Ghost Dog and Zen at War

In the past fews days I read Zen and War by Brian Victoria, a Soto Zen priest aghast at the complicity of the Buddhist priesthood in Japan with their rulers' warmongering from the beginning of the Meiji restoration through their defeat and subjugation at the end of WWII. In a semi-lucky confluence, I also saw Jim Jarmusch's Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai, a 1999 film starring Forest Whitaker as an inner-city killer for hire whose absolute adherence to the code of Bushido leads him to become"retainer" to a mobster, with tragic consequences. Combined, the two show us (1) the absolute and empowering nature of Zen practice, and (2) the fact that it takes us more than zazen to know how to choose our path in our social setting, whatever that may be.

Zen at War (Weatherhill, 1997) was written by a Soto priest trying to deal with the legacy of deceit and dishonor left by the Zen establishment, and the Japanese Buddhist establishment in general, at the close of the Second World War. The book provides no biographical background for author Victoria; I hope at some point to encounter more of his personal story. From what little I know of Japanese society, it appears that the post-War generations know little of the mechanics of how their society was led to disaster by the process leading up to 1945. So I suspect that Mr. Victoria was shocked at some point to discover that his adopted faith (and I garner from his name that he is not Japanese), which in modern times has been a voice for peace, was so recently an instigator of a terrible war.

Mr. Victoria's book is a painstakingly researched account of how Buddhism became Imperial Buddhism, and of how it has attempted (or refused) since then, to cope with disaster and embarrasment. To summarize at the risk of misstatement, Zen entered Japan from China around 600 B.C. and with its adoption by Prince Shotoku (sort of the Emperor Constantine of Japanese Buddhism) merged into feudal society where it melded with Bushido, the code of the warrior. Zen, with its emphasis on focused mind and living in the moment, was perfect for sword training. With its lack of a governing deity to provide moral laws and allegiance, it was easily co-opted by the ruling class, and after 1600 became the religion of the Samurai and the Shogunate, co-existing and blending with the Shinto of the people. However by the beginning of the Meiji restoration in 1868, it had become a shell of itself, focused heavily on ancestor worship and coming to the fore mostly at funerals.

The existence of War-Whore Zen seems to have emerged as an accomodation of the growing Japanese equivalent of Manifest Destiny, flowering in Japan's wars with China in 1894 and with Russia in 1905. The book documents which Buddhist leaders (and the other sects, like Tendai and Jodo) did, said, and published what, in their efforts to out-lick each others' boots in support of Imperial Japanese aggression, culminating in World War II. While it is easy to excuse the teachings which came out of Japanese Buddhism in that period as efforts to survive in a wartime society with no history of free speech or of tolerance to political resistance, it is clear that the Buddhist leaders went way, way over this line.

The most stunning message of this book, however, comes with the realization that the peaceful Buddhist leaders of our era are the direct disciples of leaders who for the most part either never apologized at all or did so half-heartedly. If you want to trace your own lineage for such horror, the book provides the means to do so. Suffice it to say that recognized icons of the foundations of American Zen like D.T. Suzuki, and the religious progenitors of Philip Kapleau, were among the worst offenders. Even the most (relatively) abject apologies stop short of saying that war is wrong, and there is a maddening thread of insistence that twentieth century Japanese expansionism was in some way conducted for the benefit of the peoples of Asia.

Ghost Dog is the story of an inner-city Black man who, in his youth, is rescued from a gang of attackers by a third-rate Mafioso. It is never revealed how Ghost Dog comes by his obsession with Bushido, but its message of subjugation to the ruler becomes an attachment to his rescuer which leads him, in combination with his weapons training and high-tech skills. Ghost Dog lives on a ghetto rooftop from which he communicates with his mob boss by passenger pigeon. He is reverend and left alone by the gangs that run his neighborhood. Jarmusch was perhaps wisely omitted how Ghost Dog came by his creed, let alone his skills and hardware; I think our credulity is strained enough. But the character is beautiful. Ghost Dog carries a copy of Hagakure - The Book of the Samurai, from which the films's frequently posted aphorisms derive. He befriends a young girl and gives her a copy of Rashomon, opening to her the door to his adopted culture.

The film itself is a classic tragedy, in that the heroe's flaw - in this case, the fact that his code of honor not only leads but obligates him to attach himself to an unfit and unsuitable ruler, the mobster - lead to his undoing. Since I strongly encourage you to see the film if you haven't already, I won't spoil the ending any more than I have. I also have to note that the word Zen is used sparingly in the movie, if at all, although Ghost Dog is depicted several times doing an incongruosly sloppy zazen. But to me, seen in conjunction with the book, the message is that the incredibly powerful nature of Zen practice and its concommitment lack of attachment to outside codes of ethics, lead to a danger of misdirection which can lead to the strength gained by the empowerment of the practice, being used to very wrong ends.

A couple of points have to be made in qualification. The sutras say very little about war. The conjugation of Zen and Bushido is to some extent an accident of history, although one to which Zen is open by its nature. It would appear to me to be a huge error to say that practitioners of Zen are more open to led into "incorrect action" by their "faith" or practice than, say, Christians or Moslems, which historically have much more to account for in terms of misdirected aggression than Buddhists. But as the Zen complicity of this century shows, when they go wrong, boy, they do it in a big way.

I guess my point here is that, as I've been saying, don't get your politics from the guy who teaches you zazen or encourages you to do it, even if it's me. That's a decision you have to make for yourself, and you owe it to yourself to be as informed as you can before you make it. There are people whose every comment on Zen practice I've found through my own experience to be not only helpful, but true, but whose beliefs on the issues facing the world today are naive beyond my comprehension. Zen practicewill enable to become more of who you are, and will enable you to pursue your goals more effectively; that seems to be guaranteed. So you owe it to the world to be very concerned with what you do and whom or what you serve, even if it's yourself. The last thing the world today needs is one more kamikaze.

Lies, Lies, Lies

This is in response to comments on the previous entry, "Apathy." Apparently I overcame the apathy of a handful of readers, which sure makes this stuff easier! Thanks to TheMemoWriter, pk and billgates for their comments. If you haven't read those comments, you can either go to the previous blog entry or follow this link: http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=18193044&postID=114002731094927998.

I had made the following comment on The Memo Writer's blog: As far as the cover-up, the Bush administration seriously strikes me as pathological; they lie when there is no reason to lie at all. I mean, there actually was one plausible and defensible reason for going into Iraq, but I've never seen it mentioned anywhere.

Please realize that by "plausible and defensible," I mean from the point of view of the U.S. government, which is empowered within limits set by the Constitution to further the interests of this country as it perceives them. With the exception of the power to declare War, interactions with foreign countries are largely delegated to the Executive branch. Three years ago, Bush, with the misguided support of Congress, began his war on Iraq. No, I do not believe the war was justified, motivated as it was. The real problem is that the Bush Cabal lied to us about the reasons.

What I have come down to after years to think about it amounts to a "purloined letter." The reason is the one everyone would have supposed would be the reason, if not for the smokescreen puffed up by the Cabal, and by the inadequate responses of the Democrats. The United States attacked Iraq to set up a puppet government to maintain U.S. presence in the Middle East for the purpose of "stabilizing" oil flow and prices and providing support for Israel. What really galls me is that they never admitted this.

The Bush administration of course has changed its position as to its original entry into Iraq, behind a spin campaign of Orwellian proportions. First there was the ridiculous assertion that Iraq was somehow behind the 9/11 WTC attack. It's been made obvious since then that the invasion of Iraq was planned long before then; what exactly happened on 9/11 is still now and may forever be unclear (and speculation on such can probably get you into Guantanamo), but that tragedy was either fortuitous for Bush or was at least used by him to buttress his ongoing plan. After it became clear that most of the terrorists on the planes were Saudi's, the adminstration concentrated on its famous Weapons of Mass Destruction nonsense. Those Weapons are still hiding out in the mountains with the Easter Bunny. Now that these idiots have through incompetence mired this country in a mess with the potential to be worse than Vietnam, their only excuse is that now that we're there, we can't pull out because the American lives spent so far would be wasted. So let's waste more lives? Send your own sons and daughters!

Unfortunately I, like I imagine many Americans who saw through the Cabal's transparencies, was a little confused about the purpose of the Iraq invasion. All I could tell from the Bush-controlled press was, by process of inversion, what the reasons weren't. What really threw me off was Michael Moore's Farenheit 9/11. Which was a great piece of movie-making, by the way, and was where I first became aware of all the ties between the Bush family and the Saudi's. So I tended to buy Moore's explanation of the motivations behind the war as a kind of familial retribution toward Sadam, and an unwillingness to fully confront the Saudi's, the U.S. allies.

But as much as I still think that the Iraq war is to some extent an attempt to show that W's penis is longer than Dad's (in the guise of supporting Dad), I find it hard to believe that the whole Cabal, the power structure of which W is just a figurehead, would act on that motive, or at least risk and commit all of this country's resources, and the future of the Republican party, as well as the stature of the United States, to it. The real motive becomes clear when you see that the Saudi's, as U.S. allies, had basically gone south. For one, they were the real nest for all those terrorists (and yes, for the people who brought down those planes, I won't hesitate to use that term). Worse, they had become unreliable in their support of U.S. interests in the Middle East. So they were to be replaced by a "U.S.-friendly" (read: puppet) Iraqi "democracy."

Now see, there's a reason we have three branches of government, as much as supporters of today's cabal don't understand that. The Executive branch is designed to be the cop, the warrior, the chess player in the game of international diplomacy and war. Its thinking needs to some extent to be cold-hearted and analytical. Its innate tendency is toward authoritarianism. That's why we have the Legislative branch, which is supposed to be the voice of the people, and the Judicial, for temperance and rationality. A state run by the Executive branch would almost by definition be a totalitarian state, a police state. The weaker the other two branches become in relation to it, the closer we are to Fascism.

So I understand why the Cabal, fully in charge of the Executive, would want to invade and conquer Iraq. Iraq was run by a known murderous dictator who had shown, shall we say, adversity to U.S. interests in the past. This leaves aside of course the question that we trained him and put him in power, which is bound to have really pissed off some people in the "intelligence" community, although they really should have come to expect it by now from the other known failures of our raise-a-dictator program (take a poll in South America). Justification of an attack on Iraq didn't face the PR problems an attack on another middle Easter country would have faced. Iran was a close second, and is still an option, apparently.

To summarize, the U.S. feels it has to have a foothold in the Middle East for the two reasons I stated above. The Saudi's were no longer reliable to provide that, so we decided to make our own country. But the Bush people, warmongers as they may be, weren't willing to take the advice of actual warriors (the military knew the Bush strategy for war wouldn't work, from the beginning), and they screwed it up, badly. So here we are. You know, if I woke up tomorrow and was the dictator of the United States, I'd be tempted to attack someone, too. Power corrupts. So when I say the the real, unspoken rationale was plausibile and defensible, I mean from the viewpoint of the Executive. That still leaves it to the rest of the government and to the rest of us to give the country a conscience.

In other comment, billgates questions my commitment to freedom of speech, in light of this quote from "Apathy": This is my country.... If you voted for George W. Bush, especially the second time, and if you endorse the Patriot Act, if you are willing to give up in one fell swoop 230 years of American democracy, then get out of my country.

Well, first, realize that comment was somewhat tongue-in-cheek, heartfelt as its sentiment may have been. I fully realize that over fifty percent of the electorate (nevermind 99% of the Senate) is not about to get on a boat. It's just that the America Love It or Leave It sentiment as perfected by Archie Bunker always gets used by the right wing; it's only fair that lovers of freedom should be able to use it, too. I mean, yes I support the ACLU most of the time, but things like the threated Skokie march by the Nazi's (remember that?) really bring that kind of support to the stress point. Yes, I absolutely believe in freedom of speech for everyone, including Fascists. So if someone wants to run for office as a totalitarian, they should be able to do so. If the American public wants to elect a President whose avowed purpose is to dismantle the Republic, I suppose they have a right to do so (although I'm pretty sure that trying to overthrow the Constituition is till defined as treason, which it why the Cabal is guilty of treason as well as war crimes). But we all know that's not how dictatorships come into power. If you want to see how it works in the real world, look at Germany in the 30's and at the U.S. in the beginning of the new Millenium. They come to power by instilling fear in the people, by claiming a mandate, and then by abolishing the system which they used to bring them to office. So disagree with me all you want, but be honest about your motives.

Oh yeah, billgates, by "real war" I meant "necessary war." And yes, there are necessary wars. When you're attacked and defend yourself (and defend yourself against the people who attacked you, duh), that's necessary. And I hate to equate that with an unprovoked invasion. OK?

And finally, I have to comment on pk and TheMemoWriter's conversation about apologies. I agree. And have you ever seen a more half-hearted apology than Cheney's speech in which he supposedly took full responsiblity for shooting his supposed friend? Something to the effect of "I' m the one who pulled the trigger." Duh. Just think what would have happened if that guy had shot Cheney by mistake. And I don't see any reason to think it wasn't just a hunting accident. I do believe there's still a negligent homicide statute in Texas, though. I do believe discharging a weapon toward another human being is at least negligent. Oh, but yeah, Texas. Damn.

Apathy

"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do noth-ing." Edmund Burke.

OK, apparently that popular quote is a paraphrase and can't be found in those words anywhere in Burke's writings. But Hunter Thompson liked it and I like it, and that's good enough for me.

My previous post was either my response, or refusal to respond, to people who were attacking my apparent political activism with regard to my Zen practice. The essence of my response was that zazen makes me see more clearly and helps me do a better job of whatever it is that I'm doing. Zen does not endorse any particular political view, nor does the practice of zazen inculcate one. Enough said.

What I'm addressing here is the criticism I have received frequently (though not on this blog, unfortunately) for being concerned with things I can't change. It's that psychological truth that gets reduced to spiritual babble in that AA prayer, among other things, which encourages you to have the wisdom to know which things you can change, and which you can't, and to not waste your time on the latter.

Which is good advice. I really do try not to worry about things I can't change. I can't change the weather. I can't change the past. I can't change your mind. But I live in a country which is still supposedly a democratic republic, which was the first nation (in our history) founded on the principle that each and every voice matters in the way we govern ourselves. Being a citizen of the United States as it was founded by our forefathers, and for which our ancestors (in my case, my father's generation) fought and died in WWII and other necessary, real wars, is not just about listening to canned news on the Faux channel (and note where Gunslinger Cheney is about to Meet the Press, within the hour as I write this). It's not just about being cannon fodder for a greedhead foreign invasion. It's about participating in a form of government that was, in its time, the greatest experiment ever undertaken in the history of governments, an experiment set up out of necessity to prove a thesis most of the world's population at the time probably thought was absurd: that a free people, given education and access to real information, could govern themselves.

If one more person comes up to me and tells me that "the elections are over, give it up," that person is going to need a foot doctor and a proctologist. Because to change the way this country is governed is not only a right but an obligation of citizenship. The kind of ignorance that tells the populace that they are unable to do anything about the laws that are passed, or the way those laws are enforced, is exactly what the Bush Cabal and the Christian Reich are promoting. If you want to be governed by a fascist elite, there are plenty of countries where you can go. Where you'll never have to make another decision for yourself about which church to go to, or which newspaper to read, or which TV shows to watch. If you go to one of those places, you'll never have to think about right and wrong again. The government and the church (or the lack of one) will make those decisions for you.

But this country is my country. It is the country our father's generations fought and died for. If you voted for George W. Bush, especially the second time, and if you endorse the Patriot Act, if you are willing to give up in one fell swoop 230 years of American democracy, then get out of my country. Because you are an American traitor.

And if you don't vote, what's wrong with you? Apathy will lead us back to the tyranny we fought against, tyranny with so many faces and so many names. If the Clampdown comes, and you didn't try to stop it, what kind of collaborator are you?

Historically as a people we are blind. What's unique is that we have a structure that lets us wake up when we are ready. I just finished watching Vol. 7 of Ken Burns' excellent PBS series Jazz on DVD, part of the context of which is the return of Black soldiers to this country after WWII, soldiers who had fought and seen their comrades die along with the White soldiers (though not beside them, as the military was still segregated). Returning soldiers whom the restaurants wouldn't serve. Not that racial injustice is something I can address summarily in this context. The point is blindness. All these people were opposed to Hitler, but they couldn't see the Hitler in their own minds. This is why thinking clearly is so important.

So just because the Bush cabal hasn't come after you yet, or you think they haven't tapped your phone or looked at your internet searches or checked out your bank account, don't think they won't. Don't think that because you're a White boy who still considers himself a member of the middle class, that you'r invulnerable or immune. Because once they put the boot down they won't stop, and to paraphrase Orwell while we're getting away with paraphrases, the future will consist of a boot stomping on a human face, forever.

"First they came for the Jews and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew. Then they came for the Communists and I did not speak out because I was not a Communist. Then they came for the trade unionists and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak out for me." (Pastor Martin Niemöller)

By the way, here's a link to a couple of very interesting anti-Bush commericals that were too radical for Move-on.org. Be patient, they take a minute to load. Enjoy! http://www.thememoryhole.org/pol/bush-hitler-ads.htm

This post is dedicated to David B. and everyone else who's made it to 49 without going blind.

Zen and Politics

This one could just as easily be called, "Zazen and Politics," or "Zen and the Person-ality," but I'm writing partly in response to a misperception I perceive in some of the responses to my previous posts, and partly in response to a tempest in a teapot I see going on in a couple of other people's blogs. It's not so much about politics as it is about all of the things that are important to us as people, and how that relates to Zen practice, or to zazen, at least from my perspective.

When I qualify my perceptions in that way, please realize that although I first sat zazen over twenty-five years ago, I've only been back doing it regulary for a little over a year at this point; and although when I began sitting again it immediately felt like something I should do and needed to do, only in the past couple of months have I started to notice an overall difference in my perspective, outside of the practice itself. So I could find myself in disagreement with my (current) self, in the future. Regardless I think there are a couple of points worth making.

I have had a couple of responses to my angrier anti-fascist tirades indicating that zazen should have made me calmer, or that I should've realized there are things I can't change, etc. Fellow Zennies will probably note the error here, and yes these comments were made by non-sitters who want to tell me what the benefits of practice should be. The first thing I have to say to these people is that if you want to see what the benefits of zazen are, you need to try it yourself and not just read about it in a book, because only having begun to receive those benefits, I still cannot verbalize them very well (although I have to try, here). Zazen is not transcendental meditation or New Age white light delusion. The Tibetans sometimes visualize themselves as the Buddha. In zazen I try not to visualize anything at all. I try to be just a guy sitting on a cushion in a room. Whatever thoughts come and go, they come and go and I try not to attach to them. If I'm angry, I try to realize that I'm angry and get a perspective on the anger; but see, I'm not really trying to do anything at all. I'm just sitting there. I learned early on that trying to stop the mind is ridiculous and impossible; the mind does what it does. See why trying to talk about zazen sucks? It's impossible. Any description is in error, by its definition, since it requires language, and the quality of immediate experience is beyond language.

That's enough of trying to describe zazen for non-practitioners. Every week when someone does a "reading" at our sits, I cringe, because I've just finished sitting and only once every blue moon does the quality of the reading even begin to approximate the quality of the experience. So if you want to sit, sit. If you don't or won't or can't, just try not to judge it, because believe me, you don't understand.

The point is, my zazen practice has very little if anything to do with the political content of this blog. I have just recently posted a disclaimer over in the sidebar, hopefully to prevent anyone's projecting my own personal views, beliefs and opinions on to anyone I endorse otherwise, especially the Zen people. Our Zen group had a mini-retreat last weekend; at least two of the nine people who came to sit all day admitted to being some sort of Christian, or at least attending Christian services. And these are the people who are actually practicing zazen, not just walking around claiming to be Buddhists or talking about Zen on the internet. If you asked me who is more qualified to talk about Zen, the ones who sit, or the ones who just read and talk, my answer should be obvious.

Honestly, I think you could be a Christian for life, and still practice zazen and get the benefit from it; and here I would distinguish between zazen the practice, and Zen the religion or philosophy. Because a philosophy is just an attempt to articulate in words things that (in my preception) can't be articulated or even conceptualized within the human mind; a religion is an attempt to reduce the "meaning" of the universe to the level of a man. Both are doomed to fail. Zen is unique among these "belief" systems in that it admits its own inadequacey. It is, to repeat the abused cliche, a finger pointing at the moon and not the moon itself. The more I practice zazen, the less I want to read or even hear about Zen. Experience is what it is, exactly and at that moment.

The history of Zen is replete with examples of contradictory philosophies. It is true that most of the Zen practitioners I know personally tend not to be fans of the Bush administration, but I would never begin to project that tendency to all practitioners across the board. In current times it is more likely due to that administration's ties to the Christian Reich and the suppression of dissent, that tends to make the practitioners of alternative philosophies or religions "dissenters." But look at the Zen "masters" who supported total and complete nationalistic warmongering in Japan during World War II. Leaving aside the whole issue of the corruption of Zen in Japan in those years, how can that be reconciled with the pacifist attitude I see among most practitioners here and now? Or look at the historical link between Zen and the samurai and the warrior class in Japan. Zen (except for some martial arts schools) probably has more links with pacifism in this country due to the proclivities of its early exponents here, than due to anything intrinsic in the practice itself.

It seems from my limited experience that zazen should make you better at whatever it is you do. I notice in myself an increased clarity of mind and maintenance of perspective, and that took a while to develop. I do see things more clearly than I did a year ago, and I tend to realize more that I'm feeling something, when I'm feeling it. That doesn't stop me from having emotions. I do think that being able to "drop back" and see myself as well as my environment, and myself in my environment, helps me to avoid being ensnared in illusion. That's true whether the illusion is intentionally projected by others, or whether it comes from my own inevitable filtering of experience through my senses and my mind. So whereas before I may have had a vague feeling that something was wrong, now I can see clearly that something is wrong, and I can tell you about it. I can also see myself operating in that context.

So, the "political" writings on here are expressions of the Bob J. personality. Zazen does not make that personality go away; and if elements of what I perceive in zazen are filtering through to the Bob J. personality, that take time. The only difference is that I see that the personality is there (sometimes). Sometimes I just observe that personality. At the deepest level at which we maintain individuality the personality is different from the self. At a deeper level, the self disappears entirely. But as I've said before, someone still has to go out and act in the world, and that someone is the personality. That personality may change over time, but in a way it is an independent entity. For me, the benefit of zazen is still about perspective.

So can you be a Christian or a Republican or a samurai and still be doing zazen correctly? The answer seems to me, absolutely. The other impetus I had to finally write this particular blog entry came from a discussion in the blog of a Zen teacher I revere, in which the Zen master came out with some extremely (politically) naive opinions about the end of the Cold War, U.S. dominance, and apparently a worldwide police state. And this is from someone who has practiced zazen for a lifetime, and who helped reform Zen in Japan from the rotten mess it was in after WW II. The lesson I have learned from this, I hope, is that Zen will never make me infallible. It will never make my opinions right. Although I feel that I now can see more clearly, and I am more convinced than ever that the U.S. citizenry couldn't be more deluded and shallow if they were drugged, I have to realize that that is the perception and opinion of Bob J., and not the judgment of God or the universe.

One of the ironies in in my authorship of this blog is that I really do not consider myself a political person. I have always voted because I believe that if you don't at least vote and try to do what's right, even if the whole mechanism winds up being hijacked by you-know-who, you don't have a right to complain; however, although I've never voted Republican, I haven't always voted Democrat. If the current political decision was the typical Tweedledum vs. Tweedledee decision we've usually had, I wouldn't be so outspoken or emphatic, and this blog might not exist. If my Zen practice has anything to do with my "political" writings here, it is that it helps me see through the fog. And boy is it foggy out there. I'm looking thorought the fog at the iceberg, and meanwhile everyone's still drinking and dancing and the band is still playing. There are some Democrats rearranging the deck chairs. So here we go.

Postscript: In a totally irrelevant move, I'm giving you this link to my favorite Super Bowl commercial. Everyone's looking at it, so it may be slow to load. Just click here: http://www.hummer.com/monsters/index_spot.html

Lighten Up, People

I've been trying to keep from comment-ing on these distrac-tional news stories, but this one is both apparently true and interesting: the hysteria set off in the Muslim world over a Danish cartoon's depictions of the Prophet Mohammed. Embassies are burning! A Jordanian published who reprinted some of the cartoons has had death threats. Also apparently, this is mob action and not government censorship, albeit occurring in places where the government and the mob are seized by the same hysteria.

I haven't seen much on American reactions to all this, but I don't watch the mass media much anymore. I have seen some voices of tolerance from Muslims who don't live in the radical countries, and I would imagine that most of America feels a condescending amusement at the whole thing. After all, we live in a country with a history of free speech. I imagine that most Christians feel the same way, since Christian cartoons have not been uncommon, and have been tolerated if not appreciated by reasonable Christians as part of the price of living in a country with our First Amendment. Personally, despite having some fairly vicious urges to counterattack when the Christian Reich wants to limit my own expression, I really do understand a genuine Christian's or Muslim's offense at expressions, including cartoons, which are designed to be offensive as opposed to merely humuorous. Contrary to what some of you probably think, I don't hate Christians. There are a lot of good people who believe in and espouse Christianity doing good things in the world. Religions has its place in society; it supplies a morality and a social framework for people who are unwilling or incapable of doing the personal work that is required to coming up with their own understanding of right and wrong. In a society where literacy is dimishing, education is censored and subject to political pressure, and self-reliance is discouraged, the masses do in fact need an opiate. More concisely, they need a frame of reference. The morality espoused by the New Testament is fundamentally good. The fact that the Christian Reich ignores its own Commandments just shows that they have betrayed the tenets of their own religion. I would rather live in a place where the populace is controlled by the genuine Christian faith than by, say, the Russian mob, the Politburo, or a Muslim theocracy.

No, the root problem with Christianity is that, like Islam, it relies on a fundamental delusion. Once you buy the biggest lie ever told, you'll swallow anything. But I digress; I'll have to address that one soon.

Of course, I am assuming that most of the Christian world is perceiving the Islamic cartoon scandal with a superior detachment. The scary thing is that some of that probably agree with the rioting Muslims. It's true that in the modern world, there are no zealots like Islamic zealots, or if that's not true in individual cases, it's obvious that no group of zealots has been so successful in banding together to seize political power and eradicate rational opposition. But once again, Christians with attitudes of superiority in the current situation should remember, or maybe learn, history. During the middle ages, it was the Muslim libraries like the great one in Constantinople (Istanbul) which preserved the works of the Greek philosophers while Christian nut jobs,in their most successful incarnation ever in the form of the Crusades, ravaged and destroyed the great books of Europe. There never would have been a Renaissance had not the Muslims preserved the legacy of great Western thought against the cultural descendants of the ancient philosophers. How dark would our own times be without the revived virtues of discussion and reason, as exemplified by Plato's successors, to combat the ignorance of the Dark Ages and the medieval Church? I don't see how the Western democracies could ever have arisen without the Muslim world's preservation of our true heritage for us.

But don't feel too superior yet. The forces of ignorance are at work here, too. In the midst of the deluge of press on the Muslim cartoon controversy, I couldn't help but note a minor thread in the media about NBC's backing down to "Christian" pressures in the same vein on a Will & Grace storyline. That sitcom, which jumped the shark a couple of years ago and is still playing the guest celebrity card to try to get some ratings in its dying season, was to feature a storyline in which Brittney would play a "religious conser-vative TV personality" co-hosting a cooking show with the character Jack. The name of the show was to be "Cruci-fixin's." Meanwhile the American Family Association, a (guess what) Christian nut group based in Tupelo, Mississippi (!) protested and has effectively killed the storyline, having promised a protest, especially since the episode was to have aired right before Good Friday. This is the same enlightened watchdog group which claims partial credit for the demise of The Book of Daniel. I never saw Daniel, mostly because I rarely watch network TV, but it seemed to be a rather enlightened comedy about a pill-popping priest with aberrant children. Nut jobs had apparently gotten the series dropped by a number of local stations like the one here in Nashville. God forbid Christians have something to think about while they're laughing and mindlessly buying approved products.

So see, we're not so different after all. Mob pressure is mob pressure.

Sometimes it all makes me glad to be a Buddhist. True, Buddhism has its reactionary elements. There are people practicising primitive forms of Buddhism that put them in the league of the Muslim mobs and Christian Reich in terms of sheer delusion, if not in militancy. There are sadly, people worshipping the Buddha, in contravention of everything Gautama ever stood for. But for the most part, Buddhism is not a cult of the person like Christianity and Islam. Not many Buddhists would be very upset to learn that their favorite Sutra was not written or spoken by Gautama, if it works for them. It would not destroy Buddhism if we were to learn that the historical Buddha never lived at all. And talk about cartoons! All those little fat Chinese Buddhas? Anyone really worship that? How about the (ex-) Shoney Big Boy?

So really, people. If you're unable to percieve the humor in gentle cartoons or caricatures of the things you hold sacred, at least try to tolerate them. Sometimes I think that humor is the true essence of spirituality, or at least a vital part thereof. So lighten up.

Stop Wasting Your Time!

This silliness has got to stop! Everytime I turn on NPR or any other of the few news sources I consider sane these days, I hear more about Alito. Kerry is going to fillibuster to stop Alito. Alito must be stopped. Alito this. Alito that. Let me tell you something: Samuel Alito is going to be confirmed. First, although the man's politics are reprehensible, politics are not the criterion which is supposed to be used in a confirmation hearing. So even if the Senate was all Democrats, Alito probably should be confirmed. The man is qualified under any standards to which properly can be held in this proceeding. Yes, he is part of the legacy of the early 80's, and if you didn't want something this right-wing on the Supreme Court, you shouldn't have voted for Reagan, etc. But at this turning point in our history, for the Democrats or anyone truly interesting in trying to stop the Christian Reich from cementing its foundations and completing its annihilation of the American democracy, to be wasting its time on trying to oppose the inevitable confirmation of an undesirable but unstoppable Supreme Court Justice is... well, lame.

Look around you, dammit, look look LOOK! The new version of the "Patriot Act" authorizes a uniformed federal police force. The President has asserted that he is above the law and that Congress cannot regulate him. If things go on as they are, the Supreme Court will be irrelevant by the time of the next Presidential election. So will the Legislature. Look at your Constitution. Look at your history. The Supreme Court and the Legislature can act only through the Executive. They have no guns. They have no soldiers. They have no cops. When Bush asserts that he is not subject to the restrictions imposed by the Legislature, why should he be subject to the restrictions of the Court? You are one step away from martial law, people, one step away, can't you see?

I am sick and disgusted with the Democratic Party; they either have been co-opted or cowed or just have not done their job in opposing the end of the American Democracy. We are at the turning point analgous to that at which the Roman Republic came under the rule of Caesar and was destroyed. They have jumped, like seals after kipper, after one more red herring. How could the Democrats ever win when they let the Republicans pick all the issues and control the agenda? They have been doing it to you for years, people. Abortion should not be a political issue; it is a decision between a woman and her doctor, just like the right to die. Gay marriage is not a political issue, it is a decision made between consenting adults. Yet by letting the Republicans and the Reich control the ball for so many years, so that all the Democrats and the so-called Leftists can do is scurry after it, the American people have allowed themselves to be distracted, again and again and continuously, from the real issue. The real issue is the destruction of 230 years of American democracy by totalitarians, by fear and intimidation and lies.

"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." [source: BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, Pennsylvania Assembly: Reply to the Governor, November 11, 1755.—The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, ed. Leonard W. Labaree, vol. 6, p. 242 (1963).]

You've let yourselves be scared, people. You still don't know the truth about September 11, 2001. You still don't know why those buildings came down. You still don't know how many people died in New Orleans because Bush's butt buddy who headed up FEMA was less qualified than the manager at your local Wal-Mart, and nobody else gave a shit. What's so sad is that the Democrats were just as stupid and intimidated as everyone else. Why did everyone go along with the "Weapons of Mass Destruction" lies? Couldn't they see through that. I could. Couldn't you? So why couldn't your representatives?

The only excuse I can think of is that the Congress, like the American people, had never been lied to so bald-facedly before. Just like the leaders of Europe and the World, who had been used to relying on the American President to be at least honest at times of crisis, we -- they, I'm not going down on this one -- were buffaloed by history and tradition. No more! I can't imagine the leaders of other nations (real nations) blindly following the U.S. into war again any time soon, and that may be a good thing. Will we be so blind again as a people?

So stop wasting your time. Forget Alito. Forget Roe vs. Wade. Forget gay rights. You'll have time to address all those issues later, assuming you can preserve the forum in which the argument must take place. Forget everything except preserving your Republic. Don't make the deaths of those who died in WWII and America's real wars of defense meaningless. Don't let your children volunteer to commit murder and torture in foreign lands. Don't insult the memories and the legacies of everyone who ever fought for American freedom.

If you were duped and voted for these fascists, admit it. A lot of other people were, too. Just do the next right thing, now. Stand up for your rights and for humanity, before Bush and his puppetmasters lead you into a new dark age from which a project like the American Republic may not emerge for a thousand years; these people are close to accomplishing what Hitler only dreamed of, because they have refined the tools and techniques.

Please, stop Bush now. Swallow your pride. Focus on the main issue; save our nation now, before it's too late.

Why Women's Tennis is Better than the NFL

I just witnessed a very strange event. In the women's final of the Australian Open, Amelie Mauresmo, a handsome Frenchwoman who has consistently been a top five player but had never before won a Grand Slam title, defeated Justine Henin-Hardenne. Henin, a Belgian who already had a handful of Grand Slam title, was underseeded at eighth in the tournament, having been out most of last year with injuries, but she won this event in 2004. Mauresmo had been widely seen as a choker in the big events, but as the best women's player never to win a Grand Slam. She always gets to the quarterfinals, is rarely injured -- a very even player. Henin is a pit bull, one of the toughest players, a 5'6" player who could hit with most power players. She has always been one of my favorite players because she is smart; she diagnoses her frequent first set losses, adjusts her game and find a way to win matches. She is like Martina Hingis with power.

Tonight Mauresmo won 6-1, 2-0 (ret.) to finally win that title. Henin made enough errors to lose 8 out of 9 games completed. Just before losing the ninth game, she called a trainer and a doctor to the court, who gave her something to calm her stomach. A few points later, she retired. The only explanation given was that she had an upset stomach.

An upset stomach? In her match against Mauresmo, Kim Clijsters retired when the players were dead-on in the third set because she twisted her ankle, which might seem comparable until it was revealed that Clijsters pulled two tendons and will be out for at least two months (which will make short-lived her tenure at #1, which starts Monday). Who hasn't seen the video of Pete Sampras puking on the court at the U.S. Open, then continuing to play? It certainly took the thrill out of Mauresmo's win, and Henin will be condemned for it. But I have to believe she must really have been that sick (and exhausted from her semifinal against Maria Sharapova two nights ago, one of the best matches I have seen in a while.

Less than nine days from now, Seattle takes on Pittsburgh in the Super Bowl. I will probably watch, but next year at this time I probably won't remember who player or who won. So given what I said above, why do I think women's tennis is a better sport?

It's all subjective of course. No sport could ever be better than another (unless we include ice dancing). But it's my blog, and so in this blog women's tennis is better than football. Why?

I got interested in women's tennis in the late 70's because my fiancee at the time was a very dedicated and talented club player, and I was forced to follow the sport and became acquainted with the players and the game. Prior to that, I'd never really followed sports much at all. Neither of my parents had much interest in them, and I grew up as an only child and never really encountered sports until I got to school, by which time it seemed I was hopelessly behind. I was never in particularly bad shape physically (except for a brief sojourn as a fat kid) but I never really acquired sports-specific skills, and by the time I got to high school I hated the kids who played the sports so much that I could not only not bear to play them, I couldn't bear to watch them. At the University of Tennessee I remember clearly looking out my dorm window on hungover Saturday mornings and seeing oceans of middle-aged men in highway-cone orange shouting inanities and spending money. All through my twenties, I was convinced that sports fans were a bunch of idiots. But I started following women's tennis in 1980 and never really stopped.

You may ask, why women's tennis and not men's tennis? I certainly have as much respect for men's tennis, but I never thought it was interesting because it was more of a power game. I have followed it fairly well, and to this day I still think Boris Becker's unseeded win at Wimbledon in 1985 at age 17 was one of the most emotional moments in sports I have ever seen. But the women's game was all more intelligence and strategy, and infinitely more watchable, not just because the players were cuter but because men's tennis in Grand Slams takes the form of insufferable five-game matches. Very few sporting events are worth watching for four or five hours.

Obviously my choice of women's tennis as a sport to follow is idiosyncratic and from the point of view of the general population, random. It's really about (1) individual sports vs. team sports; for several reasons; (2) less popular sports vs. more popular sports, and (3) the particular decline in cohesiveness of teams sports, and football in particular, due to free agency.

So why the NFL? I'm not going to try to talk too intelligently about a subject I don't know that much about. Like I say, I was a late starter on any of this shit, but football as a sport is my favorite of the big sports, and I did follow it fairly closely through a period in the 80's and 90's (until this year I thought Jerome Bettis was a Ram). I really hate basketball; just the sound of the gymasium and those ridiculous shorts makes me run from the room screaming. And although I did play more baseball as a kid than any other sport, and it's fun in the park, it's death on TV. So football is my favorite of these.

Really my three reasons above break down to two since (1) and (3) wind up being pretty much the same, so let's knock out (2) first. Less popular sports are better because they aren't as subject to mass hysteria. Crowds are always stupid. So games are good, obsessed fans are bad (and for a counterexample from my own favorite, ask Monica Seles). Why? See my prior posts on George Bush and the Christian Reich. The Indiannapolis Colts may be a less harmful release of the same passions, but all these groups could be shot down like rabid dogs for improvements in population control, environment, and quality of life.

As for reasons (1) and (3), OK, it's good for kids to learn to play together and I admit I play with others less well than most. And a good sports team, like a chamber music orchestra, can be interesting and a source of pride for its integration and cooperation, and a source of fascination in the way the individuals interact. So any individual game can be interesting. But I am a little uncomfortable with for whom or what the crowd is cheering in the long run. It seems like such an obvious precursor to that same mob mentality that precurses nationalism. This is particularly problematic when the team represents a place or an institution, as it normally does. The free agency rule just exacerbated the situation for professional sports. When I was a kid, the players on the teams were a lot more likely to be the same from year to year. Yeah, I can see cheering for a group of people. But when the people change so frequently that there is no continuity to speak of, it's like cheering for one patch of ocean over another; its's all about the symbol. Hence, mob mentality, hence nationalism.

On the other hand, following the career of an individual athelete is just that. Particulary in tennis, where no coaching is allowed on court. When Justine Henin-Hardenne got sick tonight, she couldn't bring in Kim Clijster's stomach. Mauresmo won't show up at the French Open with Steffi Graf's forehand. What you got is what you got. And that's what it is to be human.

[Footnote: So why is college football not preferable to the NFL, since the continuity of players is greater with a fairly predictable turnover due to graduation or college exits? Just internal football reasons like the lack of a playoff system and the fact that the mass hysteria is at its worst with universities -- don't really know why.]

By the way, the pic at the top, if you don't know, is Martina Hingis, who is making a pretty successful return to tennis after a three-year layoff after "marginal players like Anastasia Myskina" (Hingis' words) starting winning Grand Slams. In the last year or so, women's tennis had returned to its former self after two self-promoting musclebound hooligans called the Williams sisters tried to turn it into men's tennis. Go Martina! I don't know about the doll.

Gee, was this really a sports blog?

Ms. Johnson Conveys My Regrets

This is Ms. Johnson. Ms. Johnson is a sixteen-year old Calico whom I took in when she was found abandoned on Central Avenue (Route 66) in Albuquerque as a barely-weened kitten. Ms. Johnson has a long and fascinating life history, only parts of which she is willing to share with you, as she is a very private individual. She has been spayed, de-clawed, flown cross-country, been forced to live outside for years at a time, and has survived her lifetime companion, Thunder. However for the last two years she has been comfortably retired here with me in Nashville.

Ms. Johnson doesn't really like anyone but me, and she has been content of late because I have been home with her most of the time. I quit my last job at the first of the year, and since I have something else lined up starting about ten days from now, I have been able to spend a comfortable month mostly away from humans. However, I haven't been blogging much and Ms. Johnson agreed to appear here today to tell you why.

Looking back over my blog entries since I started this thing last October, most of what I wrote was inspired by the events of the day as filtered through the environment of ignorance I was working in. The job I left had a lot of good things about it, and the real reasons I left were too complex and too personal to really go into at this point, but you will recall that in several posts I mentioned that I had to deal with an inescapable exponent of the Christian right and the Bush cabal. The office manager in question was a very good-hearted individual who unfortunately had been taken in by the whole delusional machinery manifested by those twin pincers of public ignorance in America. So to summarize, every day I was lambasted by the issues of the day from a point of view derived straight from the Faux News Network.

I remember when I got my one tattoo years ago, I had to spend a total of about eight hours over three sessions in the chair. The first session consisted of the (detailed) outline, and the second of the blacks. These are fairly deep uses of the needle, and could be a little painful, but it was nothing I couldn't take. It was the final, four-hour session with the colors that drove me up in the wall. It consisted of a consistent, light scraping of the skin surface that felt like I always imagnined water torture would. In the same way, the incessant recitiation of the axioms and mantras of modern American ignorance by someone who I genuinely like affected me in a way that the fouler rantings of the hatemongers never could, and I had to lash out. Hence the angrier blog entries.

Here in my cave with Ms. Johnson and the Rufi, there is nothing to make me angry (except maybe the bad line calls in the Henin-Hardenne vs. Sharapova match last night). I can read that the ignorance marches on, but I don't have to look at their faces or hear their voices. I can sit, and I can watch my anime and read my novels in peace. When I was young I used to write songs on my guitar. Like most young men I was obsessed with passion and romance, and I used to articulate my (what I see now as mostly hormonal) pain through lyrics. So I wrote all the good stuff when I was angry and depressed and needed to howl out loneliness. When I had a girlfriend and was happy, those rare moments, I couldn't write. I had nothing to write about. So for the past few weeks I haven't felt the need to react against anything. Hence few blog entries.

Since I don't think I'll be going back into any similar atmosphere soon or ever, my posts may be a bit calmer. Maybe not. I do have some things I want to talk about. I want to talk about why I had to major in philosophy and become obsessed with the meaning of life before I came to realize that philosophy is useless except as something to get through, and that the meaning of life cannot be found in your head. I want to explain why I had to practice law for ten years to realize that the legal system and can't be fixed without a sincere effort to follow the edict of Shakespeare. I want to talk about the history of religion and to explain my view that there are a lot of good religions and only three bad ones. Mostly I want to replace the crap we have been handed in the form of various Trojan horses like the War on Drugs and displacements of reality like the "War on Christmas" shit with a War on Ignorance. It just occurs to me that we need to be able to read and think and discuss again, or the video game culture we live in, with our discussions reduced to what used to be called MTV-edited sound bites, just might be signs of the real Last Days -- not of the planet earth (this old rock is gonna be around for a while), but of our culture as we knew it before Bush.

But that's for the near future. Right now I need to feed Ms. Johnson and sit zazen.

War is over, if you want it. -- John Lennon.

Living and Dying: The Heart Sutra

Avalokitesvara Bodhisattva
when practicing deeply the Prajna Paramita perceives that all five skandhas are empty
and is saved from all suffering and distress.
Shariputra, form does not differ from emptiness, emptiness does not differ from form. That which is form is emptiness, that which is emptiness form.
The same is true of feelings, perceptions, impulses, consciousness.
Shariputra, all dharmas are marked with emptiness; they do not appear or disappear, are not tainted or pure, do not increase or decrease.
Therefore, in emptiness no form, no feelings, perceptions, impulses, consciousness.
No eyes, no ears, no nose, no tongue, no body, no mind ;no color, no sound, no smell, no taste, no touch, no object of mind; no realm of eyes and so forth until no realm of mind, consciousness.
No ignorance and also no extinction of it, and so forth until no old age and death and also no extinction of them.
No suffering, no origination,no stopping, no path, no cognition, also no attainment with nothing to attain.
The Bodhisattva depends on Prajna Paramita and the mind is no hindrance; without any hindrance no fears exist. Far apart from every perverted view one dwells in Nirvana.
In the three worlds all Buddhas depend on Prajna Paramita and attain Anuttara Samyak Sambodhi.
Therefore know that Prajna Paramita is the great transcendent mantra, is the great bright mantra, is the utmost mantra, is the supreme mantra which is able to relieve all suffering and is true, not false. So proclaim the Prajna Paramita mantra, proclaim the mantra which says:
gate gate paragate parasamgate bodhi svaha gate gate paragate parasamgate bodhi svaha gate gate paragate parasamgate bodhi svaha.

The above is the translation of the Heart Sutra of the Kwam Um School of Zen, a Korean school to which the sangha to which I belong had ties in the past. It may not be the best translation of the sutra, but it is the one to which I have become accustomed.

Zen differs from most religions, including most other schools of Buddhism, in that it really has no sacred texts [In fact I don't consider my Buddhism a religion at all but a practice, but that's another matter.] That is, we certainly admit that the sutras (and there may an exception or two; my Buddhist scholarship is certainly amateur) were written down after Gautama Siddhartha, the historical Buddha, died, and are prone to human error. In fact many of them are really fantastical and it's hard for me to believe that Gautama had anything to do with them. However, Zen and many schools of Mahayana Buddhism accept the Heart Sutra as the core truth at the heart of Buddhism.

I'm not really qualified to give any kind of explication of the Heart Sutra; like any other great truth, it speaks for itself (in translation). It's just that my ruminations on the discussion of life and death in the past few blogs keep bringing me back to it. "The mind is no hindrance; without any hindrance, no fears exist." It just strikes me that those who are afraid to die are afraid to live. The same people I know who would keep a disabled individual on life support in a coma for thirty years, are afraid to drive their cars in the snow. Go figure.

But once dying is accepted as a part of living, it is nothing to fear. My assumption is that when I die, my life will cease. If all these people are so convinced that upon their deaths, their souls will go to Heaven or to Nirvana or whatever, or that they will be reborn in a better existence due their persistence in making themselves subservient to a deity of their own making, why are they so afraid to die?

We tend to think the samurai were all screwed up. And of course like the American cowboy they are not what they are all cracked up to be, but that's not the point. Yeah, it's a little nuts to shove a sword into your gut because you may have displeased someone (of course it helps when there's a guy standing behind you to chop your head off so you don't feel any pain). On the other hand, it's a noble concept to end your life with honor and intent, no matter what the snivellers says. It's very liberating to begin each day with the knowledge that you might die that day, and the intent to make it the best possible day you could have for the last one. I enjoy my life and intend to keep doing it for a while. But it's mine.

A Few More Words About HST (With an extended quote which is not for children)

Thanks for bearing with me on that last post; I got overly ambitious and it got out of hand. Plus it was a pain to edit.

First, if by the time you finished reading my last entry, you were too tired to read the interview I linked to, please take the time to read it when you get a chance: http://www.freezerbox.com/archive/article.php?id=287.

It's occurred to me in the last couple of years that the things that are obviously true, for you, tend to be perceptions that you have for yourself. I tend to think that everything that someone else tells me is true (unless it's a comment about an immediate material reality), is not true. Part of this is that I don't trust other people's perceptions, and part is that other people quite often have a vested interest in making you believe what they believe, especially if they are insecure for some reason about those beliefs and want confirmation. A lot of this seems to be the source of what we perceive as racism, religion, homophobia, politics, etc.

But when I read a statement from someone else that confirms to something that I first thought of for myself previously - especially if it's years previously - it tends to make me think that statement or idea is true, at least for me. This is how I felt when I read a lot of Hardcore Zen, and how I felt when I read the linked interview with HST.

There are several points Thompson makes in the interview that had occurred to me previously and independently. First, the similarity of American in the last three or four years to Germany in the 30's, the Weimar Republic mentality of fear that gave rise to Hitler. Although the demographics and the specific economics of the two cultures in those two eras are different, the climate of fear created for purposes of manipulation are the same. Second, the feeling on September 11, 2001, and in the days thereafter that we were not being told the truth about what happened and who was responsible. There is no question that the tragic events of that day were manipulated by Bush's puppetmasters for their own ends; the question is, was there foreknowledge? The third point is the comparison between the Presidency of Richard Nixon and the current regime. Simply put, what we (and HST) saw as the ultimate evil in American government doesn't hold a candle to the evil now in place. Nixon was an amateur compared to whoever is controlling George W. Bush.

The following is an extended quote from HST's last book, Kingdom of Fear. It is long, raw, uncensored and vile. It is also the truest thing I have ever read about the situation this country is in today. If you are easily offended, don't read it. I'll be back soon.

Let’s face it – the yo-yo president of the USA knows nothing. He is a dunce. He does what he is told to do – says what he is told to say - poses the way he is told to pose. He is a Fool.
This is never an easy thing for the voters of this country to accept.

No. Nonsense. The president cannot be a Fool. Not at this moment in time – when the last vestiges of the American Dream are on the line. This is not the time to have a bogus rich kid in charge of the White House.

Which is, after all, our house. That is our headquarters – it is where the heart of America lives. So if the president lies and acts giddy about other people’s lives – if he wantonly and stupidly endorses mass murder as a logical plan to make sure we are still Number One – he is a Jackass by definition – a loud and meaningless animal with no functional intelligence and no balls.

To say that this goofy child president is looking more and more like Richard Nixon in the summer of 1974 would be a flagrant insult to Nixon.

Whoops! Did I say that? Is it even vaguely possible that some New Age Republican whore-beast of a false president could actually make Richard Nixon look like a Liberal?
The capacity of these vicious assholes we elected to be in change of our lives for four years to commit terminal damage to our lives and our souls and our loved ones is far beyond Nixon. Shit! Nixon was the creator of many of the once-proud historical landmarks that these dumb bastards are savagely destroying now: the Clean Air Act of 1970; Campaign Finance Reform; the endangered species act; opening a Real-Politik dialogue with China; and on and on.
The prevailing quality of life in America – by any accepted method of measuring – was inarguably freer and more politically open under Nixon than it is today in this evil year of Our Lord 2002.

The Boss was a certified monster who deserved to be impeached and banished. He was a truthless creature of former FBI Director J Edgar Hoover – a foul human monument to corruption and depravity on a scale that dwarfs any other public official in American history. But Nixon was at least smart enough to understand why so many honorable patriotic US citizens despised him. He was a Liar. The truth was not in him.

Nixon believed – as he said many times – that if the president of the United States does it, it can’t be illegal. But Nixon never understood the much higher and meaner truth of Bob Dylan’s warning that “To live outside the law you must be honest”.

The difference between an outlaw and a war criminal is the difference between a pedophile and a Pederast: the pedophile is a person who thinks about sexual behaviour with children, and the pederast does those things. He lays hands on innocent children – he penetrates them and changes their lives forever.

Being the object of a pedophile’s warped affections is a Routine feature of growing up in America – and being the victim of a pederast’s crazed “love” is part of dying. Innocence is no longer an option. Once penetrated, the child becomes a Queer in his own mind, and that is not much different than murder.

Richard Nixon crossed that line when he began murdering foreigners in the name of “family values” – and George Bush crossed it when he sneaked into office and began killing brown-skinned children in the name of Jesus and the American people.

When Muhammad Ali declined to be drafted and forced to kill “gooks” in Vietnam he said. “I ain’t got nothin’ against them Viet Cong. No Cong ever called me Nigger.”

I agreed with him, according to my own personal ethics and values. He was Right.
If we had a dash of Muhammad Ali’s eloquent courage, this country and the world would be a better place because of it.

Okay. That’s it for now. Read it and weep … See you tomorrow, folks. You haven’t heard the last of me. I am the one who speaks for the spirit of freedom and decency in you. Shit. Somebody has to do it.

We have become a Nazi monster in the eyes of the whole world – a nation of bullies and bastards who would rather kill than live peacefully. We are not just Whores for power and oil, but killer whores with hate and fear in our hearts. We are human scum, and that is how history will judge us … No redeeming social value. Just whores. Get out of our way, or we’ll kill you.

Well, shit on that dumbness, George W. Bush does not speak for me or my son or my mother or my friends or the people I respect in this world. We didn’t vote for these cheap, greedy little killers who speak for America today – and we will not vote for them again in 2002. Or 2004. Or ever.

Who does vote for these dishonest shitheads? Who among us can be happy and proud of having all this innocent blood on our hands? Who are these swine? These flag-sucking half-wits who get fleeced and fooled by stupid rich kids like George Bush?
They are the same ones who wanted to have Muhammad Ali locked up for refusing to kill gooks. They speak for all that is cruel and stupid and vicious in the American character. They are the racists and hate mongers among us – they are the Ku Klux Klan. I piss down the throats of these Nazis.

And I am too old to worry about whether they like it or not. Fuck them.

In defense of Hunter S. Thompson and the Real Right to Die

Boy, I hope I don't screw up here. As you know if you've been reading these posts, I am a big fan of Brad Warner, the Zen teacher whose book got me back to Zen practice after years of uh, neglect. And I've succeeded in inviting him to come to Nashville for our spring retreat in March. So I hope I don't piss him off. But one of his comments the other day struck me as something I wanted to argue with, and I'm doing it here rather than in the comments section on his blog.

Brad made the following comment on January third (of course this is out of context, so I invite you to check out the Hardcore Zen blog). "And yet, you need to be able to practice some kind of self-regulation. We do need to know right from wrong. Otherwise you'd end up like Hunter S. Thompson or somebody like that." One thing I do feel Hunter Thompson was imbued with was an overwhelming sense of the difference between right and wrong. He just didn't draw it in the same place as some others do.

But I realized that when Brad replied that he hadn't read Thompson's writings; he was just reacting to the public persona of HST as satirized, most famously as Uncle Duke in Doonesbury, but also as portrayed by Bill Murray in Where Buffalo Roam, and slightly less misleadingly by Johnny Depp [By the way, Fear in Loathing in Las Vegas was a great movie, I thought, except for Depp's portrayal of Thompson, which was way too clownish. Johnny Depp is usually a great actor and one of my favorites, but why was he so far off in his portrayal of Thompson? And likewise, he says the character he played in Pirates of the Caribbean was based on Keith Richard. I just thought he seemed like a silly fag. No homophobic reference intended. But enough about Johnny Depp.]

Anyway, Brad responded to a couple of us objecting to his characterization of Thompson by saying that he hadn't read Thompson and that he was not commenting on HST the literary man but on Thompson the man who drugged himself throughout his life and then killed himself. True, Thompson did just that but he did not kill himself with drugs; in fact he seems to be one of those rare cases where his highest literary function was not impaired by them. In fact, I think it is probably true that his accomplishments as a journalist, literary originator and cultural icon are inextricably tied to his lifestyle. Anyone who has ever read Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas or any of this other works should immediately see what I mean. The whole Gonzo thing was the integration of his lifestyle with his experiences as a journalist of his day. If you read The Great Shark Hunt collection, you'll see that his pre-Gonzo journalism in incredibly insightful and well-done; he just hadn't yet created his own form, like Kerouac when he wrote The Town and the City. And if you're not familiar with Kerouac, go check out my November blog on him. It's not at all coincidental that I mention Thompson and Kerouac in the same breath. Not only are they two of my biggest literary influences, they are also two of my biggest heroes, despite the fact that they led atypical lives. Or maybe because of that.

I have to admit that I had gotten away from Thompson's work. Of course I read the above-cited books, plus Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72 and of course Hell's Angels. If you haven't read Hell's Angels, do so immediately. It's pre-Gonzo, and a totally immaculate piece of first-person journalism. He explores them to their depths (and don't confuse the Angels of '69 with what they later became), and then of course in the end gets beaten shitless for it. He kept on writing, on the political campaigns and sports (Nixon loved to talk football with HST, by the way). But I drifted away.

I really want to make two points in this blog: First, Hunter S. Thompson was a genius who changed my life, your life and our country forever (although the latter is being consistently eroded). Second, I am damned sick of people attacking him for the way he died. Having shamelessly exposited my theses, let me continue to ramble. Hunter could have wanted no less.

I have noticed in some of the blogs I've been reading lately that the usual analysis of blogs in general is that the off-topic ones are not successful, presumably because the people who try to follow them are not interested in all of the content. This blog is all one world, my world. I think that just like HST's writing and his lifestyle, my interests in Zen and in politics and American culture are inextricably linked. This is for the Zen guys: Have you ever noticed that what you are doing when you wind up observing the mind in zazen, is in fact observing the personality? I think the bottom line is to realize that all you observe is to observed from a perspective. Perspectives are not arbitrary and bad; they exist because despite the deep realization you can have in your zazen that you are not distinct from the universe, the truth is that you must distinguish yourself from the rest of the universe to function, because the universe cannot drive your car, it cannot do your taxes, and it cannot write your blog. When I successfully disengage in zazen, I (?) can successfully and objectively observe the actives of Bob J. Who is not me at that moment. Like I talked about stepping out of the movie.

But Bob J. is a creature who does what he does. The zazen me cannot control him. I think that this is the false edge of any kind of meditation where it falls into mysticism. The basic fallacy is that I can encompass all of God or the universe in my own human being. Give up on that.

Now, on Hunter's death. He was pretty private in his writings about his personal life. I know what that is like after writing this blog for a few months. The more you try to broaden your base, the less you want to tell about yourself. I try to use my personal life only when I need to make a point. But I have to diverge here.

I have never understood why people are so personally offended when someone commits suicide. Now it is one thing when the person is not mentally competent or is severely depressed or is in some way unable to make a rational decision based on his or her own beliefs. There are other matters involved in a Schiavo situation where someone else has to make the decision whether your life is worth saving or not. But the question here is, is my life not mine? If you think no, it is not, it belongs to God, you are not thinking or you are reading the wrong blog.

Now the sentiment I have often heard expressed is, how can anything be worse than not living? That seems to me like a stupid question. Living in inexorable, excruciating pain seems obviously worse than not living. For some reason, it occurred to me some years ago that your life will always be an equal balance between pleasure and plain. I can't prove this; it just seems true. For example why are rich people not always happy? Why are poor and sick people sometimes quite happy? Have you ever noticed that when times are really "bad" you can be quite happy? Have you ever noticed that when times are "good" you are can just not be happy? Have you ever felt guilty about that?

My theory or perception is that we are going to be happy and unhappy in about equal degrees for equal amounts of time, no matter what happens to us. There is of course no way to prove this, but it seems true. You vacillate between happiness or unhappiness no matter what happens to you. This is one of the reasons why it is so meaningless to compare your life with anyone else's; what might be a major tragedy for them might be a benign moment for you. The starting points are different. This is why the goal of zazen is not happiness. Some have said it is equanimity; I think it is perspective. It is why I am able to sit and look at my own actions like those of a character in play.

Consequently, death is a neutral event. In other words, if the life part of my life-and-death is a neutral, a draw, then the death part is pretty much nothing. Plus, my death (as opposed to my dying) is not an event I expect to experience. In other words, the only bad part of death is the experience of getting there. Of course there are all sorts of arguments and illusions about life after death, but I see no reason why they should be true other that misguided wishful thinking, and really no reason to wish they were true. Moreover, even if they are true, I have no way of knowing that and no way to plan for them. So really I see no reason to prefer life over death except as a means of prolonging the status quo and avoiding the unknown. This is of course from the individual point of view, but that is the only point of view I have most of the time.

My favorite uncle died a few years ago by committing suicide. He was in his 80's and had had a successful life by most definitions, although he certainly wasn't rich. He had had a meaningful career and had raised children who had lives of their own. His mind was rich and intelligent but his body was falling apart. Like Hemingway, he had showed signs of deciding to end it, and like Hemingway they took away his guns but forgot one with one round in the chamber. He killed himself with one shot to the head with a .22 short, which is an accomplishment.

So how can anyone decry this man's decision? Whose life was it? How worse can you deny a man's dignity that by denying him a right to end his life when he chooses? One of the most obnoxious and invasive behaviors of the right-wing Christians of our era is their insistence that they are more qualified than the individual to make the life-and-death decision. Historically, the resistance to suicide was probably based, like marriage, on the ownership of one human by another, or of the individual by the monarch or the state. If we truly lived in an enlightened age, we would have been able to move beyond that.

This blog is getting incredibly long or it seem so to me, and I've been working on it too long. But I want to come back in the next day or two and discuss these issues. In particular, I want to talk more about Thompson and why I think his work is so significant for our time and meaningful to me. But that's enough for now.

In the meantime, you might want to check out the following odd but meaningful interview with Thompson, a year or two before he died:
http://www.freezerbox.com/archive/article.php?id=287

Now We Know Who the Grinch Is

If convincing gullible Americans to send their sons and daughters to their deaths in a piss-ant foreign country for no reason other than the political equivalent of viagra isn't enough, the nut jobs who gave you George W. Bush have a new treat for you -- the "War on Christmas."

If you're dumb enough to think that the Faux News Network has anything to do with news, you may have heard the rantings of Bill O'Reilly and crew this year on the purported War. Of course I've never heard anyone come out against Christmas. What we have here is an attack against the First Amendment rights of large corporations and governmental entities who have chosen to include everyone, not just right-wing Christians, in their celebration of the holidays which have been with us much longer than Christianity. The First Amendment prohibits a state endorsement of religion. To quote Stan Lee, "'Nuff said."

From Media Matters for America: From Monday, November 28, to Friday, December 2, Faux News carried 58 different reports, interviews, and debates on the alleged "war" on Christmas. Coverage ranged from reports of House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert's (R-IL) recommendation to rename the Capitol Holiday Tree the "Capitol Christmas Tree," to segments titled "Christmas Under Attack" on Faux News Live. In fact, Faux News Live alone devoted 14 reports to various Christmas "war" debates.

Though CNN and MSNBC have lagged behind Faux, they have joined in giving the Faux-fueled controversy attention. MSNBC had 11 mentions of the debate -- though three were mocking references to the controversy on Countdown with Keith Olbermann (whose host singled out Bill O'Reilly and John Gibson's roles in the Christmas crusade for ridicule).

Of the many guests that appeared on Faux News programs to discuss the debate, 18 (many appearing multiple times) endorsed the concept that there is a "war" on Christmas that should be exposed and defeated, whereas only seven either defended more inclusive "holiday" terminology or argued that the "war" on Christmas was overstated.

If credibility is the issue, remember, this: Jerry Falwell appeared five different times on two of the three major cable news channels. Falwell is allied with the conservative legal organization Liberty Counsel, which has been involved in many of the various local Christmas disputes and operates a "Friend of Foe Christmas Campaign" which includes "free legal assistance by Liberty Counsel to individuals facing persecution for celebrating Christmas" and "a pledge to be the 'Friend' to those entities which do not discriminate against Christmas and a 'Foe' to those that do."

While Faux has taken the lead in highlighting this bulshit, media figures on MSNBC and CNN have willingly joined in. For example, on the November 30 edition of MSNBC's The Situation with Tucker Carlson, host Tucker Carlson stated: "[I]f the P.C. Police get their way -- we pray they won't -- you might be singing a different tune to the classic carol, "Oh, Christmas Tree." During a segment on the November 29 broadcast of CNN's The Situation Room, CNN anchor Jack Cafferty asserted: "Put a tree in your house, or put it on your lawn, or put it wherever, and call it whatever you want. But stay the hell out of my Christmas."

Thanks, Jack. But whoah, I like Christmas. There is a warm fuzzy feeling to it that gives us psychological refuge before we are dumped out into the bleak wasteland of January. But for those of you who don't know any better, let me tell you where your holiday came from.

From Langston.com: The biggest holiday of the Ancient Roman World, called Saturnalia, and the birth of the Persian Sun God Mithras, was named the birth festival of Jesus by Pope Leo the Great in 885 A.D. See, the Church was tired of seeing the pagans have all the good parties. December 25th was also the Feast of Sol Invictus, the Invincible Sun, a cult popular to Romans like Constantine, the Roman Emperor who inflicted the mental illness which is Christianity upon us for all time. Modern estimates based on the census records of Augustus calculate Jesus' actual birth in July although Christians had started to use the Saturnalia as the birthday feast as early as the 300's A.D.

Your Christmas tree? Besides the Celtic tree worship, the 24th of December was the feast day of Saints Adam and Eve when Medieval Churches act out the Genesis story and set up a tree representing the "tree of life" with glass balls representing the fruit. This custom was later associated with Christmas and was taken from Germany to England by PrinceAlbert and to America by Hessian soldiers and later German immigrants. In an 1883 editorial about the newfangled custom the New York Times called the Christmas Tree -- "A rootless, lifeless corpse -- unworthy of the Day..."

Santa Claus? This hybrid of Dutch customs appeared in its modern form in New York in the late 1850s. TheEnglish form was St. Nicholas, a big jolly Bishop in a red suit and theDutch had Kris Kringle, the elf who dropped down your chimney and was alsoknown as "Klaus-in-the-Cinders" or "Cinder-Klaus.'" The first image of himwas drawn in 1859 in the New York Sun by cartoonist Thomas Nast for the Clement Moore poem (Nast also created the Democratic Donkey and Republican Elephant). The modern image was created for a 1930s ad campaign for Coca-Cola by illustrator Haddon Sundblom.) According to NPR, Saint Nicholas was a Turkish ruler in the fourth century A.D. who legendarily tossed a bag of gold through a window to save a man from selling his three daughters into prostitution. Just what he got for the gold is not part of the Christmas story.

The bottom line is, all this stuff is manufactured. That's the way myth is. What we really have here is a cultural and individual psychological need for a break at this time of year. This is the celebration of the winter solstice, which we feel in our bones. Its true soundtrack is Jethro Tull's Songs from the Wood.

So why have the nut jobs decided now is the time to find a "War on Christmas?" Perhaps it is a last-minute sop to the Bush administration, in whom they have lost trust. Maybe they are realizing they were used. George Bush is willing to be Christian if he gets their political capital, but his agenda (or the agenda of Rove or Cheney, depending in which direction you look for his puppetmaster) is about war and money, not religiion, and they have been disappointed.

But I am personally very hurt and insulted that the nut jobs have taken it upon themselves to tell me I am not celebrating my holiday properly. I am perfectly capable of enjoying the winter solstice without pledging loyalty to a death cult.

Why I Do Zazen

Our local Nashville Zen Center has a Yahoo group. It was started before I joined the Center, and my perception is that it was started by them as a way for them to receive notices of events, but it's been left open to all comers in terms of membership, so there are people in there whom I have never seen at a zazen session (and some whom I don't think exist outside of cyberspace). Both these entities and some of the real members are inevitably drawn to do what Yahoo group members do best -- post, on whatever. Sometimes it has to do with Zen. Recently there was a lively debate on vegetarianism, which as interesting as it is, has very little to do with Buddhism (since the historical Buddha died of bad pork, I'm told).

Irrelevance is no stranger to me, and it doesn't bother me. Actually I kind of like these discussions, and they do beat the rantings of the jingoistic homophobe at my office (see prior posts). Lately we are getting postings from group members and group leaders on their own favorite aspects of Buddhism. A recently posted note on spirituality drew my attention because I have aversions to terms like "spiritual," especially when the term is designed as other-worldly. My snotty response drew a reference to Ken Wilber. If you don't know who Ken Wilber is, see if this sets off your bullshit detector: "Ken Wilber is the developer of an integral "theory of everything" that embraces the truths of all the world's great psychological,scientific, philosophical, and spiritual traditions. He founded the Integral Institute, a think-tank for studying issues of science and society, in 2000. Wilber is the author of twenty books." Wow. The theory of everything. And I thought everything lay in reality. Theory is reductionist. But I can see why a theory of everything would take twenty books. At least.

I won't say anything more about Mr. Wilber, but I do love open discussion. And because I was a philosophy major and a lawyer, and sort of a 48-year-old adolescent, I find it hard to stay within the rules of academia when I argue. So saying someone is obviously full of shit won't get me on the debate team. But I get to feel like Johnny Rotten for five minutes.

So, my point was? After having studied every philosophy I could find for the last thirty years and having tried several varieties of Buddhist practice, what has it come down to? I just sit there. Shikantaza.

I discovered Buddhism when I was a very lost college student at the University of Tennessee in the late 1970's. I had long known that I didn't fit into normal society and didn't share its belief systems. So like every other "rebel" of my generation, I spun off the wheel into drinking, recreational chemicals, and rock and roll. Being a philosophy major, I had some other options to pursue. So having known by no later than nine years old that Christianity was a fairy tale right up there with the Easter Bunny (a perceptive ability that kicked in years later when I heard about the Weapons of Mass Destruction), I found Buddhism and Zen in particular appealing. But if there were Zen Buddhists or Buddhists of any kind in Knoxville, TN, in 1979, I couldn't find them, and if I could've found them, wouldn't have been sober enough or focused enough, read mature enough, to practice. But I was inspired.

So when I went to the San Francisco Bay Area in 1980 to study law, I was drawn to the San Francisco Zen Center. My girlfriend and fiancee at the time, a New Jersey jock with no previous interest, was so drawn to them that she lived there and worked in their bakery at Tassajara for several years. I tried sitting with the priests and lay practitioners there, but I was too much into the San Francisco night life and the prospect of being a rich lawyer to really take advantage of my real opportunities. I gave up my first and best chance to practice.

It was six years later in Albuquerque, New Mexico, that I came back to Buddhist practice, through a strange side door. Three years of trying to work for law firms had taught me that I didn't belong there; lawyers are a race of shallow dilettantes, and the American court system is such a farce that a few years in its bowels will teach a perceptive person that the system is warped and rotten beyond redemption. In February, 1986, I was out of a job, sitting around drinking in an adobe apartment wondering what I was going to do with my life. By sheer luck I did all the right things, and my life -- well, didn't change forever just yet, but opened me up to the possibilities that later began to shape who I hope to be now. At that point I quit drinking for the first time in at least eleven years, began to work out for the first time ever, and fell in with the (then) Nichiren Shoshu Buddhists of the NSA.

I fell in with these people because I was suddenly, with my head clear and my body discovering itself, drawn back to the Buddhism I had left behind. Why NSA? Because I looked in the phone book and they were the only ones listed who spoke English. Honestly.

Nichiren Shoshu (which means Nichiren Orthodox, basically) is a school of Japanese Buddhism founded on the ranting of Nichiren, a Zen priest from the twelfth century who was banished for heresy and being a general egoistic shithead. To most Japanese Buddhists, he is a clown. To the NSA, Zen was the devil. I say was because there is no more NSA. Just after I quit them, the head priest of Nichiren Shoshu excommunicated the lay leader of the Soka Gakkai, the Japanese parent organization of the NSA. It appears this was based on the fact that the Soka Gakkai was using Nichiren Buddhism as a tool for social and political power in Japan. They were widely known as a Zen cult. They would approach you on a street corner or in your home like Jehovah's witnesses, because one main way you could achieve merit ultimately resulting in salvation was shakubuku, or proselytizing. At this point in my life, I was a self-employed lawyer, so there was nothing quite so helpful for my professional image as passing out pamphlets on a street corner.

But in the middle of all this cultish bullshit, I discovered a real truth: the power of Buddhist practice. The Nichiren practice consisted of chanting "Nam Myoho Renge Kyo," framed by selections from the Lotus Sutra, in front of a scroll called the Gohonzon, which means "great object of worship." One did gongyo twice a day. I had become a minor leader of sorts in the practice, all of which I abandoned by the fall of 1988, after being an NSA member for 2 1/2 years. And eventually my new purity of mind and body, focused through the power of the practice, led me to stop fighting my perception that the teachings were half true, half bullshit, and leave the group.

I made a mistake when I left. I quit practicing, which means I quit chanting and abandoned all forms of meditation. I became all-powerful in my own mind, which meant that two years later everything had gone to hell again; I finally left Albuquerque in 1993 to return to Tennessee. It was 2004 before I resumed Buddhist practice, and eventually after a false start with the Tibetans returned to Zen after reading Brad Warner's Hardcore Zen, which finally blew away the shit for me and encourage me to resume practice.

The thing about the real truths you discover for yourself is that they always recur as memories, as things you knew before but had forgotten - obvious things that were there the whole time, so how could you have missed them? Having seen through the bullshit of traditional religion at a young age, and having suffered the lies of Nichiren Buddhism and the dreamy obfuscations of the Tibetans, it suddenly became clear to me that all it takes is shikantaza, just sitting, to connect with reality. Just keep your spine straight; you will perceive that all reality radiates outward from a line drawn between your hara and the top of your head. The closer to that line a thing or event is, the more meaningful and important it is to you. This is all you need. You don't need to chant. You don't need to visualize Oprah. You don't need to count your breath. That's all OK but it just adds more crap to the cesspool that's already swirling in your mind. Just let what's already there settle. It won't go away.

The truth is, your mind will never stop swirling. You just have to learn to accept its swirling. Your mind won't stop thinking until your heart stops beating, and you can no more put one that the other on "pause." Neither can you change your personality. I will not stop being the angry, sarcastic individual I am. I just have to look at this character and realize its not me. "Me" is everything and these are all just parts I play. As I mentioned is "No small furry animals," I have to step outside the movie.

So this is where it's all lead me after all these years. All theory is bullshit. All discussion of Zen, or really of philosophy in general, is reductionist, so that whereas the finger may indeed point at the moon, the theory itself is always wrong.

When you pursue a theory of everything, you have already made the first error. If you believe in your theory, you will have completely mistaken the map for the territory, and you will be completely living in your head. The true answer is always "Mu." So for me, I will just sit shikantaza. But if you want to chant to a gonhonzon, go for it; the remnants of the NSA are still out there as the Soka Gakkai of America, I believe, and they're a lot less militant since they were neutered. Just don't get caught up in their shit. Incidentally, the only thing I've discovered that won't work is the guided mediation of the Tibetans and similar groups. My experience is that all that crap will take you down the same delusional path as the Christians.

And if you do that, then God Bless You, Every One.