Monday, October 09, 2006

Roundup for Oct 10, 2006

Miso, the meistro of Big Red Buddha is interviewed in the latest addition to the Buddhist ezine the worst horse. It’s a terrific interview, titled “Buddhism gets its Onion,” that is clever and funny as hell. Plus, you find out a lot about Miso, but not more than he’ll allow. A good job of interviewing is done by the even-more-mysterious-than-Miso webmeister of the worst horse. Good stuff, y’all.

Here, a tasty tidbit from the interview, instructions from Miso on how to handle a ticked-off Buddhist: “…[I]t’s helpful to remember we Buddhists are easily distracted. I try to keep a book handy with some exotic teaching by a brand-name Buddhist personality. Just toss it in the direction of a ticked-off Buddhist, and they'll quickly become engrossed in its novelty. Shiny bits of foil may have the same effect. Once the ticked-off Buddhist's attention turns from you, back away slowly. Works like a charm.”

In his blog Naked Reflections, Nagarjuna does a great job breaking down and commenting on a brilliant Glenn Greenwald article that analyses the significance of the Foley sex scandal. The scandal and cover up is a crystallizing affair that exhibits the hypocrisies, madness and power greed of the Republicans to the public, as well as exposing the Republicans for all their duplicity and doublespeak. [Btw, congratulations are past due Nagarjuna for an earlier post of his that was excerpted by John Hughes of ipsoSacto for Blog Watch and then appeared in the Sacramento Bee Sunday Forum section on 9/24, in the weekly department "Surfing USA." The original, full post, titled “That’ll Show Them for Calling Us Violent,” appeared on Sept 18 in Naked Reflections.]

A new voice in the Buddhoblog chorus y’all need to be turned on to is natasha, a “twentysomething, british, free spirit in France” who writes feminish. Her primary interest is feminism, but she is keen on zen, meditation and British politics, too. Her link-rich post yesterday was mostly on “the veil thing,” a hot feminism topic following last month’s boob thing. I love the fresh, non-sugary positivism, while still being edgy and smart, found in natasha’s writing.

Here’s how she ends her post,
And the thing is (“what is the thing, Natasha?”), the thing is - these discussions [on veils/burqas/boobs] are better than any I’ve ever had offline. Honest. Go read.
A couple of book recommendations in the last day or two sound intriguing: Deep-thinker Bill of Integral Options Café has put The Trouble With Diversity: How We Learned to Love Identity and Ignore Inequality [amazon link] on his future-reading list. The book argues that we should be worrying about economic privilege instead of social identity in our search for civil justice. The stinking rich and their playboy and lazy girl progeny float above the hoi polloi in their castles in the air, leaving the rest of us on the ground tussling over scraps. Sounds about right.

Meantime, James of Monkey Mind alerts us to a forthcoming re-issue of a book from Susan Murphy, called Upside-Down Zen: Finding the Marvelous in the Ordinary [amazon link] after seeing an advance copy. Writes James, “Quite simply, Susan Murphy gives Zen a Western face with an Australian accent. And it’s right on! Not a false note throughout. She presents an understanding of Zen that is faithful to the tradition, but which is now deeply and truly our own. Which is, of course, exactly how Zen needs to be presented. She wiggles a finger at us, winks, and gently invites us into the ancient conspiracy.”

Honest. Go read!