Peaceful Fire Journal

A Tale of Two Georges

2010-07-08T16:17:00.008-04:00

thursday, july 8, 2010
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I have not before used this blog to post a book review, but the book I'm now reading, Family of Secrets, by Russ Baker, merits a very close look, as a work on its way to drawing together the threads of a modern mystery that most believed would never yield to a solution - the assassination of President Kennedy. That is not to say that Baker has solved the mystery...he has not. But his research is pointing in the direction of, if not an outright solution, at least an explanation that makes sense, and is not weighed down by poor research and disinformation.

I was seventeen years old in November of 1963, and share the inexplicable feeling of many that something other than a civil servant was murdered on that day. As we grasped for the meaning of the day and weekend following the crime, many of us felt the death of the youthful hope brought on by Kennedy's election in 1960. There was a sense that the old guard would soon pass away, and a new generation would be free to take a second and better look at the world in a way that acknowledged problems and looked for solutions. Kennedy's attitude toward the Americas to the south alone, (except for Cuba, the Kennedy blind spot) spoke to a new international relationship based in the parity between nations that a global economy would soon demand, rather than on the brutal power of empire. When Kennedy died, it was as if the empire had won after all, and for many, idealism was put up on a shelf.

As Baker points out in his book, research and public commentary on the Kennedy assasination, carries the risk of labeling by the mainstream media as conspiracy theory, a legacy of the years of exploitive and populist investigations, described in books, articles and web pages of often dubious scholarship, a cottage industry driven by public hunger for an alternative to the inherently dissatisfactory version of history emerging from the deliberations of the Warren Commission and never improved upon by numerous subsequent government-sponsored inquiries.

To give such efforts their due however, it must be acknowledged that over the decades since 1963 a core narrative has begun to emerge that would have remained buried but for the efforts of this army of historical archeologists.

-- working --

2010-06-20T14:11:00.003-04:00

sunday, june 20, 2010
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The arrival of death

is as untimely as it is certain.

Work hard; do good.
It's the only thing that matters.

DHL

2010-06-20T12:12:00.027-04:00

sunday, june 20, 2010

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BP's green flower power hard at work, setting fire to crude oil floating in the

Gulf of Mexico. The universal response of perps to an emergency is a guilty

panic to hide the evidence. By the time BP gets into court, it will be

"who ya gonna believe, me or your lying eyes?"

Nightmare in the Gulf...

Even though raw crude oil continues to pour into the Gulf of Mexico at the rate of 60,000 barrels of gunk per day, don't believe for a minute that this spill is our penultimate nightmare...that horror show still lies in our uncertain future. BP's pattern of criminal conduct in the Gulf, from the use of bribery to sabotoge government oversight, to the theft of an estimated $53 billion in oil royalties, to its illegal attempts to limit press coverage of the spill and it's aftermath, is but a stalking horse for greater disasters looming.

While I don't necessarily mean a (reasonable) fear of the potential for additional off-shore platform emergencies, given the pattern of corruption that permeated the Minerals Management Service for all 8 years of the Bush presidency, and the first 18 months of Barack Obama's, the danger is by no means remote, especially with hurricane season soon to arrive.

But there is also grave cause for concern about the wider patterns of corruption as yet uncovered, in other agencies of the government, where federal regulatory authority has been equally absent. Whether the tea party open-carry cowboys like it or not, the federal power to regulate is our only proven fail-safe against the rapacious nature of private economic power. Environmental stewardship and public safety demand the due diligence that only government can impose against the belief of the corporate elite in their god-given right to develop natural resources where they find them, and convert them to private wealth. What further disasters wait to be revealed, when the corrosive power of bribery and corruption finish working their ugly magic?

The free-market revolution begun by Milton Friedman groupies nearly 5 decades ago, is bearing fruit in the Gulf today. The private war against the public expression of power wielded by a government of the people, is all but complete. The alliance of corporate power and the Republican/populist right, was well exposed by a key Republican senator, who shamefully apologized for President Obama's "shakedown" of BP, (referring to the $20 billion government-controlled escrow fund that Obama imposed. to prevent BP from "slow-walking" damage awards, as has happened elsewhere.)  The demand by the Republican leadership for an apology from Senator Barton, was not because they disagreed with his sentiments, but because it exposed the truth about Republican allegiances to their corporate masters.

For most of the opening decade of the 21st century, the Bush/Cheney administration operated under a policy essentially abdicating the government's responsibility for exercising regulatory authority in virtually every agency of the executive branch.  The end of government regulation as a tool for limiting private power, is the flowering of Ayn Rand's dream...the semi-erotic fantasy with which she inspired the lust of Freidman, Greenspan and the flying monkeys of the new capitalism...of the ascendant private individual as superman, celebrating the death of collectivism. Some dream...sounds like a Soviet-era propaganda poster.

Like all religions, the purity of the free-market vision was betrayed by a metaphorical 30 pieces of silver; the collective greed and lawlessness of a corporate priesthood whose contempt for the politicians they found so easy to bribe, was exceeded only by their dreams of avarice.

Our caution for our immediate future lies in the realization that these predators worked every sheep pen in the government, not just the Mineral's Management Service, and not just the Department of the Interior. We have already seen the collapse of the financial markets, and the super-heating and collapse of the housing market, both caused by the same pattern of corporate corruption of government oversight. Given this horrendous recent history, we can only wonder and worry about what bursting bubbles lie in our immediate future.

Though apparently aware of the thirst of corporations for absolute power, President Obama has followed the lead of other Democratic politicians (read Bill Clinton) in an accomodation of influence, amounting to the "corporatism" with which he is often charged by the green left. It is certain, from his support last spring of increased off-shore drilling, and his fronting of the myth of oil rig safety, that President Obama did not envision himself leading a war against "Big Oil."

But in the Gulf, war has already been declared, and the first great battle is now being waged.  President Obama, sword in hand, has demanded - and received - an escrow account of BP funds to pay for damages, leading to the first narrow victory in what BP hopes will be a long-term war of attrition. For there to be other victories, President Obama must slay the free-market dragon. If he doesn't continue to confront the corrupt power of the corporation, we as a nation, will face capitulation to corporate monarchs and the end of government of, by and for the people.

Hyperbole? I wish it were.

DHL

The Two Negations & the Lord of Creation

2010-06-17T15:12:00.056-04:00

thursday, june 17, 2010
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reprinted from Peaceful Fire Journal, February 19, 2009

I was listening to His Holiness, the 14th Dalai Lama, in the Four Noble Truths presentation that I posted a couple of days ago. He made the point that the first principle of Buddhist thinking is the principle of dependent origination, and in particular the principle of causation. Within this framework, everything that "exists" does so as the result of something that existed before it. Our minute-to-minute "reality", with all of its' arising causes and conditions, is impelled into existence by something pushing from behind, and in turn, as it shoves its' way through time, causes the onrushing future. As a result of this says His Holiness, the world of apparent existence that occupies our daily lives, is in fact empty of inherent meaning.

Then His Holiness made the point that the principle of dependent origination gives rise to two negations. First, that nothing comes out of nothing, negating the concept of a first cause. And second, because there is no first cause, any concept of a creator God is negated. (Interestingly, Saint Thomas Aquinas follows a similar line of reasoning to arrive at the opposite conclusion; that each event of existence is caused by the one before it until one reaches the first cause, which is God...well, there's no accounting for tastes).

With regard to the second negation, I had a feeling that something was up when someone sneezed at a Jewel Heart meeting, and no one said "God Bless You."

Just kidding. Actually these were the principles that attracted me to Buddhism in the first place. When I was coming up, the expectations of the so-called Judeo-Christian tradition seemed to require belief in a series of magical tricks, which made it impossible for me to remain a Christian practitioner after the onset of the age of reason. Buddhism seemed to offer relief from this expectation, and His Holiness confirms that the very hallmark of Buddhism is a negation of non-rational theories of origination. It was while I was in a crisis of faith regarding the existence of God and the nature of Christ, that Buddhism became available to me and filled a need for achieving a deeper understanding of existence, without the irrational expectations that I found alienating. It also provided an ethical framework for living within society that promoted human unity, justice and non-violence.

As described in an earlier post, at a certain point in my life, my rigid rationalism gave way to the demonstrated power existing within the subtle realm, the gateway to which is to be found only within the perceptive ability of human consciousness...as far as we know. Within this realm, the drama of visionary experience contains much that is anthropomorphic in its' apparent nature, leaving it vulnerable to psychological interpretation. (An example might be the eternal dance of Yamma, the Tibetan Lord of Death.) But, it also contains much that seems successfully descriptive of the more complex and subtle forms of spiritual existence one would expect to find in a natural realm coexistent with the universe as described by a modern understanding of cosmology.

It will remain forever true for myself that the God of the Old Testament, the Creator God of Genesis, is an impossibility. The logic traps of fundamentalism just do not work for me.

However, I cannot imagine a universe without consciousness, and I cannot imagine that consciousness is bound by its relationship to physical existence; indeed, His Holiness asserts that it is not. The basis for the Buddhist belief in reincarnation, he says, lies in the realization that matter and consciousness are separate and distinct. Matter, he says, cannot create consciousness. And consciousness cannot create matter.

Currently, a furious debate is unfolding in the scientific community, on the question of whether or not the mind exists independent of the brain. The question is of interest to psychologists, neurosurgeons and others who have professional cause to wonder about it. The debate is the subset of a debate - or is it a war? - between the Darwinian strict constructionists, and the stealth creationists of the intelligent design camp. I don't want into that fight; when rigid tautological battle lines are drawn, I tend to run for cover.

It is true however, that the world of science is searching for an explanation of how the brain creates the mind, and has yet to find one.

Buddhism, as expressed by His Holiness and the other enlightened beings, by negating the concept of a creator God, expressing the principle of dependent origination, and observing that matter and consciousness exist independently, opens the door to the realm in which we exist when we don't exist as inhabitants of physical matter.

As advanced as Buddhist thinking is from my perspective, and especially as compared to the relatively primitive fundamentalist religion of my youth, its' accomplishments become even more remarkable when one realizes that the concepts of Buddhism, which seem to fit so comfortably within the scientific model of quantum physics and the expanding universe, is actually 2,600 years old and came into existence at a time when the prevalent vision of the cosmos was of a flat world of earth with a dome of sky, riding on the back of a tortoise. The stars were perceived as little leaks of light exposing the sun in its hiding place behind the night.

The birth of Christianity led to belief in a world of faith, with human sinners struggling on earth, below a chorus of cloud-dwelling angels, archangels and saints in a universe consisting of an flat earth orbited by the sun the stars and the abode of God in Heaven. It has been a slow and difficult journey since then, for priests asserting their authority and theologians their understanding of God, within the unfolding knowledge of science regarding the nature and origins of the universe.

The understanding of the universe common in the years of my childhood, was influenced by the science of Einstein.*  In those days, we were in the midst of a debate about whether the universe had existed for eternity in a "steady-state," or had exploded and was expanding. We did not know in 1950 that Einstein had already discovered that the universe was expanding when he wrote the General Theory of Relativity, in 1905. But it seemed counter-intuitive to him, so he assumed that his math was wrong and fudged his figures. Strange, but true.

In 1926, Edwin Hubble was looking at the stars through his telescope (Mount Palomar), and noticed that the light from certain stars had shifted into the red portion of the spectrum, indicating that the wavelength was increasing. His observation, which became known as "Hubble's Law," was that the shift in the light wavelength from a distant object, to the red portion of the light spectrum, increased proportionate to the distance of the object from Earth.  This led Hubble to the realization that the object was moving away from the earth, and that the universe was therefore expanding.  It was a monumental discovery; embarrassing for Einstein, and a big surprise for the rest of us, although it took about 30 years for the news to reach the west side of Cleveland.

The realization of an expanding universe leads to the further insight that the universe has not existed in its' present form since eternity as previously believed, but was created by a single catastrophic event occurring a short 15 billion years ago - a factoid from which we can derive not only the age of our universe, but its' approximate size as well. Imagine a space roughly the shape of a flattened globe with a radius of 15 billion light years, and you've got it.

In modern time, the scientific journey of discovery was also taken in the other direction; to the universe existing within the structure of matter. The understanding of matter that I had as a child was probably not much different from that of a child living in ancient Greece. We shared a belief in atoms as the smallest of things. And atoms, we believed are little solar systems of unimaginably tiny elemental planets. As it appeared, the same understanding that we applied to how the sun and the planets functioned in the solar system, could equally be applied to an understanding of the sub-atomic world.

Not so we found out; apparently things at the level of particle physics are chaotic, and the same sets of rules do not apply. Strangely...and quite poetically, when we get to the center of sub-atomic particles, with their positive and negative energies exquisitely balanced in a dance of strong and weak forces, we find, not the tiny elemental worlds we expected, but vibrating strings of energy spelling out the illusion of matter.

The very illusions perhaps that His Holiness refers to when he speaks of the negation of intrinsic existence.

Our growing scientific knowledge carries us ever forward, into the heart of the mystery of existence. And what God do we carry forward with us on this journey of discovery? The God of Abraham, Issac and Jacob. The god that spoke to us when civilization was young, and the world was a disc, riding on the back of a tortoise. We have good reason to do so, we believe. The bonifides of the God that led Moses through the wilderness, were confirmed more recently - a mere 20 centuries ago - by someone whose trustworthiness is impeccable; the son of the living God.

But will our limited ability to understand the vast realms to which we have been introduced in the last 100 years, allow us to meld our understanding of the God of the Old Testament, with our understanding of a universe expanding toward infinity in two directions? Toward the external infinity of the universe of stars, planets and galaxies in one direction, and the infinitely small universe of matter in the other? If so, can we call it God, with any sort of insight or understanding of what we mean when we use this term? It is apparent to me that my poor powers of imagination fail to give rise to a vision of a consciousness so vast that it can rule so great a realm. Depends on the definition of "rule" no doubt.

Remarkably, in pointing the way back in time to the "Big Bang" science has given us a place mark of fundamental value, a tool to be used in our struggle to reconcile ancient myth and modern knowledge in our search for understanding. It has revealed the manner and the moment of our creation. Has it also revealed at least the shadow of the Lord of Creation?

Before Einstein and Hubble, we didn't have a point from which time is reckoned. We lived in a world that had always been, in a universe that would remain forever the same...ticking it's way through eternity like the elegant timepiece of Jefferson's understanding. Even Einstein believed it; so much so that he fudged his numbers rather than change his mind.

Creation myths abound in man's ancient memory, but none of them compare to the story of the Great Explosion, before which is only the shadow of mystery, and after which is the birth of everything, awakening in a newly-crafted cradle of time. Though it sounds like an aboriginal myth created in dream-time, it is in fact, rock-hard science.

But all of this only serves to describe the physical universe, and offers nothing to account for the existence of consciousness. It must be asked, was the Big Bang of physical creation concomitant with the creation of consciousness, and if so, how? Did it happen in the same big flash? Did consciousness coalesce as matter did? As an incomprehensibly dense plasma of newly forming electrons, protons and neutrons coalescing into the periodic table of the elements? Or did the birth of consciousness come later, after the fire had died down, and the earth had cooled. Did it wait for the birth of the biosphere, before consciousness came to Earth and other places?

Science no doubt would surmise that consciousness grew incrementally in the same manner as the atmosphere; the collective expiration of the planets' living things over eons, giving rise to the breathable and navigable ocean of air that encircles the planet. Is there a comparable mechanism for accumulation of consciousness arising perhaps from the signal response of a collective infinity of flagella-waving amoebic nerve endings?

Seems a bit unlikely, and it certainly lacks elegance as an explanation for human consciousness, but the fact is we don't know. We know there was a big bang, and we know there is a world of matter. We live in it. We're made of it. We know there is consciousness. We think it. We become aware of it; an inner presence when we meditate. But of its origins we know nothing.

It has none, His Holiness would no doubt say, and no doubt he is right. But imagining that an event of consciousness might occur concomitant with an event of matter, at a moment when the universe flashes into sudden existence, leads one to wonder what sort of influence one aspect of such an event might have had on the other, and what aspect may have led to what outcome? The answer to such questions lie beyond the horizon defined by the explosion that led us to our present time and space; the mysterious event preceding, and undoubtedly causing, the only big bang of which we know.

(His Holiness goes the extra mile, by suggesting that the "Big Bang" is unlikely to have been a unique event.  From the Buddhist perspective, he has said, the big bang is more likely to have been one of many. Not unique, but rather a common occurrence - the drop of water that suggests a greater ocean.  Leading us to imagine a mysterious multi-verse of dark matter, and distant dimensions...but then that's why he's the Dalai Lama.)

Many suffer alienation from spirituality due to anger and bitterness toward the God that permits human suffering. Where was the God of mercy during the Holocaust? During Hurricane Katrina? Our way of understanding, and our need to feel control over the environment, gives rise to the God to whom we pray for deliverance.

When prayer fails, is not our anger directed at the straw man set up by a limited human vision? If so, it is a misplaced anger, and should be directed not at the Lord of Creation, but at the cargo plane made of sticks and vines, set out in the jungle in hope of attracting the source of the mystery by which it was inspired.

We must always remember that the world of human misery, the whole ugly history of wars inspired by greed served by violence, the ancient tradition of indifference by the elite for the fate of the poor, is a world of our own creation. It is the human choices we make that create the suffering of the world, not the demons of hell, abetted by an indifferent god.

Our prayers are largely misplaced. Instead of begging for deliverance from misery and misfortune, our need is for insight, to open us to the realization of the perfection within which we are living day to day, and to an awareness of the human suffering we create by greed and violence. To be awakened to the need for change in the world, so that the human vision of earth as a ball of resources ripe for development may be transformed into a respectful awareness of the sacred garden of life into which we were born and in which our treasured consciousness resides. So that our thirst for violence as a tool for intimidation and command may be transformed into an awakening awareness of human suffering and a response inspired by love and compassion.

DHL

* To my amazement, I found the following quote recently, over a year after writing this essay...

"The religion of the future will be a cosmic religion. It should transcend a personal God and avoid dogmas and theology. Covering both the natural and the spiritual, it should be based on a religious sense arising from the experience of all things, natural and spiritual and a meaningful unity. Buddhism answers this description. If there is any religion that would cope with modern scientific needs, it would be Buddhism."

Albert Einstein

2010-06-14T13:31:00.012-04:00

monday june 14, 2010
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Of Cozy Relationships....

and Criminal Conspiracies

There is a difference.

Cozy relationships are like your mom reading you a bed-time story, with a tucked-in sleepy ending where all live happily ever after...criminal conspiracies end with indictments, and people going to jail...I'm just saying.

The cunning slicksters of the right have schooled us well in the art of the media spin, and the importance of directing the flow of conversation. With that in mind, I can't help but pay attention to the message sent to us sheeple of the lamestream media whenever I hear the phrase "cozy relationship" as a descriptor for the quid pro quo that existed between employees of BP and the Minerals Management Service, (the federal agency responsible for, among other things, safety and environmental regulation of deep-water drilling, and collection of royalties for the oil taken by the petrochemical giants operating off our shores.)

Regardless of the media outlet, from Fox News to the New York Times, the phrase "cozy relationship," is being used when alluding to the scandalous reports of drug use and sex parties that hit the papers some time last year, and the relevance of this old news to the current catastrophe in the Gulf. There is nothing the media likes better than reporting on naughty sex parties after all.

My concern is that the phrase is waaaaaaay too light-hearted for the reality of the moment. It seems likely to me that a bit of diligent investigation by the Department of Justice is likely to turn up, not a cozy relationship, with all the warm fuzzies implied by the phrase, but rather a criminal conspiracy...one whose consquences now flow by the millions of barrels from a hole punched by BP in the bottom of the ocean.

In the years since Watergate, the art of the ass-covering memo has been perfected. I am as sure as I can be, that a paper trail in rich detail extends from every drug and sex party hosted by BP employees for their co-conspirators in the Minerals Management Service, to every supervisor up the chain of command whose approval would have been needed for expense account items that included cocaine and hookers. To be succint, when low-level BP employees take the initiative to corrupt government officials, they are acting on orders from higher up...much higher up. Do I know it? No. Can you bet on it? Yes. In fixing responsibility for initiating the various acts of corruption through which BP vacated the power of the government to check its greed, we need to recall that foot soldiers don't set policy, general staff officers do.

We are learning that these parties at the MMS were standard operating procedure during the past 8 years. In an administration that ignored federal regulatory responsibility as a matter of policy, the employees of the MMS had little to do on a day to day basis, and as we know, idle hands...

We are quickly arriving at a point where the bill for the catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico can be totaled and presented to BP. Without a doubt, it will be far more than it would have cost BP to simply operate under the law in the first place. But hindsight is 20/20.

But what of the cost to the environment in the gulf, and the people of the region that make a living on its fisheries...and its oil? And what of the cost to the taxpayers in the uncollected royalties that should have been paid by the oil companies but were not , due to the negligence and malfeasance of the same corrupt officials? The same evidence trail that documents the connection between federal/corporate corruption of safety and environmental operations are also likely to demonstrate that BP has profited hugely in this regard as well.

Wake up America...your country needs you.

DHL

(btw, speaking of cozy relationships...)

2010-03-16T13:14:00.008-04:00

wednesday march 16, 2010
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Peace for the Region

Last week's Israeli insult toward Joe Biden was an arrogant double-cross of America's efforts to bring the peace process to a successful conclusion.

The Vice-President, it is well-known, was in the region to reinforce the American commitment to the security of Israel. This re-iteration of a U. S. foreign policy that dates back to the very birth of Israeli nationhood, is so fundamental to the peace equation, that it should have been unnecessary. To speak clearly of the security of Israel is to lay the foundation for the process itself.

The attitude taken by Israel reminds me of the relationship that existed for a while during my childhood. Following a long illness, I returned to school - fit for duty though in a weakened state. My older brother out of compassion for my vulnerability, became my protector - that is, until he caught me taunting an enemy and threatening him with my brother's retribution. "You're on your own," he told me, "and if you get your ass kicked, it will be on you."

So it is today with Israel. The situation as it exists in the region today is untenable; the misery of the people of the elusive State of Palestine, is a bitter injustice, tolerated and excused for too long by an American foreign policy that guarantees the security of an Israel motivated to use this protective umbrella to subvert Palestinian statehood, while paying lip service to the peace process. The result is continued injustice for the Palestinians, and a march toward disaster for Israel, whose demographics doom the dream of a Zionist democracy, in the absence of the two-state solution that the justice of history demands.

The struggle over Palestine since 1948 has given rise in present time, to a state-less reign of terror directed against the so-called near and far enemies of global jihad - Israel and its' American big brother. The American foreign policy establishment bears responsibility for this outcome, a flowering of the karma created by our uneven approach in the region resulting from our consistent tilt toward Israel. Thus American interests in the region beyond its support for Israel, have grown to include our own security issues relating to protection of the homeland from terrorist attack, as well as our commitment to honor the aspirations of Palestinians for statehood.

To address these interests, it seems to me necessary to un-link the outcome of the peace process from the issue of Israeli security, by offering a guarantee of military protection to an emergent State of Palestine. similar to that now enjoyed by Israel.

American will always be a guarantor of Israeli security; this responsibility will remain sacrosanct. Though some may be prone to attribute American support for Israel to effective Israeli lobbyists, I would contend that the true source of American support for Israel is written first in the American heart, and only incidentally by Jewish politicians and lobbyists.

An important point, given the next point I need to make. It is often true that only a very stern older brother can make the call when the perfidy of a younger sibling puts the community at risk. The solution in this case lies not in the abandonment of Israel, but in the inclusion of Palestine within the military protection of the United States, and the United Nations.

The time has come to recognize that the problem in the middle-east, is not just a regional conflict. The linkage between Palestine radicalism and the terrorist network of global jihad is that of an infection to a physical injury. Both must be treated. The imbalance of power created by the American presence in the region, with it's persistent tilt toward Israel, allows both the original wound and the resulting infection to go untreated. Israel must be confronted with the reality of the American stake in peace, and with the unwillingness of the American establishment to be held hostage to Israeli hegemony in negotiating an emergent Palestinian state.

DHL

2010-03-02T14:44:00.003-05:00

tuesday march 2, 2010
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Gateway to the Path

This is a time to reflect and recap. A year has gone by, and I've had a considerable change in the path of my life. I've retired from my public career as a social worker in child welfare, and I'm two months into planning an alternate future.

It's a largely positive experience so far. I am well-prepared for a change in social identity as a result of the past two years spent attending Jewel Heart. It helped me gain an improved understanding of some applicable Buddhist principles. By attempting to understand emptiness, and through meditation on attachment, I believe that I am better able to see the benefit to be gained by experiencing change without fear of loss.

It may be said that retirement is akin to death; it is the shedding of a body of behaviors and modalities surrounding a public role, not unlike the shedding of the physical body at death, with it's cocoon of behaviors, thoughts and delusions.

But the future takes planning. I want to finish The Redemption of Coyote Woburn, the mystery novel I began last year. In writing fiction, there is a need to envision a context in which your characters can find a home and a way of facing the future. So hiding in the basement and building bookcases was ok for January and February, but it's March now, and spring will be here soon; there are projects, in addition to Coyote, that need planning. Like a trip to Dysart Woods...on which, more to come.

About politics, I remain optimistic. In early 2009, the optimism of the emerging Obama coalition gave cause for hope. The backlash, though anticipated, has been harsh...violence is always at the center of human potential and an episode in which American populism is unleashed in civil unrest is a horror to contemplate. Are things that bad? Only if I make them so though indulgence in fear.

But the issues facing us are serious, and time is short if human suffering is to be prevented. I do believe that the conservative resurgence of 2010 is a mere reaction to the mainstream of human thinking, which appears to be in the midst of an awakening.

The failure of Copenhagen while discouraging, at least show-cased the emergence of China as an engine of environmental change. That alone is cause for celebration - a big part of the pessimistic global-warming model was based on the assumption that China would plod through each phase of industrial development, spewing co2 in their wake, before arriving at the painfully obvious realization of global limits. Instead, China offers the surprise that they intend to leapfrog over the west and embrace the market opportunities inherent in the shift from a carbon-based economy to one based on re-newable energy sources with minimal environmental impact. This kind of market pressure has the potential to shift the western discussion from one that is driven by reactionary carbon-invested industrialists, to one that is driven by a new generation of entrepreneurs capable of competing with China.

How long does history give us, to wrestle the monster to the ground? To kill the influence of the carbon-based industrialists, and begin to evolve our systems to address the common good while preserving the earth - the incubator that gives us life on our journey through time?

This is our task; to live in harmony with nature in accordance with the vision of the Great Spirit. How to find this pathway and how to embrace its heart? How to bend our arrogance and our will to the greater wisdom of which we are only a part?

In some ways, Americans are harmed by the very diversity that we cherish. A million pathways to choose from...some sincere and from the heart, some appealing to the dark nature that is our constant companion, and the hungers it gives rise to. How to know that the path we choose to follow is the correct one? The path revealed though meditation on our true nature, the path capable of leading us to the heart of the great mystery, capable of serving as a guide to the heart of the Great Spirit?

President Obama I'm bound to say, is as good as it gets, though only time will show the fruits of his leadership; time and the ability of the rest of us to understand and follow the leader's wise counsel. The president is proving himself a tough executive who will get us by hook or crook, to a signed bill on health care and will begin the process leading to the eventual mitigation of environmental catastrophe, to the extent that it can be mitigated at this late date.

On balance, despite a rough year, there is yet reason for hope.

On March 7th, I go back to Jewel Heart after an absence of a month or so. I miss it when I'm not there. Looking forward to a class being taught by Susie and David called "Gateways to the Path." I made my way through Lam Rim I, but really don't feel like I gave it a good effort, so I will look to begin again, perhaps with better focus.

Can I re-hab the basement to create room for a sacred space? Can I re-hab my body through exercise in time to save it from ruin? I was born in 1946, and my goal is to make it to 2046. How likely do I think that is, and what in addition to a desire for longevity for its own sake, can I bring to the quest?

DHL

2010-02-25T11:43:00.006-05:00

thursday, february 25, 2010

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Why the serpent?

I envoke the metaphor of the serpent to account for my absence of the past year. Like the people of the serpent, I was on... call it the latest phase of an ongoing journey...

Atop a plateau overlooking the Brush Creek Valley, Serpent Mound is the largest and finest serpent effigy in the United States. Nearly a quarter of a mile long, Serpent Mound apparently represents an uncoiling serpent.

In the late nineteenth-century Harvard University archaeologist Frederic Ward Putnam excavated Serpent Mound and attributed the creation of the effigy to the builders of the two nearby burial mounds, which he also excavated. We now refer to this culture as the Adena (800 BC-AD 100). A third burial mound at the park and a village site near the effigy's tail belong to the Fort Ancient culture (AD 1000-1550).

A more recent excavation of Serpent Mound revealed wood charcoal that could be radiocarbon dated. Test results show that the charcoal dates to the Fort Ancient culture. This new evidence of the serpent's creators links the effigy to the elliptical mound and the village rather than the conical burial mounds.

The head of the serpent is aligned to the summer solstice sunset and the coils also may point to the winter solstice sunrise and the equinox sunrise. Today, visitors may walk along a footpath surrounding the serpent and experience the mystery and power of this monumental effigy. A public park for more than a century, Serpent Mound attracts visitors from all over the world. The museum contains exhibits on the effigy mound and the geology of the surrounding area.

The serpent of Serpent's Mound in Adams County of south-western Ohio is probably the work of the Adena people. The best guesses of archeologists link the Adena both to the Serpent Mound and to the epic journey depicted in the creation myth of the Hopi, who emerged from the fourth world in the general vicinity of four corners, and then migrated under the direction of the Great Spirit, one element of the people in each of the four directions to follow the path of their destiny, established by the Creator. The prophecy of the Hopi elders called for a future in which the people of the four directions are reunited; the myth looks to a future of uncertainty for the human beings, but is ultimately optimistic for those who respect the earth and listen to the wisdom of the sky.

As with the Hopi, my journey is not over...I follow the path where it leads.

DHL

2009-03-30T18:20:00.003-04:00

monday, march 30, 2009
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Bridge for Sale: fair condition - high miles - one owner. Interested? If so you may be the only person buying China's story that they were not behind the recent GhostNet cyber-assault on the foreign offices of over one hundred countries, including Iran, Bangladesh, Latvia, Indonesia, Phillipines, Burnei, Barbados, Bhutan, the offices of the Dalai Lama, and the Tibetan government-in-exile.

BBC NEWS Americas China denies spying allegations

It is laughable that China would expect the west to buy this story; a fairy tale in which today's free and open China, so disinclined to spy on its' own citizens, might harbor a secret (and private; apparently no-one presently employed by the Chinese government was involved), highly sophisticated espionage unit capable of coordinating attacks on the foreign service computer systems of multiple countries, armed with innovative cyber-techniques so sophisticated that they could tap into embassy computers and operate microphones and cameras to eavesdrop on real-time conversations.

pork lo mein anyone?

Oddly, the Chinese government doesn't seem too worried about it. They figure it is a splitist trick; just the sort of thing that sneaky fellow the Dalai Lama would do. Good thing the cyber-spies didn't try to break into Chinese computers. Otherwise the government might have to look for them a bit harder?

You know, I really could use a new bridge.

and in a related story...

2009-03-29T13:03:00.002-04:00

sunday, march 29, 2009
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His Holiness the 17th. Karmapa was a teenager when he made his escape from Tibet, thwarting the efforts of Chinese government officials to control his public role; it was Chinese interference with his need to complete his spiritual education, that led to his final decision to leave. Once safely in India, Karmapa declared publicly that the decision was his alone, and had not been orchestrated by the Dalai Lama, as the Chinese were quick to claim.

The consequences of his escape for the future of Tibet in it's struggle against Chinese domination, are enormous. His public influence on Tibetans was subject to total government control while he was contained within his monastery near Lhasa. His value to the Chinese as a tool for control of Tibetan unrest, vanished when he crossed the Himalayas into India and the embrace of the Tibetan government-in-exile. At the same time his grooming for leadership by the aging Dalai Lama shows early signs of success, as the Karmapa enters early adulthood already an international media star.

As a figure of drama, Karmapa would be hard to improve on. His stature in Tibet is unique, even among the enlightened beings who are his peers. He is the living embodiment of the Buddha; the historical roots of his lineage extending deep into old Tibet. He is also uniquely recognized as the reincarnation of the 16th. Karmapa by both the Dalai Lama and the Chinese government. HH17K's enthronement ceremony included Chinese participation. This dual recognition results in full acceptance of Karmapa's authority among the Tibetan people, while preventing the Chinese from either denouncing him, or repudiating reincarnation as the accepted mode of succession for high Lamas. Finally, the heroic nature of his escape through the Himalayas recalls the legendary escape of the Dalai Lama in 1959, further establishing his leadership credentials.

Karmapa Lama emerges as Tibet's new voice - China- msnbc.com

BBC NEWS Asia-Pacific Karmapa softens stance on China

Flight of the Lama - The New York Times

It is clear from his emotional reaction in the following video, that Karmapa fully understands the enormity of the task now before him, as the Dalai Lama first informs him of the plan for succession.

HH the 14th. Dalai Lama Joins His Holiness the 17th. Karmapa at 2003 Kagyu Monlam festival

HH14DL confirms HH17K at a public gathering. In Tibetan.

2009-03-29T11:57:00.003-04:00

sunday, march 29, 2009
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The 17th Karmapa and the Future of Tibet

Not even the death of His Holiness the fourteenth Dalai Lama is as fraught with the tension of Tibet's future as the re-birth of the Karmapa and the succession of His Holiness the seventeenth Karmapa to the Kagyu throne. The struggle with the Chinese on behalf of Tibetan autonomy and religious freedom, has taken a toll on HH14DL. He was recently hospitalized, following his acknowledgement of failure last November, in the 50-year 'Middle Way' effort to relieve Tibetan suffering.

Among the enlightened beings guiding the people of Tibet, Karmapa has traditionally shared responsibility with the Panchen Lama and the Dalai Lama for preserving the stability of Tibetan culture through recognized re-birth. The Chinese have been locked in a bitter struggle with HH14DL to rid themselves of the influence of the high lamas in Tibet by controlling the procession of succession through reincarnation. The success of the Chinese in the last decade to eliminate the Panchen Lama from this equation by kidnapping the candidate recognized by the Dalai Lama and replacing him with one selected by China. Now enthroned, the state-controlled Panchen Lama is rarely seen in public for fear of adverse reaction among Tibetans, by whom he is distained.

By contrast, the Karmapa, who has been officially recognized by both the Chinese government and the Dalai Lama, is in a unique position to influence future events in Tibet. Following his re-birth and enthronment, in which Chinese government officials participated, the Karmapa was regarded as the best hope for China in controlling Tibet in the coming decades. The best hope that is until at the age of 14, reacting to Chinese attempts to control his spiritual education, the seventeenth escaped from Tibet, crossing the Himalayas to refuge in India, where he was welcomed by HH14DL.

Now in his early twenties, the Karmapa is gaining world-wide acceptance as the probable successor to the Dalai Lama, during the regency period which will preceed the birth and recognition of the fifteenth Dalai Lama, which HH14DL has declared will occur outside Tibet.

With the stage thus set, this post offers two sets of YuTube videos; the first documenting the life and death of the 16th Karmapa, and the second documenting the discovery of the 17th Karmapa, living in a nomadic family in eastern Tibet.

the 16th Karmapa (on left) and 17th Karmapa at about the same age.

His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama confering with the 16th Karmapa.

Buddhist monks demonstrating against Chinese government attempts to control selection process of reincarnated Lamas

His Holiness with the 17th Karmapa soon after his escape from Tibet

His Holiness, the 17th. Karmapa

Film Biography of the 16th Karmapa - The Lion’s Roar

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2009-03-23T19:42:00.002-04:00

monday, march 23, 2009
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Is Everybody Happy?
With the Obama / Geithner toxic assett fire sale?

Results Mixed. What we know so far is that the market is happy, to judge by a 500 point jump, and that Paul Krugman is not, for reasons unclear, but initially appearing strangely moralistic...let us soon see if I have jumped the gun and must eat crow. I will post the articles and them read them as posted. You'd think I would do it the other way around, but no. See how I am?
BBC NEWS Business US unveils $1tn toxic asset plan
Nobel Winners Spence, Krugman Clash on Geithner Plan Prospects - Bloomberg.com

Thanks to the BBC for retreiving this summary:
How the Plan Will Work
Bank seeks to sell pool of mortgages worth $100
Private auction decides that asset is now worth $84
Private investor and government put up $6 each
They then borrow remaining $72 from government
That loan is guaranteed against any losses
If asset is later sold at higher price, government makes profit and private investor pays back loan and pockets profit.
If asset is sold at lower price, government and private investors could lose initial investment.
Source: US Treasury
This plan appears to me an ingenious blend of public/private powers working in harmony. I would think that it would have great potential to unlock the credit markets without giving away the store, which appeared to be the direction we were headed initially. By that, I simply mean that the plan does the essential thing; it begins to move the money. Better, it moves it in such a way that the taxpayers have fairly good potential to limit further liability, retreive some lost revenue and begin to benefit from increased available credit. So not a bad outcome.

Interestingly, Paul Krugman, who has been like a crotchety uncle since November, now seems upset primarily because we didn't follow the Swedish model of some years ago, in which assets of defunct corporations were taken outright, leading to stabilization.

So apparently, while the right wing is foaming at the mouth because of Obama's 'Socialist agenda,' Krugman is mad because the president isn't buying it. Swedish-style Socialism, that is. The dread of the right for decades has been the fear that we will slide into SOCIALISM, and now with the sliding board of history ready for the plunge, that calm-acting, middle-way follwing, garden-weeding president of ours, goes and acts like a person of reason and high intelligence, and comes up with a workable non-socialistic solution. Dang his hide.

DHL

2009-03-21T12:17:00.007-04:00

saturday, march 21, 2009
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President Obama's Iranian Love Bombs...

are they reaching the target? From his first television interview with Al-Jazerra shortly after taking office, to yesterday's reach-out to Tehran for the Iranian new year, the president has made clear his clean break with the BushCheney strategy of intimidation and threat. His skill at addressing Iranian national pride, and his clear intent to deal from a position of mutual respect takes enormous political courage in an environment that regards Iran as a pariah state. But is the Obama love campaign working? As this morning's BBC world report indicates, Grand Ayatollah Ali Kamenei's response shows diplomatic ineptitude at best, and determination to remain in self-destruct mode at worst. For as former president Clinton said in an interview last year, "the day Iran chooses to use its' nuclear capability against its' neighbor Israel, would be its' last good day." It has often been said of the Palestinian leadership, and of Hamas in particular, that "they never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity." Maybe it is the influence of Hamas on Iran that we should be worried about, rather than the other way around.BBC NEWS Middle East Iran demands change in US policy

As a citizen observer, without access to the circles of power in which the world's future unfolds, one can only hope that the Ayatollahs are as rational in private as they are belicose in public. For the fifty years of the U.S. / U.S.S.R. cold war, the world hoped and believed that "the Russians" as they were called in the conversations of American citizens, were fundamentally rational people and not bent on mutual suicide over ideology. The U.S. policy toward the Soviets in those days, as concocted by Dr. Strangelove...er, Kissinger, was one of "mutually assured destruction." And it is true that one pillar of that policy was based on President Nixon's covert attempts to convince the other side that he was emotionally unstable, and that his willingness to push the button should not be doubted.

Needless to say, the 'MAD' policy was not a public relations success. Most Americans refused to believe that their future and the future of the world was dependent on the whims of madmen. During these decades, citizen-to-citizen communication initiatives became increasingly common, eventually overcoming the efforts of the propagandists to portray the other side as an implacable enemy.

So let it be with the people of Iran. The false enemy of the political right has been defeated; at least for the moment. A window of opportunity has opened, and will remain open for a minimum of four years and probably a good bit longer. Enough time to come to terms with "the Great Satan" in a manner that allows the brighter future for Iran that is longed for and deserved by her long-suffering people.

DHL

2009-03-18T22:04:00.001-04:00

March 18, 2009

Arya Nagarjuna - 200 a.d.

Reflections on a weekend with Gelek Rimpoche

It has taken the four days since the weekend to let it sink in, and begin to appreciate the qualities of this great spiritual teacher. Rimpoche's teaching was a commentary on A Short Dedication, by Arya Nagarjuna. Because it is so short, I can include the entire dedication, first in phonetic Tibetan and then in English:

GEWA DI YI KYE WO KUN

SONAM YESHE TSOH DZOH SHING

SONAM YESHE LEY JUNG WAY

DAMPA KU NYI TOP PAR SHOH

By this virtue, may all beings

Complete the collections of merit and wisdom,

And attain the two ultimate bodies

That arise from merit and wisdom.

I would not presume to interpret, or even report on the content of Rimpoche's commentary. It included a full exposition on the Four Nobel Truths as an aid to material contained in the dedication. However, I can say that I feel a much improved understanding of many of the Buddhist concepts I have been learning at Jewel heart. Rimpoche has an ability to make human to human contact with his teaching. He offers a full understanding of Buddhism, but with a simplicity that seems to sweep aside contradictions. As a result the mind is able to accept it with less struggle; at least mine is.
As an individual, Rimpoche is very interesting. He has a great sense of humor. He makes every effort to help people feel welcome and at ease. He expresses humility to such a degree that it is very easy to forget that he is a high Lama with a lineage reaching into the heart of old Tibet and into the roots of Buddhism.

I feel a deepening comfort with Rimpoche as my personal Guru; I believe he would be of great help to me in resolving the struggle I feel between the practice of Buddhism and my devotion to Jesus. Frequently in his writings, Rimpoche has talked about the absence of contradiction respecting spiritual masters, and has specifically included Jesus. I think a discussion with Rimpoche would allow me to lay this matter to rest, other than to write about it for the benefit of others that may struggle with the same issue. Hope so; could work out.

DHL

2009-03-17T23:50:00.002-04:00

March 17, 2009

Earth Angel;

Because the planet can be a lonely place, and everybody needs somebody, sometime

aka Masque

2009-03-13T22:09:00.001-04:00

March 13, 2009

Gelek Rimpoche - tomorrow at Jewel Heart - Cleveland

This is going to be a huge weekend at Jewel Heart; Gelek Rimpoche will be here for a three-part teaching, with plenty of time for questions and interaction. What a great opportunity. I asked David, one of the Dharma coordinators if the visit was related to the anniversary of the uprising in 1959, but he said it was just coincidence.

I met Rimpoche several times last year; once at Jewel Heart and again when he did a presentation at Unity Church. I like that he completely discourages Tibetan posturing; no genuflections, no prostrations, etc. Just straight Buddhism, with a simple presentation and an impeccable lineage.

There will be much more to say after the weekend is over.

DHL

2009-03-10T19:24:00.001-04:00

March 10, 2009

The Promise of Chairman Mao

For those who love the people of Tibet, and the people of China, a time of crisis is quickly approaching, with great dangers ahead.

For Tibet, it is a time calling for united action. His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama, in an interview with NBC News, has, for the first time to a mass western audience, acknowledged failure in his 50-year quest to achieve autonomy for the people of Tibet within China. Meeting in Dharamsala, India with Ann Curry, His Holiness also denounced, in very harsh terms, China's treatment of the Tibetan people.
Dalai Lama: 'Hell on Earth' for Tibetans - China- msnbc.com

Today marks the fiftieth anniversary of the uprising of the Tibetan people against the Chinese invasion. At this hour fifty years ago, His Holiness was consulting the State Oracle, who emphatically urged him to take immediate flight into India. In 1959 people in the west were either hearing about Tibet for the first time, or were aware of it only as the remotest of the remote; a curiosity of the mysterious east, led by a boy "god-king."

Today, His Holiness, who has assured the world that he is no god, but merely a "simple monk," is a global celebrity, with phone numbers of most of the heads of state of the Western Alliance in his Blackberry. In the fifty years since his trek across the Himalayas in the late winter of 1959, he's been successful in delivering the moral authority of the office of the Dalai Lama to the world and the world's support to Tibet. (though so far tepid in the Obama administration).

It is the eventual death of His Holiness, impending in geopolitical terms, that creates the immediate crisis in the Tibet-China relationship. As discussed in other posts the Chinese are now in position to control from within Tibet, the selection of the 15th Dalai Lama, through their control of the Panchen Lama. Outside of Tibet, HH14DL has taken steps to protect his succession. As Regent during the period between the death of the 14th Dalai Lama and the recognition of the 15th, his hope appears to center on the 17th. Karmapa, aka HH17K.

HH14DL is in support of a succession of leadership to the Karmapa, although most experts on the situation are worried about resistance by monks of the Gelukpa order of the Dalai Lamas, to the Karmapa, head of the Kagyu order. With stakes this high, and the will of Tibetans both inside and outside of Tibet strongly in favor of independence behind a united leadership, one hopes for resolution of this misgiving.
The occupation of Tibet, which began at the hands of the Chinese Army, has now been concluded through the duplicity of a lineage of Chinese governments, and accepted as the just desserts of an emerging power by Chinese intellectuals and the Chinese mainstream. As far as Greater China is concerned, Tibet is a region of China and always has been, anyone on the outside who says otherwise should mind his own business, and 'oh by the way,' the Dalai Lama is a dangerous "split-ist." who is inexplicably hood-winking the west. It is in recognizing and accepting the reality of the present situation, in which China appears to be holding most of the cards, that HH14DL acknowledges the failure of his Middle Way approach.

The deeper meaning of His Holiness' acknowledgement however, relates not to defeat, but to an increased potential for the true dream of Tibetans on both sides of the border; full independence from China. While on the Chinese side, there may be nothing to talk about, from the Tibetan point of view, the termination of the Middle Way policy effectively ends the commitment to autonomy in exchange for Tibetan acknowledgement of Chinese suzerainty. The implicit alternative is an independence struggle, and I believe that His Holiness understands and accepts this. He knows that the people of Tibet want freedom, and that many, especially the younger people, are prepared to accept the high costs of struggle with the Chinese.
In providing the link to MSNBC I viewed one of the related videos; an interview with Professor Barnett at Columbia University. I learned something regarding the history of the Tibet/China relationship. In 1931 Mao Tse Tung made a commitment to the Dalai Lama, of full independence for Tibet. It is likely that Mao never intended to keep his promise. But it was made in public from one head of state to another, and as the poet says, "a promise made is a dept unpaid." *

Having said so, no one should underestimate the probable cost in human life of a Tibetan freedom struggle; a struggle that mainstream China would be likely to treat as a civil war of "win at all costs" importance. That truth makes a sad prediction for the future of young Tibetans.

So the time is truely upon all who love the people of Tibet, and the people of China as well, to spare these brothers from the violence soon to come. Redeem the promise of Chairman Mao.

DHL

(with apologies for the irreverence of the footnote)

* Robert W. Service; poet laureate of Alaska: "The Cremation of Sam McGee." in The Spell of the Yukon and other Verses. Barse & Hopkins, New York. 1907

2009-03-08T16:01:00.001-04:00

March 8, 2009

ArcelorMittal - Cleveland Steel Suspends Operations

March 7, 2009

The end of the line has come for steel manufacturing in Cleveland, Ohio. The ArcelorMittal Plant, reborn from the rubble of a steel-making legacy that goes back to 1880, has suspended operations at the old Jones & Laughlin plant. About 1100 people will lose their jobs. Yesterday, I drove to the plant gate and talked with the security guard on duty. "They ain't making no steel in there," he said. "They ain't made no steel in there for a long time."

The Cleveland industrial flats were once the economic heartland of the country. There is a legend in Cleveland that in the 1950s a member of the Krups Board of Directors was visiting Cyrus Eaton in his office in the Terminal Tower, overlooking the flats, which at that time was in full production. "If Hitler had seen this sight," said the visitor, "He would never have started World War II." When Barack Obama talks about replacing the manufacturing base in this country, this is what he is talking about.

DHL

2009-03-06T19:54:00.001-05:00

March 6, 2009

Love Songs of the Canadian Prairie

Introduction: MJ and I were married in 1976 and for a honeymoon, took a monumental trek across the Canadian Prairie, headed for Lake Louise. I was very taken by the vast expanses. You could feel the earth’s curvature and get the feel of being on a planet that you don't get in cooped-up city life. (It is a pity life.) As we approached the mountains from the east, we could see dark clouds forming; we made our way into the mountains as the clouds descended and we were immersed in thick fog and rain. The weather persisted for most of our stay at Lake Louise and dampened things considerably. Last year, I began planning a novel and was drawing on memories of the trip and the region as I constructed a set of characters, and planned their relationship. So the poems below occur in the lives of characters in an as yet unpublished (and mostly unwritten) novel. So please enjoy these, along with this great version of the Tennessee Waltz for your listening while reading pleasure.

Love Songs
of the Canadian Prairie

1.

Alberta Clipper

Born in the mountains
the storm seeks its home on the prairie;
the grasslands alive with passing power.

Curtains blowing at an open window;
fingers of the wind caress the body
of the woman lying naked in Alberta;
blowing through her hair, across her breasts.

The woman stirs in a lazy stretch,
excited by the wind.
Her musty smell, lifted by the storm
is carried aloft in clouds of snow.

Towering pillars of roiling clouds
driven by the wind,
follow the path of the ancient glacier;
drinking deeply from inland oceans;
churning new snow
in the gut of the swift winter storm.

At the edge of the lake,
at the high place where the glacier stopped,
the clouds open and the snow falls.

The scent of the woman falls
with the fresh Alberta snow,
to the place where the man is standing
on the heights at the edge of the lake;
at the place where the glacier stopped
on its way to the sea.

I was there at the edge of the lake,
I took the wind in my hand;
the wind that blew
the fresh snow of Alberta
across the lake,
and carried the musty smell of you
when you stirred naked in your bed.

2.

Muse of the Northern Lights

The muse of the Northern Lights
watches the old galoot
with eyes of cool blue wisdom
as they dance around the room
to The Tennessee Waltz.

She was laying low at a corner table
trying to escape her pain.
he sent her a drink,
and they got to talking;
the place was almost empty.
Wary of intercourse, social or otherwise,
her hope is winded, on the ropes;
her tough hide cracked by betrayal.

She takes her refuge in the land;
the howling wind,
The wide square miles around the town.
The fire in the sky as the lights dance by,
the moon when it’s full above the mountains,
and the stars guide the way through time.

the great prairie about her
is beautiful, or would be,
if you didn’t have to drive to Calgary to get laid
without the whole town knowing about it;
looking out their damn windows
at her busted car in the driveway
and his in the garage.

He talks like a crazy man -
Old Coyote she calls him;
grey, grizzled, and potbellied
with pretty blue eyes
and charm enough to be believed
when he whispers to her of winter storms,
and the times in the war
that taught him lessons.
Soon she is lying next to him
warm and naked by the fire.

Outside, the cold wind blows
and coyote calls
under the Northern Lights.

3.

Masque

Searching in places dark and unfamiliar,
the old warrior seeks
a path away from death;
a last chance
to illuminate the dark road ahead
with the light of desire
and the re-birth of power;
a weapon to raise
against the gathering night.

Pathways ahead open up,
making glib promise, but leading to dead ends.
The last card in play
lands face down on the bargaining table.
the old warrior wagers his last coin,
his face a masque of resignation.

But the card lying face down on the table
is a woman, unafraid in the darkness
and eager to obviate the old man’s resignation.
She comes without guile,
naked and unashamed,
her wise lust glowing hot,
she calls out to the old warrior
radiating her power
from the dark warm place
the woman keeps hidden within.

Waiting in the dark
she sees the light in the eyes of the man
behind the masque of the warrior.
She feels him awaken.
Taking him into her hands,
she guides him to the center of life.

Her lust is the alloy, her hunger the fire
to re-forge brittle spent iron;
honing the blade of now-strong steel
with the hope she brings to the dying man.

4.

Old Coyote

In the glow of the Northern Lights
I trace your contours;
your body warm against me
in the cold Alberta night.

Outside your window
Old Coyote is howling to his mate;
calling her close -
calling her home;
the entrance to their secret den
hidden by deep winter snow.

Like Old Coyote
I sniff around you
seeking the dark warm place inside;
the musty smell of you
that calls to me
when we lie close.
'You make a place for me in the cold night 'says Old Coyote to the woman.
The heat of you is like the warmth of a fire;
your body stirring against me
like the crackling of the flames.

I settle inside you like a log
laid over a bed of glowing embers.
I feel you unfolding,
like the mystery
of a beautiful flower.

Awakened in the dark by stirring desire,
Old Coyote nuzzles your dark places.

5.

Dunes of Snow

Dunes of snow,
wind-swept fields;
The western mountains
copper-red in morning sun.
Heavy clouds promise new snow.
Sunlight dances on the Chevy’s blue paint.
Coyote squints against the glare
on the hood of the car
heading south on route 2.

The radio plays
country music out of Edmonton.
The jock is playing The Tennesse Waltz;
Bonnie Raitt - her Fender guitar,
Nora Jones on keyboard.
Wrapped in warm memory,
it makes Coyote smile,
humming to the tune.

Naked and ripe under her plaid robe,
the woman cooks at the stove.
Her blue-green eyes intent
on sausage and eggs;
she stirs homefries,
ketchup, salt and fresh-ground pepper.
She passes the toast and butter;
Coyote pours the coffee.

Her long blond hair with flecks of grey,
sing Coyote’s song.
He wants to drag her back to bed
just one more time before he hits the road.
But he smiles at her
and drinks his orange juice,
eats his eggs,
and spreads his toast with marmalade.

Belly content and warm inside,
Like Coyote in his den;
asleep under the snow beside his mate,
their howling stilled
till moonrise.

At the edge of the lake
on the way out of town,
The woman calls Coyote
on the wind.

Time drifts in decades
an inconsistent marvel;
the old man
is struck by incongruence.
Hot young blood warms his worn old body;
his man parts alive with last night’s fire.

2009-03-05T21:11:00.001-05:00

March 5, 2009

Song for Miranda

Introduction: This was written a few years ago. I was at a professional conference on interventions for working with abuse survivors. I met a group of social workers from Omaha, who had developed an equine therapy program for sexual abuse survivors. The team leader was named Miranda. I've forgotten her last name, but we had a great conversation about it and I found her work inspiring. Hence...
Song for Miranda

I.

This is a song for Miranda.
A song for her
When she wakes in the morning,
When she sings in the shower
And listens to the radio
On the way to work.

This is for her
when she sees the sun from the east
Striking the glass boxes of Omaha.

This is a song of the people,
Sung from long ago.
Sung for Miranda
Driving through the glass city
on her way to work.

This is a song for Miranda,
To sing to the children sleeping in the city
And to be a circle around them.
To be the grandfathers
And brave warriors;
The aunties
and grandmothers making stew.

To be the stallion
Rearing in anger,
Bringing his sharp hooves down
When the wolves gather.

II.

Before the time of the glass city
The people gathered
On the south bank of the Platte
Making camp on a high bluff
overlooking the river
Not far from Cedar Creek.

A Toyota dealer marks the spot
Where the people first saw bands of ponies
Grazing on new grass at the river’s edge
drinking from the Platte’s sweet water

the people wanted to ride like the wind
on the backs of the ponies
so quietly, the warriors crept
through the tall grass

nostrils flare as the stallion alerts
to the smell of the stalking warriors
the mares gather in a circle around the colts
the stallion wheels, and with a shrill cry
leads the band away from danger

Clouds of dust rise above the Platte
As pounding hooves carry the ponies
Away from the smell of the camp
Out of the reach of the warriors
Creeping quietly through the tall grass

above the river in gathering twilight
the women light the cookfires
for buffalo stew with meat from the last hunt
and wild carrots gathered by the river
the women sing to the children
and the Grandfathers tell their stories

the children are asleep under warm robes
in a circle by the fire,
Safe from wolves
and the dark human heart.

III.

In the glass boxes of Omaha
No campfires burn
To carry the smell of stew cooking
The children lie asleep in the city
but no circle surrounds them
No brave warriors protect them
And the dark heart is all around

From the glass boxes of Omaha
The dark human heart
Like a trader in commodities
Strikes a bargain
For the souls of the sleeping children
Like wolves
they stalk the stragglers
On their way to school in the morning
Baiting traps with candy
And bits of bright ribbon

Oh baby! make me cum inside u
Say the dark human hearts
To the children

The Grandfathers who watched over you
When you slept with the people
In the camp above the river
are drunk in the city
The mamas and aunties
who cooked stew for you
buffalo and wild carrots
Are crack whores now

you are alone
and only have me to protect u
My big cock will be your friend
It won’t hurt…I promise
And when I’m done
You’ll have candy…all you want
And a pretty dress to wear.

IV.

This is a song for Miranda
To sing to the children sleeping in the city
And to be a circle around them
To be the grandfathers
And brave warriors
The aunties
and grandmothers making stew

To be the stallion
Rearing in anger
Bringing his sharp hooves down
When the wolves gather

.....

DHL

2009-03-04T22:14:00.001-05:00

March 3, 2009

Tonight was the Jewel Heart class on the Four Noble Truths. Susie Kirchner is the dharma teacher. She does a great job; mostly I think, because she loves doing it.

Baby Dee was there; I'm not sure how long she has been coming. Quite awhile I think. She's been a pretty steady customer lately. Usually her tour schedule keeps her away from Cleveland for long stretches. So it was good to see her. David was there also. His cat ran away on Monday, but the cat is back. So that's good.

We were talking about karma tonight, good and bad. It is just the action you take, good or bad.

I must say, that I am not a very good student of Buddhism. I don't take notes, I just try to absorb. Most of the other people take notes. I always say and think that it is because I abhore dogma but it's really because I'm lazy. Still, to give myself credit, I do absorb quite a bit.

Take ego for instance. The western view of ego is that it is very much at center ring. The whole goal of healthy personality development in the west is to develop a mature ego with a good executive command in charge of it all. From the Buddhist point of view, ego is not only not at the center of things, but in an enlightened being, it is gone. Literally. Actually. Well, not really gone, but never acutally there in the first place. Which from the healthy ego at the center of things point of view sounds like jibberish. It's not; it just means that although our existence is eternal, traveling from body to body and life to life, our ego is impermanent. It is simply a method of organizing our thought process, while in a physical body. So ego does have a practical aspect. But it is not reality. It is not the core of consciousness. We leave it at the door on the way out. But, because we rely on it so much while we are alive, we mistake it for the real deal.

As you might surmise, this is Roger Miller, singing do-wacka-do, one of my favorites. Ignore the printed content; I just posted it for the lyric. The point that sent me in quest of it is the lyric, "well I see you going down the street in your big Cadillac, you got girls in the front, you got girls in the back, back, way in the back you got money in the sack, both hands on the wheel and your shoulders right back ...."

It's a perfect methaphor for the ego. More real than real. Life and death itself; so much a part of you that you'll fight to the death to protect it. The irony is that you are protecting an illusion; an illusion in the sense that it is temporary, based on the concerns of the present existence and only a small component of present existence at that. It does seem to have a primary function of some importance however. It serves as the mechanism that connects consciousness to the world of physical existence. The purpose of existence, it is often said, is learning. While we draw breath, we have an opportunity to learn, and what we learn, we take with us when we go. We use it to build future lives, to connect with the full potential of our consciousness and to use the human opportunity to achieve, or at least work toward achieving, the level of perfection of which we are capable.

So ego can be useful, as long as we don't mistake it for the real thing.

It is a lot like owning a car. Americans are crazy about their cars, and actually think of them as an extension of the self. In America, "you are what you drive" is a common attitude. When you drive the new car off the lot, it looks like a million bucks, and you look like a million bucks driving it. But after you've put a few hundred thousand miles on it and aquired a few dents and a thick coat of dirt, your million bucks is down to spare change. And your proud ego goes with it. In the fifties, when I grew up, yearly trade-ins were a common status symbol. The new car ethic of the fifties, was "trade it in as soon as the ash tray is full." Protect that ego! Polish it, wash the tires, give it a wax job to keep the rain off. Buy a set of fuzzy dice to hang from the rear view mirror.
I just thought of a good YouTube that would fit here. I'll be right back...

This line of thinking may have been of great help to me tonight. It has to do with writing, and my ambition to write. I have known since a young child, that I have a talent for writing and my undergraduate degree from Ohio University is in Communications. My first career was in journalism; I wrote for a magazine, and have done writing for radio and tv. But I have not realized my true ambition, which is to write creatively. I have the worst case of writer's block I know of. Obviously I've thought a lot about why that is, and I think I have it figured out. It is a three-fold problem, as follows:

I'm lazy. To succeed at writing, you have to write every day. That's why I started this blog; to begin to discipline myself to work at it. After I retire in December, I hope to begin a project. This has been my game plan for some time.
Writing takes honesty. True honesty. Which I find very difficult. One the one hand, I have a lot of dark corners, and I'm not sure how honest I want to be. On the other hand, I realize that only honesty is interesting and to be otherwise, is to risk creating trivia instead of something worth reading. Or worth writing for that matter.
Protection of the ego. See point 2.

See my point? I am so invested in protecting my ego from whatever, that I let it get in the way of my creative energy. So here, I may have a practical application for the whole impermanence of ego thing. Ya think?

DHL

2009-03-02T21:46:00.001-05:00

March 2, 2009

Winter Clouds over Lake Erie - February 28, 2004 - 17 x 20

Tonight was my first Lamrim back after missing for 2 weeks running. It was a struggle to settle in, being out of sync with the group. I'll read the text during the week to catch up. Ironic, being behind in Buddhism, rushing to get with it...seems a bit unBuddhist, but oh well. Before my break, we were discussing the creation of sacred space, but I think I will do some reading before trying to write about anything.

Except maybe the weather. Cold as hell. High tonight of 11. Brrrrrrrrr. The photo above was taken a few years ago around sundown at the mouth of Euclid Creek. Over the weekend, I dropped my mother's 90th birthday gift off to her. Her actual birthday was last August, and I gave her a large view of Downtown Cleveland taken from Edgewater. But she didn't like the color and it was too big. So I exchanged it for something smaller. Now that i think about it, I guess I'll post them both. First the one she didn't like...
view from edgewater - 13 x 29

And now the one I exchanged it for, which she loved. North Chagrin Reservation; winter meadow - 7 x 20

So that turned out good.

DHL

2009-02-28T22:41:00.001-05:00

February 28, 2009

Happy Birthday Snake!

I suppose it is just a bit pathetic to use your own blog to wish yourself happy birthday. My wife and all my old friends call me Snake, hence the card. What did I get for my birthday? A polo shirt and renewal of my New Yorker subscription from MJ, my wife, and a biography of Lincoln (by Ronald White) from Michael and Mia, my kids.

And what did I get you out there is blogland, to help me celebrate my birthday? Its going to be the Paul Simon Zimbabwe concert in 1987, featuring Miriam Makeba and Hugh Masekela. The music is mostly from Graceland:

Paul Simon - Concert Zimbabwe

The Boy in the Bubble

Township Jive (alt open)

Graceland

I Know What I Know

Call Me Al

Whispering Bells

With Hugh Masekela

Paul Simon - LadySmith Black Mambazo - 1

Paul Simon – Concert Zimbabwe - LadySmith Black Mambazo 2

Under African Skies – with Miriam Makeba

Diamonds On the Soles of Her Shoes

N’kosi Sikeleli Africa - Zimbabwe national anthem

Happy Birthday to all in Blogland, from your friend,

Ssssssssnake

2009-02-27T22:09:00.001-05:00

February 27, 2009

Dark Ghosts

Introduction: This post is a celebration of the Obama administration's announcement today of the finalized timetable for withdrawal from Iraq. Going to war in Iraq was deeply troubling for me and emotional in a very personal way, touching on feelings and memories born in Vietnam in 1968-69. I was stationed in the Central Highlands with the 1/52nd Infantry of the 198th Light Infantry Brigade, Americal Division. I arrived in-country on July 19th., 1968 and left on July 19th., 1969. I was as naive as any Goldwater booster in those days, although still a Democrat. I believed that the government had a well thought out game plan for Vietnam, mainly because of all the dazzling Harvard grads in the Kennedy State Department. It took personal exposure to burst the bubble. Once in-country, it did not take long to realize that the government had absolutely failed to understand the situation on the ground in Vietnam; if they had thousands of American and Vietnamese lives need not have been sacrificed.

What was particularly horrible about the ramp-up to Iraq, was that it could be seen from such a long way off, and yet felt inevitable. During Vietnam, self-education happened on the fly; the realization that our Vietnam policy was a mistake didn't dawn on most until we were actually in the soup - chin deep. The inevitability of the Iraq war could be seen emerging from its' dark neo-con lair, then onrushing like a nightmare train of death approaching from a far horizon.

Iraq became personal and cut to my heart the day that I heard from my brother-in-law that his son Colin had enlisted in the Army and was on his way to Tikrit. It is true of me that at moments of high personal emotion, I use a form of poetry to express my feelings. So it was when I realized that the Iraq fraud of BushCheney was to put the life of my nephew at risk. And at that time, Iraq was a true nightmare, likely to get worse. Indeed it did until finally even BushCheney realized change was needed. So this poem was written in the emotion of that time, and it seems appropriate to offer it as we reach the end of the Iraq period, in celebration of lives redeemed and in sorrow for lives lost. And a salute to my nephew Colin, who survived Iraq, has returned home to Bosie, Idaho and is training for a civilian career in treaching. So, for Colin and many like him...

Dark Ghosts

I.

I hear again the sounds
That I heard at the death of my youth.
Chopper blades overhead
Whack the air with human violence
The crack of small arms fire.

A grid marked on a map
In black crayon,
a military radio
calls death from the darkness.
the darkness returns
an affirmative.

The distant rumble of Rolling Thunder
Like earthquakes in another town.

Dark ghosts bank and turn in the sky
Ordinance falls in clusters
The land below a blanket
Of red and yellow flowers.

The great criminals
Feel the ground shudder underfoot.
The air a whirlwind of fire
Alive with the frightened spirits
Of the newly dead.

B-52s fleeing the scene,
Arrive home in time for drinks
At the officer’s club on Guam.

II.

The great criminals
Squat at the hearth of cookfires
Playing cards; two-handed Bhatt
Slapping the cards down one-by-one
As they wait for rice to cook.
Rusted weapons wrapped in oiled rags
buried in the fields.

Waiting for John Wayne
To explain again
How death comes for a higher purpose.

III.

I hear the sounds again
Though forty years have passed.
Warriors now fat and old
Load their children onto airplanes
Praising their courage
While priests absolve their shame.

Mothers at church
Praying on Sunday morning;
Loudly singing the hymns of ancient faith
To drown the memory
Of lullabies sung to their babies.

Young warriors now with red berets
Body armor; suits of high-tech Kevlar
Protect their hearts from tragedy
As they leap from the bellies of airplanes
To assault the great criminals below.

IV.

Have you not learned just one new trick
In forty years?
All those years of study?
All that college education?
And still the only song you know
Is sung to the sound of explosions?
The only trick you know
Is blowing holes through human hearts
With bits of metal?

All you know is waging war with children
While John Wayne explains
That death comes for a higher purpose.

V.

In the blue sky over the garden
Streaks of white
Evidence the passing
Of the great warbirds

300 generations
Separate the thunder of F-16s
From the angel’s flaming sword
When adam and eve
were banished from the garden.

Only the time is different.
The place is the same.
The tree of life stood then
Where the battle for Tikrit now rages.
VI.

The place of the Lord while on earth
Was in the garden.
His creation was at hand
Blooming and new
His children growing.
And when the time came
He returned to heaven
Leaving his children
In the hands of the angels.

And wobetide you!
Said the Lord
If you lead the children
In the path of death and danger.
. . .

DHL

2009-02-25T22:34:00.001-05:00

February 25, 2009

Say 'NO' to Losar
China expects Tibet to celebrate, or else - Los Angeles Times

or...talk about a lousy stimulus package.

Among other tactics designed to thwart the designs of the "Say 'NO' to Losar" movement now taking root in Tibet, the Chinese government has given $120 to 37,000 Tibetan families to encourage holiday shopping. Comes to about $4.5 million. I'm soooooo impressed.

In tribute to Tibetans who died in the uprisings last year, many Tibetans are choosing to replace the traditional Losar celebration with a period of mourning for the dead. The Chinese, fit to be tied, are responding by trying to force Tibetans to have a good time. Talk about buzz kills. Not to disrespect the seriousness of the say NO movement, but the absurdity of it puts me in mind of the old "you have relatives in East Germany?" routine. You vill go to ze picnic, und you vill haff a sandwich! Und ven der muzic plays, you will tap ze foot!

Sorry, that was pretty dumb. But not as dumb as paying for round-the-clock government sponsored Losar events that no one goes to; or watches on TV. And having huge fireworks displays going off without an audience. Sad. The Chinese are on the way to discovering that tyranny breeds contempt, and contempt breeds revolution. Fanning the flames of Tibetan anger is a bad strategy for trying to control a people rapidly loosing faith in non-violent resistance. Indeed, the Chinese permit no resistance, non-violent or otherwise. To say that Tibet faces an uncertain future puts it mildly. The key question being asked by practicing Buddhists is whether or not the non-violent tactics of His Holiness will survive his death. For the Chinese government the cost of containing the coming conflict will be measured in world opinion. For the people of Tibet, it will be measured in human life.

DHL

my thanks to the Stand Up 4 Tibet web site for the say 'NO' to Losar graphics

standup4tibet

2009-02-24T18:43:00.002-05:00

February 24, 2009

Cuba Libre? Si! Cuba Libre!

BBC: Senator Lugar says U.S. 'must rethink Cuban embargo'
I found this photo of Cuban schoolkids on a Santiago website last updated in 2004. I couldn't locate the owner. They look to be about 5 or 6, don't they? By now, they'd be about ten. When they were born, the American grudge against Cuba was in its' fortieth year. Had probably been in place since before their parents were born. So our original beef was with the grandparents of this group of kids. And those of us, like myself, who are old enough to remember the early days of Castro's Cuba, we are also grandparents. It is time for the old ones to get out of the way, and give the kids some breathing room.

But I am far from ready to join the ghouls at Papa Fidel's deathwatch. I respect the Cuban Revolution and its' leadership, including Fidel. I respect them for taking Cuba back from the United States and returning it to the people of Cuba. I respect them for living up to promises of universal health care and education. I respect them for the international reputation they have achieved for medical education and service delivery.

I do not respect Fidel's police state; how could anyone? As an old time American lefty, with family roots going back to Eugene Debs, I see the betrayal of the principles of Utopian communism by Soviet and Chinese models of totalitarian repression, to be among the great crimes of the twentieth century.

But there is much more to the Cuban people, and much more to the Cuban Revolution, than Fidel Castro. There is a country filled with kids like the ones in the purloined photo above. Kids being taken care of by parents who need jobs. That Cuban future is not someday, that future is today, and today American foreign policy is deciding that these kids will continue to live in poverty. They'll have health care, and they will get an excellent education, but they will be poor all of their days, and their children will be poor. Because an American elite has a beef with Fidel Castro, and they think they can bully him into becoming a democrat, and giving United Fruit back their banana plantations.

Yesterday, Senator Richard Lugar, who enjoys the reputation of a giant of foreign policy in his role on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said that our policy toward Cuba was a failure and should be reviewed. It's good news. It doesn't go very far, but then, you wouldn't expect it to. American politics has been dominated by the Cuban right wing in Florida for so long that it has become a third rail issue for anyone running for president. Which does not include Republican Richard Lugar, but does include his good friend Democratic President Barack Obama. So a small first step by a Republican ally, to test the political reaction in the American right wing, is a logical strategy for keeping Cuba from becoming an issue in 2010/2012. I guess there's more than one way to get to bi-partisanship, eh?

But let's get on with it. This policy has been stupid from its' inception. It had no chance whatever to alter Castro's "behavior" and probably wasn't designed to; its' punitive nature is evidenced by the many initiatives taken by Castro, over the five decades of the embargo, for open dialogue, that have been rebuffed by the United States. The American strategy from the beginning has been to up the stakes, increase the pressure and crush the regime with an uprising from within, coupled to a CIA-cooked brilliant scheme for a stealth invasion. Blowback from the last such brilliant scheme probably cost President Kennedy his life.
Unfortunately for the elite princes in the dark towers of American foreign policy, the uprising never came, for the very vexing reason that the people of Cuba (not all of them, of course) love Fidel Castro, and support the Revolution. So do I, despite all the bad habits of police state control he learned from Kruschev.

DHL

President Obama is no fascist, but "no hayt agresion que Cuba" to you as well, sir.

2009-02-22T15:57:00.001-05:00

February 22, 2009

Meanwhile, Back on Planet Earth,

It's Sunday morning in America and we have awakened to an age in which the unthinkable has apparently become impossible to avoid. Friendly Ed, the town banker has breathed his last. Coaxing him out of his coma with a stimulating tonic hasn't produced the usual lurch into consciousness. His eyes have not fluttered open at the last possible second for a warm Hollywood ending. The brain scan is flat. The defibrillator? Zilch. Adrenaline injected straight to the heart? The only response is the quiet humming of the air conditioning, and the shuffling of Alan Greenspan's feet, as he draws the sheet over the body and begins turning off the machines.

Were it otherwise, I'm sure we wouldn't be hearing all this loose talk about nationalizing the banks. Chris Dodd mentioned it, just in passing, and Team Obama said nothing doing. The stock market plunged anyway, and the morning talk was all about "oh dear, oh dear, what shall we do?"

Well, I hope that what we shall not do is get screwed through some jerry-rigged scheme for re-starting the economy that does not involve nationalization simply because the land of Ayn Rand gags on the N word. (the other N word). The taxpayers are shelling out a lot of money to keep afloat a system that was running full tilt boogie, trying to screw every last dime out of every last sucker before the band stopped playing. Now has come the recession that we hope can be kept from becoming a depression, and the Masters of the Universe are running like antelope from a prairie fire to their recently despised Uncle Sugar for refuge.

Well, let them come, but get a receipt. Better yet, get the deed to the place, lock, stock and barrel; isn't that how it's supposed to work? When Little Nell had to sell the family place because she couldn't pay the note, everyone booed Snidley Whiplash, but no one questioned his right to the property. So let the stockholders run for cover, move the corrupt management out, find someone who will work for a mere $500,000 plus benefits, and clear out the wreckage. Let Uncle Sam bring it back to life, and take a payback to the Treasury as the cost of doing business.

At some point, I think that Team Obama will probably come to the same conclusion as the NYT Editorial Page and sign off on nationalization. The Republicans, I guess, are going to sit this one out. Must be nice.
In the meantime, Hillary is in Beijing making sure the $787,000,000,000 check her boss just wrote doesn't bounce. That would be a perplexing predicament, I must say. Personally, I thought the Chinese were a little chilly. Let's not let Tibet, religious freedom or human rights obscure the realities of global trade; says Hillary. And we are so happy and proud you intend to continue investing in the American future...um, you do intend to continue, right? For the moment, replys the Minister of Finance. But the smile on his lips was as thin as OJ's alibi, and the look in his eyes lacked warmth.
The sole comfort of the day, and actually it was a considerable comfort, was news of the President's plan to cut the deficit in half by 2012. Apparently despite the huge numbers needed to save western civilization, President Obama has not lost sight of the looming crisis that will begin the day the Chinese decide they are no longer in the market for T-bills.
And the fact that $100 billion in support for education made it into the final version of the stimulus bill, is further cause for celebration. It must be apparent that despite it all, I maintain my sunny optimism. I believe it was Camus who once said "the man who can still smile, has not yet heard the terrible news."

DHL

2009-02-19T20:41:00.012-05:00

thursday, february 19, 2009
.......................................................................................................................................

The Two Negations & The Lord of Creation

I was listening to His Holiness, (the 14th Dalai Lama) in the Four Noble Truths presentation that I posted a couple of days ago. He made the point that the first principle of Buddhist thinking is the principle of dependent origination, and in particular the principle of causation. Everything that "exists" does so as the result of something that existed before it. Our minute-to-minute "reality", with all of its' arising causes and conditions, is impelled into existence by something pushing from behind, and in turn, as it shoves its' way through time, causes the onrushing future. As a result of this says His Holiness, the world of apparent existence that occupies our daily lives, is in fact empty of inherent meaning.

Then His Holiness made the point that the principle of dependent origination gives rise to two negations. First, that nothing comes out of nothing. There is no first cause. Second, that any concept of a creator God is negated.

With regard to the second negation, I had a feeling that something was up when someone sneezed at a Jewel Heart meeting, and no one said "God Bless You."

Just kidding. Actually these were the principles that attracted me to Buddhism in the first place. When I was coming up, the expectations of Christianity seemed to require belief in a series of magical tricks, which made it impossible for me to remain a Christian practitioner after the onset of the age of reason. Buddhism seemed to offer relief from this expectation, and His Holiness confirms that the very hallmark of Buddhism is a negation of non-rational theories of origination. It was while I was in a crisis of faith regarding the existence of God and the nature of Christ, that Buddhism became available to me and filled a need for achieving a deeper understanding of existence, without the irrational expectations that I found alienating. It also provided an ethical framework for living within society that promoted human unity, justice and non-violence.

As described in an earlier post, at a certain point in my life, my rigid rationalism gave way to the demonstrated power existing within the subtle realm. Within this universe, the drama of visionary experience contains much that is anthropomorphic in its' apparent nature, leaving it vulnerable to psychological interpretation. But it also contains much that is suggestive of the more complex and subtle forms of spiritual existence one would expect of a natural realm coexistent with the universe described by a modern understanding of cosmology.

It will remain forever true for myself that the God of the Old Testament, the Creator God of Genesis, is an impossibility. The logic traps of fundamentalism just do not work for me.

However, I cannot imagine a universe without consciousness, and I cannot imagine that consciousness is bound by its relationship to physical existence; indeed, His Holiness asserts that it is not. The basis for the Buddhist belief in reincarnation, he says, lies in the realization that matter and consciousness are separate and distinct. Matter, he says, cannot create consciousness. And consciousness cannot create matter.

I am aware that there is currently a furious debate unfolding in the scientific blogosphere, on the question of whether or not the mind exists independently of the brain. The question is of interest to psychologists, neurosurgeons and others who have professional cause to wonder about it. The debate is the subset of a debate - or is it a war? - between the Darwinian strict constructionists, and the stealth creationists of the intelligent design camp. I don't want into that fight; when rigid tautological battle lines are drawn, I tend to run for cover.

It is true however, that the world of science is searching for an explanation of how the brain creates the mind, and has yet to find one.

Buddhism, as expressed by His Holiness and the other enlightened beings, by negating the concept of a creator God, expressing the principle of dependent origination, and observing that matter and consciousness exist independently, opens the door to the realm in which we exist when we don't exist as inhabitants of physical matter.

As advanced as Buddhist thinking is from my perspective, and especially as compared to the relatively primitive fundamentalist religion of my youth, its' accomplishments become even more remarkable when one realizes that the concepts of Buddhism, which seem to fit so comfortably within the scientific model of quantum physics and the expanding universe, is actually 2,600 years old and came into existence at a time when the prevalent vision of the cosmos was of a flat world of earth with a dome of sky, riding on the back of a tortoise. The stars were perceived as little leaks of light exposing the sun in its hiding place behind the night.

The birth of Christianity led to belief in a world of faith, with human sinners struggling on earth, below a heavenly chorus of cloud-dwelling angels, archangels and saints in a universe consisting of an flat earth orbited by the sun the stars and the abode of God in Heaven. It has been a slow and difficult journey since then, for priests asserting their authority and theologians their understanding of God, within the unfolding knowledge of science regarding the nature and origins of the universe.

The understanding of the universe common in the years of my childhood, was influenced by the science of Einstein. In those days, we were in the midst of a debate about whether the universe had existed for eternity in a "steady-state," or whether it had exploded, and was expanding. We did not know in 1950 that Einstein had already discovered that the universe was expanding when he wrote the General Theory of Relativity, in 1905. But it seemed counter-intuitive to him, so he assumed that his math was wrong and fudged his figures. Strange, but true.

In the 1930s, Edwin Hubble was looking at the stars through his telescope, and noticed that the light waves of certain stars shifted into the red portion of the spectrum, indicating a lengthening of the light source's wavelength. This observation lead Hubble to the realization that the object was moving away from the earth, and that we are therefore living in an expanding universe. It was a monumental discovery; embarrassing for Einstein, and a big surprise for the rest of us, although it took about 30 years for the news to reach the west side of Cleveland.

At the same time, the realization of an expanding universe led to the further insight that the universe had not existed in its' present form since eternity, as previously believed, but had instead been derived from a catastrophic event occurring at a specific point in the past. Specifically, a short 15 billion years ago - a factoid from which we derive not only the age of our universe, but its' approximate size as well. Imagine a space roughly the shape of a flattened globe with a radius of 15 billion light years, and you've got it.

In modern time, the scientific journey of discovery was also taken in the other direction; to the universe existing within the structure of matter. The understanding of matter that I had as a child was probably not much different from that of a child living in ancient Greece. We shared a belief in atoms as the smallest of things. And atoms, we believed are little solar systems of unimaginably tiny elemental planets. It appeared to us both that the same understanding that we applied to how the sun and the planets functioned in the solar system could be applied to an understanding of the sub-atomic world.

Not so we found out; apparently things at the level of particle physics are chaotic, and the same sets of rule do not apply. And strangely and poetically enough, when we get to the center of sub-atomic particles their positive and negative energies exquisitely balanced, in a dance-tune of strong and weak forces, we find, not the tiny elemental worlds we expected, but vibrating strings of energy spelling out the illusion of matter.

The very illusions perhaps that His Holiness refers to when he speaks of the negation of intrinsic existence.

So it is that our growing scientific knowledge seems to carry us ever forward, into the heart of the mystery of existence. And what God do we carry forward with us on this journey of discovery? The God of Abraham, Issac and Jacob. The god that spoke to us when civilization was young, and the world was a disc, riding on the back of a tortoise. We have good reason to do so, we believe. The bonifides of the God that led Moses through the wilderness, were confirmed more recently - a mere 20 centuries ago - by someone whose trustworthiness is impeccable; the son of the living God.

But will our limited ability to understand the vast realms to which we have been introduced in the last 100 years, allow us to meld our understanding of the God of the Old Testament, with our understanding of a universe expanding toward infinity in two directions? Toward the external infinity of the universe of stars, planets and galaxies in one direction, and the infinitely small universe of matter in the other? If so, can we call it God, with any sort of insight or understanding of what we mean when we use this term? It is apparent to me that my poor powers of imagination fail to give rise to a vision of a consciousness so vast that it can rule so great a realm. Depends on the definition of "rule" no doubt.

Remarkably, in pointing the way back in time to the "Big Bang" science has given us a place mark of fundamental value, a tool to be used in our struggle to reconcile ancient myth and modern knowledge in our search for understanding. It has revealed the manner and the moment of our creation. Has it also revealed at least the shadow of the Lord of Creation?

Before Einstein and Hubble, we didn't have a point from which time is reckoned. We lived in a world that had always been, in a universe that would remain forever the same...ticking it's way through eternity like the elegant timepiece of Jefferson's understanding. Even Einstein believed it; so much so that he fudged his numbers rather than change his mind.

Creation myths abound in man's ancient memory, but none of them compare to the story of the Great Explosion, before which is only the shadow of mystery, and after which is the birth of everything, awakening in a newly-crafted cradle of time. Though it sounds like an aboriginal myth created in dream-time, it is in fact, rock-hard science.

But all of this only serves to describe the physical universe, and offers nothing to account for the existence of consciousness. It must be asked, was the Big Bang of physical creation concomitant with the creation of consciousness, and if so how? Did it happen in the same big flash? Did consciousness coalesce as matter did? As an incomprehensibly dense plasma of newly forming electrons coalescing into the periodic table of the elements? Or did the birth of consciousness come later, after the fire had died down, and the earth had cooled. Did it wait for the birth of the biosphere, before consciousness came to Earth and other places?

Science no doubt would surmise that consciousness grew incrementally in the same manner as the atmosphere; the collective expiration of the planets' living things over eons, giving rise to the breathable and navigable ocean of air that encircles the planet. Is there a comparable mechanism for accumulation of consciousness arising perhaps from the signal response of a collective infinity of flagella-waving aamoebic nerve endings?

Seems a bit unlikely, and it certainly lacks elegance as an explanation for human consciousness, but the fact is we don't know. We know there was a big bang, and we know there is a world of matter. We live in it. We're made of it. We know there is consciousness. We think it. We become aware of it; an inner presence when we meditate. But of its origins we know nothing.

It has none, His Holiness would no doubt say, and no doubt he is right. But imagining that an event of consciousness might occur coexistent with an event of matter, at a moment when the universe flashes into sudden existence, leads one to wonder what sort of influence one aspect of such an event might have on the other, and what aspect may have led to what outcome? The answer to such questions lie beyond the horizon described by the explosion that led us to our present time and space. The event that preceded the only big bang of our personal knowledge and experience.

(His Holiness postulates that the "Big Bang" of our experience is unlikely to be unique and thinks they are likely to be a common occurrence - but then that's why he's the Dalai Lama).

Many suffer alienation from spiritually due to bitterness toward the God that permits human suffering. Where was the God of mercy during the Holocaust? During Hurricane Katrina? Our way of understanding, and our need to feel control over the environment, gives rise to the God to whom we pray for deliverance.

When prayer fails, is not our anger directed at the straw man set up by a limited human vision? If so, it is a misplaced anger, and should be directed not at the Lord of Creation, but at the cargo plane made of sticks and vines, set out in the jungle in hope of attracting the source of the mystery by which it was inspired.

We must always remember that the world of human misery, the whole ugly history of wars inspired by greed served by violence, the ancient tradition of indifference by the elite for the fate of the poor, is a world of our own creation. It is the human choices we make that create the suffering of the world, not the demons of hell, abetted by an indifferent god.

Our prayers are largely misplaced. Instead of begging for deliverance from misery and misfortune, our need is for insight.

To open us to the realization of the perfection within which we are living day to day, and to an awareness of the human suffering we create by greed and violence.

To be awakened to the need for change in the world, so that the vision of earth as a ball of resources ripe for development may be transformed into an awareness of the garden of perfection in which we were born and in which our treasured consciousness resides.

So that our thirst for violence as a tool for intimidation and command may be transformed into an awakening awareness of human suffering and a response inspired by love and compassion.

DHL

John E Mack, M.D. - "Experiencers"

2009-02-17T22:08:00.002-05:00

17 FEB 2009

John E. Mack, M.D.

Documentary: “Experiencers” - features people who have had contact with extraterrestrials, been abducted by them, and have had dramatic emotional and psychological adjustments to make as a result. In five parts.

Dr. Mack was Dean of the Harvard Medical School, Department of Psychiatry at the time of his death. He was an expert in diagnosis and teatment of trauma-based emotional injury, and had written numerous articles, and several books, editing several others. He was the author of a psychological biography of Lawrence of Arabia that had won a Pulitizer Prize. Because of this reputation, he was approached by a colleague and asked to see someone seeking assistance. A New York artist of considerable reputation, Budd Hopkins had developed an interest in unidentified flying objects, after seeing one while at the beach on Cape Cod. Hopkins' interest led eventually to a study of people who were reporting abduction by entities that they interpreted as alien and probably extraterrestrial. Because he lacked a mental health background, and was concerned for the emotional well-being of the people he was seeing, Hopkins was seeking someone skilled in working with trauma victims, who would not pre-judge them for the strangeness of their stories.

The UFO field is seen in the mainstream as not to be taken seriously, and professionals who take an interest, take a risk. Dr. Mack’s interest was risky. In response to media coverage of his work with alien abductees, or “experiencers” as he preferred to call them, and the several books he wrote based on this work, a committee of his peers put him on academic “trial.” Though they had grave concerns regarding the subject matter, they eventually had to conclude that Dr. Mack's view, which was that the people he was seeing, were clearly not mentally ill, presented as victims of trauma, and were probably telling the truth about their experiences, was reasonable. He was "aquitted." The committee did admonished him to open up his work to colleagues in his and related field in order to broaden the scientific foundation of what was being learned. Not a bad outcome for what must have been a severe ordeal.

At the time of his death, Dr. Mack was working to establish a foundation for training of mental health professionals in the treatment of abduction-induced trauma. I will post appropriate web addresses ASAP, including, I hope a complete listing of his written works.

My interest? As a licensed social worker, I constantly receive invitations to go to conferences. Back in 1992, I received a brochure on a conference being co-sponsored by MIT and Harvard on the topic of alien abductions. The conference was obviously not the usual UFO carnival. It was designed for mental health professional with a focus on trauma victims. Since at the time I worked for the local Witness/Victim Service Center, as a specialist in treatment of domestic violence perpetrators, and had extensive experience in working with DV victims, I was an obvious candidate for the conference.

Other priorities intervened however, and I didn't go. But I did develop an interest in the subject, especially as it was approached by the late Dr. Mack.
"Experiencers" is not a new documentary, but as a reader of this blog has already surmized, I have become a YouTubenaut, and was excited to find this five-part series:
"Experiencers"

Part 1:

Part 2:

Part 3:

Part 4:

Part 5:

2009-02-17T18:40:00.001-05:00

February 17, 2009

The Four Noble Truths - redux

Tomorrow night is our meeting on the Four Noble Truths. I thought it would be useful to copy forward the four-part presentation of His Holiness 14th. Dalai Lama on the subject, which was originally presented in London, in 2007, Or so. I find the YouTube format useful for study. It is really easy to get lost in thought while you are watching His Holiness groove out with audience members while his translators is speaking. But after many rewinds, I have a much better handle on how Tibetan Buddhism defines the Three Jewels of Buddhism.

As His Holiness explains, the Buddha includes the historical or Shakyamuni Buddha, and also includes the Buddhas past, present and future, who have developed a quality of spiritual attainment that eliminates all negativity and fully comprehends the implications of the principle of dependent origination, aka the interdependent nature of reality.

In attaining this realization, as I understand His Holiness, such an individual has become a Buddha, and presumably a member of the host of enlightened beings constituting the Buddha of the first jewel.

This effectively defines my path as a practicing Buddhist as first cogitating on the principle of dependent orgination. ok, I'm cogitating.

This usually takes me to two places, in quick succession. First, a mind drift through the laws of physics and how they function at levels both titanic and infitessimal. Galaxies orbit the black holes at their center. Planets orbit the suns at their center. Electrons orbit the cluster of particles at their center, the protons and the neutrons. The particles themselves, less particles, than the illuson of particles created by the vibrating strings of energy that confirm quite literally the deepest of Buddhist truth.

Second, it takes me to the human family. To the realization that while the deepest principle of Buddhism is an abstraction, lost to most of us in a cloud of incomprehensible mathmatical symbol, it's purest expression is anything but abstract.

It is the realization of human suffering, and devotion to the pathway leading out of suffering.

But I wonder if the gift of Buddhist practice is not in its' turn, based on a deeper truth; that the efforts of the Buddhas builds on the natural quality of human beings to recognize the suffering of others, and to respond with compassionate action.

Unfortunately, most of this post has been about my Buddhist mind riff, and not about the Four Noble Truths or the Three Jewels. But then, that's why we have the Dalai Lama.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

DHL

2009-02-15T17:52:00.001-05:00

February 15, 2009

Heroic Women emerging from time armed with sticks - 2005 - 18 x 24

Deconstruction of this piece reveals a construct of artistic liberties taken with my daughter Amelia's high school lacrosse trophy and team photo. It goes out to all in blogland as a shout-out to her, dedicating all merit to her safe journey back to Columbus, with her friend Ray. They both go to Ohio State.

She graduates in a few months; while she was home, she showed us the Honors College academic cord, she will be wearing with her graduation gown. As her paw, I am proud.

DHL

2009-02-14T18:23:00.001-05:00

February 14, 2009

BBC NEWS Science & Environment Global warming 'underestimated'

State Oracle of Tibet Talk On Global Warming
August 6, 2007

One of the core components of Tibetan Buddhist philosophy and ethics is compassion. The practice of genuine concern for others is actually quite rare, Robert Thurman explains, and many humans use their precious lives to create suffering versus peace for others. With the gift of intelligence, human beings have great power to think. In extreme cases, one human being, the Nechung Oracle warns, can dominate the entire world. All beings have the capacity to develop their minds and to reach enlightenment Thurman says, and it is possible to achieve happiness. Human beings have caused global warming, and so our excessive desires and appetites are the root of the destruction of the environment. The Nechung Oracle outlines steps humanity can take to begin to heal the planet. For more information and/or to learn about the Tibetan State Oracle, go to www.tibetanoracle.com

Part 1 of 5

Part 2 of 5

Part 3 of 5

Part 4 of 5

Part 5 of 5

2009-02-14T15:50:00.001-05:00

February 14, 2009

This being Valentine's Day,

I sat around all day working on my blog, while my wife put in a full shift at the hospital, where she works in the Chemistry Lab. Now, instead of going out to buy her a proper card, I'm going to try to get by with some internet clip art, and YouTube videos. Happy Valentine's Day to MJ, my wife of 32 years, from your old

Sssssssssnake

Happy Valentine's Day MJ

2009-02-13T22:48:00.001-05:00

February 13, 2009

A Shout-Out to Bill Moyers and Mark Johnson

Thanks to YouTube and PBS for this interview on Bill Moyer's Journal with Mark Johnson, the producer of Playing For Change. It was on BMJ about a month ago; a beautiful way to spend thirteen minutes.

Here is “One World” by itself, without the Moyers interview.

Another cut from Playing For Change - “Stand By Me”

Playing For Change - Blues Across America

Playing For Change - Music Revolution

Blurb and videos with appreciation from Playing For Change:

See the immediate impact our Foundation is having by building new connectged music schools beginning with one featured in this video in Guguletu, South Africa. Join the movement by signing up at http://www.playingforchange.com/ and receive more exclusive content.

DHL

2009-02-13T22:11:00.001-05:00

February 13, 2009

His Holiness, the 17th. Karmapa,
on cultivating compassion:

2009-02-12T16:35:00.001-05:00

February 12, 2009

The Truth of Suffering II / Guru Lineage

Last night we talked further about the nature of a guru lineage. Several posts back, I listed the spiritual teachers I've studied over the past six decades; it called to memory the events of my life at the time each was an influence, like a reverie of non-contradiction. Very nice. I offered this up at Jewel Heart as an application of the first extraordinary quality of Lamrim; the way in which it reveals the non-contradictory nature of all spiritual teachers. To which Susie K. added, "all true spiritual teachers."

So one wonders, what is a true spiritual teacher? The easy answer would require a teacher with a direct lineage connection to the Buddha, to achieve the human to human transmission of authenticity. But western Buddhists are usually coming from other traditions where they've had some difficulty feeling at home, for whatever reason. So for them, the expectation of a teaching relationship with a guru directly linked to a lineage of the Buddha, doesn't accommodate the links in the chain of experience that get you there.

The important teachers of my life have a few common qualities that distinguish them. Each has a bond with humanity based in love and compassion; each feels worthy of trust without conditions, and so inspires devotion. Each offers refuge to humanity from the dangers and dark forces unleashed by fear and ignorance.

To live in a world of peace is a dream for many. But human beings don't live in a world of dreams; they live in a world of predators where violence and cunning are the tools of survival. It's not that we invent the heavenly protectors we come to depend on, as cynics and scientists believe. It's that in our suffering we cry out for help, and from a realm we don't live in and don't understand comes a quality of grace, providing a pathway of learning that leads the way forward. In grief we cry out to old gods, and in their name a response is forthcoming. We never part from our path of free choice, but we benefit immensely from guidance out of the fog of confusion.

Knowing the way of this, depends on the certain knowledge of certain people. Without them, connections are broken or lost and once lost, hard to find again. Native Americans use old stories and trusted knowledge carried by honored people as the way to keep the relationship with the Holy People sacred and alive. The invading west did all that could be done to destroy forever the connection of the people to the strength of the Great Spirit. Schools were set up to remove Indian children from their families and send them away to learn western ways. these schools had the goal o f destroying all traces of language and culture, punishing severely the practice of religion. The most infamous of the Indian schools was the Carlisle School, in Carlisle Pennsylvania.

But the non-contradictory nature of the Great Spirit is no respecter of conquering armies or the missionaries who follow in their wake, so the crusade of the preachers to stamp out the "devil religion" failed, and the seeds of Black Elk's vision are held in the earth, waiting for spring.

The experience has been similar in this century, for the people of Tibet. A balance of power between China and Tibet had ebbed and flowed for centuries. In the twentieth century, the rising military power of modern China became an overwhelming circumstance for Tibet, and when Mao Tse-Tung invaded, Tibet was virtually defenseless. Since then, colonization by ethnic Han Chinese has overwhelmed Tibet in numbers. The recent completion of the Beijing - Lhasa passenger line has accelerated colonization to the point that numbers of Han Chinese in Tibet may exceed that of native Tibetans, especially in Lhasa, where the Tibetan people are a marginalized and disrespected minority. Harvesting of mineral resources, has caused extreme environmental damage, reminiscent of the devastation of Navajo tribal lands by Peabody Coal. Devastation of its native culture has centered on the monasteries and the system of reincarnate Lamas; physical and sexual assaults against Buddhist clergy were commonplace during the Cultural Revolution, and most of the monasteries and temples were destroyed, along with invaluable portions of the written Dharma, dating back to antiquity. Some monasteries have since been rebuilt, and their use resumed under the supervision of the party. Chinese authority that now holds sway over Lhasa and "old Tibet," regards the sacred lineage emanating from the Buddha as the stuff of pagan superstition, good only as a tourist attraction. A role familiar to native Americans; Black Elk himself traveled briefly with Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show. In the same way that Tibetan Buddhism has been demeaned in Tibet, so the Christian conquerors of the Lakota People demeaned the vision given to Black Elk by the six Grandfathers.

Black Elk, known to some as Nicholas Black Elk, was a Lakota, born in South Dakota in 1863, at a time when the iron horse built by the Wasichus had cut the bison herd in two. He was the fourth generation of his people to bear the name Black Elk, and his name has been carried forward by his descendants. His father was a medicine man, and several of his uncles. He began hearing the voices of holy spirits when he was four, although he kept this to himself. His recognition by his people as a medicine man was confirmed after they learned of his transformative vision, and sought to understand its' meaning. This happened when he was nine years old, while lying in a fever during a severe illness. His parents told him when he woke up that he had been lying like dead for twelve days, until brought back by Whirlwind Chaser, a medicine man who was the uncle of his friend Standing Bear.

In his vision, Black Elk was carried away by an escort of horses, each rank a different color, representing the four sacred directions, to a council of ancient relatives, who were waiting for him. Two warriors armed with spears escorted him through a cloudy landscape to a tipi made of clouds with a doorway made of a rainbow. Within, Black Elk was welcomed by the council of six Grandfathers. The oldest spoke:

"Your Grandfathers all over the world are having a council, and they have called you here to teach you." "His voice was very kind," said Black Elk, "but I shook all over with fear now, for I knew that these were not old men, but the Powers of the World."
A vision was given to Black Elk of the future of the Lakota people. This vision still guides many Indian people today even though Black Elk believed he had lived to see it fail. The vision made a gift to the people of the Sacred Pipe, and told of a future in which the Sacred Hoop of the people would come together with the Tree of Life at their center. Black Elk saw the flowering of the sacred tree.

The link below is from the internet, and I've checked it for accuracy. I recommend going to the source; "Black Elk Speaks" by John G. Neihardt. My copy was published by Bison Press, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, Nebraska - 1993 - originally published in 1932.

Black Elk's Vision

Black Elk survived the massacre of Wounded Knee in 1890. The memories of overwhelming death and suffering represented to him the annihilation of the people and the ending of the path on which his vision had taken him. It shattered Black Elk, who lost faith in his vision - he saw that the circle of the people was forever broken and the tree of life withered and dead.

Later in his life Black Elk became a Christian minister, influential in bringing the spirit of the so-called white man's religion to the Indian people, along with the material support of missionaries. Many survivors of the sixties like myself had romanticized the vision of Black Elk, and when it was learned that he had "sold out" to the white man, he fell out of fashion, though never with his own people.

But his conversion to Christianity was not a case of "Stockholm syndrome." It was the choice of one living in the spirit, recognizing the truth of that same spirit in Jesus despite the package of white conquest in which it arrived. He saw what I can now see thanks to his vision, to which I pay respect. His "accommodation with the white man's religion" is in truth a step to a higher truth about the common destiny of all human beings. Of the resurrection of a people under the pressure of conquest to a new life in a transformed world. The Lakota definition of human being includes a description of the connection between the human beings and all other living things on the earth who form the web of life in which human beings live. Black Elk's vision forecasts the destiny of all people on earth, to be awakened to the truth about the place of man on earth and within the circle of life.

The peril in which we have put the earth makes the outcome of this aspect of human destiny, uncertain to say the least.

The personal importance of Black Elk's vision was the introduction to me, in powerful and persuasive fashion, of the existence of a realm whose reported existence I had repudiated long ago, as the abode of the magical Christ, crucified icon of conniving priests.

To bear witness to the vision of Black Elk, is to see for the first time the realm of a spirit world, for lack of a better term, inhabited by beings no less powerful and influential in human life, for their insubstantial form. A scientist of great repute has referred to this "place" as "the subtle realm." Because of the vision of Black Elk, I am able to appreciate that authentic spiritual systems offer a connection to this world. The elitist arrogance of western scientific thinking has closed all access to this place, now known to us only through folklore and religion, yet "real" in a way that science can't measure and reason can't describe. It is the place where the Six Grandfathers gathered to guide the Lakota people and prepare them for a time of cleansing. Where the enlightened beings navigate the bardo, and offer guidance and help to the Dalai Lamas, Karmapas and other living Bodhisattvas. Where Jesus talks to his children.

His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama, spoke of this realm indirectly while talking about the Buddhist basis for belief in reincarnation. He said consciousness does not create matter, and matter does not create consciousness. It is a truth that requires, in order to understand it, the awareness of a previously unrecognized universe.

Both Jesus and Buddha recognize the human capacity for realization, and devote themselves to assisting humanity toward this goal, at great cost to themselves. Buddha relinquished the life of indulgent luxury only known by monarchs, to first learn, and then teach the way of liberation. Jesus, in urging humanity to seek realization through divine inspiration over earth-bound authority, paid with his life's blood, betrayed by the religious powers of the old order.

The great gift which Krishnamurti offered was a caution against following leaders, isms, philosophies, systems of education, systems of religion, politics etc., in pursuit of the goal of truth. He advocated freedom and a reliance on individual intelligence and experience as the antidote to blind acceptance of external authority. Krishnamurti said "truth is a pathless land." Meaning there are no guides, no Gurus, no one with the ability to reliably take you from uncertainty to knowledge. It is odd that I would insist that one who argues against all gurus be included in my personal guru lineage, but I have trusted implicitly in this guidance for over forty years. The human capacity for realization was recognized by Krishnamurti as it was by Buddha. K's service to humanity was his trust in this capacity, to which he added his warning not to be influenced by those with a vested interest in controlling the direction of human thought.

Nothing in this path to freedom contradicts or is contradicted by anything in the Dharma as I have learned it so far. On the contrary, it is in perfect harmony with the Buddhist path of transformation from ignorance to awareness and realization, achieved on the strength of freely made choices.

In our discussion at Jewel Heart, it came to this. Although Gelek Rimpoche is generously inclusive in his interpretation of the Guru lineage, some of our group members felt that this is actually a much bigger deal than his approach implies. Coming down to this. Do you trust your spiritual teacher with your life? And truely with more than your life; your soul itself is at stake. You receive and abide by the teaching you receive through your Guru, when the relationship is one of complete trust, or shall we say discerning trust. It will guide you through this life , accompany you in the bardo, and either out of the cyclic existence of samsara and into a path toward union with the ever present, or into the new life, with all of the fears engendered by this wild ride.

In that vein, do I recognize in Jesus a true enlightened being, emanating directly from the divine mystery? Yes. Do I trust Buddha in the same vein. Also, yes. Do I trust trust them both to offer guidance for the life ahead and the life beyond death. Also yes.

So then how is it that Jesus is for me the penultimate guru? It is the personal nature of the relationship. The comfort over time of knowing someone as though they were a family member. An older brother, or an uncle; albeit, one who understands the true nature of the universe and the true meaning of human existence. There is a compelling mystery surrounding the appearance of Jesus on the earth at the time he did and in the way he did. It has to do with the destiny of human existence, and despite exhaustive human analysis over the past 20 centuries, it remains at its heart, a mystery. So that is something that is unique to Jesus; his true full nature is still a mystery. It is a powerful emotional experience for a person to feel a direct and intimate personal connection with an individual who is at the same time a person of the highest spiritual authority, the son of the Lord of Creation.

The relationship between humanity and Buddha, and between myself and Buddha is similar, but not the same. Buddha represents the highest of human achievements; the realization of the true nature of human existence, and the inspiration and teaching offered to make this realization available to all human beings. The unique quality of Buddhism, offering the greatest service to humanity, is its' absence of mystery. By revealing that the miseries of life are traps of our own devising, and offering meditation as the antidote, the living spirit of the Buddha penetrates to the heart of the ignorance that keeps humanity enslaved to the wheel of samsara.

Thinking about the non-contradictory nature of the worship life inspired by Jesus and by Buddha has lead me to a realization about the connection both have with the destiny of human existence. Both teachers have inspired vast numbers of human beings to realize their true nature, and devote their lives to reflect this realization and live it in daily existence. Without the benefit of these great teachers would humanity, of its own accord, have made this discovery?

But the discovery has been made, and the inspiration of humanity by these great teachers, motivated by their great love and compassion, predicts a human future in which these qualities become transcendent.

Having said all of this, I must make one last but critical point, inspired by Susie K. She related tales of Rimpoche, as quick to confront western students taking on the trappings of Tibetan Buddhism, such as prostration and so forth, but expecting that they fully appreciate, and take advantage of the opportunity they have been given to develop a relationship with a Guru from an authentic lineage of Tibetan Buddhism. It is a very good point. Even though I'm involved in Jewel Heart, and the Jewel Heart-Cleveland Dharma Coordinators and Instructors are excellent, I am sure I have missed opportunities to be with Rimpoche, were I willing to drive up to Ann Arbor more often. Maybe I should think of organizing a car pool?

DHL

2009-02-11T17:56:00.001-05:00

February 11, 2009

Shakyamuni Buddha b. 566 BC - d. 480 BC

The truth of suffering.

We had an excellent discussion at Jewel Heart-Cleveland, on the truth of suffering as the first of the four noble truths. I learned tonight to focus on the suffering that I experience in my life, and less on the suffering of others, as I tend to do. It is a very good point. It reminds me of any number of the people I worked with in domestic violence group therapy. Many were eager for the therapy to take, and to their credit, had been diligent in working on their issues. However, setbacks occurred even with long term participants when they began focusing on the issues of other group members as a "helper" to the therapist. In AA they talk about "working your own program." If your life depends on your sobriety, you have to learn the tricks that your own illness will play on you to keep you sick. If you are all focused on what the drunk next to you needs to do to keep himself sober, you are not paying attention to you. And you need to pay attention to you because you are the one who is killing yourself with the dillusions and insane rationalizations that you use to keep kidding yourself, so that you can stay sick.

I'm thinking that it works the same way with Buddhism. I always want to be seen as the Bodisattva who is only still here to help relieve the suffering of others. A much more comforting self-image, than my present reality, which is that I am here because I keep falling prey to the same aspirations life after life; keep following and feeding the same insatiable hungers. I keep falling for the same sucker bet, and never gain insight as to which pod the pea is really under.
I have the same tendency in Christian practice. With hindsight, much of my alienation from my Christian culture was less about the faults of the church and its practitioners, but derived from my own arrogant refusal to see myself as the imperfect sinner, deserving of punishment. The Christian concept of punishment for sin suffers much from the interpretations of fundamentalists, who seem called upon to deal out the punishment to other sinners as God's surrogate, rather than tending to their own conduct. Which largely accounts for my absence from church on Sunday. The Buddhist approach, being more introspective seems to have a reduced tendency to this particular regard.
So my take-away lesson for tonight is to relinquish my guise as Bodhisattva, and accept the suffering that I experience in my life, in the same vein that I would have to accept myself as a miserable sinner seeking redemption, had I not left the church of my youth.
For some reason, our extended discussion put me in mind of the blues. We talked a lot about how our grasping and our aspirations are a primary source of our suffering. We seek the pleasures of life compulsively, and fear their loss almost before they've begun, that the result is not joy, but bittersweet sorrow. Sounds a lot like the blues. In class I talked about Bob Dylan, and some of his love songs about loving and losing. On the way home, I listened to Oscar Peterson doing "One For My Baby, and One More For the Road." It was all about lost love. This post needs a soundtrack:
Here is "You're Gonna Make Me Lonsome When You Go." Bob Dylan; from "Blood on the Tracks."

"Tomorrow Night" is all about feeling the pain along with the pleasure.

Another sweet tale of a sad affair ending in twilight memories.

Finally, the penultimate song about love and pain...

DHL

2009-02-10T21:42:00.001-05:00

February 10, 2009

What Do We Want? Peace! When do we want it? Now!

At this hour, both leading candidates in the Israeli elections are claiming victory; by all accounts, it will take several weeks for the candidates to go through the process of forming a government. The timing is auspicious, with regard to prospects for peace. The final outcome in terms of who yields power, may be less important than the transformed world in which the new office-holders will find themselves.

The Obama administration has signalled to the Arab world the desire to begin a new relationship. BushCheney related to the middle east largely through its' crowned heads. By contrast, Obama is talking directly to intellectuals, businessmen and ordinary citizens. He understands that to gain credibility with Arab states and their people, he must demonstrate openness to change through both words and through his actions in the region. For a head of state to be respected, promises made must be redeemed. Obama demonstrated by his appearance on al Arabiya his understanding that the basic posture of all diplomatic dialogue must be mutual respect on a footing as equals; a point that persistently escaped BushCheney.

The world already understands that no American president will allow the pursuit of peace to compromise the security of Israel, so it is clear that any new conversation in the middle east must have at its core, the goal of justice for Palestine; i.e., an implementation of the two-state solution. And so, the understanding present in the world today, is that a new relationship with Arab people is desired, and therefore a solution to the barrier to that relationship is required. And therefore peace is possible

So in the very act of raising the question of how he would redeem his promise, President Obama answers it. The only possible way forward, is a demonstrated commitment to peace from day one, and this Obama has done.

The president's pledge to meet other nations on equal terms creates an enormous pressure on Iran in general and Ahmadinejad in particular, to enter into good-faith discussions. In upcoming Iranian presidential elections, Ahmadinejad, who is fighting for his job in a tight race with reform candidate Mohammad Khatami, has already toned down his anti-west, anti-Israeli and anti-Semetic trash talk.

Obama's interview on al Arabiya also signals to Israel that while our pursuit of peace will not compromise Israeli security, neither will it tolerate Israeli intransigence. In order to talk with Iran, and with Syria - both necessary precedents to the immediate goal of re-uniting Palestinian leadership, the American position must be strong for Palestine. On both sides, risks and sacrifices will be required. To take risks or make sacrifices people must believe that peace is not just a promise for the future,
but an immediate possibility.

American expectations alone can't make it happen. But with the end of American obstruction, and the beginning of active and intelligently pursued diplomacy, in alliance with the support to be expected from the Western Alliance, and the support to be earned from the Arab states in the region, the possibilities for peace are better now than they have been for many years, and certainly better than they may ever be again.

So new Israeli leadership faces a choice. To allow continued settlement in the West Bank, creates a reality on the ground, that if left unchecked and not reversed in a settlement deal, will eventually - indeed very soon - make implementation of any two-state configuration impossible. Israel will then face a political future within its' borders, in which demographics predict an Arab birthrate that will soon eclipse the Jewish majority in Israel, and eventually end the Zionist state. A fate which Israel can only avert by creating a disenfranchised class of Israeli citizens, a clearly unacceptable outcome.
So the time is now for a coordinated response to the present reality, and it is well that new leadership in Israel come into office understanding that a momentum for peace is building. Great risks will need to be taken, and great sacrifices made. But great dangers may yet be averted and peace is still possible.

DHL

2009-02-10T18:09:00.001-05:00

February 10, 2009

As Maine Goes...So Goes Pennsylvania?

In the shadows of the battle over the Barack Administration's stimulus bill lie unspoken fears that what is broken can't be fixed. A jump start won't work if the metaphorical engine block is cracked. It is possible that cowboy capitalism has spun so far out of control and done damage so deep, that ordinary recession fixes, even on the scale of the Obama stimulus package, may not work.
Only a finished bill will stem that mounting fear, and the president moved a huge step forward today with the Senate passage of its' version 37 - 61. Pending final House/Senate work on details, a signature-ready product is expected by this time next week at the latest.

Leaving President Obama to confront a Republican leadership that thinks it can lay low and play left-out victim, while counting on worsening unemployment figures to depress the Obama "miracle" enough to possibly shift the balance of power out of the president's reach in 2010. Unfortunately, they think they can also count on corruption erupting on Obama's watch, and also unfortunately, they may be right. With the huge amounts of money that will soon be flowing through state and local governments to contracts for local projects, trouble ahead is likely. Past Democratic reigns have produced plenty of indictments, for crimes petty and otherwise. Public tolerence for business as usual is at an all-time low, and Republicans have already felt its wrath. So much so, that they have little left to lose in a strategy of wait and see. If corruption and incompetence accompanies the administration of the stimulus package, regardless of who is at fault, the public will not continue to tolerate a Congress that can't deliver in 2010, or 2012. So, team Obama will be wise, I hope, in letting accountability roll down like thunder, and transparency like a mighty stream. In particular, with regard to the letting of contracts at the local level, where lie the most fragrant opportunities for corruption.

Today's vote was a first battle for "home field advantage" in the coming struggle over the balance of powers that will define President Obama's first term. Advantage the President; at least on the stimulus package, moderate Republicans have decided to support the administration. Obama himself has made it clear that he'll take his brand of hardball right to the neighborhood of the resistant Republican old guard, while at the same time rewarding Republican allies like Florida Governor Charlie Crist. And Obama's brand of hardball is beginning to look street-mean. His back-to-back speeches in Indiana and Florida, both critical swing states in 2008, were notable both for their location and for the way Mr. Cool laid responsibility for hard times right in the laps of the bad old boys, who - if they are smart - did not appreciate the attention drawn to the heartland of the old Confederacy...er, I mean Republican Party.

It took all the Democrats, two Independents and three Republicans to put the bill over in the Senate, 37 - 61. A shout-out across the aisle to Arlen Spector, with big kudos to the women from Maine who made it happen; Republican Senators Olympia Snow and Susan Collins. It must be good news, because when President Obama was handed a note telling him that the Bill had passed the Senate, while he was giving a speech in Florida, he said "that's good news." The expression on his face didn't change much, but he said it about four times. So I guess it's good news.

I have finally accepted the need to quit worrying about the size of the stimulus bill, and focus instead on the more immediate issue of accountability. As my wife and I were doing our daily rant about the CEO who spent $1.3 million in government funds on new office decor, and other icons of the Bush bail-out, with its disappearing $350 billion, I had a sudden flash of realization regarding the Obama stimulus bill. However painful the cuts made to get Republican votes, what is in the bill, matters much less than how the money is actually spent, and how transparent and accountable the process is.

We have just come from eight years of a cowboy president who thinks that accountability is the sound the shock absorbers on your jeep make when you're driving around the ranch in Texas. Remember the drama of last October when Henry Paulson went up to the hill with a three-page bail-out plan, and the look of grim death on his face. "Sign Here" he says, or the banking system gets it. They got it all right. Barely three months later, we learn that $350 billion, i.e., half of $700 given to the Bush Administration on the strength of Paulson's alarm, has - much like Bush himself in the last months of his administration - gone AWOL.

President Obama is too smart not to know that to continue his upward trajectory, he must spend public money wisely, and that all passed bucks land on his desk. That means targeted expenditures, careful data analysis as spending unfolds, to track correlation with job creation, public recovery of any profits generated by private companies who benefited from bail-out funds, prior to or instead of stockholders, and at the end of the day, accountability for every dime. That alone, would be radical change in America.

Beyond that, I would hope that Treasury Secretary Geithner quickly gets a line on the "lost" $350 billion; it needs to be found, and returned to the Treasury. Then the President and the Attorney General need to find the people that lost it and either fire or prosecute them. Preferably both.

Oddly, as Tim Geithner announces the Obama Administration's spending plan for the remaining $350 billion of the Bush bail-out allocation, Wall Street still goes flat. Which strikes me as some nerve. Wasn't it Wall Street that got the rest of us into this? They'll only be happy when the helium balloons loft high the days of old, which sad to say, I think are done for now.

Here is the BBC article on the Senate vote; it is worth watching the video just to see Mr. Cool in action:

BBC NEWS Americas US Senate approves stimulus plan

DHL

2009-02-09T18:09:00.002-05:00

February 9, 2009

Lamrim IV

Tonight is my fourth Lamrim meeting at Jewel Heart. The instructors are wrapping up the creation of sacred space, and beginning to move on to section 4. In some respects, I'm still back at preliminaries. I still have a few things on my mind that I have to resolve.

I do find the guidance through the Lamrim provided by Rimpoche in written form to be most helpful. Specifically, he identifies the first of the extraordinary qualities of Lamrim as revealing the non-contradictory nature of all spiritual methods. This has been liberating for me. First, it means that my inclusive devotion to the spiritual teachers of my past not only can, but should be incorporated into my practice; and second that my pre-eminent devotion to Jesus does not contradict the value or integrity of my devotion to the Buddha.

In fact, it is not until I stop focusing on the differences, and accept their non-contradictory nature, that the similarities become apparent. Both Jesus and Buddha identified with the suffering of humanity, and offered a path out of suffering; Jesus through repentance of sin; Buddha through generation of merit and positive karma. Both offer a pathway through death, humanity's greatest dread. Buddha spoke of escaping the wheel of samsara and reaching Nirvana; Jesus offered a home in the Kingdom of Heaven. Both pointed to consciousness as the path to knowing; Jesus said that the Kingdom of Heaven lies within; Buddha points the way through meditation. Both promised to return to earth for the further benefit of humanity, Buddha as the awaited Maitreya, Jesus as the returning Messiah. Both taught that love and compassion for every living being is the infallible pathway to realization.

So Lamrim has been helpful in allowing me to develop insight into the non-contradictory nature of Jesus and Buddha and the spiritual paths they offer, along with the other teachers who've guided me through the years; Krishnamurti, Black Elk, His Holiness, the 14th. Dalai Lama, and now Rimpoche and the beautiful people of my sangha at Jewel Heart.

So when I offer a Daily Prayer as follows: Namo Gurubye, namo Buddhaya, namo Dharmaya, namo Sanghaya It will perfectly capture the meaning of the paragraph above.

So far, so good. But last week and this week we discussed setting up an altar as part of creating a sacred environment. So now comes a consideration of what an altar incorporating all of the above is going to look like?

Jeddu Krishnamurti: May 12, 1895 - February 17, 1986

Lakota Holyman Black Elk (Hehaka sapa) Born; December, 1863, died August 17, 1950. Wounded at Wounded Knee massacre, Wounded Knee, S.D., 1890.

Gelek Rimpoche, teaching

HH the 14th. Dalai Lama

Jesus , teaching his disciples

HH the 14th Dalai Lama with Thomas Merton

Jesus, teaching at the seashore

Gelek Rimpoche with HH the 14th. Dalai Lama

Black Elk with the Sacred Pipe

DHL

2009-02-07T19:38:00.000-05:00

HH 17th. Gyalwa Karmapa

Here are the results of a quick internet search for the 17th. Karmapa.

It appears from what I found, that HHDL has invested HHK17 with his succession, whether as the titular Dalai Lama, or as a regent? Obviously, others know more than I. So I need to seek these others out; as Sarah Palin would say, "I'll get back to you."

LINKS

Who is Karmapa? ‎(Who is Karmapa?‎)

The Karmapa's Great Escape - Background Information - the Karmapa website

Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly . PROFILE . Karmapa Lama . July 11, 2008 PBS

International Web Site - 17th Karmapa
Dharma Chakra Centre-His Holiness the Karmapa seat

Official North American Website - 17th. Karmapa
Karma Triyana Dharmachakra: His Holiness Karmapa

Kagyu Office: the Website of His Holiness Gyalwang Karmapa

Karmapa In America 2008 Home Historic First Visit to the U.S.

VIDEOS

YouTube - After The Dalai Lama - India

HH 17th. Karmapa on PBS “Religion & Ethics Newsweekly”

Karmapa complete interview Part 1

What is the meaning of oneness? - 13:08

Karmapa complete interview Part 2

What is the role of spiritual leaders?

HH the Seventeenth Gyalwang Karmapa: Complete Interview
Uploaded by GlobalOnenessProject

December 24, 2006: Gyalwa Karmapa arrives to conduct Monlam festival at Bodhgaya, India. Editor: Piotr Obal Producer: David Nutt Lions Roar Productions 2006

Dalai Lama discusses succession with His Holiness the 17th. Karmapa

HH the 14th. Dalai Lama Joins His Holiness the 17th. Karmapa at 2003 Kagyu Monlam festival

DHL

2009-02-07T12:42:00.000-05:00

His Holiness, the 17th Karmapa

In my last post I added a postscript introducing a Youtube video of the 17th. Karmapa, and a discussion of his possible role in the future of Tibet and the Free Tibet movement. To learn more about the 17th. Karmapa, I went to YouTube's "4FreeTibet2008" channel, where I found this 12 part series by Clemens Kuby called “Living Buddha.” It is the story of the death of the 16th. Karmapa, which happened in Chicago in 1981, and his rebirth as the 17th Gyalwa Karmapa in Tibet in 1985.

Following the death of the 16th., a search was conducted, based on a predictive letter he had left behind. The 17th. Gyalwa Karmapa was found living with a family of nomads in a remote area of eastern Tibet. His birthname was Ogyen Trinley Dorje.

The Karmapa is the traditional head of the Kagyu Lineage of Tibetan Buddhism, known as the Black Hats. There appears to have been an historical rivaly between the Black Hats and the Yellow Hat Gelugpa sect of His Holiness the Dalai Lama. However, the Dalai Lama welcomed the Karmapa to Dharmasala following the Karmapa's escape from Tibet.

Clemens Kuby follows the search party and documents the 17th. Kamrmapa’s life up to his first public blessing at age eight.

Part 1 of 12

Part 2 of 12

Part 3 of 12

Part 4 of 12

Part 5 of 12

Part 6 of 12

Part 7 of 12

Part 8 of 12

Part 9 of 12

Part 10 of 12

Part 11 of 12

Part 12 of 12

2009-02-05T18:02:00.000-05:00

Only 51 Shopping Days Until...
Serf Emancipation Day? I Don't Think so.

Is China winning the fight for world opinion on the issue of Tibet? Serf Emancipation Day is the latest barrage of propaganda against the fortress of goodwill created by Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama. March 28, 1959 is the day the Chinese Army declared the occupation of Tibet, following the escape of the Dalai Lama across the Himalaya mountains, and into exile in India. The Chinese re-branding of this date in Tibetan infamy, falls on the eve of the fiftieth anniversary of the escape.

BBC NEWS Asia-Pacific Serfs' Emancipation Day for Tibet

The new "holiday" reflects the on-going Chinese effort to co-opt Tibet. The violent campaign of terror against the Buddhist clergy during the Cultural Revolution, earned China a reputation that it is still trying to live down, even as it maintains a a stealth campaign of political manipulation designed to gradually eliminate the unique status of the Dalai Lama within Tibetan Buddhism and within Tibet.

It is a strategy with a long shadow, and the Chinese are skillful players. A critical moment in the struggle for Tibet came in 1989, when the Panchen Lama, Tibet's most prominent religious figure after the Dalai Lama, died unexpectedly.

The Tibetan Buddhist belief in reincarnation, creates a vulnerability in terms of transition, that the Chinese are attempting to exploit. Following the death of a prominent Lama, a team is appointed to search for his reincarnation. Usually, a small group of candidates is identified and persons familiar with the deceased Lama use a number of tests to determine which of the candidates is the true reincarnation. Following this tradition, the Dalai Lama and the Panchen Lama have each participated in the selection of the other following death and reincarnation.

The death of the Panchen Lama in 1989 created an opportunity for the Chinese government to manipulate the selection process for his reincarnation. During the period between the death and the discovery of the reincarnation, the Dalai Lama worked with the Chinese government through intermediaries, in an effort to coordinate the selection. By 1995, when it had become apparent to His Holiness that the Chinese were not acting in good faith, he took control of the process and announced the successful candidate, a six year old Tibetan named Gedhun Choekyi Nyima. Within a short time, this candidate was arrested along with his family. They have since vanished, and have not been seen in public since. The Chinese then announced their own candidate, who was subsequently installed as the 11th. Panchen Lama.

BBC NEWS Asia-Pacific China's Panchen Lama visits Tibet

BBC NEWS Asia-Pacific China's Panchen Lama hails Party

BBC NEWS Asia-Pacific China says vanished Panchen Lama 'happy'

Tibetans in India demand release of Panchen Lama Top News Reuters

The Chinese now control the process for selection of the Dalai Lama from within China, through their current control of the Panchen Lama. Upon the death of the current Dalai Lama, this individual will be in a position to determine his successor.

For this reason, His Holiness has announced that following his death, he will not reincarnate within Tibet. He has already selected the individuals who will be responsible for the identification of his reincarnation, and has also publicly discussed the possible elimination of the traditional Tibetan selection process for high Lamas.

In this same vein, the Chinese have recently forbidden reincarnations not sanctioned by the government, as absurd as that may sound, as part of their strategy to control the selection of the 15th Dalai Lama.

The Chinese declaration of Serf Emancipation Day, is intended as a pre-emptive strike against the world support for Tibet which is likely to surge during the run-up the the fiftieth anniversary. The escape into exile by His Holiness and approximately 100,000 Tibetans, across almost impassible Himalayan mountain passes still buried in deep snow, was heroic with world-wide appeal. As March 28th. approaches, the Chinese are anticipating the event, with a campaign of dis-information in readiness, in its struggle to keep the lid on the Independence movement. They had some success in keeping Tibet out of the news during the Olympics, but this crisis is looming.

As the day draws closer, China will be ready with the "real" story; the liberation of serfs living under feudal domination by an aristocratic elite maintaining oppression through both political and religious power.

Unfortunately, it is an imperfect world, and enough truth can be found to create uncertainty in the minds of those unfamiliar with the history of Tibet, and of its' relationship with China. Without question, Tibetan society under the Dalai Lamas before the Chinese invasion was feudal in its' character, with the efforts of the many enriching the aristocratic few. (However, it is also true that the storehouses of the monasteries were used to feed the poor during times of famine.) It is indeed the case that the monasteries had become wealthy under this system, and many of the powerful families were motivated to retain power through corruption of the worst sort.

However, it is also true that the 14th Dalai Lama, like his predecessor the 13th Dalai Lama, (known as "the Great Thirteenth,") recognized the problems created within Tibet during its lengthy period of isolation, prior to the modern era. The 13th. Dalai Lama recognized the danger represented by a rising China, and the vulnerability of the Tibetans who had not maintained a military preparedness. His efforts to modernize the military were too late. Otherwise, under the leadership of the 14th., modernization of virtually all aspects of Tibetan society has been a top priority of the government in exile in Dharamsala, India, as well as preservation of Tibetan culture.

Politically, His Holiness has used the time in exile to completely transform Tibet from a feudal monarchy to a modern democracy in which a representative governing body, the Kashag, administers the country and the Dalai Lamas increasingly assume a role that is primarily spiritual.

His vision for the future would be to return to an autonomous Tibet within China, to establish a democratic society with a drastically reduced political role for the Dalai Lama. But clearly, this goal is incompatible with the present situation in China. The precarious balance between capitalism and communism that governs modern China, is intolerant of democracy. And so the government cannot risk it. Which means that the government cannot risk the return of the Dalai Lama to Lhasa.

It is not the rescuing of serfs from the corruption of the Lamas that motivates the Chinese campaign against His Holiness, it is their fear of democracy. Specifically, it is the government's fear of loss of control, supported by the anger of hubris now being expressed with characteristic arrogance by the Han Chinese, who have become the dominant ethnic group in Lhasa, Tibet's capital.

For many years His Holiness, recognizing the long-term advantage to China in the struggle for the future of Tibet, and committed to a goal of non-violent struggle, has disavowed the goal of independence as unattainable, and has instead sought autonomy under Chinese authority. Over time however, this goal has become increasingly unrealistic. The Chinese have invested heavily in Tibet, and large numbers of ethnic Chinese have relocated to Tibet. The recent completion of Beijing - Lhasa passenger rail service, has opened Tibet to tourism and created a thriving tourist industry. Native Tibetans have become an oppressed minority in their own homeland.

Given the present reality, the vision of an autonomous and democratic Tibet under the umbrella of China, has become recognized as a failed strategy, even by the Dali Lama himself. Recently in Dharamsala, he led a discussion on the future of Tibet, in which he put everything on the table, and made clear his willingness to remove himself from the picture if his people thought it necessary. They didn't.

But many, especially the younger generation, have grown impatient; they've seen Chinese development overtaking the homeland, risking the dream of a cherished past that may be gone forever. As a result an unequivocal movement for full independence is growing in Tibet and throughout the Tibetan diaspora. As it grows, I hope Tibetans and their friends throughout the world will remember the lessons of non-violent struggle taught by Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and their own beloved Tenzin Gyatso.

In other posts I have talked about my spiritual life and the benefit I have gained recently from the disciplined study of Buddhism offered through Jewel heart - Cleveland, so my sympathy with Tibet is no surprise. But I feel identification with the people of Tibet in another way. The modern America in which I grew up was a world marvel of wealth and leisure, at least for the fortunate ones. Many Americans however, became aware that the childhood game of cowboys and indians, had its' origins in genocide.

A hidden history, once revealed, has great power. For myself, the discovery of the suffering of native people following the arrival of Europeans, was transformative in terms of how I viewed the world and my place in it. I felt impelled to learn as much as possible about native American culture and history. While in granduate school, I focused on federal policy on Indian affairs and the contemporary conditions of poverty for native people. In the process, I learned about the native way of understanding the world through the wisdom of the Great Spirit.

Not only did I learn from the example of native people to make my life meaningful through following a spiritual path, but while traveling that path, was re-introduced to my own culture at a deeper level of understanding. It was through the great Lakota holy man Black Elk, that I learned to see Jesus, not as an icon of the Christian church, but as a man on the earth with a deep insight into human character, and a genius for healing.

It is important to know of the greatness of the Indian people, before one can fully appreciate the enormity of the terrible crimes perpetrated against them. It is important to know of Indian spiritual power and its' ability to open the eyes of humans so they can see the true nature of the world, and of their proper place, before we can fully appreciate the enormous crime we are committing against the earth.

Many have learned of these things through the study of the great people of the Indian nations. The military leaders such as Sitting Bull, and Crazy Horse. Or the political leaders like Chief Seattle. Or the holy men such as Handsome Lake and Black Elk. And we have come to learn of the terrible loss to a world in need of wise leadership and spiritual guidance, that our mistreatment of Indian people has caused. Many are remorseful for the cruelty of the past, and wonder if our future has been compromised in ways that the spiritual knowledge of native people might have prevented.

It is through the lens of the American experience with its' native people, that we can fully appreciate the current situation in Tibet. Though many love him, Tibet is much more than the Dalai Lama. The people of Tibet, and the culture they have created, is a world treasure, a unique resource for the planet. A repository of a human way of knowing. As such its' value to all people of the earth is inestimable.

But the Tibetans themselves, and not the gift they have to offer, should be our first concern. Just as our own native people were abandoned to the material aspirations of the so-called superior culture, so the Tibetans are being lost to the dominance of the Chinese.

Yet not completely. It will always be so, that if you seek, you will find. The knowledge of Buddhism will be preserved both in Tibet and in the west through the efforts of its great teachers. In the same way, the knowledge of the native people is preserved within the wisdom stories of the people. But to know of the loss of wisdom and of the loss of wise and holy people is to know that the crime of genocide must be resisted. Never again should a great power be permitted to overpower the rights of indigenous people.

DHL

Update: This report by Eric Campbell on the Tibetan independence movement, is fourteen minutes well spent. Discuses a possible role in the future of a freeTibet for the Kharmapa Lama.

YouTube - After The Dalai Lama - India

DHL

Lamrim III

2009-02-03T18:13:00.001-05:00

Lama Je Tsongkhapa and his disciples

Lamrim III

Last night at Jewel Heart - Cleveland, we had our third Lamrim class. We being myself as one of the students, and Sarah as dharma instructor, with assists from David, Laura and others of team Jewel Heart.

Last week, we discussed the orgins of Lamrim, and its' value as a practice guide. We began with a discussion of preliminaries.

The text used by Jewel Heart is taken from a transcript of teachings by Gelek Rimpoche in 1997 - 98 in the United States and the Netherlands. In his presentation, Rimpoche focused on the Lamrim written in the fourteenth century by Lama Je Tsongkhapa, founder of the Gelugpa sect of Tibetan Buddhism. In turn, Tsongkhapa's teaching is based on the Lamrim's orgins in the writings of Nagarjuna and Asanga, two early Indian pandits and saints of the first century. So that is its' lineage.

Gelek Rimpoche refers to the Lamrim as "nothing but the experience that Buddha has gained and has shared." As Rimpoche explains, the collected works of Buddha run to over 125 volumes, and these are not organized as a formal teaching. They are the living record of the teachings of the historical Buddha as he traveled through India in the 6th century BC.

The Lamrim takes the teaching contained in this historical record, and distills it down to its' essential elements, so that the full teachings of Buddha are available to all who engage in its' study. Rimpoche refers to the Lamrim as a "highway to enlightment," and says that Tsongkhapa referred to it as "the essence of the essence of gold."

Gelek Rimpoche sums up the Lamrim this way:

it is the path that all the enlightened beings have traveled
it is the path that has been opened and clarified by Nagarjuna and Asanga
it is the main message Atisha brought to Tibet in the 1100's
it is the essence of the Buddhist teaching in Tibet, "revolutionized" by Tsongkhapa

Then we talked about what Rimpoche calls the four extraordinary qualities of Lamrim, which he says distinguishes them from other forms of practice, as follows:

The understanding of Lamrim reveals the non-contradictory nature of all spirtual methods;
The understanding of Lamrim makes you aware that every teaching by any great master can be taken as personal practice;
The true intention of the Buddha is made clear;
Harmful behaviors will automatically stop;

Then came a caution: the Lamrim has been developed to provide all that is needed to create the foundation for a spirtual practice leading to enlightenment. It should not be treated as a novelty, an exercise in scholarship, or as the latest spiritual fad. The benefit comes from accepting that Lamrim gives you everything you need to develop a lifelong spiritual practice, leading to attainment of the Buddhist goal of enlightment.

The next preliminary might be called the engagement between physician and patient. The effort of the teacher to engage the untamed monkey mind of humanity, with all of its' dangers. (What I think of as the essential purpose of the teaching offered to humanity by any great spiritual leader, whether Jesus, Buddha, Tenzin Gyatso, Gelek Rimpoche, Krishnamurti, or Black Elk (my personal lineage of spiritual teachers)).

It certainly seems true to me that the sufferings of humanity are created by the minds of humans for whom power at the top of the hill, and not spiritual development is the first priority. AKA, the patient. The power to create and to destroy is the essence of a human history dominated by violence, greed -- all of the west's seven deadly sins; the toll in suffering by victim and perpetrators alike, cries out for a solution. For this human power to be loose in the world without the influence that comes from a religion of love and compassion for others, creates the danger of life by the sword with which we all live. Without an awareness of others and a motivation of concern for their well-being, all is lost for humanity, and perhaps for all of life on the globe, at least for now. So the stakes are high. Higher than ever in history. Higher than in the time of Buddha, or of Jesus six hundred years later. It is a measure of the trust that we must have - that I do have -- in our spiritual leaders, to depend on them with the stakes so high.

And yet, without the human capacity for growth, all the saints of Buddha and Jesus combined cannot create change in man. It is the knowledge that the patient is capable of redemption that must motivate the physician; the knowledge that a human being is capable of learning and growing, that gives the physician the power to heal.

Of course, these are my thoughts on the matter under discussion, and certainly should in no way reflect on Gelek Rimpoche or team Jewel Heart. This is the sort of personal outburst that I want to confine to my blog, rather than risk side-tracking the instructors.

2009-02-01T19:00:00.000-05:00

The Story of Miles Davis; Parts 10 - 13:

Part 10:

Part 11:

Part 12:

Part 13:

Tomorrow - Lamrim III

DHL

2009-02-01T18:28:00.000-05:00

The Story of Miles Davis; Parts 6 - 9

Part 6:

Part 7:

Part 8:

Part 9:

DHL

2009-02-01T13:54:00.000-05:00

Davos? Miles Davis is going to make way more sense...

The report out of Davos is bleak. No one knows what to do; certainly not me, or I'd tell someone. At best, its being said that the free marketeers are losing ground and a consensus is developing for a permanent set of regulations at the global level. But no one with even a clear view of the bottom, let alone instructions for building a ladder. So, for now the hell with it. You can read about Davos if you want, here's the link - BBC NEWS Business Davos 2009 Davos finds no answers to crisis - but for me, I found a 13-part video biography of Miles Davis on the web, and I'm going to watch it. I suggest you do the same; you'll be better for it.

Part 1:

Part 2:

Part 3:

Part 4:

Part 5:

Continued on next post...

DHL

Btw: the header images are 2 of 8 terra-cotta art-deco pieces that I found in the flats; actually at the front door of the Stonebridge Apartments. They bear a resemblance to the bridge abutments on the Lorain Carnegie bridge, which leads me to suspect a connection. They are up on stone pillars at the Stonebridge, but they do not look original to the site.

BBC NEWS | Science & Environment | Acid oceans 'need urgent action'

2009-01-30T18:25:00.000-05:00

When it Comes to CO2, What Goes Up Also Goes Down

BBC NEWS Science & Environment Acid oceans 'need urgent action'

The BBC is the only place I see this issue being raised. CO2 does serious damage to the atmosphere, leading to the global warming crisis, which has finally reached the attention of enough people to allow for a change in the political viability of environmental issues.

But the voting public remains largely unaware of the associated problem of CO2 absorption by the world's oceans. The oceans are the cradle of life on earth. The natural ph balance of the ocean, attained over millions of years of evolution, is alkaline. The absorbtion of CO2 from industrial activity has altered the balance from alkaline to acid. It is the alkaline nature of seawater that supports the formation of protective shells by the ocean's simple creatures; including the diatoms at the food chain's end. If this were a 50's movie, there would be scary organ music playing as I add - the basis of all life on earth.

Picture the classic cartoon, often seen on the sides of coffee mugs; a tiny fish about to be swallowed by a larger fish about to be swallowed by a still larger fish, about to be...

And then picture yourself in a seafood restaurant with no seafood on the menu. The chain of life on earth, from its most basic to its most complex, is facing an urgent threat from human action and inaction. We remain blissfully and willfully unaware of an unfolding cascade of extinctions; both flora and fauna all over the earth, and throughtout the oceans, and all caused directly by human hands.

It seems that the lack of awareness cannot be blamed on inaction by scientists. As the following link shows, the scientific community has been raising the alarm for decades.

Mass Extinction Underway Biodiversity Crisis Global Species Loss

It has been reported in detail in many sources including National Geographic, as a period of mass extinction potentially greater than the period leading to the end of the age of the dinosaurs.

DHL

2009-01-29T18:47:00.000-05:00

Lam Rim II

Lama Je Tsongkhapa b. 1357, d. 1419. Birthplace, Amdo in eastern Tibet

Update on my dharma education. The Four Noble Truths were snowed out on Wednesday, and we miss the following Wednesday for a Lama Chopa Tsoh, which I sort of understand, but would not undertake to explain lest my profound ignorance be revealed.

But we did have a good first session (for me, I skipped week 1 due to Obamamania). As I begin the Lam Rim, my need for this blog as an outlet really increases. I want to take responsibility for not distracting the dharma teachers, Sarah and David, but it is hard to resist an interesting discussion. I feel that I have a lot in common with the others in the sangha. None of us are native Tibetans, as least not in the present incarnation. Some of us share a need to reconcile certain aspects of the culture I grew up in, with the point of view expressed in the dharma, even when the aspects are not in conflict, but simply different ways of understanding.

A simple example. I was raised in a series of Christian churches as a child. My parents were children of the jazz age, and didn't go to church. But they weren't existentialists either, so they retained respect for religion and wanted their children educated in the Christian tradition. My siblings and I went to a Quaker church first, and I regret that we didn't stay. From what I know of their form of worship, I am in total sympatico, especially the absence of an authoritarian leadership. But anyway, we didn't. Our next church was Baptist, and seemed very well-to-do. We attended Sunday School briefly. The teacher made a point of having us memorize the following:

For God so loved the world

That he gave his only begotten son

And whosoever believes in him

shall not perish

But shall have everlasting life

It was not, for me the beginning of the path, but it does contain seeds of the path. Human life contains the fear of death, or if not fear, the awareness of our own mortality. It was a preoccupation for me early in my life, when I found the thought of my own eventual annihilation both shocking and terrifying, akin to falling into the ocean to be eaten by beasts. When I was taught this poem, I was given the sense that it was important, and when I realized that it was telling me that other people feared death in the way that I did, it connected.

But even at the beginnings, I had reservations, based on the process of rational thinking that I have depended on from the beginning. Everlasting life seemed to be a promise too good to trust. Unlikely in the face of what is seen in the world of everyday experience, where things are born, live and die. To believe beyond the evidence trusted by the rational and scientific mind, is the struggle for faith, and it lasts for a lifetime.

But soon we moved on to the church that was most instrumental in my spiritual development, but not for the reasons one might assume. A couple named Roy and Helen Sturr lived next to my parents, and Mr. Sturr was an elder in the Bible Presbyterian Church. They went every Sunday in his gray 1952 Ford. Their only child was grown and gone, so they took us to church with them. The Bible Presbyterian Church was a conservative fundamentalist church. By conservative, I mean that they were not flashy, like the evangelicals of today. They believed literally in the Bible, but since in those days no one was likely to challenge them on it, it was hardly an issue. Intellectual smart alecks like myself had not yet gone to college and learned the ways of the skeptics.

My moment of disillusion with the church coincided with the onset of the age of reason; I was around 13-14 when a crisis broke out in the church over the process of hiring a new pastor, after the Rev. Eugene Faucette retired. A war broke out on the board of deacons that painted an ugly picture and carried a nasty scent. This event coincided with the conclusion of a process of reasoning that concluded with a rejection of church's expectation of belief in miracles and the literal Resurrection as a condition of faith. On scientific grounds, it simply was not on, and as I am sure it has for many millions, it compelled me out of the realm of religion as I progressed rapidly from skeptic to agnostic to atheist.

Where I remained, until instincts of social justice gave rise to increased political awareness. Given the events of the day, the foreign war in Vietnam and the domestic war over civil rights in America, it was probably inevitable that I would become a communist, and that I would experience it as a substitute for religion. A rational belief system with a goal of social justice for all people, that does not require belief in fairy tales. As we later learned, not only does Marxism not require fairy tales, it doesn't tolerate them either; witness the priests, nuns both Christian and Buddhist, Monks and Lamas who have been humiliated and killed throughout the socialist world. And what became of the fear of death and the promise of redemption? Nothing left but the cruel darkness of the Gulag.

It was also around this time that I first encountered Buddhism, in a rather unlikely spot. At about the age of 14, I was in a Rexall Drug Store on Puritas Avenue on the west side of Cleveland. Browsing through a paperback book rack, I found a copy of "The Way of Zen" by Alan Watts. It exerted a very strong attraction and I read it through several times, despite the ideas being foreign and very difficult to understand; especially in a western culture which offered no opportunity for instruction in the dharma. As I grasped it then, Buddhism offered an intriguing intellectual puzzle regarding ego and emptiness, a locus of enlightenment contained somehow within the individual, a connection to a culture guided by compassion and ethics, and no expectation of belief in a creator god. The early American interest in Japanese culture and Zen Buddhism probably came to the west through servicemen and others returning from Japan during the occupation. It first surfaced among the beatniks of NYC; Jack Kerouac and Alan Ginsberg were early adherents. Later on, Alan Ginsberg became a student of Gelek Rinpoche, the founder of Jewel Heart.

It was also in the seventies that I first became exposed to the story of Krishnamurti, though I cannot recall how. The Krishnamurti is unique in the history of religious movements. Jeddu Krisnamurti was discovered in the late ninteenth century by the Theosophists living at their ashram in India. The Theosophists were compilers of esoteric knowledge, led at that time by Annie Besant and C. W. Leadbetter. They were in India seeking the expected reincarnation of the "world teacher," the spiritual figure known in the west as Jesus, and in other cultures by other names. The return of the teacher had been predicted by many religions, according to the Theosophists.

Krishnamurti was picked out as a child of ten, by C.W. Leadbetter due to the "purity of his aura." Sadly a number of years later Leadbetter was tried for molesting children is his role as priest of a religion he had established in Australia. There is some speculation that he moved to Australia to escape similar charges in England.

That aside, Krishnamurti was raised by the Theosophists as an English gentleman in preparation for the day that his role as world teacher would be announced to the world. A religious order, The Order of the Star, was begun in his name, and acquired thousands of adherents, growing to a substantial organization by the time of the announcement.

But Krishnamurti had developed a personal realization that religious movements, far from reliably supporting the spiritual development of people were more likely to develop patterns of corruption and motives for the accululation of wealth and power. A view which I had largely come to share. He further teaches that all of education, politics and religion were illusions that obsure the truth. On the day of his installation as the world teacher, he instead announced that the people who were following him instead follow their own understanding gained through direct personal experience. Humans are responsible for finding their own truth, by looking within and confronting every pre-conceived notion and replacing the mind of conventional thought with the mind of courageous seeking of the truth.

Krishnamurti dissolved the Order of the Star, and sent everyone home. For the rest of his life, he traveled the world teaching his philosophy of reliance on self effort to establish a basis for living. I found this remarkable and unique approach to human freedom absolutely inspiring, and it has been a primary basis for my spiritual development ever since. Even in my current practice of Tibetan Buddhism, I am directing my efforts at learning the fundamental underlying principles of Buddhism and not so much toward learning the details of Tibetan ritual, though I find them beautiful, and inspiring.

I became alienated from leftist politics due to the violence of the movement. During my period of service in Vietnam I developed a clear and very strong ethic regarding personal responsibility for the choices I make and the effect on other people. Although generally supportive of the objectives of the Vietnam war prior to serving, the experience itself and further reading about Vietnamese history led me to realize the fundamental flaws in American foreign policy supporting the war. Having seen first hand the suffering of the innocent, and coming to understand through education the just nature of the Vietnamese struggle against domination by outside powers, it was very difficult for me to reconcil the conflict which thereafter existed between my military and my human responsibilities.

It forms the basis of my political philosophy today. When the government acts in the name of the individual citizen as it does every day, it is the responsibility of the citizenry to direct the government, and to confront it when govenment policy acts with malice or lack of wisdom. Although expresson of this philosophy began in the streets, in the sixties, it has gradually become part of the fabric of the politics and is now expressed within the system at the highest level; hence President Barak Obama.

In the seventies, I continued to follow a path of spiritual development. During the "acid revolution" of the sixties a writer named Carlos Castenada became popular, writing a series of books on the life of a Jaqui Indian shaman named Don Juan, whose life of magic centered around use of peyote, which accounted for its popularity among members of the acid generation. The tales of magic did not ring true for me, and it later turned out that Don Juan was a fiction created by Castenada.

It did however spark an interest in native American culture, and led quickly to a discovery of the great spiritual power of many native cultural leaders. Foremost among these were two; Handsome Lake of the Iroquois people, and Black Elk of the Oglala Lakota. In the case of each I found an opportunity to encounter the power of the visionary experience of native shamans and the power of this experience in the lives of the people. It was exposure to this vision that helped me understand the nature of the world of existence which lies just outside ordinary human perception. The world we touch and feel with the tools of faith and intiution

Those who know the story of Black Elk and of his people, know that he was present at Wounded Knee Creek, when the heart of the people was destroyed by the American arm. Black Elk believed on that day that the circle of life surrounding the people was forever broken. Events proved him wrong. Today the spirit teaching of native peoples are gaining strength at the very time when western thinking is in crisis. It may well be that the spirit thought broken by military power may yet serve to lead the people out of their confusion as to how to live in the world.

Be that as it may, it was my exposure to the reality of the world of spirit that led me to reconsider what I thought I knew about my own religion, and most importantly, about the nature of Jesus. Having dismissed Jesus as an unscientific fraud, I was now forced to reconsider. Having accepted that the world of Black Elk's vision was real in an expanded sense of understanding the meaning of "real" it then became evident that my dismissal of the nature of Jesus as a being with spiritual power was probably premature and uninformed.

At that point in my life I had finished graduate school, and was working as a group therapist. I was very focused at that time on the use of individual and group therapy, and of the nature of the relationship between the person seeking treament and the therapist.

DHL - working

Republicans Fear ND2

I agree with Paul Krugman's assessment of the Republican boycott of the stimulus package, that it was motivated in part by fear of a second New Deal. Except that I'm not sure the Obama package amounts to a New Deal; that devil is in the details, and I really ought to do a little googling before I go shooting my mouth off. But I have not thus far heard any details of a plan worthy of a new Roosevelt. My experience so far has been that the president is more than a few steps ahead of everyone, so I hope that as things take shape, they will not be the usual ineffective grab bag. I'm still sanguine.

As far as Republican fear is concerned, they seem not to have yet realized that the election, which President Obama won in a good imitation of a landslide, was in large part an expression of the electorate's hope for exactly that which the GOP seems to fear most; ND2 Our local neocon shill on the PD editorial board, a guy name Kevin O'Brien, was hootering today about Rahm Emanuel saying that it would be a shame to waste a crisis. He did a rif on Democratic fear-mongering, but it fell flat. I agree with Rahm Emanuel, it would be a shame to waste a crisis. We have now seen what unregulated private power can accomplish in the way of self-reward, and anti-democratic predation. It would be a shame to not strike against the accumulation of power that has fallen to the private sector, and out of the hands of the people, while the memory of the damage done is fresh in our memory, and our anger still righteous.

White Phalenopsis - winter, 2007

Bye-Bye Blackwater

Here's a bit of irony; the government of Iraq, a shaky but so-far successful democracy to the surprise of many, including myself, has declared Blackwater, Inc., persona non grata. Hey! I didn't think American puppet states were allowed to do that. Might there be a lesson in this for the State Department? And the Defense Department? That having private contractors operating in a war zone is a very bad idea?

The privatization of the military was a conservative fad and a bad idea. During the hot phase of the Iraq war, I was astounded to read of encounters between U.S. forces and Blackwater teams that ended in U.S. Army personnel being held under arms by Blackwater, pendng feedback from higher authority. In a war zone! And mind you, I am not prone to the use of exclaimation points! When my nephew returned from duty in Iraq last fall, he acknowledged that it was not uncommon.

DHL

2009-01-28T18:23:00.000-05:00

President Obama's interview with Al Arabiya

Clearly, President Obama intends the interview as a companion piece to the departure of Special Envoy George Mitchell for the region. His response to the first question says it all. Asked how he will approach the regional conflict and how his approach will differ from the Bush Administration, he responded that the United States will begin by listening to people in the region. He acknowledged that in the past, the U.S. policy was to dictate to the region. It is the message the Arab/Islamic world never expected to hear. In giving this interview, the president has signalled to the Arab world that the United States has entered into a new era with regard to its relations with states in the middle east. Without any suggestion that the relationship with Israel will be any less supportive, the president went on to assure Arab participants in the conflict that the United States intends to see the establishment of a State of Palestine; a state with defensible borders and the ability to protect its people. His vision for the future is one in which peace between belligerents will replace the current situation.

DHL

2009-01-27T18:52:00.000-05:00

Roosevelt set the gold standard...

Canadian Geese resting on Rocky River - January 19, 1009

for presidential response to crisis with the first 100 days; it has become the inevitable standard of measurement for new practitioners of the presidential art. Until Mr. Cool came to town that is. I'm referring in this case to the article link below to a BBC description of the president's recent announcement of a comprehensive energy strategy, less than a week into the new administration. And that on top of closing Guantanamo, ending torture by policy, setting the clock ticking for an Iraq withdrawal on his 16-month timetable, with everyone who needs to be on board, seemingly on board, appointing a gold star cabinet with minor tremors of difficulty, sending an envoy to the middle-east with both a portfolio and the skills to get it done, taking the helm on passage of the stimulus package, and opening a dialogue with Iran. These are not trivial accomplishments, but the work of a man who is much better prepared to be president than anyone in my recollection.

Already, sharp edges are beginning to show. I'm having my own problems with the stimulus bill, and while I mistrust the motives on the Republican side, I can certainly see their point. Not their whiney crying about being left out of the process,about which I smell a rat, but their expressed concern that the bill is the usual Washington christmas tree. I have the impression that the crash is telling us that christmas is over. I am hoping for a stimulus bill that would fund infrastructure development, related job training,etc. with an eye to getting something tangible for the money. As a child growing up, I well remember the legacy of the New Deal represented by all the great WPA projects built during the Great Depression.

Speaking of something tangible, I was interested in the article below regarding a discussion of nationalization of financial institutions currently underway in Washington. A range of options is under discussion, uncluding full nationalization at least on a temporary basis. The strongest argument against this step seems to be based in emotion more than reason; the atavistic fear of so-called socialist solutions, or indeed any solutions in which government power trumps private power.

To propose that the government expend the funds needed for a successful rescue operation of these failed financial institutions with their proven history of management arrogance and incompetence, without taking a majority position on their boards of directors, for the express purpose of firing everyone, and prosecuting some, could only happen in America.

Our national Ayn Rand fantasy of the private capitalist as the captain of destiny, is a romanticized fraud perpetrated on the backs of the people. One wonders, are Wolfe's "Masters of the Universe" in their open contempt for government and sustained assault against its' power, in secret league with Marx, seeing the withering of the state as the logical end of capitalism? Well, so much for that theory. The collective strength and wisdom of the people is the ocean in which Mao's revolutionaries learned to swim, and in which capitalists should be made to play nice.

Nationalization of the banks would assure the American people that in return for an investment they receive an asset. The fairness of it seems self-evident. And prudent. With the incredible sense of entitlement currently existing within the management class, we are reasonable in believing that a government bailout without government oversight, carries a significant risk of replicating the present crisis somewhere down the road.

Indeed, it already has. We are learning that the $350 billion TARP program, extorted from Congress By Treasury Secretary Paulson, has not onlyfailed to move the credit markets, but in fact, has disappeared into the wilds of Manhattan and the Hamptons like pallets of $100 dollar bills vanishing into the Iraqi dessert. The Bush modus operandi - lack of accountability - has done for the Bush Administration's financial rescue package what Brownie did for New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.

Even so, talk of Nationalization worries people. Not me; other people. It gives visions of bearded revolutionaries in combat fatigues, and suburbanites being herded off to collectives for re-education. It remains to be seen how comfortable we are with our migration from the fear of the Gulag, to "I'm ok with nationalized banks."

A companion worry, is that the government will get carried away with its' new and unfamiliar role as corporate mogols, and force business into unwise decisions. Such as designing cars that no-one will buy. Congressmen as planners of corporate destiny does not instill confidence, even for an optimist. We have our memories of the consequences for human beings of the 5-year plans of Stalin and Mao, filled with images of starvation and chaos. So we are seeking a balance between the march of the collective, and the free market fairy tale of Ayn Rand, Milton Friedman and Alan Greenspan. And Dick Cheney.

Steelhead fishing at second ford; Rocky River - January 10, 2009

So we need a new economic system. One with a conscience. But how does one impose a conscience on an economic system? Only through government regulaton. The argument of free marketeers, that regulation is an impediment to economic growth, used to make some sense; until it led to markets growing like Barry Bond's lifetime record, and for much the same apparent reason.

We need to think about how to re-build the economy, so that we don't simply recreate the old model of amoral dollars chasing any and all opportunities, i.e., capitalism on steroids. We need an economy that factors in as a cost of doing business, a planet-healthy response to the compelling environmental emergencies that surround us as the result of centuries of unregulated free-booting.

And as we have also learned, when the market is brought low by the sword of it's own dark excess, it brings us down with it. So we have a vested interest in asserting the right of the people to trump private interest. To get there, we need something other than profit and loss to regulate the markets; we need an ethical balance as well. And that is the role that government must play. Not designing product, or planning production schedules, but serving as the conscience of the economic system. To compel it to serve interests beyond those of stockholders, but to serve the public interest as well, not as an elective corporate policy but as a matter of law.

Yes, we need economic growth, and yes we need the genius of the marketplace to provide it. So freedom of choice within the marketplace is essential. But it must be constrained by the power of government expressed through the wisdom of its citizens. So it is up to us as citizens to use the power of government to prevent private interests from inflicting suffering on people. Which requires our spiritual development.

But spiritual development must contend with a system of punishment and reward in order to move forward. Why? Because development is based on the choices made by human beings over time; it is not a matter of philosophy, but of practice. Within Christianity we have virtue and the wages of sin. Within Buddhism we either create merit or generate negative karma. It is our response to the choices that life presents us with that creates our negative karma, or rewards our Christian virtue. So we need the adversity of a punishment/reward system in order to develop spiritually. And the way we enact our economic choices must be consistent with this development.

Some might say that spirituality and the market do not mix. One is governed by consciousness and the other by balance sheets. I disagree. It is in the marketplace that much of human suffering is created, and so it must be addressed.

For example, the computer I am using I bought at Best Buy, and right now their sales are down. Plus my computer is getting old and I could really justify a new one. But that would mean throwing my old one away; I did not realize until recently that old electronic equipment has been shipped to China in huge quantities for recycling. The poisons that escape during this unregulated process, has created an environmental wasteland for the people living nearby, with almost total destruction of the water supply, among other terrible problems.

So at every level of commerce, from the Boardroom of Merrill Lynch, to my individual decision to replace my computer, it is necessary that the people assert their right, and exercise their responsibility as citizens to empower to government to regulate the marketplace. To the least extent necessary, but in the end, for the best interests of people present and future, and for the best interests of the biosphere in which we share the sacred gift of life with so many other beings.

That's enough on that, but I also want to point out the contrast between President Obama's energy plan - which is wide open, intelligently crafted, and contains no favors to purveyors of carbon in any form - and the dance of the seven veils Dick Cheney put on during the banquet he set for the oil industry during BushCheney.

This Sunday's New York Times editorial on an upcoming Supreme Court ruling on the Voting Rights Act, will open debate on the enduring role of the Court, as we emerge ( I hope ) from the conservative era.

DHL

News Analysis - Nationalization Gets a New, Serious Look - NYTimes.com

2009-01-27T18:47:00.000-05:00

News Analysis - Nationalization Gets a New, Serious Look - NYTimes.com

BBC NEWS | Americas | Obama aims for oil independence

2009-01-27T18:43:00.000-05:00

BBC NEWS | Americas | Obama aims for oil independence

Editorial - Uphold the Voting Rights Act - NYTimes.com

2009-01-27T18:42:00.000-05:00

Editorial - Uphold the Voting Rights Act - NYTimes.com

2009-01-26T22:25:00.000-05:00

Beginnng the Lam Rim

Tonight at Jewel Heart, I began the Lam Rim, a teaching developed by Je Tsongkhapa in fifteenth century Tibet. Tsongkhapa is revered in part, for his accomplishment of capturing all of the lineages of Buddhist teaching in existence at that time, and synthesizing them into one coherent practice, with the goal of providing a path of guidance or instruction in all of the steps needed for spiritual development leading to full enlightenment. It takes a year, more or less. It might take me longer.

I saw my old friends Elliott and Margret there tonight, and several new people. On Wednesday as aforementioned, I begin the course in the Four Noble Truths, being led by Susie Kirchner. It is quite a bit shorter; 8 - 10 weeks.

DHL

Cedars in snow, Kirtland, Ohio - January 2006

BBC NEWS | Americas | Obama aims for oil independence

2009-01-26T17:50:00.000-05:00

News Analysis - Nationalization Gets a New, Serious Look - NYTimes.com

BBC NEWS Americas Obama aims for oil independence

2009-01-25T23:05:00.000-05:00

Suffering

In preparing for teachings on the Four Noble Truths, I anticipate a discussion on the meaning of suffering, and the statement attributed to the Buddha that life is suffering. As a westerner raised as a Christian, a meditation on suffering would focus on the suffering and death of Christ on the cross, and the salvation from suffering that it offers to humanity. The goal of Buddhism is also salvation from suffering, and for both Christians and Buddhists, the path away from suffering depends on the choices made by an individual over the course of a lifetime to follow a path of compassion for others. Or to fail to do so, and to continue to suffer, and to inflict suffering on others.

As one who follows a Buddhist strategy for spiritual development, while accepting the living spirit of the historical Jesus as my pre-eminent spiritual authority and/or guru, I frequently find it helpful to call notice to similarities between the forms of traditional Christian worship and the forms of Buddhist practice, as I encounter them.

In both traditions, for spiritual practice to be meaningful, it is critical to realize that to understand the meaning of suffering requires more than a listing of the daily aches and pains of the self in a self-absorbed life. A fuller definition of the meaning of suffering requires a realization of the emptiness of the self - that is to say, the meaninglessness of the self, the unimportance of it, and to thereby experience a liberation that opens the eyes of the practitioner to the immense suffering that exists in the world as, on a daily basis, the strong prey upon the weak, subjecting those they choose to oppress, to the worst constants of human cruelty. It is in the world outside of our meditative practice that we are able to see clearly the consequences in human suffering created through the greed and violence of those making choices without enlightenment into the true nature of humanity.

Our experience of deep compassion as a result of our exposure to the suffering of others, and our commitment to take action to relieve suffering where and when we can, provides us with insight to the true and noble nature of humanity.

We need only look to the immense suffering of the people of Gaza, experiencing the injury of pain and the grief of death. Or the suffering of the invading Israeli Army, each member sacrificing their individual humanity for the hope that a violent response to violence will produce peace. Or to the people of Tibet faced with oppression from the Chinese. Or the Chinese, led to excesses of absurdity in attempting to suppress the spiritual power of the ancient traditions that still rule the land of Tibet.

The suffering documented in the media on a daily basis is the suffering created within the human family by the unrealized mind, with its willingness to follow the dictates of the primitive monkey mind, in which skill in the use of aggression and control to dominate the group, is valued. How can a society such as ours...

Rocky River at Horse Ford - January 2004 - 7 x 18

more - DHL

2009-01-25T01:55:00.000-05:00

The Four Noble Truths

This week, I am beginning a course in the Four Noble Truths at Jewel Heart - Cleveland. I thought it would be useful to prepare by chasing down the Youtube archive for the 4-part series by His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

DHL