Roundup for Nov 14 - 20, 2005

Change is a theme that appears in different Buddhist guises this week. In politics, hatred, letter writing, Bush and Iraq get attention. We also give you information on what to put in your Buddha statue and give you a jumpstart on your midterm.

Ch-ch-ch-changes

In a post, follow-up to another asking about the nature of change and our ability to affect change in the world, chalip of Zen Under the Skin delves deeply into the issue in a post "Always Ripe for Change," making use of earlier feedback. She leads off with this sentiment, "I'm still trying to figure out how to carry the dharma into my daily life with consistency. I'm still trying to figure out how to bring my meditation off the cushion. Who am I to say what other people need to do when it is all I can do to stumble through my own attempts at right action? I've also been of the opinion that such attempts to consciously sway a person... to get them to do a certain thing or be a certain way... are often futile."

By the end of her post, after filtering through the offerings of others, feelings of futility have lifted:

The world is always ripe for change. The world is always responding to who we are and what we are doing. And so are people and everything else in the world. This is what Thich Nhat Hanh's word Interbeing is pointing to. Everything exists because of everything else. As subtle changes happen in one person, subtle changes happen everywhere. This may be hard to quantify. Everyone may not cause the global impact that Buddha, Ghandi, or Martin Luther King, Jr. did in the world... but everyone can have the same impact right where they live.

Jeb of Wonderings on the Way writes about extending gratitude to “the entire milieu of existence” in a post titled "The Ecology of Gratitude." He begins by looking at gratitude from our in-the-house animal friends and the prefunctory “thank you”s of our grudgingly civil society, and then expands the vision multidimensionally. Following are words from the middle of a wonderful post:

Whether one is talking about life sciences and their extremely complex interactions, or physics with its Bell’s Theorem and quantum entanglement, the conclusion is that we live in a world where interconnections far exceed our ability to understand them. ... We are gradually learning not to be as naive as primitive man about destroying things we don’t understand. In a larger sense, I can reach a conclusion that all of existence is worthy and somehow is not separate from my own existence or sustenance. I can reach a conclusion of reverence for life – all life.

A real ecology of gratitude begins to arise when one begins to understand that even those things or people or groups one does not like are an integral and valuable part of existence that sustains us all.

Fogueira of foot before foot is up to many changes this week. One post, about reversing her decision to not purchase a spiffy camera begins, “I reserve the right to change my mind about just about anything. The mind, after all, is the most impermanent conditioned thing there is.” But it is the positive effects of her healthy diet that get the most attention in posts titled “Quality of Life Report,” and “Ch-ch-ch-changes.” Fogueira now eats healthy, natural foods and is a committed vegetarian: “I could never cry enough or ask pardon enough to every animal for every minute I spent exploiting them. To eat animals to me would be like murdering my family, literally. … I have to admit it's wonderful to do the right thing and literally feel great doing it. … May all beings experience such a phenomenon.”

Cliff Jones of This is this finishes [for now] his one-post-per-year, number-of-words-equaling-the-age-he-is-in-each-post autobiography. Here is the last chapter, The Sum Of All Years - 33:

Bad things happen - they'll bother you more if you're always holding out for the good stuff. What you want will come and go, but what you need will find you in the end.

"The girl" who blogs auspicious coincidence wrote a post this week called "change." In it, each of the seven paragraphs begin with these words: "Some people say that people don’t change..." The first six paragraphs reference herself, but the final one is a global observation: "Some people say that people don’t change, but I think that they just want to see the world as constant and unchangeable because it makes life simple. Let’s face it, we are who we are, not who we were or who we want to be. We just are."

The 11th Century Vietnamese poet Van Hahn wrote of changes. At the moment of his death, he wrote a poem -- presented by Amadeus in his blog dharma vision. Please, please follow this link to read the translation Amadeus has and has presented so wonderfully. Following is a different translation of Van Hahn's words, found at the online site of Boston Review:

Our life is a lightning flash, here and gone
Spring plants blossom, to be bare in fall
Mind not the rise and fall of fortunes
They're dewdrops twinkling on the grass

Political Stuff

Amadeus is a political researcher and consultant residing in Oregon. This week, in his blog dharma vision, he tackled the issue of Politics and Hatred. “Lately, I have begun to again study the notion of hatred.” he writes. “It really is a hard thing to understand. We often hold such deep feelings about issues that they could sow seeds of hatred within us. I know mine sometimes do and although I have become a little better at recognizing it, I still have a long way to go.”

Mumon of Notes in Samsara writes about Bush's miscues in Japan, where he is slashing back at domestic critics of his war, bumfuzzling his hosts. [In one stop on the island nation, Bush insisted he wasn't there speaking for the US government, while at another stop, he thanked the prime minister for sending troops to Iraq.] "Nixon [could handle diplomacy]; he was venal but talented." observes Mumon. "George W. Bush, miserable failure that he is, is venal but not talented."

Congressman Duncan Hunter's fake cut-and-run legislation, written in an effort to undermine Congressman Murtha's stern assessment that the war isn't going at all well, is rebuked by James of Genius of Insanity: "This resolution introduced by House Republicans is a sham, a typical smear ploy, dirty politics and a political stunt."

Ruby Sinreich, of lotusmedia consultants in North Carolina’s Orange County [the other OC], blogs lotusmedia 2.0 [formerly, Ruby’s Rants and Randomness]. In a post this week, “Blog to Congress,” she has a bead on code [currently just for Bloxsam] to turn blog entries into letters to congress. She is eager for the code to be written for additional blogging software/platforms.

DID YOU EVER WONDER WHAT 2000 LOOKS LIKE? At his blog Dharmavidya Web, in a post titled “November 2005: Iraq Item,” David Brazier has links to a short flash video every American should see.

Buddhist Stuff

In a fascinating post, titled “Buddha Statues – Imagining Buddha,” Gareth of Green Clouds tells us, firsthand, of steps involved in the ritual preparation of a Buddha statue for its place on a shrine. An early paragraph explains what is expected …

Within [my] tradition, and others I think, the statues are filled with dried (and blessed) rose petals, mantra rolls and precious objects. The statue can then be painted and dressed, if wished, and set upon the shrine. Before the statue is filled, it needs to be checked for flaws and repaired, and washed down and rinsed with saffron water.

… but unexpected challenges are encountered!

Dave Bonta of Via Negativa passes out the mid-term on his way out of town. [I am not sure if the test is meant for congressfolk, Buddhists or alchemists.] There are five questions. Here’s #2

2. From dreaming about salamanders, can you remember how it felt to breathe through your skin & listen with the bones in your feet? Use both sides of the paper if necessary.

Iain Sinclair’s blog Jinijik is an always-fascinating virtual lobby to the museums and the salvaged crumbling texts of our religion. Finds this week are (1) an article, “Conservation and Digitisation of Rolled Palm Leaf Manuscripts in Nepal” and (2) the new website of The Research Institute of Sanskrit Manuscripts & Buddhist Literature based in Peking University.

In a post called MR. ANGRY, Brad Warner of Hardcore Zen writes about a longtime crazy-mad student of his teacher. Here is a central paragraph, after the teacher advises the unhappy student that one of his options is simply to leave:

Lotsa people ask me how to recognize a real Buddhist teacher. You can recognize them by this attitude. A real Buddhist teacher never tries to draw you in or convince you of anything. He (or she, but I'll stick w/ male pronouns) just says what he says. If you like it, you can stay and listen some more. If you don't like it you can go away.

The girl who writes auspicious coincidence has written a true-to-life tanka that come with a burst of steam. Go read.

Blog Harvest

Jeb of Wondering on the Way filed his fifth Blog Harvest at the end of this week, titled "Chump Change." He recommends the following blog posts and miscellany:

• The post "Always Ripe for Change" in Zen Under the Skin, with especial kudos for its emphisis on personal change.
• The movie Dead Man Walking, where the condemned man takes direct responsibility for his actions
• The post "Going Beyond Belief" in Green Clouds, "because it speaks to the willingness and courage to look at one’s own mind and beliefs"
• The post "alternatives" in Jack/zen which touches on problems with forms of engaged Buddhism
• The post "Rumi, FLOW and Love" in FLOW, here again, because the post touches on problems with forms of engaged Buddhism.
• The organizations Greyston Foundation, Human Kindness Foundation, and Human Impact for their better methods of addressing changes in society

Truth, Revealed

We close with a quote this week offered by the delicious whiskey river:

“We are hidden in ourselves, like a truth hidden in isolated facts. When we know that this One in us is One in all, then our truth is revealed.”
--Rabindranath Tagore in his 1917 book Personality.

Roundup for Nov 7 - 13, 2005

A not-so-simple hello, hot sex, lotto millions, postmodernity, keeping your zafu in reach, death, non-violence and golden leaves in a pear tree were all touched upon in the Buddhism-flavored blogosphere this week.

Practice, Practice, Practice

Zataod of Zen and the Art of Dreaming dreams of winning multi-megamillions in the lotto. His fantasies end up being very tame – more Buddhist than hedonist. “The more I think about it,” he writes, “the more that I realize there won't be a lot of changes due to this newfound wealth.”

Meditation thickens the brain in delightful ways, we are told. Several blogs picked up on this interesting story, originating in the November issue of NeuroReport. Writes eeksypeeksy for Zen Filter, "Brain imaging of regular working folks who meditate regularly revealed increased thickness in cortical regions related to sensory, auditory and visual perception, as well as internal perception -- the automatic monitoring of heart rate or breathing, for example." Amadeus of Dharma Vision quotes a co-author of the study: "The study participants were people with jobs and families. They just meditated on average 40 minutes each day. You don't have to be a monk."

"Buddhists and Hot Sex" is the title of a post over at Woodmoor Village. No, it's not the annual invitation to Nacho's orgy on the grounds of the zendo, though Nacho does appear to be feeling a little randy. What the post is is a Thought Train that cho-chos through some blogs, some TV watching and a high school auditorium.

Another good one from the intoxicating whiskey river:

"We (that indivisible divinity that operates in us) have dreamed the world. We have dreamed it as enduring, mysterious, visible, omnipresent in space and stable in time; but we have consented to tenuous and eternal intervals of illogicalness in its architecture that we might know it is false."
- Jorge Luis Borges, Other Inquisitions

John of My Zen Life is going to keep a zabuton and zafu handy in his car. “What is it going to take to change my life such that I can allow zazen to be the root of all my daily actions?” he writes.

This in a The Buddhist Blog post by James called "The Ocean of Delusion":

If you live the sacred and despise the ordinary, you are still bobbing in the ocean of delusion. ~Lin-Chi

Cliff Jones of This is this is soooo Buddhist. He is more than a little self-conscious just in saying hello.

Heady Stuff

An Xiao Mina is thinking about death, for several reason: a book, a cemetery, a loved one at death’s door. In her blog That Was Zen, This Is Tao: A Journey in Haiblog, she writes, “We begin, we end, we continue, we do not, and all is the same and yet distinct. …Waves rise, waves fall, and we crash upon the rocky shores and sandy beaches before becoming waves once more.”

Justin Whitaker of American Buddhist Perspective has a three-pronged series of posts on the meaning of the combo ‘Postmodernity [qv] and Buddhism’ [See I & II & III]. Here’s one thing Justin wrote:

The Buddha, and Buddhism itself (as its own grand narrative) is not the foundation of Truth (though we often cling to each as if they were) in Buddhism. Yet Buddhism does provide the grand narrative and the Buddha as exemplar, because the Dhamma alone is pretty vague for us normal folk. With these we are moved toward ever more abstract notions of truth, the 8-fold path, the 3 marks of existence, etc. Somewhere along the way we quit grasping to these as if they are true, as if everything else is false. We now see the truth and potential falsehood in everything, including the Buddha's teachings.

Jeb of Wondering on the Way gets into the whys and hows and makes some wise points about how how and why, a pair often confused as near-identical twins, differ. “For the lack of why, we must descend into a graspable ‘how.’” he writes. Why is there suffering? becomes How does suffering arise?

William Harryman of Integral Options Café looks through the prism of Spiral Dynamics to address his personal 'meme vs. meme' battle in a two-post series, with a third post as an addendum. William explains things so well, readers can follow what is written without a grounding in the SD scheme. [But if it helps, think of a Blue Meme person as someone like Bush and a Green Meme person as being someone like the average American lay Buddhist.]

In a long, rich post, Will Buckingham of thinkBuddha.org tackles ahimsa, the Buddhist view of non-violence, and the question of what needs to be done to counter powerful, cruel dictators like Hitler or Saddam. He writes, "A true pacifism would deal not only with crises, but also with the systems that lead to them, systems that are already a part of the logic and machinery of war. "

Sean of Wandering the Pathless Land continues thoughts on the conflict between Science and Spirituality in a new, long, idea-rich post. Here’s the concluding paragraph:

So the impasse is superficial. We’re arguing over beliefs, which are, in themselves, nothing more than concepts defined by words. It’s language, really, and it’s inane. Does God exist? I don’t know. What does “God” mean? What does “know” mean? Let’s discuss but let’s not argue. And then, when we’re all done, let’s go back and do something real. Let’s redefine what it means to be “beyond belief.”

Lefty Politico Musings

James of Genius of Insanity puts forward what must be the week’s most important piece about the Bush Administration: An article in the Washington Post shows that Bush’s Veterans’ Day-speech assertions that “Congress saw the same intelligence the administration did before the war, and that independent commissions have determined that the administration did not misrepresent the intelligence” are not wholly accurate. Per usual, the Bushies take facts and twist 'em.

Mumon of Notes in Samsara likes the idea of seeing Bruce Springsteen in the Senate and shows how this is truly a slight possibility. Jon Corzine, elected New Jersey governor last Tuesday, has to pick his own replacement to fill out the remainder of his term in the senate. Mumon links to a Daily Kos post, which links to a Philadelphia Daily News blog entry. The idea is making the rounds. In another post, Mumon finds, in a New York Times report, evidence that the Republican Party is ripe for disintegration. Maybe Springsteen will be part of a Democrat-majority Senate that can prevent the complete disintegration of Roe, should Bush get a third Court appointment in 2007 or 2008.

Via Negativa’s Dave Bonta writes of “Seven things that make me happy right now.” Dave passes through the pristine arctic wilderness and Dover, Pennsylvania, and bedazzles us with marvels and wonders, and then – like the Twelve Days of Christmas – ends up in a pear tree.

Blog Harvests

There is just one Buddhist blog recommendation over at Zen Filter this week. M’s words re tinythinker’s peaceful turmoil are quick and direct: “Another nice Buddhist blog worth visiting.”

Nacho of Woodmoor Village Zendo is effusive in rambling praise for Haiku’s This Zen Life. Here’s a snippet:

Reading This Zen Life is truly like participating in dharma discussions in a sangha: the space is open, people bow in and say here's where I find myself in my practice, it challenges me this way, or it brings me joy in this other way, sometimes both. That's the feeling I get.

Roundup for Oct 31 - Nov 6, 2005

Bloggery should stick close to the razor edge of time -- even
though worms and rot and yellowing don't afflict electrons.

Buddha not being Buddhist, the unbearable pain of a world in unbearable pain, loneliness, and Death are some of the topics that captured the attention of Buddhism-loving bloggers and their readers this past week. The blogha had a rough week, feeling hurt in the belly from undigestible candy, perhaps.

Thoughts Chase Thoughts

In his post “Buddha was not a Buddhist,” Douglas Imbrogno, in his blog Hundred Mountain Journal, asks, words poetic, what is [or should be?] the central epistemological [qv] question of Western Buddhism: Is Buddhism – as it is practiced, and perhaps as it has always been practiced, or by its nature – a diversion from its supposed goal of becoming a Buddha? and is this goalseeking itself a diversion? and do then, the diversions keep coming like tumbling bricks?

Writes Douglas at the conclusion of his poetic post,

We flash our badges at passersby: 'Buddhists At Work!'
But what is that strangeflavor in the mouth, a gun-metal taste?
Have we soured the teachings by clutching them as our own?
The Buddha stands, sits, reclines, never once a Buddhist.
A reminder of what we do not need to become

a Buddha.

Will Buckingham of the blog thinkBuddha.org quotes a Mary Oliver poem, “the Moths” that ends with these words:

If I stopped and
thought, maybe
the world
can’t be saved,
the pain
was unbearable.

Will agrees, but soldiers on through the hurt, writing, “It is a relief to remember that the belief we can fix the world is a delusion. The world is beyond fixing: suffering is woven into its very fabric. We are born with bodies that are vulnerable to harm, with hearts that are fragile and easily wounded, with limited capacities and with only short spans of life. How could we even begin to fix the world?”

Fluffy Green Clouds are again blooming at Gareth’s blog. In this post-Halloween period, Gareth explores Death, a subject of fascination for him. He tells us, citing The Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life [qv], that we should always be aware of the Lord of Death at our side. Gareth then looks at personifications of Death: Yama, Shantideva’s Lord of Death; and Cerridwen, The White Lady of Celtic lore, who may appear as The Crone and is the model of Halloween’s pointy-hatted witch.

Writes Gareth, “Perhaps we should not fear death, but we must accept it. Maybe we can use the plastic pumpkins and cardboard witches as a reminder. Death walks with us.”

Chalip of Zen Under the Skin also picks up The Guide to the Boddhisattva's Way of Life, but for her it is an aid to help with a difficult time at work. "This week sucked." she writes. " I think it mostly sucked because I've been mired in a state of unforgiveness.

"The Guide frequently reminds us that we should be grateful for all difficult people and situations because they are occasions for us to lift our spiritual muscle and be about the business of bringing dharma to life."

In an enormously powerful post, Fogueira of foot before foot looks at loneliness -- first, that of a nineteen-year-old suicide victim in a Yahoo News report, and then unblinkingly at her own. She writes, "I think it is safe to say that the pathology of loneliness drove me mad. It peppered me with delusions, the first, and worst of which was that my situation was somehow wrong and wanting. When one is alone, one has a lot of time to think. And frequently when that happens, one thinks wrongly, and dangerously."

Dave Bonta of Via Negativa loves the poetry of Paul Zweig. A poem of Zweig's he posted this week has a kinship with Fogueira's "Loneliness" post. Here are two of the short stanzas from the poem "The Art of Sacrifice":

The faucet bubbling with anxiety
And the mirror fishing for loneliness,

The worm we cut into lengths and serve,
Calling it day by day, are offered in love.

Yet another blog and another poem found kinship with Fogueira's "Loneliness." Here, two two-line stanzas from "Ready for Silence," by Rumi, posted in whiskey river this week:

When the heart has a Friend like
you, the universe cannot contain

their pleasure. Anyone warmed
by sun feels courage coming in.

The Buddhist Blog's James quotes Longchenpa, a 14th C. Tibetan Buddhist:

Since everything is but an apparition, having nothing to do with good or bad, acceptance or rejection, one may well burst out in laughter.

James then advises, "...Look around, be mindful and laugh from time to time.

"In fact, laugh a lot."

Political Buddhists

William Harryman of Integral Options Cafe asks Is Hillary Clinton the First Integral Politician? In Buddhaspeak, this is roughly asking if Hillary is the first enlightened politician -- someone who sees the value of [or at least, the framework of] all worldviews and acts to do good unblinkered by an oppressive ego. [William's blog is devoted to his great interest in Integral Psychology (qv) and Spiral Dynamics (qv). He uses the terminology of those systems of thought.] William cites the words of Jean Houston, a Spiral Dynamics lecturer/expert, and an article in The Nation to explain the speculation.

Writes William, " if [Hillary] can think politically in second-tier ways--meaning that she can perceive and value each of the vMemes--then she's probably second-tier enough to defeat any politician who doesn't share that skill.

"The 2008 presidential election could be very, very interesting."

Second-tier means Hilliary thinks "globally" rather than being centered in self-interest.

James's Genius of Insanity blog focussed this week on the myriad ways the Bush administration is struggling. In one post, titled "Rove Still Under Investigation," James asks, "What's that saying, 'Where there's smoke (Libby) there's fire (Rove)?'" In a post at the end of the week, James reported on Bush's fading popularity with his job approval rating now at 35%, according to a CBS poll.

Matthew of the freedomforall.net blog looks at Bill Gates's staggering wealth and compares it in various ways to the impoverished conditions of a billion of the world's citizens. Matthew cites the Bill Gates Wealth Clock, telling us that he has $61.7 Billion, currently, and contrasts this to World Bank figures which report per capita annual Gross National Income in the poorest countries at $510 in 2004.

Blog Harvest

M of Zen Filter has five Buddhist blog finds this week: That was Zen, This is Tao [ZF]; Dharma Vision [ZF]; Breath by Breath [ZF]; My Zen Life [ZF]; and Beneath Buddha's Eyes [ZF].

Roundup for Oct 24 - 30, 2005

Meaning, purpose, ego, anger and yearning were important subjects in Blogmandu posts last week -- and this is before getting to the politics-focused posts! In the political sphere, Plame and 2,000 Deaths were prime topics.

Meaning and Purpose

In a series of posts, Jeb of Wondering on the Way has targetted the very heart of religion. The group of posts is categorized as Analogs of Reality. This week, Jeb posted Number 6, "Meaning and Purpose."

Almost immediately, following a warning to readers, Jeb posted questions central to any human's existance:

1. Does life ultimately have meaning?
2. Is there some ultimate purpose to life?

Acting as our most excellent guide, Jeb hacks through the thick growth of ideas to essential elements that allow a confrontation with these questions. He identifies and explains the four approaches an individual can take to face meaning and purpose: Teleological, Existential, Abandoned Search and Denial.

Jeb shows how these approaches manifest in Christian and science-orientated individuals before he comes to the more-interesting Buddhist confrontation with these perennial questions. Jeb has put up a masterpiece of a post that will benefit all those who carefully read it.

Another dazzling philosophy-centered post of the week was put out there by Justin in his blog American Buddhist Perspective. Justin writes about the tension between being ordinary and among the ordinary in opposition to becoming a philosopher or being philosophical and, by necessity, looking at the world from on-high and objectifying it. How can one be in the world and of the world at the same time? How can one avoid being in two places at once and not anywhere at all?

Writes Justin, "But the philosopher may also reenter the world, gently; in the words of one of my teachers, 'he becomes fully human, fully normal.' He sees the divinity/enlightened nature of others as reflections of his own. He does not see and recoil from the flaws of the world. He acts fluidly within the world. "

Practice leads in the direction of Perfection

Haiku of this zen life writes of ego loosening its death grip and finding she is becoming more authentically herself. “[M]y desire to be thought of in certain ways, my fear of embarrassment, my concern for what people think are becoming less prominent.”

John of My Zen Life has a burst of maddog anger coming from the inundation of suffocating gimme-gimme advertising pitches. At the end of his post, he laments, “It’s times like these that just make me want to abandon this world and go live off the grid up in the hills somewhere.” He must be referring to the electrical grid. Electrons are a blogger’s heroine.

Miranda of Mt Metta Journal writes of working with Kuan Yin to adjust her life and actions and improve her orientation toward others. She is finding that, ironically, her developing compassion is turning her toward seclusion. "I don't want to become a total recluse; I like people the way I like jazz - when the mood hits, and in limited doses." she writes.

James, The Buddhist Blog blogger, quotes the Dalai Lama who tells us, essentially, to forget yearning for Nirvana, “lead a good life, honestly, with love, with compassion, with less selfishness,” and THAT will put you on the path to your forgotten goal. James concludes, “Stick to [these] basics and you cannot go wrong in my opinion.”

The Plame Game

Early this week, Zataod of Zen and the Art of Dreaming colorfully predicted “coal for Fitzmas” with regard to Plamegate. “Cheney and Bush are the key players here. Their henchmen are just following orders, but I think it's those underlings that will take the fall.” As we now know, only one “henchman” ended up taking a hit – from a multicount indictment.

James of Genius of Insanity reported on the Republican effort to discredit Fitzgerald in advance of any issuance of indictments. One point of hypocracy: “Even though Republicans nailed Clinton to the wall over perjury when it comes to one of their own it's a ‘technicality.’”

Neolotus of Free Thinker reposted a piece from Geopolitical Intelligence Report explaining the importance of the Plame affair. A couple of cogent sentences: “Rove and Libby had top security clearances and were senior White House officials. It was their sworn duty, undertaken when they accepted their security clearance, to build a ‘bodyguard of lies’ -- in Churchill's phrase -- around the truth concerning U.S. intelligence capabilities.”

Terrance of Republic of T still thinks bad times may be ahead for Karl Rove, identified as Official ‘A’ in the indictment of Scooter Liddy.

Mumon of Notes in Samsara wrote several posts the day the indictments where handed down. One ended happily and piercingly: "I wish all of you a safe and merry Fitzmas. May we remember it's true meaning."

Two Thousand

The Buddhist blogha took note of the milestone of two thousand American deaths in Iraq.

Ryan of Ryan’s Lair looked at the cold statistics. “The current war is costing America roughly 63 KIA per month. This war is vastly cheaper, in terms of American lives, than nearly all of our previous conflicts.” And parsed meaning from pathos-ladened reporting on the milestone as, “the incredible isolation of Americans from war and other forms of suffering, and our ability, perhaps not unrelated, to dwell in an ethical or emotional space utterly free of context and history.”

Too, genkaku in an Oct 22 post to his eponymous blog, looked at the statistics of the war, somberly. “I don’t care much where anyone stands. Whether a person believes the cause to be ‘just’ or ‘unjust,’ still there are the facts – or the best guess at the facts. … The premise is that based on facts, people can make informed decisions.”

James of Genius of Insanity dedicated a post to the fallen soldiers, and later presented an excerpt of an AP report that says the Iraqi death toll in the war is 30,000 – or, possibly, much higher. Says James, “The Iraqi's have sacrificed much. Let's hope that things continue to improve for them.”

Terrance of Republic of T linked to a political cartoon in an Atlanta paper that formed the 2,000 names of the dead soldiers into a question: WHY?

Harvests and Kudos

New in the Blogmandu firmament is Hardcore Zen, keyboarded by Brad Warner, author of a book that also uses that in-your-face moniker. The book is greatly admired by several Buddhist bloggers.

Warner’s blog gets recommendations this week by both John of My Zen Life and M of Zen Filter. Writes John, in opening words to a short post loaded with exclamation marks, “Hey! I just found Brad Warner in the blog-o-sphere! He’s blogging now, very cool!!” Writes M: “You've read the book, here's the blog.” In a post a few weeks ago, Chalip of Zen Under the Skin wrote that one of the book’s chapters was helpful at “uncovering the mystery of the [Heart] sutra” for her.

Blog posts recommended in Zen Filter this past week: A post by marlaine of it is in me about anger and an inspirational post from the blog Inspirations, comparing words of Stephen Covey and Thich Nhat Hanh.

Zataod of Zen and the Art of Dreaming names his “Cool Blog of the Week” which is [drumroll and eggroll, please] OneManBandwidth: An American Professor in China. It may not be Buddhist, but it is east Asian – which almost counts. Written by Dr. Lonnie B. Hodge, who is a business consultant, among his many professions, the blog is always interesting and has amazing graphics.

Roundup for Oct 17 - 23, 2005

Blogging is, if anything, more like the kind of pamphleteering the framers
had in mind when they guaranteed "freedom of the press" than is the New York
Times or Washington Post. -- Michael Kingsley in Slate, 10/20/05

If not an altogether happy week, it has certainly been an interesting one in the blogoBuddhaspere. A guaranteed successful retreat, depression, death and Gross National Happiness have all left their mark.

This is This … unusual autobiography technique.

Cliff Jones, blogmeister of This is This, is doing something pretty damn spiffy. He’s writing his autobiography, called “The Sum of All Years” in daily blog entries, with each entry telling the story of a year in his life – starting at age one. Cliff tells us, “The Sum Of All Years is an autobiography where the word count for each post is [equal] to the corresponding age for that entry.” His first three entries are: “The Sum of All Years – 1”: Born. “The Sum of All Years – 2”: Stood up. The Sum of All Years – 3”: We moved south. This week, Cliff completed years eight to fourteen. According to his profile, Cliff is 33 years old. By the time he’s done, Cliff’ll be writing short paragraphs. [Afterthought: In China, babies are born at age one; but elsewhere, other than American racehorses, the age at birth is zero. Shouldn't Cliff have a "The Sum of All Years - 0" entry?]

Modest Requirements

Vincent Horn writes in his eponymous blog of accomodations during a three-month silent retreat at Insight Meditation Society's Retreat Center in Massachusetts: "Bedrooms are simple and small, with a pillow, two blankets and a foam mattress on a low bed frame. ... Very simple and spare. Just like I like it…" Vincent is near completion of the first month of his stay. BUT this entry, like the others during the past month, are preceded by a note which tells us, "This is a post I prepared before going on retreat, so I could keep a small flow of content on VH.com while I'm gone..."

Now, I hate to be a stickler for journalistic ethics, but How can Vincent know in advance that he hasn't been given a second pillow? or that the mattress isn't giving him a sore back? or that the place isn't infested with rats?

I will be eager to read Vincent's blog two months from now to read how wonderful he knew the retreat was before he left for it. That Vince: I think he already had that "insight" thing down pat.

Up Close and Personal

James of The Buddhist Blog put up an astoundingly well-written and interesting post about his mental health difficulties. Samsara for James comes with being buffetted by schizoaffective disorder, which carries all the symptoms of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder (inc. mania and depression). Following is a snippet from the post where James describes dealing with an episode of depression:

The prevailing way to deal with depression in Buddhism seems to be meditating on compassion and and loving-kindness towards our depression. It is very easy for me to have compassion and loving-kindness toward others but often I forget to have compassion and love toward myself. This is probably one of the reasons that my physiological depression becomes worse with a lack of self-love and compassion.

So this morning I sat with my depression and just showed it love and compassion. I talked to it and told it that I understood it was warning me to "stop and listen." I told it that I loved it and thanked it for being so concerned about me and my life but that it could now go. I understood the lesson it was trying to teach me. I no longer needed it to fertilize the seeds of happiness that would soon grown and blossom out of the depression.

Reports from the Buddhist Frontlines

gendaku tells us that, according to an internet bulletin board post, Buddhism has been voted the most-tolerant religion, but the blogger warns, "As Buddhists, we pay attention and take responsibility. Taking responsibility does not mean basking in false, if much-supported, notions. Being encouraged is one thing. But falling into the belief trap is like shooting yourself in the foot."

JackZen of the blog jack/zen is impressed with the New Orleans Vietnamese community. "In the midst of widespread fragmentation, victimizing government dependency, bureaucratic finger-pointing, and chaos, this tiny community is fast becoming the story of what happens when healthy social networks encounter disaster."

In a wonderful post, Justin in American Buddhist Perspective, listening to a movie score, finds he’s not engaging his loving-kindness meditation practice quite so often as he thinks he should. He then muses “Eventually, so the story goes, our love and our awareness become boundless, and nothing in the world can break that. We become walking emanations of joy and understanding. We still live in the real world, but things 'out there' no longer dictate how we feel 'in here'.” The sweet music plays on, getting "a little deeper, a little richer."

Atanu Dey [At a new day?] of the blog Atanu Dey on India’s Development explores the national measurement GNH, or Gross National Happiness, that Bhutan’s government uses to understand how things are going there. Bhutan is a mostly Buddhist nation in the Himalayas. The GNH is somewhat like America’s Consumer Confidence index, but it attempts to be a measurement of personal well-being rather than one of feelings of economic security of a populous. Atanu is not impress with this measurement tool, preferring something fully objective. See Atanu’s posts GNH is Grossly Silly and GNH: The Cat’s Meow.

A Child and the Question of Death

Nacho of WoodMoor Village Zendo writes of his effort to explain death to his young son in a long post “Death and the Child, Part II,” a follow up to a post three months ago. Both now and three-months past the boy told his father at bedtime, “Dad, I don't want to die, but I know I have to.”

Nacho writes, "We talked a bit about how our love, our goodwilll, our deeds, survive our physical death. But this is understandably a difficult concept, and I don't expect it will bring him comfort immediately. ... We also talked about how many people believe in some kind of heaven, paradise, or afterlife where we meet again, and how he is likely to hear much of that, because it brings comfort and solace to people. I did tell him that I did not believe in such places."

Nacho asks readers, “How do you handle these conversations?”

genkaku had a similar experience -- though much less onerous -- with his boy, when, on the way to football practice, he was asked, "Papa, if you could be dead or alive, which would you pick?" Writes genkaku, "How nice it is to hear someone address one of those elephants in the living room, one of those questions which, when unaddressed, keeps shrinks in business."

Manufacturing Future Shock

Terrance of Republic of T often asks his readers for thoughts on books he should read. This week, he asks them for something by Noam Chomsky, whom he’s never read. Meanwhile, John of Inveterate Bystander has written a post called “Manufacturing Consent VIII: European Public & Media” which tells us there has been a decline in good information and news analysis. At the same time, meditateNYC’s Wednesday Blogma leads us to genkaku who finds wisdom in Paul Simon’s lyrics to “59th Street Bridge Song” [Slow down, you move too fast; you gotta make the morning last …]. Genkaku says, “This is a wily world, I imagine: Even ‘faster than a speeding bullet’ cannot catch up.” And then, there’s this: Kristian of Wandering where you will is in an angsty place, writing, “[It’s gotten] to the point where I'm not really sure whether this input is real, or whether it's something I've created over the years, slowly evolving and changing, some times this, some times that.. some times good, some times bad.. some times encouraging, some times devastating.. Am I becoming nothing at all?” This is also a week where it was revealed that TV Guide, for many years the top-selling magazine in America, stopped providing program listings, since that had all gotten too woolly and complex for a nationwide zine, reincarnating itself as a TV fan-mag.

The links in the paragraph above fit together, somehow. Each is a wonderful blog entry [except for the TV Guide thing], still I’m going to have Patrick Fitzgerald look into it and issue indictments. As to Kristian's angsty post, it's titled "The best is yet to come," so at least K's life is or will be on an upward path; he's not metamorphosing into a bug, like Georg Samsa [or, is it Samsara?], or otherwise is stuck in some Halloween-goulish Kafkaesque castle.

Harvests and Other Kudos

This week’s meditateNYC “Wednesday Blogma” recommends posts in tysonwilliams.com, gendaku and The Buddhist Blog. M of Zen Filter is keen on blogs this zen life, citing the wisdom in a recent post there, Kirin Pal because of its nice quotes, and My Zen Life which is clever and interesting.

Republic of T, Terrance Heath’s mostly-political blog, where T bills himself as “Black. Gay. Father. Vegetarian. Buddhist. Liberal.,” has been honored twice recently (1) with a big, fat quote in the Washington Post Express and (2) by prominent mention in Daily Kos, an uber important liberal political blog. Said Daily Kos in the leadoff to their report, “Kossack TerrenceDC of the excellent Republic of T, had a diary on this subject [the Millions More March] that scrolled off very quickly yesterday and it deserved more exposure; I've excerpted snippets in this diary.”

And, finally, Douglas Eye of Hundred Mountain Journal recommends Blogmandu to his readers: “It's a good way to discover and stay atop what's up in the blogoBuddhasphere.” Thanks, Doogie.