Too Bad for You, Buddy!

Or words to similar effect, form in my head from time to time, and occasionally, I'm not happy to report, escape my lips. Each time, it's a variation on a theme: my less than compassionate response to someone else's misfortune.

Unless we're arhats or saints with permanent halos, as night follows day, when we learn about (or imagine) unpleasant things befalling someone who 'had it coming', uncharitable thoughts follow. Such persons include, but are not limited to - I seem to be lapsing into legalese here - individuals whom we deem arrogant, unkind, unfair, critical, proud, pompous, selfish, cruel, and generally anyone who has, or is imagined to have, slighted us, or has stupidly disregarded our advice. And of course, those who have the effrontery to think it's OK to judge us.

An extreme example is the outbreak of jubilation and festivities that erupted after the killing of Osama Bin Laden.

When the misfortunes that befall these folks are only embarrassing, it's just funny. A lot of slapstick comedy relies on this - the haughty character's flamboyant exit, followed by his sheepish reappearance when he realizes that he has just stormed into a closet.

When something they value, besides their pride, gets damaged, as when we hear of a bullfighter getting gored in an important place, we get a jolt of guilty pleasure - jolt because it comes out of the blue and is usually short-lived, and guilty because deep down, it really doesn't feel good.

Lately, I've noticed this happening quite a bit. Since I'm pretty sure I'm not becoming a nastier person, I think I'm probably just catching myself in the act more often. I let the little ones come and go without much mental comment, but when I catch myself in a doozy, I get a good chuckle out of it.

Perhaps the little squirt of endorphin our brain gives us when someone else stumbles used to have some value in the distant past when our survival depended on besting others. Perhaps it's similar to the pleasure we get from eating sweet fatty foods or the adrenalin 'fight or flight' rush - the one useful if we are going to spend a cold winter without much food, and the other useful if our house catches fire, but in general, both doing more harm than good.

Regardless of whether it's an instinct or just a deeply ingrained mental habit that we learned as little children, it continues to be strongly and widely reinforced by society - for example, in business, when the wealthy are ruined, in sports, when the bullies are beaten, and in theatre, when the villains suffer painful retribution.

But there is a world of difference between having unkind thoughts and harbouring them.

In zazen and mindfulness practice, we can treat our thoughts as part of our ever-changing mental scenery - whether they be mean thoughts or thoughts of elephants eating popcorn - and we neither try to push them out of our minds nor pursue them. When we realize we have taken off on a train of thought, we just get off and return to being present. If we deliberately pursue a thought, then we are no longer doing zazen or mindfulness. We’re just thinking.

If one moment in practice can be said to have more value than another, then I would say it's that moment when we become aware that we are no longer present, let go of the thought that was distracting us, and return to the present. Kosho Uchiyama Roshi has referred to this process as 'vow and repentence'. And a quote from Samuel Beckett comes to mind: "Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better." It is coming home.

So we need have no remorse or shame about uninvited unkind thoughts, no matter how out of character they may seem. They simply remind us that we're human. If we find we are not letting these thoughts go, but brooding on them and nurturing them, or even trying to cultivate them in others, then we may need to take a long, honest but compassionate look at ourselves and try again. Fail again. Fail better.

Image: detail from Christ Carrying the Cross (Heironymus Bosch) - Wikimedia Commons

Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream

In this dawning age of mindfulness, how often we hear 'be present in the moment'. In my own practice, on the cushion and off (when I remember), that's my aim too. But do I pine over happy days gone by? Yes, sometimes. Do I yearn for better days ahead? Yes, often.

Looking back over the mayhem of our civilization's troubled adolescence and how far we've come, it's hard not to dream about the future our grandchildren might have if we would only embrace our evolution rather than run away from it.

Global Warming Stopped and Reversed

Albedo Yacht pumping sea
water into the atmosphere

With the future of the biosphere looking bleak and the chances of our puny efforts actually creating a stable climate for those grandchildren seeming pretty slim, here's an encouraging development.

Over the past few years research into cloud reflectivity modification has received funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. It involves seeding clouds with the most benign substance around - seawater - to make them more reflective to infra-red while allowing visible light through.

Around 1,900 floating machines would be enough to stop the rise in temperature. The cost? $7.5 billion, barely one percent of the USA's annual military budget.

The War Machine Re-Tooled for Disaster Relief

The spending of mind-boggling amounts of hard-earned tax dollars on a killing machine will eventually come to an end.  However, the downside of dismantling the armed forces would be roughly two million military and civilian personnel losing their jobs. Assuming bulldozers are cheaper than stealth bombers and hospital ships cheaper than aircraft carriers, re-tooling the military for disaster relief and humanitarian aid looks like a viable workaround.

As Isaiah prophesied an awfully long time ago:

They will beat their swords into plowshares

and their spears into pruning hooks.
Nation will not take up sword against nation,

nor will they train for war anymore.

Here's a little glimmer of light from Al Gore's website:

The U.S. Department of Defense plans to open up 16 million acres of its land for renewable energy development, which it hopes will create a boom of solar, wind and geothermal projects and provide clean power to military bases, the department announced Monday.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and the Interior Secretary Ken Salazar signed a memorandum of understanding to work together on promoting renewable energy generation projects on public land that has historically been restricted for military uses. About 13 million of those 16 million acres are located in western U.S., where a lot of solar, wind and geothermal power development already has been taking place on private and other types of public land.

People Won't Come Out Any More

Because there is nowhere to come out from. Faded into the mists of history is the almost irresistible compulsion, when describing someone, to include facts that are almost always irrelevant: gender, racial origin, sexual orientation, first language, apparent wealth, height, weight, apparent age, taste in clothing, religion, and on and on.

Much more heart to heart exchange. Much less hiding from each other.

Emancipation

Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream has gone viral. Mahalia Jackson shouted out, "Tell them about your dream, Martin!" And he did. The powerful don't take advantage of the weak. The remnants of male chauvinism are found only in museums. And yes, the animals are finally free.

The sky's the limit to the hurts that can be healed.  Perhaps, once in a while, we need to let go of the present moment, follow John Lennon, and just imagine.

No More Country & Western Music

Unless it's played backwards - then you reconcile with your estranged spouse, get your job back, and your dog comes back to life. KIDDING! I'm sorry. That was a terrible, cruel joke. I actually love country. A lot. Honest!

Here's Pete Seeger's rendition of the song I used for the post title.

The Zen Cure, an Alternative to the Death Penalty and a Case for Dharma Lineage

Getting strapped into "Old Sparky"

It seemed like a bright idea at the time, but I'm having doubts that this argument can withstand scrutiny. If it turns out to be exploring a dead end, perhaps others can see a way through. Anyway, here it is.

The death penalty is wrong for so many reasons and should be abolished. Zen practice can (suddenly and/or gradually) result in a fresh view of the world, the unfolding of wisdom and compassion, and a commitment to the Bodhisattva path. Inmates on death row should have the option of intensive Zen training with a qualified teacher. Their progress could be verified by masters with recognized dharma transmission and by experienced psychiatrists. The ultimate goal is their return to society.

The penal system deters crime, rehabilitates offenders and protects the public. At least that's the theory.

The death penalty doesn't deter crime. States in the USA without the death penalty have consistently lower murder rates. In the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, A recent study concluded:

The findings demonstrate an overwhelming consensus among these criminologists that the empirical research conducted on the deterrence question strongly supports the conclusion that the death penalty does not add deterrent effects to those already achieved by long imprisonment.

And of course the death penalty doesn't rehabilitate offenders - at least, not in this lifetime.

The death penalty may protect the public, but at great cost. The Innocence Project reports that, despite apparently compelling evidence of guilt at trial, 300 inmates on death row have been exonerated based on DNA [as at September 29, 2012]. One wonders how many of the 78 people executed in the USA in 2011 and the thousands awaiting execution (3,189 as at January 1, 2012) may be innocent.

Another purpose of the penal system is retribution. Killing a murderer is supposed to make society in general, and the family of the victim in particular, feel better. Personally, the killing of Troy Davis, Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden all just made me feel sick.

Religious beliefs don't seem to make taking a stand on capital punishment any easier. If you believe every word of the Bible, then you will also support the death penalty for Adultery - Men and Women (Leviticus 20:10), Blasphemy (Leviticus 24:16), Breaking the Sabbath (Exodus 31:14-15), Being a Disobedient Child (Exodus 21:15 and Leviticus 20:9), Homosexuality - Men Only (Leviticus 20:13), and Not Being a Virgin on Your Wedding Night - Women Only (Deuteronomy 22:20-21), whereas Jesus is said to have said "turn the other cheek" and "if you did it to the least of these, you did it to me." Some Christian denominations that do not oppose capital punishment, like the Roman Catholic Church and Southern Baptists, still decry its use for vengeance. Many others outright oppose it.

You would think that Buddhists would be on side, but there is even disagreement about whether Buddhism forbids the death penalty. In general, Buddhist groups in secular countries such as Japan, Korea, and Taiwan tend to take an anti-death penalty stance, while in Thailand, Sri Lanka, and Bhutan, where Buddhism has strong political influence, the opposite is true. Just as the First Precept against killing other beings seems to be circumventable to permit eating animals because they taste good, it has been gotten around, it seems, to sanctify killing people for the greater good, whatever that means.

So the choice has to be a personal one. I hope you will forgive my biased phrasing of the question: "Is the priceless gift of a human nervous system and consciousness, through which we can awaken to our interdependent, compassionate nondual nature, and in a sense, through which the universe can realize its own existence, something we have a right to take away from another human being just because she or he has done it to someone else?"

Can a murderer be cured? I think the answer is 'yes', at least sometimes.

In his Message Supporting a Moratorium on the Death Penalty, His Holiness the Dalai Lama said:

Before advocating execution we should consider whether criminals are intrinsically negative and harmful people or whether they will remain perpetually in the same state of mind in which they committed their crime or not. The answer, I believe, is definitely not. However horrible the act they have committed, I believe that everyone has the potential to improve and correct themselves.

Is Zen training a way to do it? Again, I think the answer is a qualified 'yes'. Even though the justice system is supposed to weed out those who are not guilty by reason of insanity, there will be those on death row who are deeply disturbed - either originally or as a result of "death row syndrome." Can they be reached by a skilled psychotherapist or a wily Zen master? There is only one way to find out.

Ultimately, how can apparently cured murderers be let loose on the streets? Many, I suspect, are, or have learned how to be, skillful con artists, capable of faking spiritual transformation and psychological healing. That's where even more skill is required to detect the fakers. For psychological issues, it probably means highly qualified psychiatrists. For Zen issues, the obvious choices are masters who have received full dharma transmission, i.e. those who have been through the process of "it takes one to know one".

This is only a brief and I’m sure extremely naive sketch of a concept, not the blueprint for a solution. Many, many practical challenges await. In fact, it sounds more like the description of how an advanced civilization might treat its criminals in a science fiction novel, set in the distant future or a distant galaxy, rather than West Livingston, Texas.

But then who ever thought we would walk on the moon?

On the subject of how we relate to 'evil' people, Meredith Garmon has written some great posts over at Lake Chalice, including Primary Sociopaths and Secondary Sociopaths, Answer Evil with Justice and Community and The Wound that Cuts Through Every Human Heart.

May I also suggest exploring the Prison Dharma Network website if you haven’t already?

Photo: An African-American prisoner is prepared for execution in "Old Sparky," Sing-Sing Prison's infamous electric chair. Photograph taken circa 1900 by William M. Van der Weyde. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress.

Look! A Mayfly!

Look! A mayfly!

Tears began, but then my heart

Sang a little song

The mayfly is a member of the Ephemeroptera, from the Greek meaning 'lasting only a day'. After a year as a nymph, it crawls out of the water, moults, spreads its wings, takes to the sky, finds a mate, lays its eggs, and dies, all in a day.

A cascade of emotions took me by surprise.

Melancholy and a sense of futility surfaced first. Compared to the rest of its life, the tiny creature's last day is like a flash of lightning. So much heroic activity in such a short time, and for what? So that more mayflies can grub around in a stream for a year to spend a frantic day in the sun, provided they don't get eaten by the fish or the birds first? Perhaps even so that people can contemplate them, get all teary-eyed and write poetry that other people who may not have seen a mayfly can read and get all teary-eyed too.

Melancholy becomes wonder. The critter's last day really isn't so much frantic as it is perfect. After a slow climb out of the water, it waits in the sun until it's ready to moult. It climbs out of its old skin and waits again until its wings dry in shape. Then at just the right time with just the right effort, flapping them, the former bottom dweller does the unimaginable. (I don't imagine that mayflies imagine, but who knows what goes on in their little heads.) Its flight is an invitation to jump for joy.

Then the adult stuff - courtship, wild mayfly sex, laying eggs. Since baby nymphs don't need looking after, the parents do the right thing and give themselves completely for the benefit of all beings in the vicinity that could use some nourishment.

I recognize I'm projecting here, or maybe squinting at my reflection. The sadness, wonder and joy I feel contemplating that brief life, are the sadness, wonder and joy of my life.

And the cascading emotions aren't quite over.

I feel an uneasy chill that I really don't want to deal with, knowing exactly what it is. The mayfly's life is brief, but not a moment is wasted. My life is not so brief, and about those wasted moments, let's just say I seem to be studiously ignoring what Zen Master Daito Kokushi said in 1337:

Time flies like an arrow, so do not waste energy on trivial matters.

Be attentive. Be attentive!

Guilty as charged.

So many lessons packed into a tiny mayfly.

So many lessons in everything, if we just pay attention.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Here is one of my favourite pieces of music that breaks my heart – the theme from Schindler’s List, composed by John Williams and played by Itzhak Perlman. Although the movie is about the Holocaust, the music makes me think of the suffering of the animals for whom the Holocaust has never ended.

Mayfly photo credit: Richard Bartz via Wikimedia Commons.

A Snuggle, a Swim and a Hug - Taking Refuge in the Three Jewels

The early Buddhists seemed to love making lists - the Four Noble Truths, the Ten Perfections, the 108 Cravings (comprised of six groups including the 18 Cravings Through the Sense of the Nose for Sensual Pleasures Associated with a View of Eternalism or Nihilism, Internally or Externally, of the Past, Present, or Future). Out of curiosity, I had a look at the 38 Blessings. It turns out the first one is Not Associating with Fools. Who knew?

I think because I’m a bit of a minimalist (read: simpleton), lists enumerating the Virtues, the Hindrances, the Dwellings of the Noble Ones and the Unwholesome Actions just don’t ring my bell. I guess that’s why I’m attracted to the simplicity of Zen - even the name only has three letters.

There is one little list, however, that I have grown very fond of: the Three Jewels - the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha, a.k.a. the Three Treasures.

Many folks with great scholarship and great insight have already written about the Three Jewels. This little offering is just a freehand sketch of what they mean to me. I know that as soon as I open my mouth, I fall into error, creating artificial separations, but here goes.

First off, the Three Jewels are not separate 'things' - more like one thing seen from three different directions. For the same reason, our take on them will be different, each from our own vantage point.

Buddha - not just the chap who sat under a tree and noticed something important. Buddha nature may be a better term. Vast emptiness. All-inclusive. Capable of becoming anything. Capable of awakening.

Dharma - the teachings of the Buddha and more. The laws of cause and effect. Change. Unfolding. Awakening. Relieving suffering.

Sangha - for sure everyone who follows the teachings of the Buddha - but also every other being of every kind, everywhere.

Taking refuge in the Three Treasures is a formal Buddhist ceremony. It is also a personal act we perform with our whole being - not just our thoughts and words - but our whole lives: a lifelong, intimate love affair.

We take refuge in the Buddha whenever we sit down, let go of our thoughts (including the thought of taking refuge) and simply pay attention. A little habit has crept up on me: last thing at night, if I snuggle up with the universe, for want of a better term, my iron grip on my little sense of self seems to loosen and I'm asleep in a few seconds.

My mental picture of taking refuge in the Dharma is going for a joyful swim in a river, doing a playful dance with the currents of cause and effect. It's also expressed in our sincere efforts to do the right thing, to be a manifestation of wisdom and compassion.

Taking refuge in the Sangha. Group hug. How wide can we spread our arms? We support and nourish and heal and cherish. And we are supported and nourished and healed and cherished. How cool is that?

Photo credit: Tambako the Jaguar via Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic

~~~~~~

I apologize to anyone who got a malware warning from visiting this site, especially if your own blog started setting off alarm bells for linking to it. I hope I didn’t cause you too much grief. The problem seems to have been a link on my blogroll and a spam comment that I hadn’t deleted. Both are fixed now and thankfully, Google was very prompt to reassess the site and give it a clean bill of health. Please feel free to contact me at ashton at shaw dot ca. A useful resource for checking site safety is http://sucuri.net.

Blowing in the Mind

I feel a little thrill whenever I see flags flapping in the wind. I usually gaze and listen for a while and then come back to earth, noticing that my feet are plodding along the pavement as usual and that some litter has blown up against a fence.

This is the 29^th koan of the Mumonkan:

Two monks were arguing about a flag. One said, "The flag is moving."

The other said, "The wind is moving."

The Sixth Patriarch happened to be passing by. He told them, "Not the wind, not the flag; mind is moving."

Their habitual way of thinking about flags in the wind was stripped away, leaving – something else.

About two hundred years later, some monks were debating the koan. Zen master Miaoxin overheard them and said,

It's not the wind moving, it's not the flag moving, it's not the mind moving.

Something else was stripped away, leaving – what?

This progression reminds me of the first few times I attended our Zen centre. The first time I went, the abbot gave a dharma talk during the second sit, which I thought was pretty profound. The same thing happened the second time I was there. The third time I went, he just sat in silence. I remember thinking to myself, what could be more profound than that? Well, the next time I went, he wasn’t there at all…

I suspect “mind” is one of the most difficult words to define. There is mind meaning thought; there is the subconscious mind; there is no-mind and there is mindfulness; there is little mind and there is big Mind; there is original mind and everyday mind and there is beginner’s mind and there is don’t know mind.

Then there are the Three Minds (sanshin):

Magnanimous Mind (daishin) is like an ocean or a mountain: calm and steady, yet accepting and nourishing countless beings and situations without differentiation. The ocean is serene because it accepts the many rivers without resisting.

Nurturing Mind (roshin), literally "old mind", is akin to the attitude of a kindly grandmother or parent who delights in caring for others. It is the spirit of the bodhisattva, the fully mature person.

Joyful Mind (kishin) is the joy that comes from deep in our hearts even in the midst of difficulty. It arises from the insight of zazen, that we live together with all beings and are not separate.

(These originated with Dogen Zenji and were propounded by Kosho Uchiyama Roshi (Opening the Hand of Thought) and subsequently by his successor, Shohaku Okumura Roshi (Realizing Genjokoan), founder of the Sanshin Zen Community, from where the above quote was taken.)

Rational thought insists on trying to compartmentalize and categorize mind in order to comprehend it, as it does with the rest of the world. Except it can't. The best it can do is ask interminable questions.

If it would only shut up and pay attention, it might notice something important.

I don't know much, but I know enough not to vex my brain or anyone else's by trying to think up - or worse, suggest - answers to these questions.

What is it that flaps in the wind? What is it that watches the flag through my eyes? What thinks about the flag with my brain? What is asking this question? What wants to know the answer? What opens and unfolds, withers and dies all at the same time? What suffers and at the same time seeks out and relieves suffering? What is both nowhere and everywhere? What is neither one nor more than one? Neither nothing nor something? What is writing these words? What is reading them? Wouldn't a cup of tea be nice?

It occurs to me that I may have overstepped my bounds. I don't want my aimless musings / infantile burblings to be mistaken for teachings. As an unordained layman with no qualifications, verification, rank, transmission or lineage, I'm not really anything. If I must be something, perhaps the litter blown against the fence.

All The Missing Names Of Love - A Review

Discovering All The Missing Names Of Love motivated me to do two things I have never done before: buy something online, and write a review. The first was easy; the second, definitely not so much.

Reading blogging friend Roselle Angwin's beautiful posts over at Qualia and Other Wildlife, I knew her new book of poetry would be worth reading, and now having read it, definitely worth sharing.

Like the tapestry by Anne Jackson on the book cover, Roselle’s poems interweave her thoughts and feelings with a sympathetic vision of the natural world to which she is clearly attuned.

In his haiku Nazuna (The Shepherd’s Purse), Basho was captured in an instant by the beauty of a lowly weed, then captured the moment in a poem:

When I look carefully –

Nazuna is blooming

Beneath the hedge.

Roselle does this too. By capturing moments that captured her, she captures us. This is from Tracks:

Now, dawn; the stillness

broken only by a clattering tractor

and its retinue of gulls.

As in On Staffa:

… It’s in these moments

that we remember the truths behind words;

and recover an ancient longing; and our

kinship, our covenant, with wild.

True to the title of the book, Roselle invites us to share her view of love from many different vantage points.

This is Rosa Canina:

Rain, milky with mist, has gently

erased the moorland distances.

Lanes are at their heartbreaking

fullest: buttercup, bluebell, campion,

Queene Anne’s lace, buds of dog rose.

And this is also an act of love:

to see another over a threshold.

Love of nature, animals, friends, lovers, parents; joy in their life, and sadness in their passing and decline.

I’m going to turn off my commentary here. These excerpts easily speak for themselves.

From Wild Garlic:

Everyone we love will leave us eventually,

or we’ll leave them. That’s what the wise vicar

said at that wedding blessing all those years ago.

Knowing that, how can I not love you fully?

From All The Missing Names Of Love:

Today I’m obsessed by things transient

or lost: the dog dead for fifteen years

who today lapped water in the kitchen

at noon, even though I couldn’t see her;

my father’s mislaid past; or the names

that slip through my mother’s grasp

like the minnows we’d try to catch

up to our childish knees in the Vellator streams …

From Rain Dharma:

Rain settling in like conversation between

lifelong friends; rain, plants, stone, birds

at ease with themselves and each other, at ease

with how the world needs to be.

From After Midsummer:

My mum is so light now I can

carry her in one chamber of my heart.

From Going into the meadow after the retreat:

the horse’s light breath on my cheek

the way he delicately politely

only just

meeting my eyes reads my face

hands hair with his gentle muzzle

as if he smells

questions, as if I were an event

blown in on the whirling wind

as if

from within the zero

of Zen in which he dwells

he barely

recognizes me, each thing wholly

new, every encounter the first.

From South Cerney Sonnets     ii Cotswold Water Park: Plate Movement:

The layers beneath our feet are provisional

as anything else; time swallows its tail

and I’m afraid. Hold me. …

From On not going over the lip of a waterfall in an oil-drum:

                               Tell me again

what you said about love;

speak it again – the one

about two bodies’ heat,

the one about crossing the water.

Tell me again.

From This rain, the window open:

Still I lie on the roomward side

of the bed

after all these years

wash the pillowslips

on which I never lie

when I wash my own

put them out to dry

billowing in the salt wind

and reinstall them

neither foam nor feathers

ever as good a pillow

as his chest

Diagnoses

for my parents:

i Alzheimer’s

Once she found a goldcrest’s nest,

tucked it carefully in a crook, made sure

the entrance was clear and open.

Recently the winds have blown it far

from the tree, are gently taking it apart.

ii Stroke

The last dominoes perch unsteadily.

The rest have fallen so that their black

sides are uppermost, the numbers

and the narrative mostly obscured.

From Whiteout:

… On that high crest

the snowdrifts fell and fell and were chest-height

and head-height and then filled the lane till

even hedges were eclipsed, the white drift a foretaste

of what later would take my mother’s brain and gently erase it.

From Let there be peace:

Let me go in a breath of applewood smoke from the mountains

Release a white mare into the hills for me

Whisper my name into her ear

Let her go.

Thank you, Roselle.

Buried Treasure on Lyle Hill

He was the kindest, most gentle man I have ever known, and I loved him for it.

My dad was born at home in Greenock, Scotland in 1910. Thirty-nine years later, I followed suit. Unfortunately, I never met his dad, a crane operator in the Greenock torpedo factory, as he died shortly before I was born.

I don't know a lot about Dad's life before me - just snippets of stories about his childhood and youth, like the time he acquired a permanently deformed fingernail after one of his friends, startled by a frog, dropped a heavy storm drain grate; and later, when he sang tenor songs out the window of the YMCA to impress the girls in the street below.

Then came war. I've already written about how Mum and Dad met as pen pals.

Most of my earliest memories are of Dad taking me places - to the beach, to the Italian ice cream shop, and to my favourite place - the top of Lyle Hill.

Greenock and Gourock on the Clyde from Lyle Hill

There was a circle of indentations in the ground near the summit. Dad said if I tried digging in them I might be lucky and find buried treasure. I dug in one but didn't find anything. Dad suggested I try a different one. I did, and found a penny! He suggested some others, and I dug up more coins, even a sixpence! On our way home, I suspect he did a lot of internal grinning, and I was bursting with excitement to tell Mum all about our adventure. It was easily ten years later when I was marveling to him about the coins on Lyle Hill that he finally confessed to planting them.

In 1957, we emigrated to Victoria, British Columbia in Canada. Dad said he would have been more homesick, but was comforted by the similarity of the landscape and the mountains across the water.

Victoria on the Strait of Juan de Fuca from Gonzales Hill

Again, my memories of Dad's life in Victoria seem to be just snippets: my mum often playing his favourite melody, "Moonlight Sonata" on the piano for him; our suspicion that he was colour blind because of the blue trees in his paintings; and later, signs of his advancing Alzheimer's when the last batch of the blackberry wine he made every year turned to vinegar and he 'solved' the problem by adding large amounts of sugar...

Except for The Upper Room, a daily devotional he read every morning while eating his porridge alone (he was up and off to work before the rest of the house stirred), the only books he seemed to read were westerns. One summer we drove to California, and as we passed through Oregon, we came upon the Rogue River. Suddenly, Dad was like a little kid, so excited to see for himself the river he had read about in Zane Grey's stories.

Dad was a gifted carpenter. He loved to build furniture and fix things, and would never accept payment for the work he did for our friends. I still cherish his old hand tools with his name stamped into their wooden handles. We used to walk along the cliff top and he would identify different kinds of wood washed up on the beach below and then go down, saw them into chunks, and lug them back to his workshop in the basement.

After almost forty years, it was finally time for Mum and Dad to leave their house and move into a condo. I don't recall Dad ever getting angry or saying an unkind word, but on their last day there, Dad went down to the basement, fired up his table saw and cut some wood for the last time. As the noise of the saw echoed through the house, we knew how he felt.

Although he gave up driving, much to everyone's relief, he continued to go on long bicycle rides with Mum every day well into his 80's. It was a sad day when we realized it was time for him to stop, because his dementia had progressed to the point that he would cycle off and get lost if not closely watched, and because he would pedal so slowly that he fell over turning corners.

Mum used to do jigsaw puzzles. One night, she woke up to find Dad standing over the puzzle eating the pieces. After that, we moved him into a nursing home. He didn't complain, but expressed his disapproval by catching pneumonia and dying peacefully about a week after he arrived.

All my life, I never told Dad how I felt about him until, in his last hours, I thanked him for being my dad and told him that I loved him. I don't know if he heard me, but I hope so.

If I could have only half of his kindness, I would be a very lucky man.

Buddhist Blasphemy?

As in all the congregations of the saints, women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the Law says. If they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home; for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church. (1 Corinthians 14:34-35)

This, in my opinion, and not to put too fine a point on it, is crap.

And so is:

A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent. (1 Timothy 2:11-12)

I've had my share of dharma combat with Christians over using the Bible to support rather un-Christian positions, such as the death penalty ... for homosexuals.

If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall surely be put to death; their blood is upon them. (Leviticus 20:13)

In fact, a pastor once warned one of his flock, a friend of mine, to stay away from me lest I corrupt him with my arguments. Apparently, one must guard the faithful against people who criticize a god who says (or inspires the saying of) things like:

Blessed shall he be who takes your little ones and dashes them against the rock. (Psalm 137:9)

I confess that I did fire a parting quote at the pastor:

So I turned my mind to understand, to investigate and to search out wisdom and the scheme of things and to understand the stupidity of wickedness and the madness of folly. (Ecclesiastes 7:25)

Although I've heard the rationalizations for not expunging offensive passages from the Bible, I've lost interest in trying to remember what they are. Without doubt, there are glorious passages overflowing with beauty, wisdom and kindness, but because they are intertwined with the other stuff, I can never think of it as more than just a book.

I suppose my use of the C word earlier qualifies as blasphemy, being an expression of irreverence towards religious things. Sure, we can twist words until they morph into reverence for all things, but I'm not going there. A spade is a spade.

Which brings me around to Buddhism. There are times when I wonder if I'm a "real" Buddhist at all, because, as I've posted before, I'm not really interested in reincarnation, the afterlife, Karma, or who's who in Buddhist cosmology. While this might be considered a tad heretical in some circles, it doesn't feel blasphemous because there is no disrespect.

Still, I was relieved to discover recently that Buddha said:

Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it. (Kamala Sutra)

Good questions posed by two blogging friends brought some things into focus for me. Lynette Genju Monteiro over at 108 Zen Books asked, "Which do you follow: the teacher or the teachings?", and Thane Lawrie way over in Scotland at My Journey asked, "Does Buddhism Need a Voice?"

Lynette's question stumped me for a while until it dawned on me that I don't really follow teachers or teachings, I just listen to them and then follow my gut. Their words are sometimes a patient finger pointing at the moon, and sometimes a good jab in the ribs. To use one last biblical quote,

The words of the wise are like goads (Ecclesiastes 12:11)

Thane's question explored the Buddhist identity and got me pondering. I call myself a Zen Buddhist because that label seems to be the best description of what I seem to be. And then, because I'm a Zen Buddhist, I do Zen things, like put on a black robe and do zazen on a zafu on a zabuton in a zendo, chant the four Bodhisattva Vows and pay attention to the abbot.

And when I remember to be mindful of it, bow deeply in gratitude.

The Karma of the Animals

If I can make you give me pleasure, even if it hurts you, why not?

Oppressor and oppressed. A relationship as old as the human race: cannibals and their prey, slave traders and their captives, invaders and the vanquished, lords and serfs, rapists and their victims.

Some are easy to recognize and revile. Others, I think because they are closer to home, are harder to see and more uncomfortable to face: domineering husbands and subservient wives, bullies and victims in the schoolyard and in the workplace, and one of my pet peeves: humans and other animal species.

Oppressors have a sense of entitlement. In some cases, we hardly notice it, but in others it's a cleverly constructed rationalization. I think what is uncomfortable is the disconnect between head and heart. Head says it's OK. Heart knows it's not.

In the latest post over at her terrific blog The Jizo Chronicles, Maia Duerr, a recently ordained Buddhist chaplain (congratulations, Maia!) quoted from her thesis. Introducing the concept of "Protest Chaplains", she refers to Fleet Maull, the founder of the Prison Dharma Network:

Maull observed that we are dealing with an accumulated toxic level of internalized shame and violence that is perpetuated when we violate our own integrity, and any time war and oppression take root in a culture and system.

I think the head/heart disconnect is the violation of our own integrity that Maull is referring to. Although I had intended this post just to be about our presumption of entitlement to oppress other species, it keeps coming back to the violence we do to ourselves in the process. Toxic shame, mostly buried beneath our awareness, I suspect, poisons us and the fruits of our actions in ways beyond imagining.

Mostly, by habit or by design, we don't give it a second thought.

The most damaging phrase in any language is "It has always been done that way".

- Rear Admiral Dr. Grace Hopper (1906 - 1992) Mathematician, First woman Admiral in the US Navy.

Here is one small example.  How much honey do we put in our tea, on our food, or in our cooking? How much effort went into producing that honey? I don't mean by the people putting it into jars. Here are some facts. A worker bee produces only about 1/12 teaspoon of honey in her entire life. To produce one pound of honey, bees have to visit approximately two million flowers and fly 55,000 miles - more than two trips around the world. The bees make it and we take it. Because it's tasty ... and because we can.

Some commercial honey thieves suppliers keep the hives alive over the winter by feeding the bees sugar. Others simply kill them and buy new bees in the spring.

This from the Canadian Association of Professional Apiculturists:

Colonies should be killed during non-flying conditions, such as in cool weather or in the early morning or late evening. Calcium cyanide should be used according to the label directions: 12.5 - 25 g (1-2 tablespoons) of calcium cyanide are sprinkled on a paper plate or sheet of cardboard and slipped into the hive entrance. Once the chemical is applied, entrances are blocked and the hives kicked or jarred to stir up the bees.

And then there is bullfighting. Did you know that proponents sometimes justify it as a culturally important tradition and a fully developed art form on par with painting, dancing and music? About 10,000 bulls endure this ordeal every year. Many horses, blindfolded during the “fight” to keep them from avoiding the enraged bulls, are also gored and killed by the bulls.

And on, and on. Rodeos. Greyhound racing. Silk production. Wool production. We take and take, just because we want to and because we can.

What about the karma part? That's easy - I don't know. If you mean something other than cause and effect, I honestly don't have a clue what you're talking about. Just be kind - really, what else matters?

The animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours, they move finished and complete, gifted with extension of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren; they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendor and travail of the earth.

- Henry Beston, naturalist and author (1888-1968)

Do you get frustrated sometimes by our glacially slow progress and by the seemingly overwhelming resistance to change? I do.

But just because we can't do everything is not a reason not to do anything.

PS - when you're shopping for cosmetics or detergents, don't forget to look for these symbols.