David Brazier, author of one of my very favorite zen books, Zen Therapy, is fearful re the future of the dollar. He writes in Dharmavidya Web, “For the US to get out of deficit would require unthinkable economic and political shifts here but for it not to do so is like being on a slippery slope. Sooner or later balance will be lost and all will come crashing down.”
Phra Prasong stamps out little clay Buddha images, Noah tells us and shows us in Yuttadhammo. “What a neat idea - a Buddha in your pocket. Just make sure it's a shirt pocket, not a butt pocket!”
In a long rambling post that hangs together beautifully, Paul, A Blue-Eyed Buddhist, writes about Highway 99, zips past Green Lake, and ends up thinking about nuclear weapons, and in the midst of this section, the war in Lebanon. He returns to Highway 99 at the end and it is as if his post were a round trip, an enso. Here is the last bit of it:
Is it ever justifiable to use a nuke? What if you’re not using it on a city, but on a military base? What if you give a 3 day warning ahead of time? What if the bad guys use several against you?Dave of Via Negativa writes about nukes, too. A poem about the blast over Nagasaki, “On the Birthday of Death.”
These are hard questions. Perhaps I’m not a good Buddhist, because the answers to some of them don’t snap immediately into my head. In fact, I wonder about them, and struggle with them.
These are things I was thinking about while driving back down highway 99 tonight.
Tuesday 8/8 is primary election day in Connecticut. The last sentence in Mumon’s Notes in Samsara post relates his sentiments starkly: “I never liked Joe Lieberman.”
Will of thinkBuddha writes about the challenge of putting together ideas for his PhD thesis that meet his interests. Ethics and stories become his focus, and the merging of East and West. Here, he writes about seminal thoughts:
Through the practice of the dharma, through meditation, reflection, the reading of the Buddhist texts, my sense of life and of my own place within it shifted. The old frameworks of thought within which I was operating seemed no longer adequate. … the frameworks handed down through the traditions of Buddhism, although I was fascinated and… moved by them, seemed to be inadequate as a way of allowing me to think through the questions that were raised by practice. They were too alien, they rested upon metaphysical premises that I could not accept, they were too Buddhist.As if in response to Will, above, Tyson of tysonwilliams.com quotes the Dalai Lama on our relationship with our practice. Here’s a snippet: “To investigate the teaching critically is fully encouraged in the same way that medical students are encouraged to apply their theories to real life and thus to witness their validity.”
Robert of Beginner’s Mind finds a really really great quote from Alan Alda, no less.
Bill LaLonde of Oaksong’s Nemeton is way too easy to please. But, wait a second. I’m pretty damn happy about his post. Hmmm.
Here’s a pop quiz you may take before reading Bill of Integral Options Café’s answers to his book meme.
What one book changed Bill’s life?
- The Atman Project by Ken Wilber
- The Story of O by Pauline Reage
- Nicholas Nickelby by Charles Dickens
- The Puppy who wanted a Boy by Jane Thayer and Lisa McCue
- The first four books of the five-part trilogy The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
- The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
- One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish by Dr. Seuss
- Tinker, Taylor, Soldier, Spy by John leCarre
- The Perfect Storm
- Complete Works of Shakespeare
- Complete Works of Umberto Eco
- Dune
- Coyote Blue by Christopher Moore
- Picture This by Joseph Heller
- Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Bastard By Al Franken
- Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson
- My Pet Goat
- Mein Kampf by Adolph Hitler
- Over the River and Through the Trees by Ernest Hemingway
- [Bill chooses not to name one]
- Liberalism: The religion of the Godless by Bill Harryman
- Ulysses by Bill Harryman
- Mystic River by Bill Harryman
- Sex, Ecology and Spirituality by Bill Harryman
More Tasty Roundup-Type Stuff
- Speedlinking 8/7/06 by William Harryman of Integral Options Cafe Another bountiful linkfest, with a long paper on proportional response and the best Talking Head taking us to Jesus Camp.
- Speedlinking 8/8/06 by William Harryman of Integral Options Cafe Should be up by about 5:15am PT on 8/8.
- Mark of Zen Filter offers us a heapin' helpin' of Zen Cake. Delicious but weird.
