People not only notice what we do; they notice why we do it. I may fool people sometimes, yet over time, as the intentions behind my deeds become obvious, my character becomes revealed. The more I am motivated by greed, ill will, and delusion, the more I must manipulate the world to get what I want, and consequently the more alienated I feel and the more alienated others feel when they see they have been manipulated. This mutual distrust encourages both sides to manipulate more. On the other side, the more my actions are motivated by generosity, lovingkindness, and the wisdom of interdependence, the more I can relax and open up to the world. The more I feel part of the world and genuinely connected with others, the less I will be inclined to use others, and consequently the more inclined they will be to trust and open up to me. In such ways, transforming my own motivations not only transforms my own life; it also affects those around me, since what I am is not separate from what they are.

I love this snip because I think it is certainly true, even as I stumble often in living up to its sentiments.

Jimmy Roughton, I think, would agree to the core of it, but it would have to be cast in conservative Christian terms. He would not go for the idea of our being punished not for our "sins" but by them. And I think he would see things as Christians achieving the aims of the idea by separating from the secular world.

The whole of the article the snip comes from makes the point that a modern-day understanding of karma can view it not as merit and punishments passed on to a future life, but as the benefits and difficulties we give ourself (and others) near-immediately in our current life.

I have more of a pantheist take on things. I think that we are each "the whole of the reflected moon." Each of us is the complete consciousness package, though we are imperfect in differing ways. Karma is immediately felt in what we do to and do for each other.

Neither I nor David Loy sees karma as a means to rebirth. The stumbling block is that there seems to be no mechanism to accommodate it. But unlike Loy, I think that there is a capital-S Self that we all/each are that prevails.

Strange justice

2009-06-24T11:55:00.000-07:00

The Bee's Marcos Breton always seems to be trying to be as controversial as possible.

Today, he writes that there's nothing skewy about the thief who stole Lance Armstrong's $10,000 bicycle getting a three-year sentence in prison in contrast to Donte Stallworth's 30-day jail term for killing a man while driving drunk.

The thief, Lee Monroe Crider, has a rap sheet as long as your arm. NFL-star Stallworth, meantime, is suffering punishment in other ways. Still, I would maintain, the specific punishment meted out by the justice system should be appropriate for the damage and circumstance of the specified crime.

AND, the rich and famous should not get different treatment than the poor!

Breton cites a fellow columnist expressing sentiments that I like: "So much for our justice system supposedly being blind," wrote Michael Mayo of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. "So much for the law applying equally to all." Mayo's column of complaint appeared a week ago in "Mayo on the side."

Since Stallworth is rich, he was able to placate the family of the man he killed with lucre, something thief Crider couldn't do. Shouldn't this circumstance be fully outside the thinking of what penalty should be imposed on the criminal? Doesn't our criminal justice system break down if paying off the family – which clearly occurred here – is something that is allowed to happen?

Let us face it: Stallworth wouldn't have bought off the family if what he was really doing wasn't buying his way around a broken, corroding criminal justice system.

Breton thinks it's powerfully significant that...

Stallworth has been suspended indefinitely by the NFL. He will serve two years' house arrest after his release. He'll be on probation for eight years. He will lose driving privileges for life. He'll do 1,000 hours of community service, pay court costs and make donations to Mothers Against Drunk Driving.

I would maintain that what punishment Stallworth may receive from the NFL should be disregarded by American justice. The thief Crider in comparison is worse off, if you think about it, having never had the opportunity to get rich and have the priviledges of being a star.

As for house arrest, let us face it: Stallworth's house is the lap of luxury. Crider, in contrast, isn't offered house arrest, even though his house is surely modest, at best.

Stallworth, as followers of his story know, doesn't lose much from losing driving privileges since he is used to being chauffeured around and can well afford to pay for that service far into the future. Crider, meantime, probably has trouble raising the scratch for an RT pass.

As for Stallworth's equivalent of six-months' work of community service, that is punishment, of course, but will be a rather painless work project – and will in context be of benefit to him, getting him out of his confined house. And he'll probably be able to take a chauffeured ride to and from the site of his community-service work.

Justice in America is not in good shape. The contrast here is evidence of the inequity between what the poor get as opposed to what rich people get in our nation's courts.

The collision of the finite and the infinite. Or, What Jesus was trying to tell us.

2009-06-23T12:25:00.000-07:00

In my year-plus listening to nightly sermons at the conservative Union Gospel Mission, it is not frequent that I have been so impressed with a sermon that there's been something I've taken to heart.

I've been very impressed with the performances of various preachers, including, especially, Jimmy Roughton and Tom Mooney. Both of these fellows are very organized with what they come to tell the congregation. They have something to say; they can talk without mumbling and fumbling and ever losing their place. There's an arc to what they say, with their case building and leading to a cascade of important points. Beyond that, Roughton and Mooney are mightily charismatic (and I mean that, fully, in a good way). Each is bursting with talent, bigger than life, and convinces us of his true-hearted belief in his spiel.

Pastor Brett Ingells of Vacaville Bible Church, more than anyone, does impress me with messages he delivers that are stirring and have a clarion ring of truth about them. His wonderfully prepared and delivered messages invariably pierce my heart. Other preachers, too, from time to time "get their game on," with sermon messages that are fresh and profound.

Still, I haven't been motivated to consider Christianity as saying anything to me to cause me to embrace it, on the whole. Pastor Brett has said some wonderful thinks about being profoundly open hearted and forgiving and loving toward those who are still "of the world." [Almost all the other UGM preachers are quick to use worldly folk as subjects of ridicule and disparagement.]

-----

Recently I read this scruffy little book I found at the public library, called The Gospel According to Us: On the Relationship between Jesus and Christianity by Duncan Holcomb. In just about every way, the book looks foolish and amateurish. The title is poorly chosen, the cover is silly and the foreword and first section didn't impress me. Then, the second section got me interested. And from the third section on, I was smitten.

What the book did for me, someone who was raised outside religion, is it takes a step back and shows me the whole of what Jesus and his disciples were like and what Jesus, if you look at everything he said, was trying to do. It was a means for me to see the forest for the trees; to understand what the picture was when the pixels where assembled.

An important first element in the understanding the book gave me was to see Jesus's general connections with everybody. Including, to my surprise, the much-derided [by the mission preachers] Pharisees. Quoting Holcomb in his book:

Strange to say, Jesus seems to fit in with the Pharisees better than any other group. ... Like the Pharisees, Jesus believes in a loving Father who will bring his children resurrection and eternal life. Like them, he scorns animal sacrifice. Like them, he preaches an ethical code that transcends all other loyalties, even loyalty to country. Like them, he believes that the children of Abraham are sent as a blessing for all peoples of the earth.

Of course, Jesus and the Pharisees differ with respect to the poor. Quoting Holcolm:

The "poor" constitute a broad segment of society that includes shepherds and prostitutes, beggars and day laborers, fishermen and itinerant craftsmen and a great variety of the immigrant, homeless, harried, diseased, and disabled. These are people who live precariously, who eat what they earn each day, who in war or famine are the first to die. they're accustomed to insult and injury, plagued by frustration, anxiety and disease, disdained by civil authority, deprived even of the hope or consolation of religious faith. They are the ones the Pharisees call "the rabble, who know nothing of the law," and whom Jesus calls "the poor in spirit." They simply don't have the time nor money nor disposition to observe properly the intricate and resource-consuming practices of orthodox Judaism (Fasting is a sacred act, you see; starving is a profane one.) Most of them can't even read the holy books, the great code of the Jewish faith. The verdict is unhappy but, in the Pharisees' judgment, inevitable: "They are the damned."

But why does Jesus preach mostly to the poor? And what is his message? It begins with a values system that is markedly different (1) from the Pharisees, (2) that in modern-day America, and (3) that of the UGM preachers. Jesus has a complete disinterest in money.

Quoting Holcolm:

[Jesus] pays no mind to the financial dealings of his shifty treasurer (coincidentally, another money-obsessed peasant named Judas). He never gives alms to the poor. He refuses to arbitrate between two men contenting an inheritance. He cares not at all that the fine oil a woman uses to cleanse and anoint him was very expensive. When Jesus does mention money he turns its face value upside down: in his stories money isn't treated even as a dependable measure of material value. This of the parable of the talents, of the dishonest steward, of the laborers who worked all day in a vineyard. The monetary values here are all skewed, and our first reaction is that someone has been treated unfairly. How can a servant with one talent be expected to do as much, or even obtain the same interest rate, as someone with five? ...

Jesus explains his worldview very carefully, says Holcolm. The Pharisees, with their great interest in outward behavior, have things backward. For Jesus, it is what comes out of a man that is his fruit, that either defiles him or is the merit of his being.

What Jesus was trying to tell us.

Jesus was trying to tell us, explains Holcolm, that we avoid being condemned by not condemning others. "In an astounding conceptual coup, he applies the fundamental principle of law – reciprocity – to the law itself. In this way he attempts to break the vicious circle of sin and condemnation and guilt, once and for all."

And yet, to do his 'work,' Jesus most certainly does condemn the condemners, but from a meta-position of rising above the fray and rising above his human self. Kierkegaard, following in Jesus's path, as an imitation of Christ, would, eventually, go from being judiciously non-condemning to being condemning of condemners. [Note that Jesus often sees himself outside himself. Being ego-less, he, on occasion, speaks in the third-person, in "witness mode." It is from here, the meta-position, that he condemns.]

Finite and Infinite

"If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things through narrow chinks of his cavern." ~William Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

Quoting Holcolm:

Sense tends to suggest that this tangible, visible, tastable, quasi-controllable world is all that really is, or at least all that really matters. There can be no sensory window on the infinite, since "what is flesh is flesh, and what is Spirit is Spirit." (Of God Jesus baldly tells his listeners "His voice you have never heard, his form you have never seen.") We're unable to understand or assert our control over an infinite realm, so it's not surprising that we might prefer our own, and simply ignore the "radical" questions, those of spirit and truth. But Jesus wants at least to call to his listeners' attention their act of willful blindness. ...

Our spirits yearn to be liberated; our egos suppress the craving. Jesus is condemned by the religious classes for wanting to break out of the dull round of reason, to offer something more than just himself and the apprehensible world, to point beyond himself and it, to teach an infinite message instead of a finite one.

Re charity

Jesus never once mentions the material value of the work done for people by charity, the common justification for such efforts offered by Christians and agnostics alike. His unique emphasis is always on the benefit to the giver. We often do lip service to this sentiment, but Jesus actually appears to believe that it's a greater blessing "to give than to receive." So what is the blessing provided by giving to others? How does it enrich us? It's hard to say. There are no miracles where Jesus turns lead into gold. In fact, he never construes physical wealth as a sign of blessing.

What shall I do?

Near the book's end, Holcomb tells the story in Luke 10 when a lawyer asks what he must do to gain eternal life. Jesus is amazingly clever, here, Holcomb avers: beyond what Luke realizes! Jesus turns things around and asks the lawyer, "How do you read it?" The lawyer answers rightly and is praised: "Love God with all your heart and soul and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself." Then, the lawyer asks "And who is my neighbor?"

In response, Jesus tells a story where a Jew is beaten and bloodied and is then aided by a Samaritan. The parable, then, casts the Jewish lawyer as the Samaritan! It is the Jew, in the story who receives the aid. You should love your enemy so thoroughly that you identify with him as yourself!

The New Covenant, "Love God with all your heart and soul and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself" is, then, a single statement with only one part: You identify with Everyone, and make no distinction between yourself and others. Holcomb calls this New Covenant the "Love Commandment."

Writes Holcomb,

How should I act? How should I threat those around me? Well, how would I like to be treated? Look within yourself, Jesus suggests, and nowhere else. The Love Commandment thrusts us into a moral universe in which we have to make the determinations of what to do, how to act. No one else, not even God, will do that for us. (Jesus often refuses to do so for the disciples: "Why don't you judge for yourselves what is right?") There are no prescriptions provided to us by the Love Commandment, because it's not a traditional standard of law. If fact, it's not really "law" at all, but a way, a sign, a method of relation. Jesus points out what should have been obvious to us from the beginning -- that a moral code can make sense only within the context of our relation to one another. He tells people to act in accordance with the central human dynamic composed of Self and Other, I and Thou. Treat others based on how you want to be treated. Love others as much as you love yourself.

Another update from Bleak House

2009-06-18T10:45:00.000-07:00

[FYI, Bleak House is the name of a Charles Dickens novel about a very long running legal dispute. I've snagged the title for my own very long running legal imbroglio.]

The judge has sentenced me for the window-breaking incident that the jury found me guilty of.

You can click the link below to see the case record.

At the bottom of the record, you can see the sentence: 60 days; three years formal probation. And then there's what you don't see: Lots and lots of fees and charges. The sentence or trial is likely to be appealed.
https://services.saccourt.com/indexsearchnew/CaseNumberList.aspx?SearchValues=ARMSTRONG,THOMAS,EDWARD,4160766

Update: I wasn't accepted into The Sheriff's Work Project. I was told that this was because I was living at the Union Gospel Mission. I was given a time to report at the Rio Consumnes Correctional Center: 6/29 @ 2pm. I will serve for 32 days only, so long as I'm not cited for causing any problems. The reduction in time comes from eight days served when I was initially picked up on a warrent last July, before being released on my own recognizance. And a 20-day reduction, which is the standard 1/3rd-time reduced for good behavior.

To send me mail [after July 1 and before July 24], you should use this address:

Thomas Edward Armstrong, Xref 4160766
Rio Cosumnes Correctional Center
12500 Bruceville Road
Elk Grove, CA 95757

Is hatefulness outside the realm of Buddhism?

2009-06-16T14:50:00.000-07:00

This is one of those opinion pieces that I think that only I am likely to write and that others are likely to tsk, tsk, look at me and say, "there but for the grace of Avalokitesvara go I."

As happens, a bunch of things suddenly came together that prompt me to write this essay.

A post in Danny Fisher's blog where Dano expresses disapproval for a hateful comment posted to his blog.
An incident in the mission dorm where several black guys decided to have a long, loud conversation before wake-up time about, in part, the terribleness of white people.
An article my friend Steve Curless wrote on the touchy subject of forgiving a serial child abuser and killer.
A paper written by Scott A. Mitchell about Buddhism getting all twisted apart by popular American culture.
Oh, and lastly, I got a book from the library called "Why we hate: understanding, curbing, and eliminating hate in ourselves and our world".

I tend to think that there are many benefits to having Buddhism undergo the bardo-like experience of adding "being interpreted by American culture" as one of its many manifestations.

American culture is rich, yet earthy; narcissicistic, yet there are many people with advanced spiritual development; and it's course & reeking, yet seeking & reaching.

Americans also tend to want to look into everything: uncovering hypocrisies; bringing down the powerful; fighting injustice. We consider ourselves the Center for this very sort of thing, which gives us some standing to think of the country as the Brightly Lit City on the Hill, the envy of the world (which is crap, somewhat).

But we Buddhists know better than others that America's chutzpah is its Achilles' heel. The arrogance and creaturely neediness of Americans dams the way to happiness.

So, how do we engage Americans? and make Buddhism comfortably a part of the American experience such that Buddhism shapes America at least as much as America has seemed to have overpowered Buddhism?

Surely, there is only One Way with a beast as multiheaded as America: we engage at every level.

The easiest of it ought to be to embrace what seems hateful: to understand it and engage it.

This is, afterall, the highest spiritual level. Christ went directly where he was most vulnerable (and got crucified; but I ask that you ignore THAT for the time being).

Though it isn't about Buddhism, at all, and was written just after the attack on the Twin Towers in 2001, Why We Hate is pretty interesting and ends with a chapter called "An Enlightened Future."

Basically, the author advocates that we must move from an Us-v-Them world to one of cooperation, where all of us is us, which author Rush W. Dozier calls "us-us."

The problems of a worldwide consumer culture will ... have to be addressed. Is this culture sustainable given global resources? Because consumerism has no core values other than the market itself, it can be shaped by the changing tastes and desires of the consuming public. Those tastes are now heavily manipulated by the propaganda of advertising, which generally appeals to the primitive neural system. An us-us global civilization could move from limbic self-absorption within a culture of materialism to a culture of enlightened meaning. And in a more enlightened age – if tastes shift away from overconsumption and acceptance of the lowerest common denominator in cultural offerings – the market will shift as well.

The job ahead for us, then, is this ...

The task of the civilized world is not just to cease acts of terrorism but to curb and eliminate dehumanizing hate. We must expand the concept of "us" until it includes every human being and the idea of "them" falls into disuse as an obsolete stereotyping device. This can be achieved only through the constant and determined use of the advanced neural system when it has been bolstered by a first-rate education and supportive culture that protects the rights of all people. ... Humanity must embrace, both cognitively and emotionally [Wisdom and Compassion; prajna and karuna!!], what modern genetics tells us – we are a remarkably homogeneous young species within which, scientifically speaking, there is only one race: the human race.

Re-abolish slavery by a show of hands

2009-06-16T12:22:00.000-07:00

Why was Jesus crucified?

2009-06-12T15:30:00.000-07:00

My friend James gave me an explanation for why Jesus was crucified that overcomes one of my primary stumbling blocks for acceptance of Jesus' life-story being all-important.

I have been "blocked" by this set of components:

Since God is omnipotent, why would it be necessary for God to sacrifice his son, if that is all so painful. I mean, if God can do pretty much anything, He can get the result, forgiveness of man's sins, without any prerequisite.

Preachers at the mission have explained things in these terms: A sacrifice had been necessary as atonement for sins. Jesus was the ultimate sacrifice, relieving mankind of the necessity of sacrificing animals for sin in the future, and it gains man an opportunity to return to an edenic heaven. By accepting Jesus into our heart, we are saved from sin and may see God and praise Him forever.

THAT explanation seems wildly strange to me. There is simply no logic I can find in the set of conditions and what transpires.

James, though, explains the crucifixion in this way [paraphrasing]:

Jesus should be seen as an example for us. His goodness and humility are qualities we should emulate and make authentic for our self. We should strive to be courageous, willing to pay the ultimate price in our love of God and in our love of our neighbors (which are everybody, including those who see us as as their enemy).

SoHo Gallery tribute to Michael of One foot in front of the other

2009-06-08T09:45:00.000-07:00

Be aware, any New York area readers, that, through July 4, photographs taken by Michael [blogger of One foot in front of the other] will be on display in a show at Soho Photo Gallery (map).

Our beloved Michael died on January 15, 2008.

You can read the notice of the gallery showing in a post put up by Michael's relatives in One foot in front of the other.

Spread the word, kind Buddhist bloggers who read this post, or, others who have a twitter account, or somesuch!

Here, just one of many excellent month's-worth of Michael's blogposts. Look at the pictures! Read Michael's powerful words!

[Ofifoto Blogisattva awards.]

Heart of Stone

2009-06-08T09:30:00.000-07:00

At the end of his sermon Friday night, the guest pastor from Hillsdale Blvd Baptist Church, asked the rescue mission congregants to close their eyes and submit to his inquiries.

I don't remember exactly what was said, but this is the gist of it:

He asked those who had fallen away from Christ but wanted to renew their faith to raise a hand. He said, I see you sir; you in the back; you on the left aisle. He then said he would pray for them.

Then he asked those who had never been Chistians but were open to more information to raise a hand. As before, he identified a few hands he saw in the audience and said he would pray for them.

He did the same for another couple of categories of imperfect, but seeking possible-Christians.

Finally, he then asked for a show of hands from those who had no expectation of finding Christ. I raised my hand. He thanked me for my courage and said he would pray for me.

The pastor then publically issued a prayer for each category of people he identified. For the last group, in which I think I was the only member, he identified me as the man with the heart of stone, and began a prayer of admonishment.

I yelled out, though chapel rules preclude doing so, "I don't have a heart of stone," but the pastor went forward with his admonishing prayer.

-----

As it happened, where the pastor stepped down from the dais is right where shelter guys line up who are doing "kitchen duty" that night. Since I was slated for kitchen duty, I was immediately very near the pastor, and I couldn't withhold from having a word to say to him – though my friend, Elgin, in line with me, had tight grip of my shoulder as a way of conveying to me his hope that I would pull back.

I wasn't angry, but I wasn't self-censuring, either. I told the pastor that I thought his words where unfortunate, that his words represented hate talk and were not in accord with the emergent church.

The pastor told me he wasn't a part of the emergent church, and I told him I apprehended that.

-----

I'm not writing this post because I am so sure I did the right – or even, a good – thing. I don't know that I did. I'm getting A LOT of services and benefit from Union Gospel Mission without being a likely convert to Christianity. [Indeed, I'm a professed, happy Buddhist.] Still, I do wish a small minority of the preachers wouldn't talk up the curious idea that secular America, or all non-Christians, are, somehow, 'out to get' Christianity in this country. Or, that non-Christians are, necessarily, Satan followers.

-----

Saying that someone has a "heart of stone" is a particularly scathing term in Christian circles. A "stony heart" is mentioned a couple times in the book of Ezekiel; but from what I'm learning online, Jeremiah 17:9 gives us the most deft understanding, even as stone isn't part of any mainline translation of the verse. The verse is this [King James]: "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?"

But the immediate next verse is this: "I the LORD search the heart, I try the reins, even to give every man according to his ways, and according to the fruit of his doings." And if you look at the whole chapter it is God who is searching people's hearts and making judgments, not something that is left to man.

Two verses in the book of Ezekiel, in chapters 11 and 36 are near identical. They both speak of a stony heart. They read thus:

Ezekiel 11:19: And I will give them one heart, and I will put a new spirit within you; and I will take the stony heart out of their flesh, and will give them an heart of flesh.

Ezekiel 36:26: A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh.

In context, both verses are about the new heart given the people of Israel as they become God's chosen people. The idea, then, in the Bible re stoniness of heart is with respect to God's tasks, and judgments, not man's or arrogant preachers.

-----

But the bigger issue goes to hate-mongering by Christian preachers, something that comes from a minority of those who visit Union Gospel Mission.

One speaker, associated with Trinity Bible College [and not the congregation favorite, the beloved and UGM-alumnus Ron Smith], spend a bit of time talking to the guys in the chapel about "God haters," some months back. "God haters" is the term he used for those who hadn't confessed their allegiance to Jesus Christ or idolotrate worldly things above or instead of God.

Words/terms mean something, and "God haters" is powerful, specific and accusatory. And with its intensity, it more than implies that that these worldly folk are actively thinking about and denouncing God.

Of course, this isn't so. The thing about 'worldly folk' is that they are oblivious to Christianity, not attacking it. They are barbecuing burgers on Sundays and watching sports on TV, not thinking hateful things about God. In America, Christianity simply isn't being threatened. Next to nobody at all wants Christianity to go away, and there isn't even a whit of discussion anywhere about taking away any of the religion's exclusion from being subject to taxation.

These aren't Roman times! No one's rounding up the Christians. A few prominent atheist writers may on very rare occassions cross the line, but for practical purposes – for ALL purposes – there are no God haters. The country is washed nearly as white as snow on that one. Get off your hate-mongering, Christian preachers. Knock it off!! It is YOU who are way, way out of line.

Lincoln was a buddha

2009-06-05T00:01:00.000-07:00

Writing in 1880, John Caird, looking back at the man's life, wrote these eloquent summarizing words

…[My overall impression] is that of a man who combined with intellectual originality other and not less essential elements of greatness, such as magnanimity and moral elevation of nature, superiority to vulgar passions, and absorption of mind with larger objects, such as rendered him absolutely insensible to personal ambition, also self-reliance and strength of will – the confidence that comes from consciousness of power and resource – the quiet, patient, unflinching resolution which wavers not from its purpose in the face of dangers and difficulties that baffle or wear out men of meaner mould. Along with these, we must ascribe to him other qualities not always or often combined with them, such as sweetness, gentleness, quickness and width of sympathy.

Caird's words are about Gautama Buddha, but can very much be said of Abraham Lincoln, as well – a person no less extraordinary and no less different from the people all about him such that his impact was astonishing. Events, time and place all had overwhelming influence in making Buddha Gautama and Abraham Lincoln immortal persons. But both had buddhaseeds sprouting when they were children. And both acted in ways that baffle ordinary men.

Buddha Gautama is a whole other story. He decided to try to let others in on what propelled him. Abraham Lincoln's strange life's journey led him to center stage during America's most trying time, just at that pivotal moment when the baton of the presidency needed to be passed … to that rare diamond, a buddha.

Caird's assessment is interesting in that he didn't apprehend Gautama Buddha as being a buddha. His opinion was what he came to know of Guatama as a man, from what documents he read, compared to ordinary men. Likewise, persons who knew Abraham Lincoln, most all of whom appraised him as an astonishing human being, did not have the wherewithal to assess his high spiritual attainment directly.

Young Mr. Lincoln

The shorthand for Lincoln's boyhood days are that his mother died when he was quite young, but, happily, a wonderful, loving stepmother took her place in his life; he lived in a log cabin; he was naturally athletic, but he was inclined to turn his head toward the pages of a book; and in all ways, even as a youngster, he was honest and wholesome.

All of the above is true. What is not understood is that it is true to an outrageous extreme. Furthermore, it is not understood, except by scholars, that Lincoln was very much not the pastoral, ah-shucks Huckleberry of legend and as portrayed in old movies, but was instead an outlandish alien freakazoid! If he had had a single eye in the middle of his forehead, pointy ears and the ability to fly he would have been a more natural citizen of placid rural Indiana & Illinois than the gawky, two-eyed, big-eared, non-flying Abe Lincoln reality who was born in 1809 and died from an assassin's bullet.

Rural Indiana and Illinois of the 1810s and 20s was the edge of the wild, uncivilized West. The land was rustic and primal as were the isolated homesteading inhabitants. Boys were supposed to be especially ornery and mean and scarred up and smelly. They would torture animals and torture each other and had distain for learning much more than how to shoe a horse or slaughter a pig. Constant hard physical labor was required of all members of a family to stave off death in the boggy, cold, isolated areas where Lincoln grew up. Poisoned milk killed Lincoln's mother, his maternal grandparents and others. A harsh winter killed scores of neighbors – some found only after the spring thaw.

One thing remembered by many who knew him as a small child was his love of animals. One schoolmate remembered that he quite seriously lectured others about ants' right to life; another, that he broke up a gang of 'mates that were torturing terrapin turtles for entertainment and that he composed essays against cruelty toward animals on multiple occasions.

Though hunting was one of the few pleasures for men and boys of the rural Midwest, Lincoln would not hunt. And though his farming background could have been of great advantage to him politically, he didn't speak of it – most probably since memories of it were admixed with the pain of having been hired out by his father to help slaughter pigs.

William Lee Miller, author of the book “Lincoln's Virtues” wrote “Throughout the life of that extraordinary hired hand whose name was Abraham Lincoln, there would be a recurrent pattern: an initial impression of the boy or the lad or the man, derived from externals and superficialities, would then be overthrown by the shock of recognition of this intellectual power.” Miller, it seems to me, has it mostly right, but from (my interpretation of) the words of others in his book and other books [and of these, most-especially William Herndon's “The Hidden Lincoln”] it is not “intellectual power” that throws people for a loop – rather it's Lincoln's emptiness of guile and ineffable Buddha glow that might find expression through his intellect, but might also shine from his compassion, humanity or just the way he held an ax.

A Religious Man

Mary Todd Lincoln said, after her husband's death, “He never joined a church; but still, as I believe, he was a religious man by nature.”

As a young man Lincoln would engage in discussions advocating a “doctrine of necessity,” that opposed unfettered free will. I think this is very much a young person's insight into the interconnectedness of all things and beings and the chain of causes that seem to determine all events. A less magnificent person than Lincoln is likely to develop from this beginning, a religious sensibility grounded in scientism. Compassion toward others then becomes just a wildly romantic indulgence. But Lincoln, above everything was vividly compassionate and it was through this lens that he increasingly sought wisdom.

The beauty of his character was its entire simplicity. … True to nature, true to himself, he was true to everybody and everything about and around him. When he was ignorant on any subject, no matter how simple it might make him appear he was always willing to acknowledge it. His whole aim in life was to be true to himself and being true to himself he would be false to no one. – Joshua Speed, one of Lincoln's closest friends.

Speed's statement is as clarion a depiction of authenticity as you might find. Authenticity is a requirement for spiritual advancement.

In his mid-20s, Lincoln wrote a manuscript showing that the Bible was false. He did not believe that Jesus was God and could not believe that a true God would bring punishment to his 'children' when the laws of cause and effect that he saw in the world were pre-eminent forces. His friends were shocked by his beliefs that his law partner, William Herndon, contends he maintained throughout his life. Fearing for his political future, one friend burned the manuscript to keep it from being published. Still, Lincoln – who continued to be forthright and outspoken on the subject – was dogged by a reputation thereafter for being an infidel which was politically damaging.

With Malice toward none …

Leonard Swett, a close friend of Lincoln's, said in an interview, a year after the assassination, “He was certainly a very poor hater. He never judged men by his like, or dislike for them. If any given act was to be performed, he could understand that his enemy could do it just as well as any one. If a man had maligned him, or been guilty of personal ill-treatment and abuse, and was the fittest man for the place, he would put him in his Cabinet just as soon as he would his friend. I do not think he ever removed a man because he was his enemy, or because he disliked him.”

Indeed, Swett's words are a gross understatement; Lincoln was incapable of hate. Lincoln included on his initial Cabinet men who were his rivals for the Republican nomination in 1860 -- and he was especially gracious to guarantee the acceptance of his chief rival, William Seward, to the post of Secretary of State.

Edwin M. Stanton, who was Lincoln's second Secretary of War, is a particularly curious case. Stanton (of whom Fredrick Douglass would observe, “Politeness was not one of his weaknesses”) had ignored Lincoln, utterly, when – many years before he became president -- they were two of three lawyers chosen to represent a company for a particularly important civil suit. Lincoln was not a well-educated East Coast attorney, like the others. Judged from the fact that Lincoln was a rural Illinois lawyer, gangly and not well dressed, he was kept silent at the lawyers' table and the closing argument which he had prepared went unheard and was curtly ignored: The text, that Lincoln had passed on to his colleagues in a sealed letter, was returned to him unopened.

In the first years of the Lincoln administration, there are public records of Stanton referring to Lincoln as an imbecile (twice) and a baboon, yet Lincoln was undeterred in his selection of Stanton as his Secretary of War. He selected the best person for the position and ignored all else.
Observes William Lee Miller, “[Lincoln's] 'ego,' as we call it now, did not distort his good mind's working. His considerable self-confidence notwithstanding, he would achieve a detached and proportionate sense of himself in relation to an unflinching measure of the scope and meaning of the enormous human drama that confronted him. His self did not get in the way.”

Ambition

The biggest character flaw that William Lee Miller tags Lincoln with is ambition. It would also be an overwhelming obstacle to the thesis that Lincoln is a Buddha, if one agrees with Miller that at times Lincoln pushed himself forward, instead of doing the right thing that might have been politically disadvantageous.

For Miller, Ambition first comes up when looking at Lincoln's vocational choices. Instead of remaining in his rural community, either as a farmer or businessman, Lincoln chose to become a lawyer and move to the city of Springfield.

Despite his wide-ranging, superlative skills, Lincoln may have had fewer options than Miller supposes. Saddled with deep compassion for the suffering of animals, he was not suited for farm work. Much as a Buddhist is indisposed to take up the profession of being a butcher, Lincoln was indisposed to make his life's work one that included the slaughtering of farm animals.

Entrepreneurs need to be of a character such that they are eager to profit, overgreatly at times, at the expense of unwitting customers in order to make their businesses thrive. Lincoln did not have the disposition required for him to be a successful businessman. Indeed, young Lincoln's business ventures failed, putting him in a deep debt that took years for him to extricate himself from.

Becoming a lawyer, and tossing himself into the political maelstrom of his time and place, seems to have been the vocational path (and spiritual challenge) that was left to him after crossing off others. His wasn't a fulsome, consuming ambition; rather, it was that last path available that was suitable to his blend of talents and weaknesses.

Lincoln's Face

“At first glance, some thought him grotesque, even ugly, and almost all considered him homely. When preoccupied or in repose he certainly was far from handsome. At times he looked unutterably sad, as if every sorrow were his own, or he looked merely dull, with a vacant gaze,” one observer wrote. Still, as even the caustic Englishman Dicey observed, there was for all his grotesqueness, "an air of strength, physical as well as moral, and a strange look of dignity" about him. And when he spoke a miracle occurred. "The dull, listless features dropped like a mask." according to Horace White, an editor of the "Chicago Tribune". "The eyes began to sparkle, the mouth to smile, the whole countenance was wreathed in animation, so that a stranger would have to say, "Why this face, so angular and somber a moment ago, is really handsome!" He was the homeliest man I ever saw." said Donn Piatt, and yet there was something about the face that Piatt never forgot. "It brightened, like a lit lantern, when animated."

The poet Walt Whitman commented after getting a close-up view: "None of the artists or pictures have caught the subtle and indirect expression of this man's face." And again, some years after Lincoln's death: "Though hundreds of portraits have been made, by painters and photographers (many to pass on, by copies, to future times), I have never seen one yet that in my opinion deserved to be called a perfectly good likeness: nor do I believe there is really such a one in existence."

"Beyond a certain point Lincoln's appearance not only defied description; it also baffled interpretation. "There is something in the face which I cannot understand." said Congressman Henry L. Dawes of Massachusetts. And the leader of the German-Americans in Illinois, Gustave Koerner, remarked: "Something about the man, the face is unfathomable. In his looks there were hints of mysteries within."

Buddha as a Man; Lincoln as a Man

In the middle of the 19th Century, when Lincoln was being assessed as a heroic and tragic figure, Buddha was being introduced and examined by Victorian England. Since others' assessments of Lincoln are colored by culture, time and place, I think it is interesting to see how similarly Buddha Gautama was viewed.

From the book “The British Discovery of Buddhism,” comes this quote:

Of all the qualities praised, it is the Buddha's compassion and sympathy that was most often remarked upon. Millions were won by his intense sympathy for suffering, observed Joseph Edkins [quoted in Remarks on Budhism (sic)]. According to The Westminster Review in 1878, his was 'the example of a life in which the loftiest morality was softened and beautified by unbounded charity and devotion to the good of his fellow-men'; and The Church Quarterly Review for 1882 viewed him as one 'who, born a prince, sympathized with the sorrows and the moral struggles of the meanest; who … opened his arms to receive as a brother every one who pursued goodness, truth, unselfishness, and his ideal …' George Grant remarked in 1895 that, after making all allowances for accretions, the picture remains of an extraordinary man 'the memory of whose unselfish life, thirst for truth, and love for humanity ought to be honoured to the latest generations.'

Fittingly, the last year of the century, William Rattigan drew together the Victorian assessment of the Buddha:

Having regard to the intellectual and religious darkness of the period, it is impossible not to accord a high degree of admiration to Gautama for the lofty percepts he enunciated, for the gentleness and sereneness which pervade his utterances, for the deeply sympathetic and profoundly humanitarian spirit which underlie his doctrines, and for the manly endeavour he made to arouse a true feeling of self-reliance amoungst a people prone to lean for support upon others.

Conclusion

Yes, we exhaust ourselves on the legend of Lincoln in the third grade, and for us he becomes a tired relic, like Mickey Mouse and Brittany Spears and Star Wars sabers. His face – unanimated and serene – stares out at us from pennies and five-dollar bills. His wise words are just etchings on bronze somewhere -- the life that once was in his words has been expelled. “Fourscore and seven years …” sounds like a tiresome history lesson to us today, not the beginning of a speech, rich and eloquence, that brought chills and tears to Americans for decades after the speech was spoken.

If you pull together all the assessments of Lincoln, it is a remarkable record. He was greatly beloved by all in the communities he lived in. He was the dazzling, pre-eminent person – giving, loving and vividly authentic. Absolutely honest. Absolutely dependable. Fully in touch with the pain of others'. He held no grudges and condemned no one. He believed there was clarion truth in the notion that created America – that all had equal rights to live and equivalent right to live in liberty and pursue happiness. No one could be a master since no one should be a slave. And no one could be a slave since no one should be a master.

Somewhere back in misty time, one of the buddhas that walked this earthy earth became president of the United States. And it made a difference.

O thy metaphorical B.I.B.L.E.

2009-06-04T09:10:00.000-07:00

Preachers at the mission tell me that BIBLE stands for "Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth." Well, maybe. But not in the way those preachers intend it.

The preachers think that it is the kindly-hearted, literal instructions of a mysterious three-aspect Father/Son/Ghost who is jealous and so compassionate and unconditionally loving He intends to toss 10 billion people into a lake of fire to be tormented beyond mere waterboarding, forevermore! Yipe.

A merciless, meanspirited god, that, I say.

No, no, you whacky literalists. You have it all wrong! The Bible is metaphorical/allegorical. So, forging forward from Kyle R. Lovett's post "Could the biblical story of Adam and Eve be a metaphor for Buddhist teachings?" in Progressive Buddhism, and my own fine post, borrowing heavily from Joseph Campbell, "Tom's First Sermon at Union Gospel Mission," let us look at other things from the Bible, both of what they truly intend, and the hash that's been made of them by believing them literally, in the backward, unknowing, childish way of the ancients.

One God

First, let us look at the idea of One God. Where did that come from? According to Solomon Goldman [in his book The Book of Books],

[The Bible] had its beginnings in the tales of a bold skeptic of whom it was recounted that, having rejected the beliefs universally adhered to in his day, he set out to transform the face of the earth. How he came by his skepticism or new faith is a question easier asked than answered ... Of this much we are certain: once, in the ancient world, there lived a Jew, or one whom the Jews came to regard and claim as their own, who, repelled by idolatrous creeds and pagan practices, groped his way to a glimpse of the One God, perfect in all perfection.

Let us face it, Goldman over- and under-states things here. The idea of One God has enormous appeal and can have been thought up by many. And, indeed, there are very many One Gods.

The "obvious" One God is inscrutable and acts outlandishly. Ancient people would credit everything to this One God, certainly including tempestuous weather, terrible illnesses and great good fortune.

And having God "on your side," has to have seemed to be the best, easiest way to win in all you transactions with others. And how might you get God on your side? It would seem an impossible thing, for God is God, he doesn't need anything.

What, then, can you do for him? For a backward, childish people, as the ancients most certainly were [compared to what's possible for US, that is], all you might do is praise him, and possibly give him things by denying yourself things. Thus, praise and sacrifice was all you could do.

But by praising and sacrificing to God, surely you are demeaning him. Is God an egomaniac? He doesn't need praise. What value could he place in praise from those pitiful [as compared to Him] human creatures? And what possible purpose can God have for sacrifices, unless God is sadistic and just enjoys the misery that comes from sacrifice?

Truly, the notion of One God doesn't help in formulating an understanding of the creation, structure and meaning of the universe. Besides, if you posit One God, you have to come up with an explanation of how He came to be.

Still, One God, a being with completely-free will, and total power, has enormous appeal. Why? Because we can imagine ourselves in His place, with the ability to completely clean up our messy lives. And wouldn't it be delicious [to a child] to be able to know everything and reign over everyone with the capability of crushing any opposition? Why, he's better than Superman, Spiderman and ALL the superheroes put together!

God was created, not in man's image, but in man/child's imagination of what it would be like to be all powerful.

And what could this One God do, all by himself, before there was anything? Why, create toys – aspects of himself. And so he made microscopic life, something that moved on its own, as he did. And plants, that grew in ways that took advantage of their environment. And animals, that had the freedom to explore and exploit. And people, capable of contemplating their situation as He could.

These are the obvious lines of thinking, absent any modern information, about how the world and life came into being. And, thus, stories were created along these obvious lines.

The One God is sustained because He can so easily be utilized, both as a justification for nations [God is on our side] and as a balm for the underclass [God loves us; after our miserable lives, God will redeem us].

Morality

Mankind noticed that he was unlike the other animals: he was self reflective. He thought abstractly and separated those things that were good [gentle weather; the smell of flowers] from those things that were bad [thunderstorms; the smell of feces]. Note that ancient times were before the concept of evolution occured to anyone. Now, of course, we know that feces, and pretty much all other 'bad' things are 'bad,' only because they are contrary to what aids with our success as a lifeform. Feces doesn't intrinsically smell bad; it only smells bad to us because our nose has evolved as a sense that, roughly, distinguises for us what's good for us from what's bad – usually with respect to what we should & shouldn't eat.

Ancient man wondered what was ultimately Good and ultimately Bad and figured that only God would know. God would surely know because God, himself, created the division between good and bad, ancient man, understandably, believed.

Some things that seemed good in an immediate sense, had long-term bad results. [Screwing your neighbor's wife, for example.] Some things that seemed bad, had long-term good results. [Lifting weights; eating broccoli instead of cookies, for examples.] Thus, ancient humans knew, better than other animals, that it was very helpful to plan and put off or avoid some pleasures for one's long-term betterment, or for the long-term betterment of the community.

But there were problems to overcome. Some people take advantage of others, ruthlessly. Others thrive by being paragons of virtue. Quick! Go to God; He'll sort things out for us.

Thus the tall tale of Moses coming down from the mountain with the stone tablets. Hard, fast rules of conduct. Sins are IDed.

As metaphor, this is to the good. Mankind recognizes morality, if only in broad strokes of absolute black and white. And he recognizes the need for a common morality such that everyone will tend to abide by the same rules of conduct.

But the rules are binary, commandments. There's no room made for situational exceptions. And a mere ten commandments don't begin to touch upon all the harmful things that people can do to each other. Where's "Thou shalt not sneeze directly on others and thus possibly cause others to catch your germs?," for example?

But the Ten Commandments [aka, the Decalogue] was a step forward. The laws apply equally to everyone. They don't give some people privileges and subjugate others.

Also there were myriad conflicts between what individual people wanted for themselves, and what served the good of a society at large. A heavy-handed and straightforward set of laws was purposeful in taming ancient societies.

Quoting H.A. Overstreet in The Mature Mind,

Animals know no moral law. For countless ages, man himself knew no moral law. In those animal-like ages, his self-restraints were those of custom, not of understanding in the area of social cause and effect. His relations with his fellows were instinctual, not moral.

Moses's descent from Mt. Sinai represents the insight that morality applied to all of us, equally. It was not, as the Jews experienced in Egypt, the arbitrary, self-engrandizing directives of a ruler. Thus, Moses's descent with the tablets represents a recognition that principles allowing us to live in harmony exist in a broadly defined way.

Indeed, Moses's "Thou shalt nots" are radically NOT directives from a King or God – except for the first Law.

That bold skeptic, or whomever he was who thought up the Moses tale, brought a liberating insight: Truth is one because the Source of truth is one.

Now watch what happened to this great insight – again, as reported by Dr. Goldman:

The people responded readily and agreed to do and obey. It resolved never again to be like unto the nations – but could not abandon their ways. It accepted the Eternal as God – but upon every hill and under every green tree it erected altars to wood and stone. It urged that man was God's image – but it would not abandon slavery ... It longed for justice . . . but, fond of bribes, it neither judged the orphan nor did it plead the cause of the widow. It looked forward to peace but periodically became enmeshed in the web of imperialistic ambitions of Egypt, Assyria, or Babylon as the case might be. In a word, it dreamed of the ideal society and even legislated for it, but never got down to build it.

This story of a people's noble belief and ignoble backslidings; of its inspiring faith and its failure to live up to that faith; of its spiritual triumph and unspiritual self-defeats is the story of immature men incapable of grasping the fullness of the truth that had been offered to them. It is the story that has been acted out in thousandfold ways through the ages and far beyond the limits of that small tribe of Jews.

Mathfails: Transpersonal party?

2009-06-02T16:35:00.000-07:00

Quite frankly, you're invited.

Fixation's final seduction

2009-05-23T14:25:00.000-07:00

From Stephen Batchelor in Verses from the Center: A Buddhist Vision of the Sublime,

Fixations are deeply embedded traits of human behavior. They do not magically evaporate the moment one experiences the world as "unfixatable." However liberating such insight may be, it is insufficient to free one from the habit of fixation. Once the intensity of the unfixated moment fades, fixations reassert themsleves. Even the experience of freedom itself is not immune to the corruption of fixation. As Nagarjuna is aware:

"I am free! I cling no more!
liberation is mine!" –
The greatest clinging
Is to cling like this.
A glimpse of freedom does not in itself free one from the craving to be someone special and apart. To be free from such longing entails the patient, ongoing cultivation of an intelligence that is acutely alert to the danger of self-deception. The aim of this process is to go beyond the very need to stand out. As Nagarjuna says,

Clinging is to insist on being someone–
Not to cling is to be free to be no one.

These lyrics [written by Kerry Livgren] for the Kansas song "Reason to Be" are insightful:

So long, someone is waiting
I got places to go, I got things to see
No more procrastinating
For this is the moment that was meant for me
And I'm moving like a wave on the ocean
Drifting to the opposite side
Traveling with no destination
Just riding the tide

People they say that I'm foolish
They say that I'm living in a fantasy
Well, I say, everything's easy
It's better than living in futility
So, I'm standing here in back of the curtain
Waiting for the start of the show
Acting like an actor is easy
If you can let go

Some day something will find you
A magical feeling you could not foresee
A feeling so devastating
From that moment on your life's a comedy
And suddenly you're light as a feather
You're falling like a leaf from a tree
The things you thought you needed are fading
No reason to be
No reason to be
Your reason to be
Your reason to be
Reason, Reason to be
Reason, Reason to be
Reason, Reason to be

In a passage in the poem Self, Nagarjuna offers a glimpse of the sublime depth disclosed when the constricting hold of fixations is eased:

It is all at ease,
Unfixatable by fixations,
Incommunicable,
Inconceivable,
Indivisible.

Not only is the subjective experience one of ease, but ease is revealed as a feature of the sublime itself. For not only do fixations generate conflict and anguish, they also obscure a natural world that endlessly unfolds and vanishes, untroubled by the desires and fears of humankind.

Mathfails: Closet Turquoise?

2009-05-20T11:32:00.001-07:00

I love this! And that love very much includes Mathfails's amazing gesturing with his hands.

Mathfails: Spiral Dynamics 2.0

2009-05-19T17:44:00.000-07:00

Mathfails: Reads excerpt from Integral Spirituality

2009-05-19T16:52:00.000-07:00

Mathfails: Evolving Bodhisattvas

2009-05-19T16:25:00.000-07:00

Mathfails [Jonathan Doherty], a new find, talks about evolution, Bodhisattvas, Ken Wilber, elightenment, emptiness, ultimate ground, spiral dynamics, Big Mind, and the ultimate in growth and development, until something grows beyond that ultimate, toward the Ultimate Ultimate. Interestingly, once you talk the talk, you seemingly satirize.

But, do I think this guy's for real? Yes. I'm willing to overlook his youngsterness and proclaim him to be a real deal.

Brad Warner: Atheism and Buddhism

2009-05-19T15:22:00.000-07:00

Brad Warner, author of Zen Wrapped in Karma Dipped in Chocolate and blogger of Hardcore Zen, talks in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, about atheism and God as they relate to Buddhism.

The Myth of Pure Evil

2009-05-16T13:40:00.000-07:00

Of the many things that preclude me from becoming a Christian, one of the top ones is my belief, in the mainstream of Buddhism, that differs from Christians' belief in Absolute Evil.

John Haidt, in The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom, borrowing from Roy Baumeister's Evil: Inside Human Violence and Cruelty tags the issue exquisitely. Basically, the matter relates to people's ego-nature where we see the mote in others' eyes but not the beam in our own as Jesus said, [Matthew 7:3-5], or, as Buddha said [in the Dhammapada, verse 252], "A man broadcasts the fault of others like winnowing chaff in the wind, but hides his own faults as a crafty fowler covers himself."

Baumeister examined evil from the perspective of both victim and perpetrator. ... The disturbing part is that Baumeister shows us our own distortions as victims, and as righteous advocates of victims. Almost everywhere Baumeister looked in the research literature, he found that victims often shared some of the blame. Most murders result from an escalating cycle of provocation and retaliation; often, the corpse could just as easily have been the murderer. In half of all domestic disputes, both sides used violence.

... Baumeister is willing to violate the taboo against "blaming the victim" in order to understand what really happened. People usually have reasons for committing violence, and those reasons usually involve retaliation for a perceived injustice, or self-defense. This does not mean that both sides are equally to blame: Perpetrators often grossly overreact and misinterpret (using self-serving biases). But Baumeister's point is that we have a deep need to understand violence and cruelty through what he calls "the myth of pure evil." Of this myth's many parts, the most important are that evildoers are pure in their evil motives (they have no motives for their actions beyond sadism and greed); victims are pure in their victimhood (they did nothing to bring about their victimization); and evil comes from outside and is associated with a group or force that attacks our group. Furthermore, anyone who questions the application of the myth, who dares muddy the waters of moral certainty, is in league with evil.

The myth of pure evil is the ultimate self-serving bias, the ultimate form of naive
realism.

...

Outside of children's cartoons and horror films, people almost never hurt others for the sheer joy of hurting someone. The two biggest causes of evil are two that we think are good, and that we try to encourage in our children: high self-esteem and moral idealism. Having high self-esteem doesn't directly cause violence, but when someone's high esteem is unrealistic or narcissistic, it is easily threatened by reality; in reaction to those threats, people - particularly young men - often lash out violently.

Update 5/19: Whoa. Found a blogpost with the same title as this one, that also uses Haidt's book as the source of the write-up, but, sigh, does a better, different, more-interesting job of discussing the same material. Read "The Myth of Pure Evil," posted 10/27/08 in the blog spicy lifestyle network.

update on Bleak House

2009-05-14T08:15:00.000-07:00

Possible trial this morning

Click link below in a few days to see if i'm incarcerated, writing a great prison novel using ink from an artery written on toilet paper.

https://services.saccourt.com/indexsearchnew/CaseNumberList.aspx?SearchValues=ARMSTRONG,THOMAS,EDWARD,4160766

UPDATE 3pm: Jury selection happened today, and opening statements. The trial continues on Monday. Can't say more.

The first-person dimension of homeless Sacramentans suffering from Schizophrenia

2009-05-11T15:10:00.000-07:00

"Disabilities and dysfunction process from having been shunned and denied access to needed opportunitites and networks of support."
~ the brothers Lysaker in Schizophrenia and the Fate of the Self

What is schizophrenia? How many are homeless Sacramentans?

Perhaps 15% of the Sacramento homeless population suffers from schizophrenia. The percentage is difficult to determine for many reasons that branch from both the fuzzy definition of the malady and that many people within the homeless community who have the illness (1) are in denial and are undiagnosed and (2) have the illness as a diagnosis only – the disability can be faked by people who are successful claimants of social security and other benefits.

What is schizophrenia? One webspace gives us this definition: The most chronic and disabling of the severe mental disorders. Typically develops in the late teens or early twenties. The overt symptoms are hallucinations (hearing voices, seeing visions), delusions (false beliefs about commonly held views of reality) and bizarre thought patterns. Another webspace adds this: Psychosis characterized by the breakdown of integrated personality functioning, withdrawal from reality, emotional blunting and distortion, and disturbances in thought and behavior

According to a study by Amador, et al, "Awareness of Illness in Schizophrenia and Schizoaffective and Mood Disorders" in the Oct 94 issue of General Psychiatry, between a third and two-thirds who have the malady deny or are unaware they have the mental illness.

According to Dr. Joseph Pierre's commentary in the Feb 2009 issue of Psychiatric Times, "What do you mean, I don't have schizophrenia?":

...in my patients' world – and in the wake of the Contract With America Advancement Act of 1996 – a diagnosis of schizophrenia is one of the best ways to gain access to a disability income and other social services that are unavailable for those who "only" have a substance use disorder ... [M]y patients were far from relieved when I "took away" their schizophrenia diagnosis or an antipsychotic medication. On the contrary, their very existence was threatened.

Viewed from this perspective, I realized that malingering, if present, was often [caused by the medical establishment] – incentivized by increasingly restrictive criteria for disability incomes or access to care that characterize addiction as a lifestyle choice. I'd find myself thinking of Jean Valjean: given existing conditions, who wouldn't steal the loaf of bread as a simple act of survival?

Thus in homeless communities in America, there are many undiagnosed schizophrenics, and many with other problems but who get a schizophernia diagnosis but don't have the malady.

The number of homeless in Sacramento who are schizophrenic is approximately 420. But this educated guess could be off by a hundred or more, either up or down.

Blunted affect and diological self

The medications that schizophrenics take will relieve their hallucinations and delusions and bizarre thinking to great extent, but do little for the emotional blunting and withdrawl. Schizophrenics faithfully keeping up their medication regimen will be placid and unnoticed, but from their experience, they are alienated nothings.

From the book Schizophrenia and the Fate of the Self:

... blunted affect ... generally refers to a lack of emotional expression in inflection, expression and gesture. A person described as having blunted affect would show a limited range of emotions, perhaps appearing wooden or lifeless in the midst of a celebration or a time of sadness. In contrast to a drepressed person who might silently be consumed by pain, someone with flat affect would feel emptiness. If confronted with something painful, pleasurable, surprising, or disgusting a person with flat affect would show the same emotional response: nothing. ...

[As an example, one schizophrenic, Glass, describes his experience thus:] Glass tells us that he is in a cloudbank, suggesting a hazy, undifferentiated state within which direction is elusive. Moreover, none of the events wherein his life unfolds produces any particular effect in him, as if each self-world interaction were just more mist and vapor, including his own role therein.

When one becomes fully emotionally flat like this, it disrupts one's sense of self. You have nothing to animate your character. Internally, for the schizophrenic, there is nothing to stir him to converse with others. But the schizophrenic does suffer from a sense of "nothing," feeling as if he is barely there and fading away.

Without an animating self, there is a lack of volition. There is simply nothing to compel one to pursue any particular course of action in a day.

It should be of no surprise, then, that the most common cause of death for a person with schizophrenia is suicide.

Problems for schizophrenics who are unaware of their illness

From Schizophrenia and the Fate of the Self:

Imagine having a vague sense that one was faring less well than before, but maintaining the belief that the likely symptom of and thus key to one's diminishment was irrelevant to one's situation. Presuming one's assessment was mistaken, one would continue to fare poorly, and perhaps waste time addressing unrelated situations. This is precisely the kind of scenario we think occurs when people lack insight into, or an awareness of the symptoms associated with schizophrenia - the dialogical compromises they affect continue unabated. The point is not simply that such folk are unlikely to seek help, but also that their lack of awareness prevents the development of a meta-position, for example, self-as-ill, which could help them interpret and thus delimit the influence of the unusual experiences and/or beliefs they find themselves having.
Lack of insight into one's condition is also likely to intensify social alienation. Without a plausible account of one's trouble, it would be nearly impossible to talk to others about one's experiences and the difficulties that often surround them.
... If dialogical breakdowns lead to a sense of self as diminished, and particularly with regard to one's agency, awareness of illness could be overwhelming. ... one of our [the authors'] central claims is that sense of self derives from interanimating play of self-positions. As that play proves increasingly disordered, sense of self will suffer, finding little to hold onto besides its diminishment. ... the thought that one is nothing but diminishment can be devastating. So it may be that a refusal to see one's symptoms as sympoms allows one a sense of self that is disoriencted and diminished, but at least not the nothingness that seemed to loom on the edges of paranoia.

Sorry, kind readers, for posting such a big block of text, but what's written here is important, I think.

In layman's terms from what I glean from the above: People, generally, use a lot of their energy trying to cope with and cover up their deficits. But for the large number of schizophrenics who are undiagnosed and unaware of their mental illness, things are triply bad. They can lose the ability to have a meta-position with respect to their self. [A meta-position, as I understand it, is how you fluidly present yourself as your interactions with others change during the course of short-range spans of time.] Not having access to more-resolved meta-positions, schizophrenics can be prone to more delusional thinking, and that leads to greater social alienation.

The authors believe that successful, orderly and accepted "play" between the different selves we each have makes us "normal." A schizophrenic experiences a sense of failure in transactions with others, disorder and unacceptance. Thus, there is a downward spiral toward feelings of disorientation, alienation and "nothingness." At this stage, a schizophrenic person might experience himself as disembodied.

Psychosocial rehabilitation

In a final, very short few paragraphs at the end of their book, the brothers Lysaker write about "pychosocial rehabilitation." They suggest vocational programs for supported employment; peer support and guidance and case management.

Also, the brothers are keen on creating social situations for schizophrenic people that elicit and support self-positions such that sense of self is celebrated and stabalized.
-----

Helpful links:

Glossary Of Schizophrenia Terminology
Schizophrenia and the Fate of the Self at amazon
Schizophrenia and the Fate of the Self at Oxford University Press

The theft of the neighbor's lawnmower

2009-05-10T14:50:00.000-07:00

The preacher last night at the Union Gospel Mission made a powerful-seeming point which began when he asked the congregation, "If I steal my neighbor's lawnmower, will I have sinned?"

The question hung out there, like a dark cloud over the congregants, for heavy moments before men in the audience yelled out a few "yeah"s and "yes"es and "sure"s.

But with flaying fury, the preacher informed us that No, he would not have have sinned, for it's not the theft of the lawnmower that creates the sin, it is the nature of the sinner. It is desire to steal the lawnmower where the sin is posited.

It is only through spirit and Jesus and God's grace that the lawnmower remains sitting there quietly on his neighbor's overgrown, weedy front lawn, he told us.

This lawnmower example/parable/whatever-it-was had me looking askance at the fellow waving his arms around behind the cross-shaped lecturn. Only by being in God's supple arms was he deterred from kiping* Mr. Jones's** Toro***!?

Now, this preacher is already one I respect less than most. He evokes the Christian Trap, as I call it, more than any of the few who do so. The Christian Trap works like this: The congregants are told something on the order of, "All who doubt the Word are chained by their nose rings to Satan. Thus, you must never doubt for a moment the sweet mutterings that a God-sealed soul like I tell you. You must wholly repudiate the Satanic secular world which is evil and cunning and intent on nothing other than to drag you down into the fiery lake." [And I kid you not, some preachers, like the one at issue in this post, are fully this hysterical.]

Of course, most of the fellows in the mission congregation, while Christian, have their other foot in the secular world, and are not all that easily swayed by a mission preacher's hystrionics. Still, as accustomed as I get with some of the terrible-preachers' bloviations, I always worry that some of my friends in the audience bite the hook in the preacher's bait.

But what was most interesting to me about the preacher's Parable of the Lawnmower was that thing that we non-Christians find to be the most freeky about some Christian of the immature stripe. That is, they believe about themselves that, failing Jesus holding them back, they'd run rampant breaking the Ten Commandments in a spree of mayhem.

This preacher, captivated by tribalist hate thinking, has demonized the secular world and all of us in it. Very likely there's a lot of text in the Bible that supports this way of thinking, just as there is much in the Bible that repudiates it. Contrary to what many Christians, like this preacher, think, the Bible is chockablock with contradictions and verse that can be interpretted in different ways, which sadly allows haters that come to the religion to cherry-pick from it what they choose to believe that supports hate mongering. This is the fundamentalist problem that most religions have.

I submit that 99.999 percent, plus, of secular folk are not on the prowl to steal lawnmowers. And that the preacher last night, should he disavow Christianity [which is not something I'm advocating; I'm just supposing], would not go out on a lawnmower-stealing spree, either.

"Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind, and thy neighbor [including thy perceived enemies] as thyself." [I cherry-picked the preceeding sentence from the Bible, here, here, here, here, here & here.]
-------
* kipe: means "to steal" [It's a slang word that I like that dictionaries tell me is fading away.]

** I figure one's fictive neighbors should always be the Joneses, based on the old saw about "keeping up with the Joneses."

*** A good make of lawnmower that neighbors you want to keep up with are likely to have.

Outpourings from the Belief-O-Matic

2009-05-07T10:50:00.000-07:00

My friend Steve Curless, the Sacramento Spirituality Examiner, recommended a blogpost to me by Roger Ebert about death, called "Go Gentle into that Good Night." In it, past the gentle musings, Van Gogh paintings and e. e. cummings viddies, was a note by Ebert telling us he took a religion test. I've taken it, too.

The test is the Belief-O-Matic over at beliefnet.

My Results

The top score on the list below represents the faith that Belief-O-Matic, in its less than infinite wisdom, thinks most closely matches my beliefs. However, I'm told, even a score of 100% does not mean that my views are all shared by this faith, or vice versa.

Belief-O-Matic then lists another 26 faiths in order of how much they have in common with my professed beliefs. The higher a faith appears on this list, the more closely it aligns with my thinking.

My top-scoring religions out of the 27 listed [with links to wikipedia]:

1. Mahayana Buddhism (100%)
2. Unitarian Universalism (93%)
3. Liberal Quakers (87%)
4. Taoism (87%)
5. Theravada Buddhism (86%)

I'm pleasantly surprised to find myself in perfect-seeming sync with Mahayana Buddhism. While I, certainly, consider myself to be a Mahayana Buddhist, I have some beliefs outside its mainstream, I thought.

Dark Night: raising the Great Doubt

2009-05-06T10:30:00.000-07:00

Though it might seem the province of Catholicism, Dark Night, derived from the writing of Carmelite monk St. John of the Cross in his work Dark Night of the Soul, is an important concept in Buddhism.

As succinct background, per wikipedia, St. John of the Cross was born Juan de Yepes Alvarez into a Jewish converso family in Spain.

On the night of 3 to 4 December 1577, when he was 35 years of age, following his refusal to relocate after his superior's orders and allegedly because of his attempts to reform life within the Carmelite order, he was taken prisoner by his superiors, and jailed in the city of Toledo, where he was kept under a brutal regimen that included public lashing before the community at least weekly, and severe isolation in a tiny stifling cell barely large enough for his body. He managed to escape nine months later, on 15 August 1578, by escaping through a small window in a room adjoining his cell. (He had managed to pry the cell door off its hinges earlier that day.)

Mystic St. John of the Cross is considered one of the foremost poets in the Spanish language. Although his complete poems add up to less than 2500 verses, two of them — the "Spiritual Canticle" and "Dark Night of the Soul" are widely considered to be among the best poems ever written in Spanish, both for their formal stylistic point of view and their rich symbolism and imagery.

Dark Night of the Soul (in Spanish: La noche oscura del alma) is a treatise. It has become an expression used to describe a phase in a person's spiritual life, a metaphor for a certain loneliness and desolation. It is referenced by spiritual traditions throughout the world.

In the Christian tradition, one who has developed a strong prayer life and consistent devotion to God suddenly finds traditional prayer extremely difficult and unrewarding for an extended period of time during this "dark night." The individual may feel as though God has suddenly abandoned him or that his prayer life has collapsed. In the pronounced cases, belief is lost in the existence of God or in the validity of his religion.

Rather than resulting in devastation, however, the dark night is perceived by mystics and others to be a blessing in disguise, whereby the individual is stripped (in the dark night of the senses) of the spiritual ecstasy associated with acts of virtue. Although the individual may for a time seem to outwardly decline in his practices of virtue, in reality he becomes more virtuous, as he is being virtuous not for spiritual rewards (ecstasies in the cases of the first night) obtained and only out of a true love for God. It is this purgatory, a purgation of the soul, that brings purity and union.

Entering this dark night of the soul is commonly referred to in Buddhism as "raising the Great Doubt."

The most important and influential teaching of Japanese Zen Master Hakuin Ekaku was his emphasis on, and systemization of, koan practice. Hakuin deeply believed that the most effective way for a student to achieve insight was through extensive meditation on a koan. The psychological pressure and doubt that comes when one struggles with a koan is meant to create tension that leads to awakening. Hakuin called this the "great doubt," writing, "At the bottom of great doubt lies great awakening. If you doubt fully, you will awaken fully." Only with incessant investigation of his koan will a student be able to become one with the koan, and attain enlightenment.

Or, as Mark Epstein and Jonathan Lieff wrote, quoted in Ken Wilber's book Transformations of Consciousness:

…when the perceptual capacity to discriminate very fine changes in moments of consciousness is developed, regression in service of the ego has become transmuted to inspection in search of the ego. A period characterized by the subjective experience of dissolution is entered where traditionally solid aspects of the personality begin to break up, leaving the meditator no solid ground to stand on. This is traditionally the time of spiritual crisis, characterized by “a great terror,” the “Great Doubt” in Zen, and the struggle to allow a transformation or “decathexis” of the self.

In online Buddhism, arhat Daniel Ingram is one who speaks and writes about Dark Night. In the 25th chapter in his hardcore-dharma book, Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha, he writes,

There are two basic things that happen during the Dark Night. One is that our dark stuff tends to come bubbling up to the surface with a volume and intensity that we may never have known before. Remembering what is good in our life can be difficult in the face of this, and our reactivity in the face of our dark stuff can cause us staggering amounts of needless suffering. On top of this, we also begin to directly experience the fundamental suffering of duality, a suffering that has always been with us but which we have never known with this level of intensity or ever clearly understood. We face a profound and fundamental crisis of identity as our insight into the Three Characteristics begins to demolish part of the basic illusion of there being a separate or permanent us. This suffering is a kind of suffering that has nothing to do with what happens in our life and everything to do with a basic misunderstanding of all of it.

Dealing with either of these two issues, i.e. our dark stuff and our fundamental crisis of identity, would be a difficult undertaking, but trying to deal with them both at the same time is at least twice as difficult and can sometimes be overwhelming. It goes without saying that we tend not to be at our best when we are overwhelmed in this way.

The knee-jerk response often is to try to make our minds and our world change so as to try to stop the suffering we experience. However, when we are deeply into the Dark Night, we could be living in paradise and not be able to appreciate this at all, and so this solution is guaranteed to fail. Thus, my strong advice is to work on finishing up this cycle of insight and then work on your stuff from a place of insight and balance, rather than trying to do it in the reactive and disorienting stages of the Dark Night! I cannot make this point strongly enough. ...

[The fruit of Dark Night is] the first attainment of ultimate reality, emptiness, nirvana, God or whatever you wish to call it. In this non-state, there is absolutely no time, no space, no reference point, no experience, no mind, no consciousness, no nothingness, no somethingness, no body, no this, no that, no unity, no duality, and no anything else. Reality stops cold and then reappears. Thus, this is impossible to comprehend, as it goes completely and utterly beyond the rational mind and the universe. To “external time” (if someone were observing the meditator from the outside) this lasts only an instant. It is like an utter discontinuity of the space-time continuum with nothing in the unfindable gap.

The initial aftershocks, however, can go on for days, and may be mild or spectacular, fun or unsettling or some mixture of these.

In a video, "Dark Nights of Meditation Practice," Ken Wilber responds to a young woman struggling with her Integral Life Practice. She's been experiencing discomfort, anxiety, and fear for her sanity while meditating. Wilber explains the "switch-points" between the major states of consciousness, each marked by its very own Dark Night: a death and rebirth of identity that can be scary to experience.

Spooky Christian Tautologizing

2009-05-04T15:30:00.000-07:00

If it can't not be true, then it's not true.

After the music part of chapel, about a month ago, a young lady, of about 16 years of age, was introduced to give her testimony.

She talked about an allergy or rash that she had been suffering from. She said that it helped when she thought about how much Jesus suffered. That reminded her of how of little importance her pesky rash was in comparison – or in the grand scheme of things. Then, she realized she was grateful for her rash, because it reminded her that she was imperfect, a sinner.

She knew that her dedication to studying the Bible had flagged and she had an epiphany: The rash was Jesus telling her to renew her faith, to strive more mightily to be in accord with God's instructions. Then she found that when she studied before
going to bed at night, she awoke without the rash being a bother to her. Praise
Jesus!

But the rash came back, and she realized that a grudge she had with her sister was the cause of it. So, she made up with her dear sister, and the rash was suddenly gone. Praise Jesus!

She was grateful for her life. She was grateful for her rash. She was grateful for God's Glory. Praise Jesus!

The congregation at the mission gave the young lady a hardy applause. Of course, me being me, I was horrified by it all.

It seems crystal clear to me that absolutely anything that happens, the young woman would rationalize as a message from Jesus. If something bad happened, it meant she was falling short in God's eyes. If something good happened, it was a demonstration of God's splendor.

God's presence is proved, no matter what. Doubt is disallowed, and thereby overcome. Praise Jesus! It's a tautology: God is good, all the time; All the time, God is good. God exists, because it says in the Bible God exists, and nowhere else can the absolute truth be found.

In mathematical terms, X = X, and not-X does not exist, except as Satanism.

The [Evil] World's Out to Getcha

The day before, a man from Zion Hill Missionary Baptist Church got up and read one simple verse, John 15:19, which is as follows:

19If ye were of the world, the world would love his own; but because ye are not
of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth
you.

The intent of the speaker was clear. He was telling the Christians seated in the chapel that non-Christians hate them, and that this news came direct from Jesus/God.

But the quote is taken wholly out of context. The quote appears in the middle of a talk Jesus was giving specifically to his twelve disciples and he was referring to the world they were living in at that point in time. Jesus, in line 27, addresses the people he's talking to as "you [who] have been with me from the beginning of my ministry."

Indeed, the Disciples were persecuted (and Christianity would have it very tough there for a while). [Visualize Christians being consumed by lions in the Colosseum.]

But things are different today. There aren't many Christian haters around, today. And I don't think any of the prominent New Atheists are, though few conservative Christians might accept that.

Non-believers in America today are not persecuting Christians for being Christian. No Christians are being fed to lions. The religion is not endangered because of a Grand Satanic Conspiracy by a vast underground network of non-believers. Christianity is not endangered, period.

And, quite frankly, had Jesus been speaking in general terms, talking about non-believers then, and non-Christians [once Christianity arrived on the scene, following Christ's death], for evermore thereafter, Jesus WOULD HAVE BEEN PROVED WRONG.

Haters of "God haters"

There's a lot of hating of "God haters" that goes on at the mission. Certainly, this is not true of a majority of the churches who come to the mission, but it is true for many.

We are told that it is a binary thing: Either you are with God, or against him. You are either glory-bound, or hell-bound. And, somehow, rather than awaiting God's Judgment, many of the churches have determined that here on earth there are exactly two types of people: God Lovers & God Haters. Which are you!?

----

Updates

Update 5/5/09: While I await Mumon's promised post [in his Notes from Samsara (link)] on suffering and Jesus that, I think, relate to this post, here's some things that have come in the hopper [ie, my google reader] that relate:

1) Kyle R. Lovett's post, "Truth Shall Set You Free?" in Progressive Buddhism talks about uncertainty - in thoughts, of belief in God and in quantum theory. His post ends in doubt and with a Nietzsche quote, thus: “What then is truth? A movable host of metaphors, metonymies, and; anthropomorphisms: in short, a sum of human relations which have been poetically and rhetorically intensified, transferred, and embellished, and which, after long usage, seem to a people to be fixed, canonical, and binding.”

(2) In a comment to Kyle's post [see above], JJ tells us of Negative Capability and gives us its wikipedia link. Negative capability is a state of intentional open-mindedness paralleled in the literary and philosophic stances of other writers.

Update 5/6/09: Mumon has put us his blogpost. I recommend it to you. "The Noble Truth about Suffering."

Tracking Tom

2009-05-03T15:20:00.000-07:00

Just in case they foolishly don't give me a laptop in my cell, here is how you can track me.

https://services.saccourt.com/indexsearchnew/CaseNumberList.aspx?SearchValues=ARMSTRONG,THOMAS,EDWARD,4160766

Monday may be Trial Day. If it is, and justice is swift and wrongheaded, perhaps I'll be in the hoosegow that afternoon.

Of course, I will try to smuggle a pen, pad of paper, postage stamps, envelopes, and a ham sandwich in via any orifice I find suitable on my person. Likely, corrupt guards will take my stuff. Damn them.

Update 5/3/09 9:00am: The persecution has trailed the case till 5/14. That is, there has been a continuance on the prosecutor's time for ten days.

Kinds of Empathy

2009-05-02T13:15:00.000-07:00

In his words describing a quality he sought for the person he will select to replace retiring Judge Souter on the Supreme Court, President Obama cited "Empathy." While Obama was a senator, he questioned John Roberts, now our Chief Justice, and said, in the course of things, that 5% of cases a Supreme Court justice hears will center on the justice's heart.

Daniel Goleman, author of Ecological Intelligence, tells us, in a recent Huffington Post piece, that there are three types of empathy, [thanks to C4 for this link!] which are these:

cognitive empathy, means that we can understand how the other person thinks; we see his point of view. This makes for good debaters, sales people and negotiators. On the other hand, people who have strengths in cognitive empathy alone can lack compassion - they get how you see it, but don’t care about you. Psychologists speak of the “Dark Triad” - narcissists, Machiavellians, and sociopaths, who can be slick with their arguments but have a heart of stone (think Dick Cheney).
emotional empathy, refers to someone who feels within herself the emotions of the person she’s with. This creates a sense of rapport, and most probably entails the brain’s mirror neuron system, which activates our own circuits the emotions, movements and intentions we see in the other person. This lets us feel with the other person - but not necessarily feel for, the prerequisite for compassion.
empathic concern, the third variety of empathy. Empathic concern means we not only understand how the person sees things and feels in the moment, but also want to help them if we sense the need. A study of empathic concern in seven-year-olds found that those who showed least concern when they saw their mother in distress were most likely to have a criminal record two decades later

Since it is important here, let me add something Goleman didn't provide: a description of "compassion" (taken from wikipedia):

Compassion is a human emotion prompted by the pain of others. More vigorous than empathy, the feeling commonly gives rise to an active desire to alleviate another's suffering. It is often, though not inevitably, the key component in what manifests in the social context as altruism. Compassion or karuna is at the transcendental and experiential heart of the Buddha's teachings. He was reputedly asked by his secretary, Ananda, "Would it be true to say that the cultivation of loving kindness and compassion is a part of our practice?" To which the Buddha replied, "No. It would not be true to say that the cultivation of loving kindness and compassion is part of our practice. It would be true to say that the cultivation of loving kindess and compassion is all of our practice."

Below, in a viddie, Daniel Goleman talks about empathy and what motivates it. He tells us of the importance not being rushed has in bringing to the fore our natural empathetic instincts. Of homelessness interest, at the end of the viddie, beginning at ~12:12, Goleman says this: ...Friday, at the end of the day, I was going down to the subway, it was rush hour, thousands of people were streaming down the stairs, when all of a sudden I noticed there was a man slumped to the side, shirtless, not moving, and people were just stepping over him, hundreds and hundreds of people. But because my urban trance had somehow been weakened I found myself stopping to find out what was wrong. The moment I stopped, half a dozen other people immediately stopped for the guy. And we found out he was Spanish, he didn't speak English, he had no money, he'd been wandering the streets for days, starving, and he'd fainted from hunger. Immediately, someone went to get orange juice, someone went to get a hotdog, someone brought a subway cop. This guy was back on his feet, immediately. All it took was a simple act of noticing. And so I'm optimistic.

Who the Sacramento Homeless really are

2009-05-02T10:45:00.000-07:00

Following is an opinion piece I submitted to the Sacramento Bee on April 7 – which, from their non-response, I learned they had chosen not to publish it. I found a copy of it in my backpack, today, and thought Gee, this is pretty good; I should let readers of my blog read it. And so, here it is.

Who the Sacramento Homeless Really Are, and
How Best to Help Them. Guidance from an Insider.

How can you a wealthy or, at least, well-off or working person in the Sacramento metropolis, best help the homeless in our area whom you've heard so much about, recently, and whom you care about and worry about!?

Ahhhh, that's sweet. Compassion is a wonderful thing! As the Dalai Lama is credited with saying: "If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion." And as Jesus emphasized, according to the Bible: "You shall love your neighbor as yourself."

We homeless are your neighbors. This is something I have learned in my near-year out in Homeless World Sac. We homeless are remarkably like you, though not in the way news coverage has described things in recent months, during the post-Oprah media blitz.

We are not in overwhelmingly number cowering, broken Caucasian families, unaccustomed to not having the wherewithal to tool around on the freeways in our SUVs.

Most of us are solo men, and of these, we are disproportionately black. Certainly, there are women and boys and girls and couples and families, too, that are out there on the streets, living in tents, and staying in shelters. The variety of people is as broad as the general population. If you look, you'll find a near-doppelganger of yourself or your family in Homeless World Sac.

But, indeed, a great great many homeless folk have substance-abuse issues. And maybe a past that includes large swatches of time being locked up for bad, and sometimes terrible or monstrous, deeds.

Many, many homeless have debilitating mental-health issues and have been dumped by society. Of these people, many talk to themselves and do not converse with others.

Many homeless are as wholly self-interested and inured to others' problems as AIG executives. They feign sympathy; habitually, effortlessly lie; and play mind-games.

But savaged with problems or not, you will find, among the homeless, in greater proportion than in the general population, people with mighty hearts and kind natures – folks who are likable, lovable, thoughtful and as generous as they can be. Not surprisingly, Jesus was homeless [Matt 8:20], as was Buddha. And as are saints [like St. Francis and Margaret of Cortona] and bodhisattvas [like Layman Pang and Noah Yuttadhammo].

A lot of how homeless people are depicted is flat-out false. We are not whiny and morose, as we seem always to be on the news, or can seem to be on some homeless-advocacy websites. The homeless community, by and large, is cheerful and resolute to hold on and make do.

There's a lot more money in Homeless World Sac than I would ever have supposed before landing here. A great many of the guys get monthly disability checks – which some call "happy checks" – in an amount just short of $900. That is the prime source funding the considerable use of substances to alter consciousness or otherwise have a spree early in the month. Shelter space for men frees up very very noticeably early in a month, going from "insufficient to meet demand" to 20% empty beds.

Why society gives so much money to "disabled"* people so that they can make themselves more disabled and shorten their lives, I don't understand. I wonder if things might change if people better knew what was going on.

And, finally, the homeless are not a bunch of Maynard G. Krebses, squealing "Work!" and running away. We line up for temporary work in Friendship Park, hoping something will come of it. We take whatever jobs we can, certainly including what's offered under-the-table. Guys work for small businesses doing telephone soliciting; putting up drywall; selling insurance on commission; waving signs on the sidewalk; working high-traffic hours at restaurants. Some of us recycle cans and bottles that the general population tosses out their car windows, and are Johnny-on-the-spot to help people move furniture or plant petunias.

How YOU can best help those most in
need in Homeless World Sacramento

Most of the homeless in Sacramento are die-hard fans of the homeless-aid and -advocacy programs in The Community. Me, I'm more of a curmudgeon and a critic.

Loaves & Fishes is Homeless World Sac townsquare to the homeless folk in our metropolis, and to those who grumble when they pass by it on light rail on their way to work. It's where about six hundred people get a free lunch each day and might spend an hour or two in its park or library. The affection homeless people have for Loaves – as it's nicknamed – is considerable, based on the view that, absent the facility, their lives would be downgraded to dumpster diving and great unhappiness.

Me, I'm a critic of Loaves, questioning its policies and efficiency in its use of funds. But I'm sympathetic to the mutual-dependency that Loaves and the homeless community are locked in. If Marcos Breton writes something hateful about the homeless, Loaves takes a hit in its fundraising and who knows how often meatloaf will start appearing on the menu and what leftovers the kitchen staff might need to put in it; If Loaves is lauded by Oprah Winfrey, we homeless might see nice, tasty, healthy food, served to us under the twinkling lights of international newcasts' TV cameras.

So should someone wanting to help the homeless do the simple thing, write a check to Loaves & Fishes, or another homeless-aid agency, like Volunteers of America or Union Gospel Mission or the Salvation Army or WIND Youth Services? Sure. If your time is valuable, one of those organizations is likely to squeeze a lot of good out of whatever you can send.

But if you can spend some time to target your money to really, really make it do good, here are my insider ideas: End-around bureaucracies and administration and get the homeless what they most need.

What do we need? Vegetables! There's lots and lots of sugar and starch in Homeless World, but artichokes and asparagus are next to unheard of. See if you can get your grocery store to help you out and sell you some produce that is being taken off the sales floor and GIVE it to you, or sell it to you at a deep discount, which you can GIVE to us!

Broccoli, green beans, asparagus, onions and tomatoes, hooray! If the quantity seems enough to provide a serving to feed a hundred-twenty, take what you collect to Union Gospel Mission [400 Bannon St.; Sacramento]; or, if its a great deal, that will contribute toward feeding 600, then take it to Loaves & Fishes [1300 N. C St.; Sacramento].

Another good idea: Buy Subway sandwich gift cards in the amount of $6 each and pass them out to homeless men and women you see. A Subway sandwich, much more so that McDonald's, say, is packed with plantlife. And Subway franchises, like McDonald'ses, are ubiquitous.

-----
* I put the word in quotes, since it's an open secret that many of these disabled aren't disabled: they've just gotten themselves lawyers who know how to work the system.]

Tom Armstrong has been in Homeless World Sacramento for nearly a year, now. He was made homeless when his sister stole his inheritance and his belongings.

Homeless-aid organizations and the Mean Green Meme

2009-05-01T14:19:00.001-07:00

[unfinished post, unfinished post warning warning] Above [click here or on pic to see image in a readable size] is a model borrowed from Spiral Dynamics that shows the primary value Memes of development, moving from the bottom, Beige, up the the highest Meme of the first tier, Green.

Rehabilitating confidence in truth and reason will undoubtedly be one of the tasks of the twenty-first century. As a culture, we must begin to recognize that while truth and objectivity may not be absolutes that exist perfectly free of time and history, neither are they hopelessly embedded in personal perspectives. Simply because truth is always subject to revision does not and could never mean that all truth claims deserve equal space at the table of cultural discourse. Let's not put reason and science on the pedestal of perfection, but let's also not confuse leaps of faith with rational inquiry. If the twenty-first century is being defined by an ongoing clash of traditional, modern, and postmodern worldviews both in individuals and in societies around the world, then escaping that clash with minimal harm and maximal development will mean finding a fourth way. It will mean learning to steer our ship of culture away from the overconfident certainties of theology and science but also away from the overwrought uncertainties of contemporary philosophy.

Einstein is said to have remarked that the hardest thing to understand about the universe is that it is understandable. Socrates is said to have claimed that the only thing he knew for sure was that he knew nothing. Surely, somewhere in between those two perspectives we can find both truth that we can trust and our way into the future.

Is life a roller-coaster ride?

2009-04-30T17:30:00.000-07:00

I don't know what life is, but I do hope that quickly after death we will each find out.

An answer you can find in old movies [for example, "Heaven Can Wait" or "The Horn Blows at Midnight"] is that after life you are on a cloud, in a long line, waiting for Angel Gabriel to let you in the gate – or not.

Another possiblity is that you are deleted. There is less than nothing after life; you are as much not around as the memory you don't have of yourself before you were born.

It can be that you pass through the Bardo, a spooky old place, dream-like and filled with potential terrors, on your way to a next birth, as a human or some other sentient being on this or some other planet or somewhere or somehow in some other universe that you could never imagine. And it can be, that your reborn self comes tagged with lessons that you need to learn from all your prior lives, bringing you pains and pleasures that you deserve.

Many of us Buddhists pull out text from some sutra and say that Buddha told us not to speculate on those things be cannot know. And what might happen to us after death is just the kind of time-wasting speculation he was talking about. But Buddha also told us to use our own judgment of what we should think or do, and I think that considering the possibilities of what death might mean is a good use of a modest chunk of our life's time.

My hope is that we find out that a life is just a crazy old roller coaster ride.

At the end of life, you find yourself in a roller-coaster car, passing out of a dark tunnel. The track takes you up and down a few modest bumps, splashing through water, then your car is brought to a halt. You then remember before you were born when you embarked on the ride. And unless you had a remarkable life, in an instant you see how silly you were in life, misjudging what was important and what was unimportant.

Just as with roller coasters in amusement parks throughout the world, there is no lesson to be learned from a ride, and you disembark at the same place where you got on. Life, it turns out, is just a stunning experience, playing with that magical substance Ignorance. We are all of us, really, this single great Cosmic Self, frozen with absolute knowledge of everything and thus incapable of laughter, love, terror or hope. It is only through Ignorance that Cosmic Self can have adventures and experience the myriad feelings that Ignorance makes possible.

While life isn't a land of lessons, we do learn things about it: It turns out that chasing after money and status is not only life's biggest time waster, it is as destructive as living a life of crime. There is nothing that one can achieve by being well off financially and being respected by others. Indeed, by taking more than your share of earth's bounty and putting yourself above others, you add to the collective pool of misery. It is only from a deeply-felt compassion for others, and having modest possessions, that a life is profoundly satisfying.

But life is not a lesson. And whether we live as a seriel killer or an ego-free saint, there are no rewards nor punishments to receive or endure after life's end. There is only this: Certain knowledge about everything, and the opportunity to ride again.

Funny thing -- or, I should say, seriously, that it is not so funny a thing -- the Roller-coaster Theory does not pick up much religious support. I think the reason for this is that religions thrive when obedience to the religion is rewarded with prizes and benefits after death. The Twin Towers suicide terrorists each had twenty submissive virgins waiting for them after their murderous crashes. Good Christians have an eternity in Heaven. Well-behaved Hindus and Buddhists have karmic rewards, which might include a next life graced with prosperity, health, and attractive physical features. And, of course, for Buddhists there is Paranirvana, an absolute end to all suffering.

The Roller-coaster Theory comes then with marketting problems. The afterlife of the major religions promise a Parential [usually, Fatherly] Approval, and with it, happiness and security. So, there is a reason for us to be Good; our life has meaning. Be Good to make the Great Cosmic Dad proud.

In the Roller-coaster Theory, you are not still a child -- one of God's children -- you are a grown-up. And while dangers and terrors and random acts of violence are for the most part outside what you can control or influence, there is no one more in charge than you are. Your life can go wonderfully or horribly, despite your will, effort and talents; there is no guardian angel to guide or protect you. And so it is hard to feel that there is ultimately any meaning to being alive.

Why be good if there is no eventual reward? At the first level of understanding, it is because you can only really be good if there is no reward. At the second level of understanding – which trumps the first, obliterating it – we should be good for its own sake: Good for Goodness' sake. That's all. There's nothing else.

But what is Good? And what is Goodness' sake? There is no one outside yourself to tell you. As our heart/mind matures, the ideal of good becomes less treacly and rule-bound. We do the right thing outside the call of reasons for what feels like [and is] a growing abundance of wisdom and compassion.

Zen Unbound found on Wayback Machine

2009-04-29T17:31:00.000-07:00

Some of you all might be interested in this: I found some of my old Zen Unbound stuff on the Wayback Machine.

I hadn't looked for the old stuff in a long, long time. And I believe when I last searched for it, the pictures weren't 'showing.' So, it is kinda delightful for me to see my 1990's fade into history is becoming more visible.

The portal is here: http://web.archive.org/web/20060427012734/http://www.zenunbound.com/

Sac'to Spirituality Examiner focuses on spirituality and homelessness

2009-04-29T10:00:00.000-07:00


	Picture of homeless man sleeping on a bench that appeared with the examiner.com article.

Over at examiner.com – a new website that is at the cutting edge of the evolution of newspapers into something very inquisitive and solely online – the Sacramento Spirituality Examiner, Steve Curless, looks at homelessness in our metropolis after the demise of Tent City, in the first of a three-piece report, "Helping the Homeless, Part I."

[Steve credits this blog, and its cousin, Sacramento Homeless Blog, in his report. I met Steve online and colaberated on a blog at one time with him. Since then, we've become pals in meatspace in our shared metropolis.]

In his first part, Steve addresses the distance people leading typical lives have from the homeless and how it can be "an abstraction." But, with the serious recession we've entered in deepening, homelessness becomes up-close and personal. For Steve, his friendship with homeless me has personalized homelessness.

Steve then touches on the difficulties of homeless life and the deficits of homeless-aid organizations meant to serve us.

He writes about Tent City and how it was rousted and made to disappear, at considerable expense, to hide the blight from media attention.

In his next report, Steve intends to look at what "government and privately-funded organizations [can] do to help the homeless, and [if there is] a role for spirituality to play."

I am hopeful readers of this blog will plug in to Steve's and those of other examiners at examiner.com. Certainly, I hope that readers, here, will read the wisdom in Steve's follow-up pieces on homelessness. Steve is a profoundly wise and compassionate fellow.

My Morals

2009-04-28T15:47:00.001-07:00

Above is my result from the Moral Foundations Questionaire.

As I hope you can see, I [green] am more concerned about harm and fairness than the average liberal [blue], and much more so than the average conservative [red].

I'm less concerned about loyalty than liberals and much less so than conservatives.

While conservatives care most about authority and purity, I'm down near the liberals in that I care much less about those elements.

You, too, can take this test at YourMorals. org. The test was developed by Jesse Graham and Jonathan Haidt at the University of Virginia. Haidt is the author of The Happiness Hypothesis.

David Brooks knows Morality

2009-04-20T09:00:00.000-07:00

A David Brooks column in the New York Times, today, "The End of Philosophy," is spot on, in my estimation, in explaining morality.

Here, a central snip of some of the text:

Moral judgments are like [this: You just know.] They are rapid intuitive decisions and involve the emotion-processing parts of the brain.

... What shapes moral emotions in the first place? The answer has long been evolution, but in recent years there’s an increasing appreciation that evolution isn’t just about competition. It’s also about cooperation within groups. Like bees, humans have long lived or died based on their ability to divide labor, help each other and stand together in the face of common threats. Many of our moral emotions and intuitions reflect that history. We don’t just care about our individual rights, or even the rights of other individuals. We also care about loyalty, respect, traditions, religions. We are all the descendents of successful cooperators.

Hooray, David Brooks. And hooray Born to be Good, a book that Brooks does not cite, but which gets into precisely these issues. This blog has three posts about Dasher Kiltner's book: (1), (2) and (3).

Brooks does cite, and quote, Jonathan Haidt, a academician who, similar to Kiltner, also embraces "positive" evolution ideas. [My meat- and virtual-space friend Nagarjuna is a big fan of Haidt and is currently reading his book The Happiness Hypothosis.] Here is Brooks's citation of Haidt

:... reasoning comes later and is often guided by the emotions that preceded it. Or as Jonathan Haidt of the University of Virginia memorably wrote, “The emotions are, in fact, in charge of the temple of morality, and ... moral reasoning is really just a servant masquerading as a high priest.”

[Haidt's words above come from 2001, from a book or paper I cannot fully ID. The 2003 book Handbook of affective sciences uses a paper Haidt wrote where Haidt quotes himself, with the ellipsis that Brooks uses, citing Haidt 2001 & Wilson 1993. Hmmm.]

Brooks ends his column with these fine words:

The rise and now dominance of this emotional approach to morality is an epochal change. ... it should ... challenge the very scientists who study morality. They’re good at explaining how people make judgments about harm and fairness, but they still struggle to explain the feelings of awe, transcendence, patriotism, joy and self-sacrifice, which are not ancillary to most people’s moral experiences, but central. The evolutionary approach also leads many scientists to neglect the concept of individual responsibility and makes it hard for them to appreciate that most people struggle toward goodness, not as a means, but as an end in itself.

I love that last half sentence: "...most people struggle toward goodness, not as a means, but as an end in itself."

Voyage into Flatland?

2009-04-02T17:15:00.000-07:00

Synchronicity, maybe.

The writings of Gregory Schopen, an iconoclastic Buddhist academician/researcher have become a topic in the Buddhoblogosphere at the same time that a very curious article about the evolution of Christianity came out in the new April issue of Atlantic magazine.

There are things similar about Schopen's focus in his writing and the thrust of the Atlantic piece, "...One World, Under God." Both have me wondering if Flatland Thinking plays a part, restricting the understanding of both Schopen and Robert Wright, the author of the Atlantic article.

As concisely as I can, here is a description of what is meant by flatland, borrowing loosely from Ken Wilber's book Integral Psychology:

Modernity, as compared to premodernity, managed to differentiate the Big Three of art, morals and science, on a large scale, so that each began to make phenomenal discoveries. But as the Big Three dissociated, and scientific imperialism began its aggressive career, all ‘Is’ and all ‘we’s’ were reduced to patterns of objective ‘its’, and thus all the interior stages of consciousness – reaching from body to mind to soul to spirit – were summarily dismissed as so much superstitious nonsense. The Great Nest collapsed into scientific materialism – into what Wilber calls “flatland” – and here the modern world, by and large, still remains.

In his Atlantic article, Robert Wright tells us that new "clues" that "come from the modern world, and they’re all around us" tell us that "[f]or Paul, the doctrines that now form the most-inspiring parts of the Christian message are, in a sense, business tools. They are tools that let him use the information technology of his day, the epistle, to extend his brand, the Jesus brand, across the vast, open, multinational platform offered by the Roman Empire.

"To conventional Christians, this may sound doubly dispiriting. First, Jesus wasn’t really Jesus; he didn’t really preach the deep moral truths that have given weight to the claim that he was the son of an infinitely good God. And, ... those truths, when they finally did enter the Christian tradition, emerged not so much from philosophical reflection as from pragmatic calculation and other disappointingly mundane forces."

Schopen, for his part, seems to regale in discoveries that associate early Buddhism with sometimes seemingly-shockingly mundane activities for the modern era, instead of those high-minded things we associate with canonical texts.

In his review of a collection of Schopen essays called Bones, Stones, and Buddhist Monks: Collected Papers on the Archaeology, Epigraphy, and Texts of Monastic Buddhism in India Arnold Dan writes [emphases, mine],

... when reading these essays all at once, one is struck by the recurrent statement of a specious dichotomy between what religious people "actually did," and what canonical texts say they should have done. Overcorrecting the biases of his philological predecessors, Schopen insists on this dichotomy in a way, it seems to me, that reflects a problematic view of how canonical texts must have been used -- a view according to which, if attested behavior contradicts such texts, they must simply not have been used.

And,

If Schopen's predecessors have taken it as [quoting Schopen] "axiomatic" that Buddhist texts unproblematically reflect Buddhist practice (and too often, no doubt, they have), Schopen almost seems to take it as axiomatic that, where texts and practice seem to disagree, there must simply have been no knowledge of the textual tradition. It seems to me that the more interesting possibility (and the one we are more entitled to entertain) is that both practices and texts coexisted, but that despite our sense of frequent contradiction between these, no cognitive dissonance was involved for Indian Buddhists. Perhaps, that is, it is only modern Buddhologists who have made the mistake of taking canonical texts as straightforwardly descriptive, with Indian Buddhist "doctrinal specialists" having recognized all along that that is not how such texts are used. And in fact, as Steven Collins has richly shown in his works, the canonical texts themselves frequently reflect something very much like such an awareness.

And,

It seems to me that what is called for in light of Schopen's cogent and erudite work is not so much the conclusion that there is a sharp distinction between "what religious people actually did" and the texts favored by traditional philological scholars, but rather that being religious is a sufficiently complex affair that the same people who write (and use) scholastic texts might in fact be involved (and without experiencing any conflict) in practices that might seem to us to contradict such texts. What is called for, that is, is a richer theorization of the phenomena of "real religious people" and what they "actually did."

Robert Wright, in his article on Christianity, gives utterly no credence to the possiblity that Christ or Paul were anything other than ambitious entrepreneurs of a religious franchise. Wright sees nothing in the way of soul or spirit in either.

Wright writes of Paul,

[T]he origins of Paul’s doctrine of interethnic love lie not in his own loving-kindness, though for all we know he mustered much of that in the course of his life. The doctrine emerges from the interplay between Paul’s driving ambitions and his social environment.

And further,

It may sound implausible that a doctrine of true, pure, boundless love could emerge from the strategic imperatives of entrepreneurship, even when the enterprise is a religion. And, actually, it is implausible. What emerged with early Christianity isn’t really what many Christians like to believe: a God of “universal” love. The core appeal of the early church, remember, was that “brotherly love” was a form of familial love. And familial love is discerning—it is directed inwardly, not outwardly; toward kin, not toward everyone.

This is the kind of love Paul usually preaches—love directed first and foremost toward other Christians. “Love one another with mutual affection,” he tells the Romans. “Through love become slaves to one another,” he instructs members of the Galatian congregation.

This isn’t to say that his preachings offer no foundation for a more truly universal love. He often exhorts Christians to extend hospitality to the unconverted, and sometimes he goes further. He tells the Thessalonians, “May the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all.” Still, he isn’t in the habit of putting Christians and non-Christians on quite the same plane. He tells the
Galatians: “Let us work for the good of all, and especially for those of the
family of faith.”

Paul is treading a fine line—occasionally urging a kind of “love” for non-Christians, yet suggesting that it be a less powerful motivator for generosity than the “brotherly love” he champions among Christians. Treading this line was a key to Christianity’s early success.

At the end of his piece, Wright reveals his thesis: "people are capable of expanding tolerance and understanding in response to facts on the ground; and even mandates from heaven can change in response." The science of self-interest leads morality around by its nose-ring. Flatland thinking, eh?

I don't know nearly enough about Schopen to pin Flatland Thinking to him, but I have to wonder if his insistant contrarianism is flavored by a failure to see by the Morning Star of higher consciousness.

The Buddha's Dressing Room

2009-03-30T13:35:00.000-07:00

A bit of a controversy is steaming away in the Buddhoblogosphere, and it has to do with what was really going on in Buddha's life.

About-dot-com's Barbara O'Brien started it with her Mar 21 post, "More Adventures in Mis-education." In it, she references a UCLA newsletter that reports on a lecture given by iconoclastic Buddhism scholar Gregory Schopen. [The newsletter article was picked up by Buddha Channel, btw; it's called "The Buddha as astute businessman, economist, lawyer."]

Schopen's lecture was called “The Buddha as Businessman: Economics and Law in an Old Indian Religion,” given on the UCLA campus at Freud Playhouse to, mostly, other faculty. Schopen is chair of the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures at the university. He's expert in Sanskrit, Tibetan, and Buddhism studies, generally.

The UCLA article tells us that Schopen's lecture was hilarious — delivered with "iconoclastic wit, verve and vitality, prompting frequent bursts of enthusiastic laughter" — and that it punctured Buddha's other-worldly image as an always-serene sage, above the tumult of the ordinary.

The nub of Barbara's complaint, if that's the right word, is here,

I take it that Schopen is something of a renegade scholar whose ideas are widely out of step with other Buddhist scholarship. That in itself doesn't make him wrong. But when Schopen discusses the historical Buddha's tax evasion strategies ... well, the word crackpot does come to mind.

My understanding is that there is no contemporary documentation of the Buddha's life, in the 6th century BCE, whatsoever. I believe there are artifacts that date to the 4th century BCE, but not much, if any, before that. The main body of scriptures were not written down until the 1st century BCE. There are other scriptures that exist in fragmented fashion, but none that go back to the time of the original sangha.

Here, Barbara needs to be thumped. The allusion to "tax evasion strategies" was a part of Schopen's jesting, saying what Buddha was not up to. While Schopen's research is serious, the man has a sense of humor, and it appears he went for jabs and jokes in front of a friendly audience of colleagues and kinsmen.

As for the second paragraph, quoted above, I would certainly have supposed that Barbara is right. But when you look into Schopen's writing -- e.g., detail re his books at amazon, we can see that Schopen has gathered what scraps of evidence there are to construct a vision of what life was like for those carrying on Buddha's teachings in the early centuries following The Enlightened One's death.

Per amazon, Schopen's books have these titles:

From Benares to Beijing Essays on Buddhism and Chinese Religion by Koichi Shinohara and Gregory Schopen
Bones, Stones, and Buddhist Monks: Collected Papers on the Archaeology, Epigraphy, and Texts of Monastic Buddhism in India by Gregory Schopen
Buddhist Monks and Business Matters: Still More Papers on Monastic Buddhism in India by Gregory Schopen
Figments and Fragments of Mahāyāna Buddhism in India: More Collected Papers by Gregory Schopen

Using "Academic Online," a service my public library subscribes to, I find these articles by Schopen:

"Monastic law meets the real world: a monk's continuing right to inherit family property in classical India." in The Journal of the American Oriental Society 114.n4 (Oct-Dec 1994): pp527(28) and in History of Religions 35.n2 (Nov 1995); pp101(23)
"Archaeology and Protestant presuppositions in the study of Indian Buddhism." in History of Religions 31.n1 (August 1991): pp1(23).
"The learned monk as a comic figure: on reading a Buddhist Vinaya as Indian literature." (Author abstract)(Report). in Journal of Indian Philosophy 35.3 (June 2007): p201(26).
"The Buddhist 'monastery' and the Indian garden: aesthetics, assimilations, and the siting of monastic establishments." (Essay). in The Journal of the American Oriental Society 126.4 (Oct-Dec 2006): p487
"Buddhist Monks and Business Matters: Still More Papers on Monastic Buddhism in India - By Gregory Schopen.(Author abstract) in Religious Studies Review 32.1 (Jan 2006): p65(1).

You get the idea. Delving into what early Buddhists were like is Schopen's focused field of interest. But is Barbara, really, quite right: that knowing what Buddha and his gang were up to in his off-hours (if I can call those hours that) is forever obscured? Is Schopen unjustifiably extrapolating; using evidence from a much later time, and falsely supposing that Buddha's activities are likened to what early Buddhism became like?

But wait! The great Rev. Danny waded in to weight in weightily on the topic in his eponymous blog, three days ago. In his post, "Gregory Schopen Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother," Danno hoped to be very careful. He wrote that his "sincerest hope [is] that this response will be constructive rather than critical. My intention in responding at length here is to be helpful, and what I don't want to do is embarrass, offend, or be snarky. If, in spite of my aims, I do any of those latter things, it's due to a lack of skill on my part."

Oh, c'mon, Danny. For crying out loud, tell us what you REALLY THINK!

Happily, Danny finally blurted out the truth of his feelings, writing in defense of Schopen,

Schopen's work has prompted [quoting U. of Chicago's Dan Allen] "significant revision in thought regarding the development of Mahāyāna and regarding the role of the monastic religious in Buddhist cultic life." ...
In addition to offering vital new facts to the field, Schopen has underscored the importance of including findings from archaeologists, art historians, and others in a discipline that has been heavily text-oriented. His work has also forced Buddhologists to ask important questions about the history drawn from the texts they have leaned on. Put THAT in your pipe and smoke it, BARBARA!!!

Oh, all right. Danny didn't really write that last sentence. But he did crush Barbara with fact piled up on other fact, creating a mound.

And then Jeff Wilson joined the discussion with comments in both Danny's blog and in Barbara's.

Not meaning to be snarky, I need to tell ya that Jeff and I have a history. In my Zen Unbound days, I found that an article that Jeff wrote for Tricycle had, I thought, errors of fact.

In comment to Danny's blogpost, Jeff wrote, meekly, "A very useful post, Danny, thank you for offering it. Barbara really missed the boat on that one. I can't think of any Buddhologists that I know who don't consider Schopen's work to be extremely important."

But in his comment in Barbara's blog, Jeff loaded for bear, citing his toity credentials and then writing: " Rather than a crackpot, Schopen’s works are required texts for passing comprehensive exams in Buddhist Studies, and his ideas are taken seriously by people throughout the field ... Schopen’s work is meticulously researched and referenced, and rather than cherry-pick sources, he does the EXACT opposite ... To some extent, your resistance to his findings is our fault, the fault of previous Buddhist Studies scholars, who mischaracterized the allegedly ascetic nature of Buddhism. ... Schopen has taught us much, and his evidence is undeniable. He will carry the day eventually ... . It is unfortunate that, based on one media (not academic) article rather than a familiarity with the scope of Schopen’s decades of amazing scholarship, you’ve descended into character assassination of one of the most widely respected Buddhist researchers. Also, I don’t think you’ve understood his point clearly ... Put THAT in your pipe and smoke it, BARBARA!!"

Oh, all right. Jeff didn't really write that last sentence.

Back in the comment thread to Danny's blogpost, Danny, himself, posted this: "I also wanted to point readers to the comment Jeff left in Barbara's post recently. Unlike my longwinded work ... what Jeff wrote is very pithy and clear. ... And you can just take everything Jeff wrote and put THAT in your pipe and smoke it, BARBARA!!"

OK. Yep. That last sentence is something I added.

FORTUNATELY, I then came upon the scene to STRAIGHTEN EVERYBODY OUT. Yes, I took this boatload of Angulimalas and wagged my finger at them.

Gregory Schopen is a jokester and his lecture was a bit of fun! He knows what early Buddhism [a pair of milennia before anyone called it Buddhism] was like, but does he really have keen insight into what Buddha was like that adds mightily to our knowledge (from the sutras) of what Buddha was like? Like, I don't think so!

I mean, sure, The Big B's sangha existed as an organization. And it is sure to have had shockingly ordinary aspects. Somebody had to pull tubers up out of the ground. Someone had to settle disputes over who slept nearest to the campfire. Or, nearest to The Great Man, himself. It was like that. It might, likely, not have been that different from Sacramento's Tent City.

I mean, we already know about the attempted assassinations of Buddha by the leader of the very conservative wing of his pre-nascent religion [Devadatta!], and the cut foot, and all.

Behind the scenes, things were not all meditation and vistas of bliss. We already knew this, right? Didn't we?

And I'm sure when it ALL LEAKS OUT, centuries from now, using fantastic imaging satillites that move backwards in time, Buddha and his gang will be disappointing in many ways.

For reasons obscure to me, I'm reminded of Jonathan Swift's poem, called "The Lady's Dressing Room," written in 1732. It tells of a fellow named Strephon who secretly surveys the dressing room of his beloved, the gorgeous Celia, and is shocked! Shocked, I tell you.

Here a snip from Swift's speedy pome [note that rhyming that rhymed then, doesn't now],

But oh! it turn'd poor Strephon's Bowels,
When he beheld and smelt the Towels,
Begumm'd, bematter'd, and beslim'd
With Dirt, and Sweat, and Ear-Wax grim'd.
No Object Strephon's Eye escapes,
Here Pettycoats in frowzy Heaps;
Nor be the Handkerchiefs forgot
All varnish'd o'er with Snuff and Snot.
The Stockings, why shou'd I expose,
Stain'd with the Marks of stinking Toes;
Or greasy Coifs and Pinners reeking,
Which Celia slept at least a Week in?

Sigh. Buddha in real life might be like that. Yes, a slob in the dressingroom!

But Swift's poem ends with wisdom and compassion, as if coming directly from a buddha:

When Celia in her Glory shows,
If Strephon would but stop his Nose;
(Who now so impiously blasphemes
Her Ointments, Daubs, and Paints and Creams,
Her Washes, Slops, and every Clout,
With which he makes so foul a Rout;)
He soon would learn to think like me,
And bless his ravisht Sight to see
Such Order from Confusion sprung,
Such gaudy Tulips rais'd from Dung.

Burning Down the House - Talking Heads

2009-03-28T16:36:00.001-07:00

Talking Heads - New Music - More Music Videos

Buddhist!? Maybe. YOU make the call.

Lyrics:

Watch out
You might get what you're after
Cool babies
Strange but not a stranger
I'm an ordinary guy
Burning down the house

Hold tight wait till the party's over
Hold tight were in for nasty weather
There has got to be a way
Burning down the house

Here's your ticket pack your bag: time for jumping overboard
The transportation is here
Close enough but not too far, maybe you know where you are
Fightin fire with fire

All wet
Hey you might need a raincoat
Shakedown
Dreams walking in broad daylight
Three hun-dred six-ty five de-grees
Burning down the house

It was once upon a place sometimes I listen to myself
Gonna come in first place
People on their way to work baby what do you except
Gonna burst into flame

Burning down the house

My house
S'out of the ordinary
That's right
Don't want to hurt nobody
Some things sure can sweep me off my feet
Burning down the house

No visible means of support and you have not seen nothing yet
Everything's stuck together
I don't know what you expect staring into the TV set
Fighting fire with fire

Compassion, in Born to Be Good, #2

2009-03-21T12:59:00.000-07:00

This is from the book Born to Be Good, in the chapter titled "Touch":

On the stage in Vancouver before [our Buddhist-Science panel], His Holiness the Dalai Lama entered stage left and proceeded to greet the four panelists with his customary bow and clasped hands. The sighs, tears, appreciative head nods, goose bumps, and embraces of the 2,500 people in the audience produced a crackling ether that filled the art deco auditorium. I was the last panelist for HHDL to approach. From eighteen inches away I came into contact with HHDL. Partially stooped in a bow, he made eye contact with me and clasped my hands. His eyebrows were raised. His eyes gleamed. His modest smile was poised near a laugh. Emerging out of the bow and clasped hands, he embraced my shoulders and shook them slightly with warm hands.

As he turned to the audience, I had a Darwinian spiritual experience. Goose bumps spread across my back like wind on water, staring at the base of my spine and rolling up to my scalp. A flush of humility moved up my face from my cheeks to my forehead and dissipated near the crown of my head. Tears welled up, along with a smile. I recalled a saying of HHDL's:
At the most fundamental level our nature is compassionate, and that cooperation, not conflict, lies at the heart of the basic principles that govern our human existence.
For several weeks after I lived in a new realm. My suitcase was missing at the carousel following the plane flight home -- not a problem. I didn't need those clothes anyway. Squabbles between my two daughters about the ownership of a Polly Pocket or about whose back-bending walkover best matched the platonic ideal -- no bristling reaction on my part, just an inclination to step into the fray and to lay out a softer discourse and sense of common ground. The frustrated person behind me in the line in the bank, groaning in exasperation -- no reciprocal frustration, no self-righteous sense of how to comport oneself in more dignified fashion in public; instead, an appreciation of what deeper causes might have produced such apparent malaise. The poeple I saw, the undergrads in my classroom, parents at my daughters' school, preschool teachers walking little groups of three-year-olds in hand holding chains around the streets of Berkeley, those parallel parking their cars, recyclers picking up cans and bottles, the homeless shaking their heads and cursing the skies, people in business suits reading the morning paper waiting for a carpool ride, all seemed guided by remarkably good intentions.

Compassion, in Born to Be Good, #1

2009-03-21T12:30:00.000-07:00

This from Dasher Keltner's new book Born to Be Good, in the chapter titled "Compassion":

When Richie Davidson scanned the brain of a Tibetan monk, he found it to be off the charts in term of its resting activation in the left frontal lobes. This region of the brain supports compassion-related action, feeling, and ideation. After years of devotion and discipline, his was a different brain, humming with compassion-related neural communication.

Okay, you're rightfully critiquing, whose resting brain state wouldn't shift to the left if you had the time and steadfastness to meditate for four to five hours a day upon lovingkindness, as Tibetan Buddhists do? Fair enough. When Richie and Jon Kabat-Zim and colleagues had software engineers train in the techniques of minfulness meditation -- an accepting awareness of the mind, lovingkindness toward others -- six weeks later these individuals showed increased activation in the left frontal lobes. They also showed enhanced immune function. They may not have been donning the saffron robes of the monk, but at least their minds were moving in that kind direction.

Recent scientific studies are identifying the kinds of environments that cultivate compassion. This moral emotion is cultivated in environments where parents are responsive, and play, and touch their children. So does an empathic style that prompts the child to reason about harm. So do chores, as well as the presence of grandparents. Making compassion a motif in dinnertime converstions and bedtime stories cultivates this all-important emotion. Even visually presented concepts like "hug" and "love" at speeds so fast participants couldn't report what they had seen increase compassion and generosity.

Compassion is that powerful an idea. It is a strong emotion, attuned to those in need. it is a progenitor of courageous acts. It is wired into our nervous systems and encoded in our genes. It is good for your children, your health, and, recent studies suggest, it is vital to your marriage. In the words of the Dalai Lama: "If you want to be happy, practice compassion; if you want others to be happy, pratice compassion."

Homeless Tom in Sacramento News & Review

2009-03-19T16:05:00.000-07:00


	Cover of the March 19 issue of SN&R. In the top righthand corner, just beneath FREE, it reads "It's True! Oprah Stole My Story! see Race to the Bottom, page 11

Yowza. There's a piece in today's Sacramento News & Review, in a column called Race to the Bottom that R.V. Scheide writes, titled "The Oprah inside me," where I play a role.

The article begins with this august paragraph:

Tom the homeless Buddhist guy is angry, or as angry as a homeless Buddhist guy can be, which, to be honest, really isn’t all that angry. Bemused might be a better description. At any rate, Tom insists things haven’t been the same since Oprah Winfrey blew through Tent Town. I’m inclined to agree, but for an entirely different reason than his: Oprah stole my story, and I can prove it.

What happened was I had written the alternative weekly newspaper's tip line to pitch a story I thought they should write and things turned out a bit differently than what I had originally hoped.

Actually, I had several ideas for investigative news stories I hoped SN&R would pursue. The Sacramento News & Review is the second most-important hardcopy news source in the metropolis and it hadn't weighed in recently with a boffo story on homelessness, which for bizarre reasons, ignited by Oprah, has quite suddenly become a big local, national and international news-topic extravaganza.

Anyway, R.V. met me in his office last week and we chatted about issues and topics related to Sacramento homelessness generally, and what I hoped the weekly would pursue. My broadest idea for a story was one correcting the conception, that Oprah and others had presented, of a booming illicit tent community emerging in midtown Sacramento, filled with couples and families sleeping in tents after abandoning their foreclosed homes.

Just about everyone in the broad Sacramento homeless community, including homeless-aid agency workers, know that it is a myth that women and families are overwhelming the count of solo men who are homeless. Solo men [single men or men who are separated from their families] continue to constitute the great majority of homeless people and they continue to be the major source of new homeless folk in our metropolis.

There certainly are couples whom have lost a house due to foreclosure in Sacramento's Tent City, but that is rare. And there are families and parts of broken families in shelters, now, but there is not an epidemic of family homeless - yet, anyway.

Most of the news reports follow the Oprah lead and give near-tearful reports of devastated families. Today, for example, at close to 7AM, when Friendship Park was about to open, a film crew was interviewing a couple at the park gate. There was perhaps only that one couple on the scene, in the cul-de-sac, in the midst of a hundred solo men and, maybe, ten women.

Now, both R.V. and I are torn between how this homeless Sac'to story is evolving and what works in the best interest of helping homeless folk getting to where they can have happier, healthier, more-productive lives. Based on his Race to the Bottom piece, you can see that R.V.'s heart is with us homeless and that he would sacrifice a little in-your-face ugliness of the whole truth, all of it, for the narrower story that comes with benefits.

A bit of an aside: A couple short SN&R editorial-board editorials in this-week's edition were on-board with R.V.'s view of things. One, "Six Degrees," talks about the idea of "six degrees of separation" and how, whether we are ourselves suffering in the difficult economic climate or not, someone close to us surely is. That editorial ends with this thought:

It seems the wracked economy is just another reminder that we exist in a web
of humanity that has us all indelibly linked, approaching zero separation.
What to do about it? We'd better take care of each other.

In a sidebar next to the piece it says, "Go to these Web sites to find out how to donate to community members who have been the hardest hit by the economic downturn." Then, the web addresses of Loaves & Fishes, the Salvation Army, and St. John's Shelter are provided.

The second short SN&R editorial, "Tent truths," talks about how all the media hoopla presents Sacramento's tent encampment as a "national symbol of the human results of our failing economy." Here, a central snip from the piece:

If there’s a bright side to all this attention, it’s that it might help push city leaders into doing what’s right for its growing homeless population. We’ve urged the city before in this space to sanction a campground where homeless people can live without fear of being constantly rousted by police and have access to running water, bathrooms and trash collection.
We hereby repeat the request.

In the sidebar next to this editorial it says, "A Safe Ground rally to support a legal campsite for area homeless will be held on Tuesday, April 21, 2 p.m., at the Sacramento state Capitol." The rally is sponsored by Loaves & Fishes.

MY view of things differs from R.V.'s, a bit, maybe. I greatly worry that in this welling up of concern for people whose lives are undermined by the faltering economy, we risk being steared solely by our emotions without benefit of cold, hard, inconvenient facts. I also worry when general-news sources start giving the people what they might want to hear, or what may touch them most directly, instead of giving them unadulterated truths.

I would argue that because of the post-Oprah phenomena re Sac'to homelessness, the public has a skewed idea of what is going on. From international sources [ITN; (UK) Times Online; BBC; BBC radio; Germany, Japan, Australian TV; et al], national sources [NY Times; ABC News; Inside Edition; NPR; the Today Show; et al] and local sources [KCRA; News10; et al], the public is being fed a false overarching conception of what homelessness in Sacramento is like. [I'll fill in the URLs to the 'sources' later, but you readers can find where the news is coming from from this google search, in the meantime.]

I think that general-news sources should strive to give their readers a sense of what the truth out there is. That doesn't mean that general news should not sometimes be "up-close and personal," telling a specific story that might not give an overview of what is happening in a topic area, generally. But, now, because of what general news stories have been presented, the public has an absolutely wrong impression of what homelessness is like in Sacramento. They have been mislead.

The unmitigated truth is almost always - if not always - best in the longrun. Today, there is nothing much that motivates homeless-aid providers to be efficient and to provide fully-compassionate service to the people they are meant to help. Why? Because there is little risk that a prominent news provider will hold their feet to the fire and let the public in on management problems and possible financial shenanigans. And homeless people are, most all of them, so damn grateful for absolutely anything they get, they don't complain. Besides, if you get on the wrong side of homeless-aid providers you may be subjected to getting stinted help, or to be more likely than others of being 86ed from the facility.

Today, homeless-aid providers are getting an "advance to 'Go'; collect $200" card from the press, when, truly, these aid providers are way overdue for scrutiny. Maybe now is not the time for scrutiny, due to the fragility of things in light of the economic tailspin and it still being winter. But, someday, eventually ...

Homeless Lit.: The Tenants of Moonbloom

2009-03-18T10:10:00.000-07:00

Bite the windy blackness and gasp: "I never was."


	Cover of the 2003 re-issue edition of Edward Lewis Wallant's 1963 novel.

The Tenants of Moonbloom is an amazing, almost-forgotten novel from the early Sixties, set in the early Sixties, about a thirty-three-year-old who had left being a perpetual college student to take up his first job, collecting weekly rent from the tenants of his slumlord brother's four buildings.

When Michaelann Bewsee, blogger of Michaelann Land, an excellent homeless-advocacy blog, recommended the book to me, she told me its homeless connection was weak. She wrote of Moonbloom's tenants, "No, they're not homeless, but they live in incredibly dilapidated apartment buildings in a poverty-stricken section of New York. [Yes, righto. An impoverished section of Manhattan. How New York has changed!]

"All of the characters are vivid and alive, but the real story is Moonbloom ... [who] is gradually awakened and transformed."

Indeed!

The tenant characters are impoverished, at the edge of homelessness. Like homeless people in real life — in Homeless World Sacramento, or in Homeless World Anywhere — they each have distinct personalities, ways of being, and realms of genius or insight. Some are astonishingly selfish; others, sainted and selfless. Some have gathered a concrete crust around them, to keep from being hurt; others are fragile. They span the spectrum: They are all of us; we, all of them.

Of overabundant importance to the tenant characters is Norman Moonbloom, who collects the rent [giving each renter a receipt for less than the cash that he receives], and who potentially may be able to improve conditions in the hovel where each tenant lives.

When Norman reports the enormity of the deluge of long-standing problems in the four buildings it only frustrates the detached landlord brother, Irwin, who instructs Norman to take control of things and spend a few hundred dollars here and there to shut the tenants up.

In the early part of the book, we follow as Norman Moonbloom collects rent with great reluctance. He hates doing so, in part because the tenants are chatty, eating up a lot of time, and because they complain — as well they should — and Moonbloom's excuse for never doing anything much to help them is that he is "just the agent," and not a decision maker.

But by the eighth page, the book gives us a first inkling of Moonbloom's transformation into a flesh-and-blood human being: "There had been no horrors in his life – only a slow widening of sensitivity. But he anticipated reaching the threshold of pain one of these days. It was like the fear of death; he could ignore it most of the time, although it was implacably there, to touch him with the very tip of its claw in moments of frustration, to bring dread to him during the 4:00 A.M. bladder call."

[By the way, a quick aside: In the quote above you can see how splendidly Wallant writes. Wallant writes with a flair all his own and is deeply penetrating. His observations seep into everything. While the book can seem to have a narrow topic and straightforward plot, truly it's a philosophical thunderstorm, about The Great All, no less.]

The first chapter ends with these words describing Moonbloom as we see him first going out to collect rent:

He locked the door, went up the steps, and headed for the subway that would take him to the upper West Side of town. He walked lightly and his face showed no awareness of all the thousands of people around him because he traveled in an eggshell through which came only subdued light and muffled sound.

I think that Moonbloom, at this point in the story, is the model of the majority of Sacramento-area homeless-aid workers, people utterly unaffected by the lives of the people they are supposedly there for (even though more than a few are former homeless folk themselves). For us in Sacramento, Moonbloom is just like the mental-health counselors who never step out of their officeplace, the bed-snatchers at the shelters, the dyspeptic crew at Overflow, and the bubbly volunteers who treat homeless people as if they are all slightly-retarded children. And Moonbloom is like absolutely every one of the feeble excuses for human beings who work [using the term "work," loosely] at the welfare office at 28th & Q.

In chapter 4, Norman and a tenant named Wade confront each other. Wade tells Norman, "I feel pain, I'm full of sensation. I've got an idea that you could watch a murder committed and smile your goofy little shit-eating smile. You're like a body under water you know that? Yeah, Moonbloom, that's the image, a god-damned Hebrew body wrapped in water. When you talk — glub, glub, bubble, bubble.

Later, before Norman gets away, Wade adds, "Do not go gently into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at the end of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light ..."

It's a call for Norman to use a crowbar and open up his spectrum of emotions, from those that are curlish and ugly to those that are compassionate and divine.

Of importance, something readers would have been keenly aware of when the novel was published in 1963, but which gets lost reading it now, is that Norman is a Jew in New York a scant 17 years after the end of WWII. Also, in 1963, antisemitism was rampant like it isn't today. Norman is too young to have served during the war, and there's much to suggest he had nothing to do with the military. His brother, Irvin, three years older than Norman, the same age as the Jewish author of this novel, might have served in the war, as Wallant did, valiantly. Some of the tenants are Jewish. One old man has a string of numbers tattooed on his arm, indicating he spent time in a concentration camp.

Norman and Irvin's jobs feed into the stereotype of Jewish moneygrubbing. A significant element of the novel is that Wallent faces Jewish stereotypes, and other stereotypes, head-on.

At the end of chapter 10 [just past the middle of the book], Moonbloom says something with the fragrant aroma of Zen: "I am no longer Norman Moonbloom," he said aloud in the great privacy of the city night. And then, seeing the floral brilliance of windows and distant sign lights, he was suddenly confronted with a more terrible possibility, which made him bite the windy blackness and gasp, "Or I never was."

ENOUGH of me giving away plot points in the book. READ The Tenants of Moonbloom, y'all!!

---

Find out more about The Tenants of Moonbloom and its author Edward Lewis Wallant:

Info re the book at Amazon.
Info re the book at wikipedia.
Info re Edward Lewis Wallant at wikipedia.

Stravinsky - The rite of spring - Sacrificial Dance

2009-03-15T17:05:00.001-07:00

Stravinsky Conducts Firebird

2009-03-15T16:55:00.000-07:00

Communist China Version of Tibet History

2009-03-11T10:33:00.000-07:00

Chinese TV propagandistic version of the story of Tibet since the 1959 uprising.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

... And here a radically different view of things from a The (London) Times video editorial. [Thanks go to the great Rev. Danny Fisher for this viddy find.]

Dalai Lama featured on Today Show today

2009-03-10T10:42:00.000-07:00

Today is the 50th Anniversary of the violent 1959 uprising in response to the China takeover of Tibet. Thousands of Chinese troops are on alert for any “disturbances.” An NBC report, an Ann Curry interview with the Dalai Lama, will appear on the NBC Nightly News tonight. A part of the report appeared as an item on the Today Show this morning.

In the Today report, the Dalai Lama says that indeed China’s actions toward Tibet amount to cultural genocide. And, he says, that his effort during the past fifty years to negotiate with China has been an utter failure.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

At his official webspace, His Holiness the Dalai Lama issued a long statement [thanks, Danny] commemorating the fifty years in exile. Here, just a snippet of what was written:

[A]s I have repeatedly appealed before, I would like once again to urge our Chinese brothers and sisters ... to try to discover the facts about Tibet impartially, so as to prevent divisions among us. Tibetans should also continue to work for friendship with the Chinese people.

Looking back on 50 years in exile, we have witnessed many ups and downs. However, the fact that the Tibet issue is alive and the international community is taking growing interest in it is indeed an achievement. Seen from this perspective, I have no doubt that the justice of Tibet's cause will prevail, if we continue to tread the path of truth and non-violence.

UPDATE: Here the Ann Curry piece as editted for the NBC Nightly News. The report, here, using much of the same footage as the Today report, is darker, showing the Dalai Lama speaking more sharply about the Chinese.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Sac'to Homeless featured on today's Today Show

2009-03-09T14:21:00.000-07:00

Here, the vid:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

And, here my piece in Sacramento Homeless about the wave of stories about the Sacramento homeless in Big Media and beyond.

UPDATE: And here, another Today Show segment, a follow-up the next day, an objectivity-be-gone love smooch to Sacramento Loaves & Fishes. Sister Libby Fernandez, CEO of L&F, can be heard, as can the city's major, Kevin Johnson. My good friend T-Bone [aka, New York], as nice a fellow as there is in the world, has a cameo role; he's in the food line, asked by Libby (off camera) what he's doing today. "Going to work, today" he says.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

The Snow Man

2009-03-09T10:30:00.000-07:00

Recently the most-excellent Paul Griffin, who writes as miliman for the amazing blog One City, put up a couple of posts relating to Wallace Stevens's poem "The Snow Man" that grabbed my interest.

In the first post, on 2/27, "Emptiness and Wallace Stevens" Paul presents the poem and then walks us through it, splendidly showing how it relates to Buddhism's take on emptiness and how it mostly doesn't relate to existential nothingness. The nil/nothing/emptiness concepts are rather difficult for we Westerners who are completely wrapped in modernity [mostly a good thing], rather full of our self, and filled with ideas of filling our lives with stuff and accomplishment while fleeing boredom and fleeing being quiet or alone with ourself.

I don't have any great argument with Paul's understanding of the poem and his insights, but I'm inspired to walk through the poem, myself, sharing an understanding I come away from it with, completely ignorant of the voracious study of this famous poem I had never before heard of.

Here, first, the short poem and, then, Wallace Stevens reading it in a viddy:

The Snow Man
by Wallace Stevens

One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

I, likely, have gone totally fruit loops, but from my listening, Wallace is talking about crossing the bridge of pantheism.

Perhaps foundational is whatever a reader makes of the idea of winter [or cold], so prominent in the poem.

Paul writes, quoting essayist Pat Righelato, "One must have a cold, precise, disciplined mind: this imperative is the poem’s subject."

I think the central idea in the poem is not about "the cold," per se, or even mind, and certainly not one that is precise and disciplined, but being open and available to whatever is there -- even if it is, on first encounter, something alien and harsh.

The poem is about traveling the bridge to what's other. One must have a mind of winter to regard winter, to understand winter, to be winter. If this had been a poem of summer, then a mind of summer would have been what was necessary. It's not about the cold, except that surmounting the challenge of being the other can seem difficult.

We must lose our self to conjoin an other's experience. The seeming irony is that that other is likely to be only fully us! So, the nothing, if we fully lose our self, is the self-same nothing that we encounter in an other. Eureka!

Thus, in the end, I fully agree with Paul (I think.). Here, Nishitani from Religion and Nothingness:

It has often been pointed out that the subjectivity of the ego resolutely refuses to be viewed objectively. And yet, the self shows a constant tendency to comprehend itself representationally as some “thing” that is called “I.” This tendency is inherent in the very essence of the ego as self-consciousness. Therefore it marks a great step forward when the standpoint of Existenz-in-ecstasy, held suspended in nothingness, appears as a standpoint of truly subjective self-existence. Nonetheless, traces of the representation of nothingness as the positing of some “thing” that is nothingness are still to be seen here. The standpoint of sunyata, however, is absolutely nonobjectifiable, since it transcends this subjectivistic nihility to a point more on the near side than the subjectivity of existential nihilism.

As a valley unfathomably deep may be imagined set within an endless expanse of sky, so it is with nihility and emptiness. But the sky we have in mind here is more than the vault above that spreads out far and wide over the valley below. It is a cosmic sky enveloping the earth and man and the countless legions of stars that move and have their being within it. It lies beneath the ground we tread, its bottom reaching beneath the valley’s bottom. If the place where the omnipresent God resides be called heaven, then heaven would also have to reach beneath the bottomless pit of hell: heaven would be an abyss for hell. This is the sense in which emptiness is an abyss for the abyss of nihility.

… even in Buddhism, where we find the standpoint of emptiness expounded, a transcendence to the far side, or the “yonder shore,” is spoken of. But this yonder shore may be called an absolute near side in the sense that it has gone beyond the usual opposition of the near and the far. Indeed, the distinguishing feature of Buddhism consists in its being the religion of the absolute near side.

Restoring the American Economy...

2009-03-07T10:05:00.000-08:00

This, for me, is the most-right, pithiest statement I've read about how to get the American economy on-course. [And note that I'm not saying "back on course." America has been off-course for a long, long time.] It's from an article in Truth is Contageous called "Kiss the Banks Goodbye," posted yesterday:

Restoring the American economy is not going to be a matter of simply jump-starting consumer spending, or even business investment. It’s going to take a long, hard, focused effort to move away from a parasitic consumer economy in which profits are largely made through speculation, and towards a real economy that actually makes things that people both here and around the world need.

The article was originally in Counterpunch.

What if God Disappeared?

2009-03-05T09:26:00.000-08:00

Kiped from Integral Options Cafe.

The Not-So-Good Good Book

2009-03-03T14:28:00.000-08:00

David Plotz, an editor at Slate, blogged about the whole of the Old Testament for his online magazine in 2006 and 2007. Today, over at Slate, they announced that Plotz has put out a book about his experience, titled "Good Book: The Bizarre, Hilarious, Disturbing, Marvelous, and Inspiring Things I Learned When I Read Every Single Word of the Bible."

In the Slate article about the book about the blog, Plotz tells us a bit about his amazing experience: "After spending a year with the good book, I've become a full-on Bible thumper. Everyone should read it—all of it! In fact, the less you believe, the more you should read." A pretty keen, if not wildeyed, endorsement, eh? Probably should stamp those words on the cover of the Good Book to assure that heathens like me pick it up and give it a careful, judicious read.

But Plotz isn't all-out enthusiastic as his words above imply. Indeed, he doesn't really come away thinking all that much of God by the time he finishes the Old Testament. The viddie, below gives you four minutes of Plotz talking about the Bible -- most specifically, about the story of Dinah [pronounced Deena] from the book of Genesis.

Further, here is Plotz's conclusion about his reading experience,

I began the Bible as a hopeful, but indifferent, agnostic. I wished for a God, but I didn't really care. I leave the Bible as a hopeless and angry agnostic. I'm brokenhearted about God.

After reading about the genocides, the plagues, the murders, the mass enslavements, the ruthless vengeance for minor sins (or none at all), and all that smiting—every bit of it directly performed, authorized, or approved by God—I can only conclude that the God of the Hebrew Bible, if He existed, was awful, cruel, and capricious. He gives us moments of beauty—such sublime beauty and grace!—but taken as a whole, He is no God I want to obey and no God I can love.

When I complain to religious friends about how much He dismays me, I usually get one of two responses. Christians say: Well, yes, but this is all setup for the New Testament. Reading only the Old Testament is like leaving halfway through the movie. I'm missing all the redemption. If I want to find the grace and forgiveness and wonder, I have to read and believe in the story of Jesus Christ, which explains and redeems all.
But that doesn't work for me. I'm a Jew. I don't, and can't, believe that Christ died for my sins. And even if he did, I still don't think that would wash away God's crimes in the Old Testament.

The second response tends to come from Jews, who razz me for missing the chief lesson of the Hebrew Bible, which is that we can't hope to understand the ways of God. If He seems cruel or petty, that's because we can't fathom His plan for us. But I'm not buying that, either.
If God made me, He made me rational and quizzical. He has given me the tools to think about Him. So I must submit Him to rational and moral inquiry. And He fails that examination. Why would anyone want to be ruled by a God who's so unmerciful, unjust, unforgiving, and unloving?

Counting Crows - Mr. Jones

2009-03-02T13:52:00.001-08:00

Other CC:

Colorblind [Live at Pinkpop 2008]
You Can't Count on Me
On a Tuesday in Amsterdam long ago
Omaha

Everybody Hurts -- The Corrs (Unplugged Version)

2009-03-02T13:16:00.001-08:00

REM - Losing My Religion (1991 Unplugged)

2009-03-02T13:03:00.000-08:00

Shinzen Young on the Ox-Herding Pictures.

2009-03-02T09:00:00.000-08:00

This comes to me via Bill Harryman, via Hokai D. Sobol's h~log. In the last few days, I've taken on a renewed interest in Zen's ox-herding pictures.

The Year of Living Dangerously

2009-02-25T17:35:00.000-08:00

One of my favorite movies, way back when Sigourney Weaver was stunningly beautiful and Mel Gibson wasn't antisemitic [or, at least *publicly* antisemitic], was The Year of Living Dangerously. At the time the movie was top of the box office, I was beginning a winter-session screenwriting class taught by Lester Cole, one of The Hollywood Ten and a founder of the Screen Writers Guild. The class was in San Francisco, a UC Berkeley extention course. Cole was very old at the time, and was more than a little out of it.

Cole had been a screenwriter at the time he was blacklisted for being Communist. At the time, I came to believe his most famous film was "Objective, Burma," but the faultless Internet tells me his final film, "Born Free" is it -- and I suppose that's so.

Anyway, back in 1983, Cole didn't like TYOLD, instead telling us that the 1976 movie The Big Bus was his idea of a very well-written film. Go figure.

All of what I've written is a bit of an excuse to post a YouTubing of the theme music to The Year of Living Dangerously, which I think is splendid, and appropriate to the tense nature of the movie.

John Cage's "4 minutes, 33 Seconds" (1952)

2009-02-21T15:15:00.000-08:00

John Cage's piece "4 Minutes, 33 Seconds," For Full Orchestra

I'll Fly Away

2009-02-20T12:07:00.000-08:00

One song, far my favorite, that I hear on rather rare occassions at the mission is "I'll Fly Away." It's not in the mission hymnal; I hear it when the church or organization that comes to preach to us features a solo singer who loves it and offers her rendition of it to us.

Here, the Alison Krauss - Gillian Welch version with scenes from O Brother, Where Art Thou?

Lyrics | Alison Krauss and Gillian Welch - I’ll Fly Away lyrics

The Earth Does Not Orbit the Sun [Oh, yeah!?]

2009-02-19T12:15:00.000-08:00

In this blog I have said quite a bit about my experience, from 6:30PM to 6:30AM, at Union Gospel Mission. My evaluation of what the mission takes me through is mixed. I truly am grateful that this very conservative, literalist Christian ministry keeps me alive and that there I come in contact with sterling people that pass through its gates as guests [the sixty homeless men, inc. me, who use the dorm and are beneficiaries of other services]; as other users of the mission's services [men and women who stay just for the sermon and evening meal]; as members of The Rehab Program [residents of the mission who are enrolled in a nine-month Christianity intensive for men recovering from drug or alcohol problems]; and staff.

Woe to Buddhism in America which fails to create programs and services to attend to the neediest among us. Woe and for shame that Buddhism offers no such thing as a Union Sangha Mission! [Note: The closest equivalent to "Union Gospel Mission," for a Buddhist enterprise, would be "Union Dharma Mission," but we Buddhists are non-proselytizing and non-dogmatic, so any enterprise to aid the homeless would come as a fount of compassion and community, not in an effort to, in some way, spiritually save or convert people.]

At the same time that I am grateful for the Union Gospel Mission, I am also critical. There are many, many preachers there who deliver sermons that are loony tunes, by my estimation -- and perhaps, as well, by the estimation of the psychiatric community.

Last night, the preacher from Foothill Bible Church spent his time making the case that the sun orbits the earth, and not vice versa as we are taught in third grade.

Here, as best I recall it, was the pathway of the preacher's presentation:

He began with a long-winded tangential discussion of the idea of what would happen if an object was dropped in a tunnel that was drilled through the diameter of the earth. Would the object pass through the earth to the other side? Would it stop in the middle of the earth? or Would it move back and forth, up and down the long tunnel, much like a pendulum?

The preacher never offered an answer to the concept, because determining what might happen was not really his point. His point was that such an idea cannot be tested in real life. There is no way to drill a tunnel through the diameter of the earth, because we don't have tools to complete such a massive endeavor and because water [and magma, which he didn't mention] would quickly fill the tunnel long before its completion.

Thus, said the preacher, the outcome of such a project is unknowable -- except in conception as a "thought experiment."

Much of what science engages in are thought experiments, said the preacher. Until such flights of whimsy are proved in real life, we should be skeptical of results that take place wholly in one man's mind.

From here, the preacher explained that science is an effort to explain phenomena in terms of mathematical formulae that seem to work. If a scientist's equation doesn't contradict what is observed, then it is accepted as valid.

But, the preacher warned, many experiments are funded by organizations seeking certain results, so we must be leery of scientific research.

He also made the case that something was skanky about science based on his claim that human remains have been found with many of the dinosaurs that have been unearthed, and other creatures that science tells us are hundreds of thousands of years old.

He also said that the dating of soil and fossils is corrupted by "circular reasoning." Fossils are dated based on a supposed age of the soil it is found in, and soil is dated by a supposed age of the fossils.

And this brings us to the earth/sun orbit problem: According to the preacher, the idea that the earth orbits the sun is based on scientists' thought experiments -- not on anything observed in reality. The mathematics 'works' under the assumption that the earth circles the sun, so scientists are fixated on this wholly false idea.

The Bible tells us that the sun circles the earth, so the preacher said he is in possession of the truth of the situation. He cited Joshua 10:12, which in the King James translation reads "Then spake Joshua to the LORD in the day when the LORD delivered up the Amorites before the children of Israel, and he said in the sight of Israel, Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon; and thou, Moon, in the valley of Ajalon." Proof positive that the sun circles the earth.

---

We learn after third grade that, in truth, the earth and sun move around each other. But, since the sun is 320,000 times the earth's mass, effectively it is the sun that is the center of our solar system and all the planets and objects orbit about it.

We know this, not because we are fooled from the impossibly lucky happenstance of some mathematical equations, but from rigorous investigation over centuries. And, the circumstance is confirmed by satellites that have been sent all over the solar system, including orbits around and into the sun. How the solar system "works" has very much been "tested" and there is not a bit of doubt that the sun is relatively stationary with the planets orbiting around it.

---

Troubling to me [and my friend James] was that conversation at dinner after the sermon informed us that many of our dorm brothers bought the crappola nonsense the preacher spewed that evening. One man said the preacher must surely be a college professor who made "fifteen or twenty dollars an hour." Others were impressed by the preacher's verbosity and command of 'facts.'

The men at dinner did not agree with my assessment that the preacher was an idiot. "He has a job and a family; that's more than you can say," said a man seated across from me. Yep, but he's still an idiot.

~C4Chaos's Kind of Kick-Ass Dharma Teacher

2009-02-11T11:15:00.000-08:00


	~C4Chaos meditating in an exotic spot in Washington state.

I love ~C4Chaos because he jumps into life with extreme passion and extreme compassion. And since he is also extremely brilliant, extremely productive and extremely exuberant [as well as being a hyperWilberian], all the lights in the room I'm in double their brightness when his webpages glow on my monitor.

In his latest blogblast, "The Science of Enlightenment is Paving the Way for the Enlightenment of Science," C4 sings the praises of "The Science of Enlightenment" a 14-disc CD package written by Shinzen Young.

Shinzen Young is a Vipassana meditation teacher, but also a lot else, having emersed himself in Buddhism diciplines other than Theravada, including Shingon and Zen. We also learn from wikipedia, that he has extensively studied and practiced Lakota Sioux Shamanism. BUT THAT'S NOT ALL, FOLKS ... he also is a geeky science-interested fellow, "integrating meditation with scientific paradigms." It says that Shinzen "frequently uses concepts from mathematics as a metaphor to illustrate the abstract concepts of meditation." Hmmm. I'd surely be interested in THAT leap; math to meditation. The calculus of deep non-thought.


	Shinzen Young, as pictured at his webspace Meditation in Action.

Anyway, between C4's post and Shinzen Young's main webspace, Meditation in Action, there is lots to be found about the idea of the integration of science and meditation, of the synergy of the Post-modern Age and True Enlightenment. C4 and Shinzen believe, as I must, that only a major uptick in our leaders' thinking and actions [and, thus, necessarily, in the general population, as well] will we be able to thread our way through the dangers and challenges that the testy future holds for us all. And, thus, "tread our way to liberation" using an alloy of ancient and modern wisdom.

Writes C4 in his post,

Shinzen Young's is one the most-sane voices paving the way for the enlightenment of science. Since the publication of The Science of Enlightenment ten years ago [Yep, TSoE was originally issued as a bunch of cassettes 10+ years ago, but was reissued and modestly updated in CD format in 2005.] , there already are promising signs that the cross-fertilization of Western science and Eastern meditative technology have been gathering momentum. One of the leading voices in the field is B. Alan Wallace (a Buddhist practitioner and scientist). See Wallace’s talk at Google: “Towards the First Revolution in the Mind Sciences.” On the more mainstream end, Sam Harris (a neuroscience researcher) is making noises about such integration. See Harris’s essays on the Huffington Post: “A Contemplative Science” and Shambhala Sun: “Killing the Buddha.”

Let me end things by kiping a poem, written by Shinzen, that is currently on the homepage of Meditation in Action. I have to say that the poem is controversial, even to me. Can the Path be so all-encompassing? But, mustn't it be!?:

The Path

If anybody asks you what the Path is about,
It's about generosity.
It's about morality.
It's about concentration.
It's about gaining insight through focused self-observation.
It's about the cultivation of subjective states of compassion
and love based on insight.
And it's about translating that compassion and love into
actions in the real world.

UPDATE: In C4's prior post, he has a couple Shinzen viddies and a link to a three-part audio talk with Shinzen at Buddhist Geeks, and MORE.

Homeless Lit: Cannery Row

2009-01-30T14:05:00.000-08:00


	Cover of the first edition of John Steinbeck's 1945 novel.

This is the first in a series looking at how homelessness is presented in literature. Does fiction present homeless folk realistically? Are we romanticised? Are we presented as scummier, less-wholesome beings than the good people most of us are? Are the homeless people of yore different from what we're like today?

"a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream"
-- A description of the street Cannery Row,
from the first sentence in the book.

Cannery Row is the story of many poor and interesting people who live on Cannery Row, a street next to the Pacific Ocean, where many sardine-canning factories stood, in Monterey, California.
A character called Doc is usually identified as the main character in the story, but, truly, the plot of the story results from the many actions of "Mack and the boys," a group of men who are homeless at the beginning of the book, and whom the omnipotent third-person narrator tracks most closely for the whole of the story.
As I say, Mack and the boys are homeless at the beginning, but in Chapter I, they gain possession of a Cannery Row building, thereafter refered to as the Palace Flophouse, where they take up residence without need of paying rent. A solid mass of text describing Mack and the boys concludes Chapter II [emphases, mine]:

Mack and the boys [spin] in their orbits. They are the Virtues, the Graces, the Beauties of the hurried mangled craziness of Monterey and the cosmic Monterey where men in fear and hunger destroy their stomachs in the fight to secure certain food, where men hungering for love destroy everything lovable about them. Mack and the boys are the Beauties, the Virtues, the Graces. In the world ruled by tigers with ulcers, rutted by strictured bulls, scavenged by blind jackals, Mack and the boys dine delicately with the tigers, fondle the frantic heifers, and wrap up the crumbs to feed the sea gulls of Cannery Row. What can it profit a man to gain the whole world and to come to his property with a gastric ulcer, a blown prostate, and bifocals? Mack and the boys avoid the trap, walk around the poison, step over the noose while a generation of trapped, poisoned, and trussed-up men scream at them and call them no-goods, come-to-bad-ends, blots-on-the-town, thieves, rascals, bums. Our Father who art in nature, who has given the gift of survival to the coyote, the common brown rat, the English sparrow, the house fly and the moth, must have a great and overwhelming love for no-goods and blots-on-the-town and bums, and Mack and the boys. Virtues and graces and laziness and zest. Our Father who art in nature.

There's lots of interesting stuff in this paragraph.

First, Steinbeck [as an omnipotent, crotchety third-person narrator] calls Mack and the boys [Mack, Hazel, Eddie, Hughie and Jones] "the Beauties, the Virtues, the Graces." He is refering to the Charities of antiquity. Quoting wikipedia, "In Greek mythology, a Charis (Χάρις) is one of several Charites (Χάριτες; Greek: 'Graces'), goddesses of charm, beauty, nature, human creativity and fertility. They ordinarily numbered three: Aglaea ('Beauty'), Euphrosyne ('Mirth'), and Thalia ('Good Cheer'). In Roman mythology they were known as the Gratiae, the 'Graces.'"
Certainly, the five homeless men friends are very admirable in many ways, as are the biggest subset of the homeless in Sacramento. They are clearly, basically good-hearted and well-meaning and mostly oblivious to their own self-interestedness and destructiveness.
An early tangential story, within the greater story of Mack & boys' efforts to throw a big party for good old Doc, has a lonely watchman, named William, trying to make friends with the five homeless guys. For no particular reason, the homeless guys reject William, and after some other insensitive encounters, William plunges an ice pick into his heart. "It was amazing how easily it went in. William was the watchman before Alfred came. Everybody liked Alfred."
From an unsourced commentary, found online, some wisdom about the 'tragedy within merryment' which repeats in Steinbeck's sad novella:

The symbolism of chaos-and-order is basic to Cannery Row; various characters, each in his own fashion, try to arrange and observe what cannot, in any essential aspect, be changed. As Steinbeck says in one of his "inter-chapters" or digressions, it is the function of The World - of human communication - to create by means of faith and art an Order of love which is mankind's only answer to that fate which all men, and indeed all life, must ultimately share. And if John Steinbeck turns to the "outcasts" from society as symbols for this vision, it may be that only the outcasts of machine civilization can still remember who they truly are.

Once again, even in this most charming of books, Steinbeck recapitulates the themes
so integral to his work: the need of the human animal to organize, to combine for purposes beyond that of the mere individual appetite; the corruption and poison of moral pomposity and insane acquisition; and the loneliness-within-brotherhood of all flesh and mortality.

In Zen terms, the novella hones in on the idea of interbeing [A state of connectedness and interdependence of all phenomena], or, similarly but perhaps better, circuminsessional interpenetration. We all both deflate and delight each other, usually without much awareness of our powers of destruction and our ability to bring joy. We are also oblivious to the realization that each other is all we have and that the one thing we don't have is ourself. [We stupidly, endlessly defend the illusion of ego.]
In the quote from Chap II, Steinbeck writes about "fear and hunger," which is, again, the paired cheribim of "fear and desire" [in the garden of Eden] which destroy us and hold us back, and is what we must overcome to save us. In the rescue mission in Sacramento, fear and desire ["you risk going to hell" and "jesus would love to see you in heaven"] are used to rescue homeless men from the fear and desire ['destitution/meaninglessness/drudgery of the homeless condition' and 'alcohol! drugs! immediate relief!'] outside the rescue-mission property gates. [I would say that instead of swapping one's fear-and-desire for some other set of fear-and-desire, life's purpose is to overcome fear-and-desire, altogether, and -- as with most things that suppress us -- we overcome them by examining them closely and finding them not to be so special or to be a real threat.]
In the novella, Mack and the boys cause a lot of trouble while, mostly, having good intentions. In the wake of their parties and clever adventures, other people's lives are damaged. But, Doc, the book's great good supposedly-responsible character, too, is rather-unintentionally the cause of destruction. A character in the shadows, a retarded lad named Frankie ["Frankie drifted about like a small cloud."], hangs out at Doc's lab. Because he loves Doc, he steals a clock as a present for him. As a result of the theft, Frankie is hauled away to a life in an institution with Doc being rather oblivious to it all.
Late in the book, Doc makes some observations about Mack and the boys to a friend with whom he is drinking some beer and listening to classical music:

Doc said "...Mack and the boys know everything that has ever happened in the world and possibly everything that will happen. I think they survive in this particular world better than other people. In a time when people tear themselves to pieces with ambition and nervousness and covetousness, they are relaxed. All of our so-called successful men are sick men, with bad stomachs, and bad souls, but Mack and the boys are healthy and curiously clean. They can do what they want. They can satisfy their appetites without calling them something else."
and a little later ...
"It has always seemed strange to me," said Doc. "The things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second."
"Who wants to be good if he has to be hungry too?" said [Doc's friend].
"Oh, it isn't a matter of hunger. It's something quite different. The sale of souls to gain the whole world is completely voluntary and almost unanimous -- but not quite. Everywhere in the world there are Mack and the boys. I've seen them in an ice-cream seller in Mexico and in an Aleut in Alaska. You know how they tried to give me a party and something went wrong? But they wanted to give me a party. That was their impulse."

Certainly, Mack and the boys are romanticised and overly admired by the narrator and main character, Doc, compared to the harsh glare of reality. But there is an element of truth to all that the narrator & Doc [that is, Steinbeck] is saying. From being alienated to the madness of a regular back-stabbing life, the bums of Cannery Row and the acclimated-homeless people of Sacramento enjoy a certain availability to wisdom and openness and genuineness that is -- damn it -- admirable.

Whatever Happened to "Love Thy Neighbor?"

2009-01-27T10:34:00.000-08:00

One thing that is mostly missing from Union Gospel sermons, and is intermittent in what a homeless person experiences staying in the mission dorm, is the ideal of brotherly love or ‘love thy neighbor.’ And, indeed, in the sermons, there is far, far more hate talk about earthly society than mention of anything in the vicinity of lovingkindness.

This bugs me. Most of the homeless guys I know have a lot of problems, including addictions, unemployment and a hardscrabble life getting anything done, due to the time-devouring way all the homeless-service providers in our world are organized. Getting kindness and endeavoring, ourselves, to be kind is a rather obvious need.

Christianity didn't used to be stinting with kindness and talk about kindness. Writes Elaine Pagels early on in her book Beyond Belief:

Jesus … said, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, and soul; and you shall love your neighbor as yourself.” What God requires is that human beings love one another and offer help – even, or especially, to the neediest.” [Mark 12:29-31]

Such convictions became the practical basis of a radical new social structure, Rodney Stark suggests [in his book The Rise of Christianity, pg 86-87] that we read the following passage from Matthew’s gospel “as if for the very first time,” in order to feel the power of this new morality as Jesus’ early followers and their pagan neighbors must have felt it:
For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink. I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me…. Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these, my brethren, you did it to me. [Matthew 25:35-49]
These precepts could hardly have been universally practiced, yet Tertullian [in his book The Apology] says that members of what he calls the “peculiar Christian society” practiced them often enough to attract public notice: “What marks us in the eyes of our enemies is our practice of lovingkindness: ‘Only look,’ they say, ‘look how they love one another!’”

Recently, on consecutive nights, Brett Ingalls of Vacaville Bible Church and Jimmy Roughton of Capitol Free Will Baptist Church gave tremendous, inspiring sermons that had a lot to say about goodness, the near cousin of "love thy neighbor." Hooray, them.

Brett Ingalls used the whole of his time to talk on the topic of "forgiveness." He had a lot to say that was fascinating and he anchored what he said to Scripture. Christians should endeavor not to be angry with each other, but when one is aggrieved, he should discuss what is wrong in a kindly way with the other who has hurt or harmed him. A Christian who transgresses against another should prepare himself to apologize, humbly and genuinely. And, how ever much someone has hurt or harmed us, we must forgive, fully.

There was a second part to this -- a "vertical" aspect -- where Christians humbly and genuinely seek forgiveness from God, when appropriate.

I wish I had an audio or transcript of what all Pastor Brett said, or had taken notes. From the gist of what I remember and will retain, I see the elements of outstanding guidelines for best behavior.

Jimmy Roughton, the next night, was in top form, speaking passionately and pacing back and forth in front of the altar like a caged jungle cat. His sermon was on the idea that Christians needed to be wonderful examples to others both for themselves, to live as manifestations of their dear faith, and so that nonbelievers will see them as beacons of the transforming power of belief in Jesus.

While many of the Union Gospel preachers make becoming a Christian sound like a burdensome, horrible chore, Reverend Roughton spoke of it as something that is in all ways wonderful and joyous and burden lifting. Roughton ended his surmon with one of his varietions on Pascal's Wager, saying that he would rather be wrong with all he believed about God and Jesus, and suffer no penalty, than be a nonbeliever and be wrong -- and, thus, be hellbound. Roughton is the only mission preacher who uses Pascal's Wager (though never identifying his argument as such). By the reaction of the guys in the seats, "the wager" seems motivating to many. It doesn't work on me; I feel I'm stuck believing whatever seems to be true.

While I think Ingalls's and Roughton's sermons were excellent and effective, I await a sermon that is very directly about lovingkindness, addressed to the tough rescue-mission crowd. Such a sermon might talk about how the guys should think about their behavior being too selfish or me-centered.

Today, getting a bed at the mission requires aggressiveness with some pushing and shoving at the sign-up window, outside. Lining up for dinner is competative, with many guys using sneaky means to move up in the serving line. A lot of guys have a need to maximize the space they have at the dining table; they put their arms on the table at either side of their tray.

A lot of the selfish nonesence is understandable. There are benefits that accrue from being selfish in Homeless World Sacramento. For people who don't have much, having a little extra by way of being aggressive is meaningful.

At Loaves & Fishes, there are tussles to get better or earlier services than others: There's a 7am race to get early men's showers and low lunch-ticket numbers. We live in a race to the bottom; because so many are extremely self interested, others of us have to act in self interested ways to get something close to 'our share.'

Homeless World Sacramento is full of mostly-wonderful people [truly, truly], but the tough time-devouring circumstances in which we live makes ungenerous and suspicious people out of us. Teach us to be kind, O Preachers.