I've been tagged ...

... to share seven "random or weird things" about myself [by Michael, indirectly].

So, for me:

1. In a crowded auditorium at Ft. Mason in 1983, with a dozen competitors, a heckling MC, and local-celebrity judges, I won a stand-up comedy competition at the San Francisco county fair [due solely, I can assure you, to the fact the material I wrote was far the best, not that I was comfortable in front of people].
2. When I was 25 I was hospitalized for a week when at work, suddenly, I couldn’t move one side of my body. [Today, I can’t tell you which side it was.]
3. I am an astronaut, not a Statey -- if the same reason applies to me that Mark Wahlberg’s character said applied to Leo’s character in The Departed.
4. I can’t tell left from right. It is, I understand, a not uncommon but rather weird problem. It is easy to compensate for -- when I tell myself ‘snap your fingers’ my reflex is to snap the fingers on my left hand -- but it is annoying. If you ask me directions on how to get somewhere, I will tell you while snapping my fingers a bunch of times. It’s not a problem driving because I know that the driver’s side of the car should be nearer the middle of the road than the frontseat-passenger’s side.
5. I have all the problems of a perfectionist, but I wish I was much more perfectionistic -- since my life’s a shambles and I make a lot of mistakes -- but it is just like a perfectionist to feel this way. Indeed, I realize my perfectionism hobbles my life much more than I realize. Still, I wish I was much more of a perfectionist so that things in my life would be closer to being perfect, even as I realize and dismiss the idea that getting over my perfectionism would be what’s best for me. [Well, really, I don’t at all believe that. Indeed, I don't believe I am a perfectionist and think that I should become one -- which God knows, and wholly coincidentally, is just like something a perfectionist would think.]
6. I am a stigmatic: A big flat round brown mole is at the top of one of my feet. [I can't tell you which one without taking my socks off.] It looks like the head of a rusty ancient nail. There is no bleeding around it or anything.
7. Having been raised while my age was in single digits in Oklahoma where they talk funny, I thought for a long, long time that people were also known as “human beans.”

FlailingFruit: Falling Fruit, the new podcast website, launches into a sea of green.

Two-thirds of the Buddhist Geeks have teamed with eight others to form the webspace Falling Fruit, which is the new home for the "Buddhist Geeks" podcast series and a second, new podcast show -- as they‘re calling it -- "Conscious Business."

The digs at the new space are very nice, but the rollout, otherwise, is disappointing and, even, ominous. Buddhist Geeks, as a cottage business, had promise to extend its reach as the three Geeks ripened their skills as interviewers. It’s early, yet, of course, but this new enlarged enterprise is, maybe, a sharp turn downward, with indicators it embraces gobbledygook, and has become inveigling, and consciously rigidly politically correct.

With the launch of the new webspace comes the first Conscious Business episode and a new Geeks podcast that is really an abridgement of an interview conducted earlier for The TechSattva [which is yet another pod casting series that isn’t (yet?) on the “fruit” menu].

The idea of “Conscious Business” is not new. It is another in a long series of liberal management theories that have foundered in the past, all seeming to suffer from the same flaw: they attach heavy-duty philosophical underpinnings to a business enterprise that distracts it from the effort to focus, be efficient, and provide quality, appropriate goods/services. Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m all for truth, justice and Superman being involved in the American Way. It is just that succeeding at business is a hard slog, and the competition is tough, often run by snakes in suits. I just think it’s been proved that a department of Feel Good just doesn’t help. Employees have enough problems without a supercilious management horning in on their off-hours lives. And a new flood of meetings keeping them from being productive.

Still, the pod show Conscious Business might be good, except it all seems narrowly conceived and rigged to ballyhoo and push the hosts’ fixed conceptions and aid their careers. An objective interview show CB isn’t. Hosts Theo Horesh and Duff McDuffee are leadership and life coaches [which I think we can take to mean “consultants”] involved in liberal-sounding enterprises in the Boulder, Colorado, area. They keep the banter humming in their first podcast [Or, if not they, the audio editor], and are colorful, interesting characters, but the show has the fatiguing drone of an aggressive sales pitch.

The website [“network” in hyped conscious-speak] is a “conscious media for people who care” and the show “explore[s] how consciousness emerges out of the sea of our own enterprises.” And, somehow, passively listening to the show is “joining the dialogue” while we must “prepare to be transformed.”

The ideas and show springs from Fred Kofman’s book from a year ago, called Conscious Business. In the middle of the podcast, the hosts, and their special guest Mark Wilding, delve into the word conscious as if doing so informs them of the management model. It all makes as much sense as trying to understanding baseball’s American League by discussing the word American. Thus the podcast discussion about intense awareness is ironically unaware.

At one point, the special guest cites Aldous Huxley’s book The Doors of Perception and interprets it as “the idea of really getting clear about what I’m really seeing and recognizing that I can project on the world and I can sort of override what’s actually going on with what I want to be going on. So, to be aware of that and to be conscious of that and be careful to really try to see what’s actually going on and be clear about that.” The poor special guest had spiraled into a fit of gobbledygook, but that is perhaps appropriate, since, unmentioned is the fact that Huxley’s book is all about his clarifying and confusing 1953 trip on 4/10th of a gram of mescaline.

The show is worth a listen as a stark instance of Boomeritis Buddhism on display. It is classic green vmeme, the hosts unwilling to look beyond their own POV while demanding that others be open to, and embrace, their perspective.

Roundup on October 17, 2007

Five quick items for today: Eric in Baghdad; a monk nowhere; the world all around us; Justin in conflict; and Radiohead in your DVD player.

Boys with Guns

Eric, the Zen Traveler is just finishing up his tour of duty, I guess you could call it. He’s not a soldier, but an American contract employee in Baghdad. This from his post “Speechless”:

…At the end of the Festival of Eid all of the children receive presents, much like the Christmas tradition. You'll never guess what every little boy gets. TOY GUNS!!! This is wrong on so many levels. The streets are full of little kids pointing plastic AKs at everything and everyone. When I first witnessed this I was utterly mortified. …

Homeless Monk

Yuttadhammo as pictured from a detail of the banner atop The Truth is Within.

The monk Yuttadhammo of Truth is Within [formerly called Yuttadhammo] has put up a post called “Closing Time.” He is reluctantly, suddenly leaving Wat Sanku, in Thailand, where he’s been living, undertaking forest practice, due to a longstanding disagreement with the abbot. It seems, perhaps, trivial and selfish on my part, but I hope the title of his post doesn’t mean he’s closing his blog! No, no, not now, especially. He must continue to blog! Yuttadhammo thinks he knows where he will next be going, but just in case, anyone have room for a homeless monk? [UPDATE: Yuttadhammo has added additional posts that pop up on the feed but not from the homepage at the blogsite: "A Hard-Knock Life" "Anew" and "Happy in Unhappiness." Help orphaned monk.]

A detail from the nature picture that tops Dave's post.

Appreciating the World

Environmentalist Dave Pollard is not a Buddhist, but Buddhism comes up now and again in his blog How to Save the World. Dave’s latest post is a long, beautiful essay called “What makes us care about nature?” A question he asks is whether it is necessary for us to experience important matters first hand -- do we have to be there? -- in order to understand and get involved. Perhaps Darfur, poverty, global warming and violence are too distant from us to relate “emotionally, viscerally.”

His beautiful, kind, hopeful post ends thusly:

As Daniel Quinn says … in Beyond Civilization:

People will listen when they're ready to listen and not before. Probably, once upon a time, you weren't ready to listen to an idea than now seems to you obvious, even urgent. Let people come to it in their own time.

Yet I think it is in all of us to listen, to hear the voice of all-life-on-Earth, to become a part, to reconnect, to fall under the spell of the sensuous. For twenty years I became deaf to it, it stayed inside me, waiting to re-emerge.

It is in our bones, our DNA. No experience required. We are who we are, and at heart we are all wild creatures, in love with this wild planet and every living thing within it. It is just a matter of time before each of us is ready to listen. Ready to come home.

Buddhism and War

I confess. I prompted it with an email. Justin Whitaker has posted "Buddhism and War" in his blog American Buddhist in England. In his post, the Buddhist Philosopher considers an online essay by Prof. P. D. Premasiri (University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka) that says, in the Theravada canon, there is no justification for war.

A second online essay, a response to the first, written by Justin’s advisor, Prof. Damien Keown (Goldsmith College, Univ. of London), says there is justification for use of force, even to the extent of a just war.

Justin finds no conflict between the two essays, but I think his argument tortured. Premasiri and Keown look at war from different vantages: The first, from the vantage of the individual Buddhist and his psychology or personal predicament. Keown looks at it from the vantage of society as a whole. Justin, it seems to me, is set on splitting the difference when he determines that only wholly defensive wars are justified.

I think that Buddhism and War is an important issue for us to consider with the ongoing war in Iraq, perhaps inevitably escalating into a civil war; wars and threats of wars elsewhere in the world; and the terrible and frustrating situation in Burma.

Whether we are wholly opposed to violence or support efforts in Just Wars meant to stop oppression, men and women (and children) are dying in our name, and are dying in ways and by means which we share responsibility for in this interconnected world. We have an obligation to learn what we can so that we will be informed during any effort we undertake to move the world in the direction of peace.

R A D I O H E A D

Scott Mitchell reviews Radiohead’s new album, In Rainbows, in the buddha is my dj. He writes about two tracks: “’Weird Fishes‘ has blown me away. … ‘Faust Arp’ has some beautiful combination of acoustic guitar, strings, and Thom York's ever-haunting voice that's going to deserve a second listen. Or a third.“ Of interest, if you download the album, you pay whatever you think is best.

Roundup for October 13, 2007

A quick roundup for today, as I hope to begin, again, to get this blog doing its roundup, meta-blog thing. There is lots and lots of stuff of great interest going on in the buddhoblogosphere and in nearby islands of kindness. Here, a taste:

Buddhists in the Military Blog

Bernie Simon of The Careless Hand offers a tepid recommendation of a group blog for Buddhists in the military, called Buddhist Military Sangha: An Online Resource for Buddhists Associated with the United States Armed Forces. Bernie writes, rather pessimistically, “It's fairly new and looks promising, but new blogs have a way of falling over and dying.” I suppose that’s true and could, sadly, be said of the soldiers, themselves, too -- which is, I guess, what Bernie's alluding to. The eight-member Blogger blog has a light posting history since its start on July 26, but is very, very well written, fully capably done, with many helpful links for soldiers in its sidebar. It looks solid, like a young Marine officer, and I'd bet it'll be a stand-up blog for a good long while.

A recent post by Navy Lt. Jeanette Shin is a Dharma Talk in observance of Halloween that looks at “horror films with a Buddhist theme.”

Danny Fisher of Danny Fisher wrote about the Buddhists Military Sangha in a post in early August. In the fascinating comment thread, Ray King, a UK citizen and member of the Amida Pureland School, wrote, “I'm interested in trying to understand how a buddhist reconciles his faith with belonging to the US military.” Lt. Shin responded, “What happens if we just got rid of our military? Do you think persons everywhere will have peace and happiness? … Kind thoughts and words alone will not protect our cities and our temples (or for that matter, Hindu temples, Christian churches, AND Muslim mosques, or any other place of worship) from people who would like to see them gone. The Reason we have the freedom [to] practice Buddha-dharma is people who serve in the military.”

Danny then wrote a long, thoughtful three-topic response that an abridgment by me would not do justice. [Read it here.] His conclusion, with respect to America’s military presence in Iraq: “At some point, everyone connected to this war needs to own their accountability and respond. They have to refuse service, refuse to pay taxes, refuse to sign over funds, demonstrate, and so on. A Buddhism that would excuse us from looking at the realities and the complexities of war is unacceptable.”

For my part, I recently wrote that I wouldn't mind seeing a precise, surgical American military assault in Burma. I regret that sentiment, maybe. From passages I have visited today at Access to Insight, Buddha offers no comfort to warriors. Most germane to the matter is this from the Sumyatta sutra, ch 42.3 "To Yodhajiva (The Warrior)". Here, a bit of it, quoting Buddha:

When a warrior strives & exerts himself in battle, his mind is already seized, debased, & misdirected by the thought: 'May these beings be struck down or slaughtered or annihilated or destroyed. May they not exist.' If others then strike him down & slay him while he is thus striving & exerting himself in battle, then with the breakup of the body, after death, he is reborn in the hell called the realm of those slain in battle. But if he holds such a view as this: 'When a warrior strives & exerts himself in battle, if others then strike him down & slay him while he is striving & exerting himself in battle, then with the breakup of the body, after death, he is reborn in the company of devas slain in battle,' that is his wrong view. Now, there are two destinations for a person with wrong view, I tell you: either hell or the animal womb."

The Great Michael O'Keefe

Michael O’Keefe, the Oscar-nominated actor (for The Great Santini) who, among much else, did a knock-your-socks-off job with a role during the third season of The West Wing where he played a very noble reporter, plays Barry Grissom in George Clooney’s new film Michael Clayton, which is getting boffo reviews after opening yesterday. In his non-thespian meatlife, O’Keefe is a Zen Priest and member of the Zen Peacemaker Order, which can mightily show in his performances, or not, dependent on the role. Here’s the page on Michael at IMDb. Here, an article from five years ago about O’Keefe’s work teaching meditation in Northern Ireland, posted at the official Michael O'Keefe website, www.michaelokeefe.com . Get hip to Michael O’Keefe, y’all.

Sharon Salzberg pulls a Buddhist full Ginsburg

Interesting bits of news tell us that Sharon Salzberg is in upcoming podcasts from both of Buddhism Online’s quality producers of such, the IDProject and Buddhist Geeks. In baseball terms, Salzberg has converted a double play. In Sunday-morning-talkshow terminology, it’s a full Ginsburg when you get saturation coverage.

Ethan Nichtern began his The IDProject newsletter, which I received yesterday, with these words, “This past Wednesday night, our Guest Lecture Series attained new levels of awesomeness with a visit from Sharon Salzberg, one of the foremost meditation teachers in America (soon to be available on The Interdependence Project podcast).”

Vince of Buddhist Geeks put up a picture of fellow Geek Ryan Oelke in his personal blog, Numinous Nonsense, with a caption that began with this sentence: “Ryan doing the voiceover for this week’s Buddhist Geeks episode w/ Sharon Salzberg.” Vince tells us Geek Gwen Bell conducted the interview.

Could it be that Salzberg has a new book out? From a search at Amazon, I find she has a 30-page book/2 CD/contemplation cards package called Unplug coming out in five months. She might be plugging that. [The title may be a reference to The Matrix idea of joining The Real World OR may focus on the simpler idea of relieving stress OR both. “You gotta unplug, man,” said Kroy to Keanu’s coppertop Neo.] She also has a mass paperback version of her 2004 book Lovingkindness coming out next April, published by Shambhala.

Update: The podcasts have been posted. Here are links to Susan Salzberg's three-part podcast with Buddhist Geeks [#1, #2, #3] and the IDProject's 21st Century Buddhism, "GUEST LECTURE: Interdependence and Lovingkindness."

Eight

As many of us learn, tangential to our study of Ch’an (Chinese Zen), the number eight is considered lucky by those in China and by Chinese whom have emigrated worldwide. Thus it is no weird coincidence that the summer Olympics are set to begin in Beijing on August 8, 2008, at 8:08pm (or, maybe, eight seconds and eight nanoseconds thereafter).

Roundup of Recent Whatnot on September 18, 2007

Today, I've posted Whatnot - blogs that are new to me, developments and non-developments. Interesting stuff I'm eager for you all to know about.

“the BUDDHOBLOGOSPHERE”

Scott Mitchell’s “the Buddhoblogosphere” is still in beta mode. The august August 10 launch has us in version 0.9 [public beta]. Scott tells me v. 1.0, “the re-visioned site,” will be online sometime in the upcoming week.

An earlier post on the MetaBlog [Scott's blog about "the Buddhoblogopshere"] tells us that ideas were aswirl in Scott’s head, aided by users’ suggestions, on what the Buddhoblogosphere is to become. Will it continue as a Buddhist hub and directory as it is in version 0.9? or become “del.icio.us meets Facebook with the simplicity of Craigslist. For Buddhism.”? We’ll see. But somewhere along the line Scott will need to gather a large contingent of Buddhists to contribute to and participate in what he is building. Crowds have not participated in v. 0.9. I guess "if you build in, they will come" is only guaranteed to work in the movies.

The big ideas Scott has for his webspace may have outgrown the limitation suggested by its title. Scott’s not saying, but don’t be surprised if there is a name change in store for the Buddhoblogosphere.

UPDATE 9/18 12:15pm: Scott has delivered his re-visioned webspace. Now called DharmaRealm, and moved to dharmarealm.com, "its mission of documenting everything in the Buddhist web" has been "re-imagined as a social bookmarking site."

NEW GROUP BLOG: PROGRESSIVE BUDDHISM

Justin (aka Shonin) of Ordinary Extraordinary has started a new group blog, titled Progressive Buddhism. The blog’s goal is, as expressed at the top of its sidebar, “… looking at Buddhism in the light of modern knowledge, free from over-attachment to ancient dogmas; looking at the best ways to integrate Buddhism into Modern/Western societies; discussing and encouraging an empirical or scientific approach; seeing insight and awakening as a living tradition not just a historical one.”

Another Justin (aka, Buddhist Philosopher) who solo blogs American Buddhist Perspective; Nacho of WoodMoor Village Zendo and Shikimyo are attached to the project. In Justin/Shonin’s announcement nearly a month ago, seeking group members, he wrote that he has high hopes of adding a few prominent Buddhists to the team of bloggers at PB. Stephen Batchelor and Susan Blackmore are named.

It would be a 500-1 longshot for Justin to snag Batchelor [q.v. wiki] for the group. And Batchelor's no prize. His latest post to his blog at the Tricycle website was ten months ago. Prominent Buddhists are typically lousy bloggers, often blogging rarely when prompted to do blogging duty and usually blogging overtly self-promoting words. Batchelor is wonderful in many of his books, is a brilliant wordsmith, but doesn't get 'out of himself' enough to blog decently, IMOO [ie, in my overt opinion].

Sue Blackmore [q.v. wiki] is far the more interesting possibility for PB. She regularly blogs articles in areas of her expertise for the UK Guardian's comment is free. But it's not really blogging, and it's surely not free; it's paid-for op/article writing. It would be a coup to get Blackmore for Progressive Buddhism. Perhaps she'd do it for the opportunity to express herself in more purely Buddhist terms than she's done for the Guardian. But she likely would not be willing to give away for free what she can do for pay when writing is basically her job, what she does to put bread on the table. That is, unless Justin has an in with her.

ZEN TRAVELER

Here’s a blog that is new to me - and an excellent one it is, too: Zen Traveler. A pretty interesting and exciting life blogger Eric has with an occupation that you have to believe is an unusual one for a Buddhist. He’s a bodyguard who works in the most troubled regions of the world - and that very much includes Iraq and its capital, Baghdad. Eric puts up a short post nearly every day which usually includes one of his wonderful photographs.

The last few days, Eric has been in close proximity to the Prime Minister of Iraq, Nouri al-Maliki at The Palace. See his posts “Interview at the Palace” and “Interview at the Palace, the Aftermath.” Another recent post remarks on the resilience of Iraqi children. It includes a heart-warming picture of three smiling kids.

BTW, Eric does not work for Blackwater, which is a security provider just ousted from Iraq, according to an article on the front page of the New York Times yesterday.

LIKE A MARTINI WITHOUT THE EGG

TMcG of TMCG is delighted by the work of the trio that present the Buddhist Geeks podcasts. She links to the most-recent interview by the “superpowerful Buddhist Geeks,” and then writes, “So many great interviews being done by the Geeks these days. Great job.”

But that most-recent episode, called What did Jessica Alba Eat for Breakfast?, is a monologue for more than the first half of its 23 ½ minute running time. When Gwen Geek finally engages, things get better.

[The cutesy title of this subsection mocks Buddhist Geeks episode-title silliness. It comes from something Gomez Addams said to Morticia. In Addams Family-speak it means some essential element is missing from something that could be great. We all like an egg in our martini, right? Gomez's full quote was "Can you imagine a roast aardvark without an apple in its mouth? It's like a martini without the egg."]

SIM, RAH!

Another Buddhist blog I want to tell y’all about is Simra.net, blogged by Robert A. Sim, a high-powered scientist with a doctorate of some sort, keen on Buddhism with an occupation that has him working on cutting edge robotics. Hopefully, he'll be the first to develop a robot that can sit for hours and hours without wobbling. Sorry. I'm sure there was a joke in there, I just didn't find it.

Recent posts have been on surge-o-nomics, health/diet, science, robotics, happiness -- and in a post a month ago, Robert jumped into a discussion that began over at The Buddhist Blog on the wisdom of teaching religion to kids. James of TBB had endorsed atheist writer Richard Dawkins's view firmly against indoctrination of kids into any religious view. Wrote Robert, "My two cents on this debate are that, speaking as a parent here, you can't help but rub off some impression of your worldview on your kids. Dawkins is unrealistic to suggest that kids shouldn't be taught religion but he knows that in a hypothetical universe where that link is broken there are likely fewer suicide bombings and deaths-by-exorcism. (Fewer divorces, too, as the stats play out). I mean, what exactly does he suggest we do in order to prevent any 'worldview transference'? In any case, I'm as much against the teaching of fanaticism and intolerance to kids as Dawkins or any other reasonable person but I think the argument is lost because it is impractical."

Robert is also in the great habit of periodically posting what he is grateful for that day. Very IOC.