This week in Blogmandu, life is difficult, death takes its toll, meditation is challenging, DeLay is creepy, and the examination of the new pope continues.
Pushing through flotsam and fog like a determined tugboat, Foguiera of Fogdux cites the ideal of a world pervaded by love, but with clear eyes [her powerful foglamp], chronicles it as it is. We are met with an "[environmental apocalypse which mirrors] the Rapture-driven lunatics who have taken over our government and our society: the oil will run out, the electricity grid will implode, and we will hurtle like Alice down the rabbit hole, back to the 19th century or further neolithically." And then this: "In a psychological environment such as this (here's the point, people), the heart shrivels. ... With a shriveled heart, no love is possible. ... It's a vicious circle, the catchiest of 22s." But after discussing her own anger and weaknesses, there is this brightening sentiment in a glowing paragraph:
That's why conventional non-lazy Buddhists like to do meditation. It enables the mind to jettison all its debris. Empty and white-walled, the sun comes in. Objective and light, it leaves room for the heart to function as it properly should, feeling empathy for all beings.
Sujatin Johnson writes about her stuffed garage in lotusinthemud. "I could hardly get in the door. First I had to prune the bamboo, which had taken over the end of the garden and draped itself across the path. But that Being Rather Frustrated at the Highly Unsatisfactory chaos had given me a boost of energy -- and, once able to gain access to the garage, I set to. It was rather like being in an interactive Rubik's Cube. Moving one thing required moving many things." I leave it to you readers to click to the post for the wonderful, fiery conclusion to Sujatin's cleaning-up and clearing-out.
Andi of Ditch the raft appears to be ditching the blog! But it is not on an unhappy note; Andi is traveling -- to France I think -- and will become a nun. It is hard to unravel what is going on exactly, there are so many threads in the air. But Andi will be in the New York terminal on Monday and blogless on Wednesday.
 Garden at Motel University2 © f. kwan 2005; posted with permission. |
In an entry The impermanence of intellectualism, and other carryings-on Foguiera of Fogdux posted this picture. She writes, "... the sign says RODEWAY INN PARKING ONLY IN DESIGNATED SPACES. The lot is empty; this time, the flowers are victorious." Comments from mimi and me, expressed love of her photos. I wrote "There is something of screaming truth about them in their glorious beauty, absurdity and rot." |
James of The Buddhist Blog in telling us he is happy with his new sangha, begins his post with as rapturous a poem about the shortness of life as one can find. It is from the Diamond Sutra:
Thus shall ye think of this fleeting world:
A star at dawn, a bubble in a stream;
A flash of lightning in a summer cloud;
A flickering lamp, a phantom, and a dream.
Death made a more overt appearance in several blogs this past week. Danny Fisher in his eponymous blog posted a memorial to Marla Ruzicka. She and her colleague Faiz Ali Salim were killed by a suicide bomber while on the Baghdad Airport road traveling to visit an Iraqi child injured by a bomb. Ruzicka was in Iraq working with the Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict (CIVIC), a non-governmental organization she founded in 2003, to compile statistics of Iraqi civilian casualties.
In Yaddha, Dylan Thomas's poem "And death shall have no dominion" is baldly posted. The title appears six times as a line in the 27-line poem, bookending the three stanzas. In Eschatalog, there is a poem sent on the anniversary of a friend's friend's death. Its first five lines: Death is the time / When time condenses / When all time inhabits / Each precious moment / Completely
In The Buddhist Community, theebes quotes Sri Eknath Easwaran from his "Dialogue with Death." Here's one line: "Just as high mountains have a timber line above which no trees grow, the peak of consciousness has a nirvana line above which nothing dies."
James again, in his political blog Genius of Insanity this time, gives us hope for a lessening of death in Danfur. Quoting the BBC: "The African Union has agreed to more than double the number of its peace monitors in the war-torn Sudanese region ..." But James warns that there are still grave dangers.
Several Buddhist bloggers wrote about problems meditating. College student Des of The Buddhist Community writes "I seem to have an aversion to meditation." He finds himself meditating less frequently than he would like and for shorter durations. And when he does meditate, often his "ego will try to pick fights" with him. His post drew a slew of comments, expressing empathy and offering advice. Stephanie, another member of the community, writes of "emotional rawness" that she has come to experience as a result of her meditation practice. "I notice anger rising like a wild animal, loneliness squirming like a whining puppy, and a general sensitivity to both the beauty and the pain of the world that can be almost overwhelming."
Dukkha Earl, of Sifting Samsara, writes that he is "doped up on all sorts of medicine" to fight a case of the flu and says "it is so much easier to meditate and detach like this," but wonders, "Is there any harm" so long as he is aware that it's the pills and not his "ability" driving his meditation experience?
Chris of The Zen Within Community finds that music helps him meditate by securing him from interuptions. He adds, pro bono, "When I do meditate, with U2 in the background, it does not force me to think of the lyrics (as I would if I were not meditating) but rather, it creates somewhat of a barrier in my mind, where I can indulge in the ability to completely let go and separate myself from the present place of mediation."
Genius of Insanity's James has been busy with his hammer, posting three times about Tom DeLay in eight days. A week ago, he wrote about the issue of Abramoff paying for DeLay's airfare. Last Wednesday, he blogged about corruption of the House ethics committee. But today's post is the topper, I think: "Tom DeLay's Lobbyist Mafia" James tells us some of what he learned from a new book, "The Hammer: Tom DeLay. God, Money, and the Rise of the Republican Congress." The pervasive corruption and bossism is thoroughly depressing. A central paragraph in the post, James quoting from the book, reads:
The DeLay lobbyist project that DeLay, Santorum, and Norquist run has public policy and political consequences that will last for at least a quarter of a century. By discipling the lobby and making it an extension of the Republican House conference, DeLay has expanded his influence far beyond the House. Lobbyists are being ordered to do the party's bidding. Lobbyists are told to lean on House members whom they have contributed money and tell them how the party wants them to vote.
Both Sujatin in lotusinthemud and Hooligan in Blogopotamus! draw attention to Jeff Wilson's elequent words in a long post about Ratzinger's "relativism" in TricycleBlog. "[Ratzinger] worked hard to prevent discussion of women’s ordination, positive attitudes toward homosexuality, liberation theology, and acceptance of contraception, abortion, and euthanasia. For progressives and those who wanted to see the Church more responsive to the times, he was a grand inquisitor, a man out of the Middle Ages who persecuted dissidents by censuring and driving them from positions in the church." writes Jeff. And this: "Buddhism in particular came in for criticism by the man who is now pope. ... His concern in particular was against “eastern methods” (with an emphasis on Zen, yoga, and TM), and his discussion of Buddhism falls under the heading Erroneous Ways of Praying, where he characterizes Buddhism as a negative theology and nirvana as escapism from a completely sorrowful and delusive world."
Dharma Vision's Amadeus penned a topic entry for the blog/forum Interlog titled "Reconciling Anger Towards Pope Benedict." He writes of his aversion to Ratzinger's record of hard-heartedness, but finds inspiraton in the Dalai Lama's unstinted benevolent feelings for the new pope. Asks Amadeus: "[C]an we truly embrace those that condemn us or is it an unrealistic feat to attempt? Are we just kidding ourselves when we celebrate for those that despise us?"
