Dharma Pundit

Getting ready for Halloween

2009-10-01T22:53:00.001-07:00

Small skeleton figures on table at the gun show a few years ago, part of an array of figurines, many with biker motiff. Similar to Mexican Day of the Dead figures such as the skeleton bride and so forth, I recall a shop in Nogales, Mexico that had quite an assortment. I will have to take some shots of them sometime if I can avoid getting shot myself, given the border situation.

You can purchase skeleton bride costume for Halloween now as well, so popular it has become. But I kind of like these two deadbeats. A cultural reminder of the truth of impermanence.

Spooky sculptures

2009-09-30T20:00:00.002-07:00

I like these aged rusty homemade sculptures sitting in front yard of artist's house, presumably. A Southwestern theme no doubt.

My favorite crazy video

2009-09-29T12:42:00.001-07:00

A video with Cave Dwellers' song "Meditation" is pretty hypnotic.

Warming up to Kindle?

2009-09-28T20:09:00.010-07:00

I notice some college has started an experiment with putting the reading list of a few courses on Kindle and enabling all the students to obtain a device. I was wondering how long it would take someone to do that and see what happens. In this case, many of the students seem to be negative about the experience.

I purchased a Kindle2 mainly to download book collections, especially from Mobi which has inexpensive collected works of famous authors. I'm not interested in reading newspapers or blogs for a fee on Kindle.

So far I have downloaded enough to last a couple lifetimes. Some of the collected works have 30 to 100 books and stories in them. That does not mean they are really the complete works of that author, for example, the Hawthorne collection has only selections from his Italian, French, British and American Notebooks. I guess they got bored with Nathaniel's detailed observations and psychological analysis of his children's antics around the house found in the American Notebooks.

So this is my fairyland of literature and history caught inside a white carapace:

Thousand and One Nights -- Richard Burton translation
Complete Wizard of Oz books
Complete William Shakespeare
Diary of Samuel Pepys
Discourses of Epictetus
Divine Comedy - Dante, English and Italian
Emerson's Essays
Essential H. G. Wells
History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Gibbons
History of the Pelopennesian Wars - Thucydides
Illiad and Odyssey - Homer
King James Bible
Lectures and Interviews - Robert G. Ingersoll
The Prince - Machiavelli
Varney the Vampire - Thomas Preskett
Works of: Dumas; Dickens; Defoe; Poe; Chaucer; Maupassant; Melville; Balzac; Conrad; Verne; Lewis Carroll; Twain; Hawthorne; Robert Lewis Stevenson; Kipling, Sir Walter Scott; and last but not least, H.P. Lovecraft.

So far I have resisted the temptation to reread the works of Jane Austin, Dostoevsky, or Friedrich Nietzsche, or to wade into the ocean of prose created by Tolstoy or Henry James, with whom I am less familiar. I am beginning to wonder how much space could be left on my machine, since each work takes up many times the space of the average novel.

Buddhist statues

2009-09-28T06:51:00.002-07:00

Some more locally made Buddhist statues, for art show, did not pay attention to the program describing them, unfortunately. But all nicely made, about 6 or 7 inches tall like the Padma Sambhava one I have. When I see such religious objects made by local practitioners, it reminds me of the many wall frescoes found in the Tarim Basin of the old Silk Route, in what is now western China.

This Silk Road connected the Roman Empire to India and China for a while. I recall one commentator about these caves and crumbled monastic ruins in the desolate desert of the Tarim Basin, who mocked the monks who went to such efforts to create long-lasting religious establishments that were overcome by time and hostile religions. As if the Buddhists who created these works of art were not aware of the law of transience which is one of the central doctrines of their creed! What a jerk. What these works of art did help accomplish was the transfer of Buddhist iconography and doctrine from one great civilization (India) where it was doomed to Hindu and Muslim extermination, to another (China, and hence Korea and Japan), where it survives to this day.

Maybe someday a few hundred or thousand years hence a religious scholar will unearth these statues and have to rewrite the history of American religious art to explain their significance. First one is Vajrasattva, then Yeshe Tsogyal, White Chenrezig and last White Tara.

Little yellow teacup

2009-09-27T15:37:00.003-07:00

Saw this for sale at my favorite Chinese restaurant and could not resist it. The dragon has a red ball with lines coming out from it, apparently this symbolizes a flaming pearl which represents good luck and wealth. The dragon in Tibetan lore is called Druk; Trungpa Rinpoche is known to his students, for example, as the Druk Sakyong or Dragon Earth Protector. The dragon in Chinese lore is a symbol of imperial authority, as well as the ruler of water and weather.

Below is a closeup of said red ball.

Padma Sambhava

2009-09-27T15:22:00.002-07:00

A statue made by a local Buddhist practitioner...Padma Sambhava or Guru Rinpoche is revered in Tibet as culture hero and founder of Tibetan Buddhism. His story could be a great movie, I wonder if anyone has attempted it. Along with Yeshe Tsogyal, his consort, he had quite an extraordinary life filled with adventures and dangers, as he vied with the established Bon shamanistic religion for the favor of the king.

Fierce Guard Dog

2009-09-26T18:32:00.000-07:00

Polar Bear the warehouse guard dog, fangs and all, so ugly he is beautiful. Ready to run down trespassers and corner them for the police to catch, but lovable to those he knows. He had a mate for a while but she ran away when her owner left town. Not much of a tail so he wags his whole butt when happy. Nice enough so far not to bother my caged parrots I carry into work everyday.

Van Jones Out

2009-09-06T12:24:00.004-07:00

It is wonderful how how Associated Press can "report" the resignation of Van Jones, a self-declared Communist and Marxist, without mentioning those two words. If Jones had not resigned they would undoubtedly have continued to bury the controversy he aroused, as one after another of his past statements was uncovered. Obviously AP is still acting as Obama's watchdog, under-reporting his flaws and over-reporting his virtues. Even Wikipedia froze editing of their Van Jones article last night, and refused to allow anyone to describe Jones as a Communist.

Of course liberals don't think we should be afraid of Communists in our government anymore...but the obvious response to that is the fundamental hostility of Marxism to a limited concept of government as embodied in our Constitution. Marxist theory presupposes the supremacy of government in all phases of life, until a perfect state of communism arises of course, when society becomes classless and stateless. Of course, until that utopia comes, the iron hand of of the state must be wielded with harsh discipline to obliterate the parasitic bourgeoisie.

One cannot but suspect liberals don't care about the Constitution either, every day they are inventing new "rights" government bureaucrats must insure...the right to force others to provide people with anything that pops into their heads, food, shelter, health care, a job, dignity and so on. As if people were so guileless they had no idea how to go about providing these things for themselves. The only real rights we have are those that do not coerce others into taking care of us, such as the right to free speech and press, bear arms, life, liberty, property, due process and so on. All these other so-called rights are just an excuse to create a super Nanny state run by omnipotent bureaucrats. All powers not granted to the federal government are supposed to be reserved to the citizenry.

Nathaniel Hawthorne Remembered

2009-06-01T00:26:00.003-07:00

I thought I knew my Nathaniel Hawthorne stuff but upon rereading The Blythedale Romance I discovered to my chagrin that the story was nearly new to me after all these years...but it was great to finally nail it down and figure it out once and for all...I used to think the town of Blythe, California, on I-10 on the Colorado River was named after the novel...no such luck, it was named after a gold prospector...oh well, another unverified fantasy exploded...anyway, to get back to The Blythedale Romance, I was originally attracted to it as a historical study of one of the mid-19th century utopian communes, Brook Farm, of which Hawthorne was the treasurer for a while apparently. There is a great blog commentary on the novel located at

http://zhiv.wordpress.com/2009/04/17/the-blithedale-romance-nathaniel-hawthorne/

One of Hawthorne's contributions to psychology is his study of Hollingsworth, a monomaniac who resembles the True Believer Eric Hoffer went on to describe a hundred years later. Zenobia is an interesting study of an early feminist leader, erotic and assertive, who, however he dooms to self-destruction unrealistically. She was a bit airy-fairy, lightweight intellectual, and that bothered him...although one gets the impression such strong women frightened him. Not that he was adverse to creating strong female characters as Hester Prynne of The Scarlet Letter.

It is rather touching that Hawthorne was one of the first tree-huggers, he was virtually the only person of the day to oppose the building of the Erie Canal in New York for the sole reason that it would destroy the forest. And in The Blythedale Romance we find his protagonist climbing a pine tree to get away from it all in a treehouse made by an enveloping grapevine...this guy really was a tree-hugger. He was also very human in his patriotic appreciation of General McClellan's grandiose military parades at the start of the Civil War, thinking like the other Northerners that such a great organizer and disciplinarian would soon rout the Rebels...of course it turned out McClellan was not only an idiot, coward and traitor, plotting to remove Lincoln, and then trying to lose the Civil War altogether by planning to allow the South to secede and become independent...but old Hawthorne cheered him on in 1861 or 62, who can expect an old literary genius to be a good judge of generals???

So the Blythedale Romance has very little to do with utopianism, merely a few wry comments about his inability to be creative after working so hard at farm labor all day...he actually does defend his unnamed companions as having the best of motives to create something new and just to contribute to the world community, but leaves it at that and concentrates all his attention on the triumvirate of Hollingsworth, Zenobia and Priscilla...when you come down to it, rather ordinary people, except for intimations of Zenobia's wild side, which is never shown...so the plot just goes on to show how these three suffer the consequences of having rejected the protagonist: Hollingsworth who tried to bully him into becoming a mere follower, is reduced to social and political impotence at the end, Zenobia, who failed to appreciate our hero's ego and ideas, kills herself, and Priscilla, who fails to favorably react to our hero's attentions, has to become a mere emotional crutch to a broken Hollingsworth. Our hero is really both jealous of and afraid of Hollingsworth, it is said H is merely the combination of 3 or more real persons of the day such as Horace Mann and Emerson, but I think he has to be based mainly on one real person Hawthorne knew during his Brook Farm period, given Hawthorne's intense emotions describing this character...not sure who yet...

The Big O Express Presses on towards Trainwreck

2009-04-10T23:51:00.003-07:00

Events may bring about the day when the charismatic demagogue will be shunned by everyone except Jeremiah Wright and Bill Ayers...unfortunately, this will only come about at the expense of the American people, when the Big O's administration fails to seriously confront Islamic terrorism, and we suffer the consequences. It is only a matter of time now...the clock is ticking...every tinpot dictator is grinning from ear to ear now that the socialist Democrats are running things...a great opportunity for everyone from Kim Jong-Il to the Castro brothers to run amok without fear of American opposition...of course how could a guy who thinks there is a language called Austrian and gives the British prime minister a bunch of unusable DVD's of American movies, have a chance in the real world of international politics?...not to mention his inability to stop apologizing for imaginary American faults every time he opens his mouth while overseas...an empty suit, inflated by the party-line doctrinaire media as the Savior...I guess we deserve what we get...

Get Your Wheelbarrow Ready

2009-03-15T01:12:00.004-07:00

In the 1920's it is said Germans had to use wheelbarrows to take their money to the market to buy food, thanks to hyper-inflation...well we might as well get the wheels greased on our wheel barrels, because Obama's war on our economy is in full swing and he is spending money and printed greenbacks like there is no tomorrow...no acceptable tomorrow for our children to be sure...if we or they survive his soft-on-terrorists foreign policy...one wonders if this neo-Carter would even oppose an attack by some rogue state like Iran, Venezuela, Russia, Cuba, the list goes on...he wants to make friends with these monsters, and ditch our friends like Great Britain, Poland, Hungary...throw them to the lions in the name of better international relations with anyone who is anti-American...so get your wheelbarrows out and pump up the tire and remove the rust, you are going to need it to get to the nearest supermarket with your worthless dollars very soon...

Election 2008

2008-11-05T21:52:00.007-07:00

What is amazing about this election was the ability of the Clinton Democrats to sabotage the economy with the sub-prime mortgage time bomb, which explodes at the end of the following Republican administration, ensuring a new Democratic one. McCain's failure to pin the tail on the donkey due to his populist stance should be shunned by Republicans from now on. And Dick Morris predicts The Great O will win a second term based on blaming his Depression-era first term on the Republicans as well. A great explanation of the liberal inspired sub-prime mess is at a site called Wolf Howling:
Take a look.

Conversations with Don Carlos

2007-06-05T22:34:00.001-07:00

Far be it from me to drop names, but I did run into Carlos Casteneda while hiking in the Santa Monica Mountains in the late 70's...apparently we both liked to go there through the years and this time we just happened to meet. I knew what CC looked like, having attended his UCSB lecture around 1970, surrounded as he was by stern-looking local Chicano activists trying to bask in his glory. That was such a joke considering how anti-political the Don Juan teachings are. Campus political activists hated mystics and gurus who diverted people's attention away from supposed horrible social conditions to meditate on their navel and realize inner peace. And this was exactly what CC really represented to most hippies.

On this occasion in the morning I had driven up to Mulholland Drive and parked my pickup near Fireroad 25, which was my favorite jumping off place. I had come especially to practice some of Don Juan's teachings, believing them valid in those days. More specifically, I had come to try to "stop the world", which in real terms means stopping the mind, from a meditative point of view. I found myself a secluded spot off the main road and sat down for hours staring off to the east, down at Sullivan Canyon and the ridge beyond. At a certain point I seemed to achieve a certain stillness of mind combined with a sharp focusing of the view in front of me, (with a little chemical help I must admit, well, let us say, a BIG chemical help), and by the late afternoon, I got up and starting walking back in the direction of Mulholland Drive. At this point I met Carlos Castenada, accompanied by a young blonde woman, probably Kylie, one of the 4 or 5 gringa "witches" that formed the inner circle around CC from this time to his death in 1998. I recognized him right away, from the lecture, but did not show that I did. I recall how he joked in Santa Barbara how people thought he should have "long mystical feet", but being a short Peruvian with equally short feet, this was his way of kidding himself, which put people off their guard. "Anyone who makes a joke at their own expense cannot be a big liar" etc.

Anyway, I just nodded and maybe said hi and tried to walk by, being by this time worn out, dehydrated and hungry, but Carlos started talking to me. He claimed he wanted to know where the fireroad went. I really didn't know at that time, except that if you took it south and veered left you would end up, after following a narrow ridge, at Will Rogers State Park. But I knew you could take it to the right and arrive around Eagle Rock, a midpoint in the Santa Monica trail system, and from there you could find your way down to Sunset Blvd. near the ocean. So I just summerized all this by saying, "It goes to the ocean."

But then Carlos started arguing no, no, no that can't be true, and kept arguing and arguing. I just stared at him in surprise. I really didn't care. At this point I recalled an episode in one of CC's books where his supposed teacher Don Juan just looks at him and says something like, "You know I can't stand the sight of you." And CC starts whining until DJ pretends to take it back. Now I could understand this event quite well, as I was beginning to feel quite annoyed. But I did not say much, and walked away, feeling sorry for someone so cunningly obnoxious.

Since I had a buddhist teacher at that point, I was less likely to fall under his spell. Apparently CC started conducting classes at a Santa Monica bookstore around this time. It is a good thing I did not hear of it and feel tempted to participate. As it turned out in the succeeding years, during this teaching period Castenda created a classic cult consciousness among his students. Amy Wallace's The Sorceror's Apprentice is a must for an insight into the sick group psychology of those years. Geuter's Filming Castenda adds more data.

The positive result of this odd encounter was that I determined to find out once and for all where the fireroad went. So another weekend day I hiked south on Fireroad 25, veered right, and kept going down along some newly developed housing, and finally ended up at Sunset Dr. exactly at the Self Realization Fellowship lake/temple founded by Yogi Yogananda. This mystical place is only a stone's throw from the ocean. So I felt justified by my answer to Castenada after all. By this time it was near dusk and I had to call my brother to drive all the way from the San Fernando Valley to Pacific Palisades to pick me up and take me back to Mulholland Dr. so I could retreive my vehicle.

The Curse of the Prime Directive

2005-10-09T23:49:00.001-07:00

Star Trek's big political statement revolves around the Prime Directive, especially in the Next Generation series. The essence of this law is that Federation star ships and personnel are forbidden to "interfere" with pre-warp drive cultures and planets. What this amounts to is an attempt to avoid contact with "primitive" people, for fear of altering their "sacred" path of evolution....as if such isolationism was possible in the Star Trek universe filled with money-grubbing Ferengi, haughty Cardassians, militaristic Romulans, war-crazed Klingons, and even uglier races in other quadrants. It's OK to study these backward races, but not help them in any way, or enlist them as trading partners or allies.

Such a policy would bring about the downfall of the Federation, of course. Other races would grab territory, trading rights to valuable resources, military bases, and enroll the subject peoples as slaves or soldiers. What the noble Federation turns up its nose at, its enemies will absorb and grow in strength and even diversity. The Federation will not bother to interact with these pre-warp drive cultures, leaving their fate to the tender mercies of the other advanced races it is in competition with. Such a move is like making sure Route 66, which brought many tourists to the West in the early Twentieth century, did not pass through quaint towns as Santa Fe or Indian reservations, for fear of changing them or giving them a chance to make some money. Instead it would wind through the most barren wasteland avoiding towns along the way, preventing them from benefiting from free cultural interchange with whoever wanted to travel there.

Obviously the idea behind the Prime Directive is that any contact between differing technological levels will result in the colonization of the weaker by the stronger. They will be made into a Protectorate at best. The weaker society has nothing to offer the stronger. Is this the view of human nature the idealistic Federation holds? Why not be up front and say, here we are, we want a relationship with your people, let's get started now instead of waiting until the inevitable future contact with ourselves or some other unsavory race that may decimate your planet just for fun.

Pullo and Octavian play games

2005-09-29T20:03:00.001-07:00

The new HBO series Rome has to be commended for its fidelity to history, as compared to the other cable series about the same epoch, called Empire. The latter was full of so many historical fantasies it should have been labeled alternative history. But this latest episode of Rome is a strange way to demonstrate Octavian's capacity for ruthlessness. He and Pullo decide on their own to find out what's what with Vorenus' wife and supposed former lover. This poor guy had made love to Niobe after the army told her her husband was dead and his salary stopped coming. So he has a pretty good excuse...but Octavian and Pullo, who should have known this, tell him they are going to kill him anyway, so why not talk before they torture him. Pullo, who doesn't know how, has to take suggestions from a kid. This is meant as humor I suppose.

And so Octavian instructs Pullo to cut of the guy's thumbs for starters...and so on, and after they find out the Niobe's grand-daughter is really her own daughter, then they see red and stab him and dump his body into the aqueduct...if this was a common method of murder, the Romans should have been all poisoned in no time at all from the polluted water supply.

I suppose this scene is to show us how common brutality was in Roman times, as well as giving us a clue to Octavian's nerves of steel, which would lead him to successfully climb the ladder of power to Emperorship. On the other hand, it strikes me as rather dumb....here are two guys butting their noses into someone else's business, they are bound to make Niobe unhappy, though Pullo likes her, they kill a totally innocent person who did nothing wrong under the circumstances, they contaminate their city's water supply without a thought, the list goes on.

I suppose this is part and parcel of the "Upstairs, Downstairs" soap opera motif in which we are alternately shown how the nobility conduct themselves in some particular fashion, and then how the riffraff do it their way. Except in this case one of the upper classes is slumming, "gaining experience" so to speak. Obviously none of this can be historically verified, the idea is to take what history tells us of the famous personages of the times, and flesh them out with dramatically interesting traits and intriguing plot twists. Nothing wrong with this I suppose, but this particular example is rather disgusting.

Lists of books one should read (a beginning)

2005-07-14T22:10:00.001-07:00

Journey to the West by Wu Cheng'en…about 1800 small print pages, available in English finally from Chinese publisher...the ancient Chinese Buddhist classic about a crazy monkey with supernatural powers who brings havoc to the court of the Jade Emperor and has to be subdued by the Buddha himself, later released to provide aid to an old Chinese monk who has taken on the impossible task of traveling to the West to obtain precious Buddhist manuscripts unknown in China...based on a real historical journey...

More Neal Stephenson novels, series starting with Quicksilver, Cryptonomicon pretty interesting, hard to stop reading though long (1100 pages)

Robert Sheckley detective stories, did not know he even wrote any, such as: Draconian New York, Soma Blues, The Alternative Detective. Sheckley has been ill lately, he should be considered one of the most innovative science fiction writers of the 20th century...it is sad so few of his imaginative stories have made it to the silver screen...7th Victim comes to mind...but there are scores more worthy of being made into film...

Michael Shaara, The Killer Angels...apparently a novel of the battle of Gettysburg, which has always fascinated me

Ulysses S. Grant by Geoffrey Perret...Grant was the first modern President and did a good job despite the hatchet job done by liberal historians

A Conspiracy of Paper by David Liss...cannot resist historical novels about England apparently

How the Scots Invented the Modern World...Arthur Herman...at least making a stab at this one...seems logical to me, even though I don't have any Scotch ancestry that I know of

Marking Time, The Epic Quest to Invent the Perfect Calendar, by Duncan Steel...so detailed it scares me, but accurate to a microsecond

The Spanish Ulcer, A History of the Peninsular War, by David Gates...to provide more solid background to Spanish/British resistance to Napoleon's invasion and occupation of Spain...after finishing The Man Who Broke Napoleon's Codes by Mark Urban, a real humdinger

Did I say this was only a beginning?

Don Camillo books by Giovanni Guareschi

2005-07-04T15:46:00.001-07:00

These books of short stories about a village priest in post-war Italy and his nemesis, Peppone, the Communist mayor, are always good reading. Never doctrinal or shrill, Don Camillo is street smart and wily as he maneuvers against the latest absurd power grabs of the local Italian Communist party. There is one moving story called “Christ’s Secret Agent” in which Don Camillo sneaks into an Italian Communist tourist group visiting the Soviet Union. Peppone cannot expose him without getting himself into trouble, so Don Camillo gets to see the reality of the Worker’s Paradise of Russia for himself. In this particular story he secretly performs Catholic rituals for a Catholic family on a commune, in particular an elderly Polish grandmother, in violation of Soviet law of course.

That such simple and harmless acts are considered high treason in a totalitarian dictatorship is highlighted. One recalls the Soviet occupation of Mongolia and the subsequent extermination of thousands of Buddhist monks and nuns, to know that this was standard practice in all Communist countries. This is the type of anti-religious program converts like Che Guevara relished and tried to duplicate. Even today Buddhist activity is severely limited in Vietnam, for example, and China regularly clamps down on Christian priests, while putting on a smiley face to the rest of the world.

This site has many Don Camillo stories online.

Another good site on the author of the Don Camillo books.

France owes more to Talleyrand than Napoleon

2005-06-22T15:07:00.001-07:00

Former French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte -- Napoleon I -- in exile on Elba, blaming Talleyrand and Fouche for his predicament, said: "If I had hanged Talleyrand and Fouche, I would have been still today on the throne." When the news reached Talleyrand, he said: "Napoleon, instead of hanging me, should have listened to me."

But how could a megalomaniac listen to anyone else for advice? What Talleyrand said is true, if Old Nap had listened to him, Talleyrand could have kept him in power for decades in a Europe at peace. But as we all know, Napoleon constantly rejected Talleyrand's proposals for making peace with his defeated neighbors.

Talleyrand was ahead of his time regarding many European issues. At the Congress of Vienna he strived for the creation of a strong and independent Poland, although this was not to allowed at that time. He foresaw future Prussian aggression theatening European peace, and helped foster a German federation to counter Prussia's militancy. It was only the stupidity of yet another Napoleon who declared war on Prussia in 1870, that fatally weakened this effort to contain German aggression. Talleyrand felt France's natural ally in Europe was England and opposed the brutal policies of autocratic regimes like Russia and Austria. Compared to this, what did Napoleon stand for? Not much beyond self-glory.

Pepsi gives USA the finger??

2005-05-17T10:18:00.001-07:00

If preliminary reports are true, (see here) it appears Ms. Indra Nooyi, CEO of Pepsi, in a speech to Columbia Business School, used her middle finger to denote the USA's role in the world. It appears some of these multi-national companies, though started here, feel they are immune to the wrath of American consumers. They feel it is their job to tell us what supposedly the rest of the world thinks of us. What this really means, is they want to spout off their own opinion. I think Ms. Nooyi should start rewriting her resume.

Demos against investment

2005-04-28T15:35:00.001-07:00

Why is it the Democrats are pro-choice when it comes to terminating the life of the unborn, and anti-choice in President Bush's proposal for personal investment accounts in Social Security? The investment account would be completely voluntary, no one would be forced to go that route, yet the Democrats carp and carry on like it's the end of the world. They hate to see government cede any authority or power it already has over the individual, apparently. Their opposition also reveals their anti-capitalist stance. Wall Street is a dirty word in their ideology. I suspect they can't stand the idea of some people getting more money than others from their Social Security payments. They don't want people to risk their money because they might make more than other people. The Demos prefer an egalitarian system in which the government collects our money and doles it out in equal payments to everyone.

Blade Runner vs. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep

2005-04-27T14:29:00.001-07:00

For those sci fi fans familiar with Philip K. Dick's book Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, the movie version Blade Runner must have come as a complete shock. Just the barest outline of the story makes it into the film. Director Ridley Scott seemed determined to create a noir detective film in the style of Chandler/Hammet, with homage due to Metropolis and Frankenstein as well. This is well and good, but we wish someone would make a movie that is really based on this great PKD novel.

What PKD created was in fact a religious science fiction novel. It is no wonder Scott claimed that he had not even read Dick's book, he probably wanted to make sure no one would complain about the changes he wanted to make. This is common Hollywood procedure though, even a movie about Napoleon cannot be made without inserting completely phony events, in order to "make it more interesting." Hitchcock felt no loyalty to the written word if he felt he could be more creative on film. No one seems to appreciate the effort PKD makes to create a plausible futuristic urban mass religion. Of course any reference to religion had to be deleted if Scott's detective noir theme was to make sense...it just would not fit into the hard-boiled atmosphere. No soft mushy stuff allowed.

In the novel, the religion of Mercerism is centered upon an empath who takes all of mankind's suffering upon his own shoulders. Using empathy boxes, people at home tune into Mercer's Sisyphean struggle uphill, being bruised themselves from the rocks unseen persecutors throw at him, follow him to the top where presumable he is martyred, and downhill into the Tomb World of dissolving forms of death and desiccation, until finally all is revived and he ascends again to start all over. What is significant in this trance-like experience is that all who are tuned in at the same time share each others emotions, and can exchange their joy for example to others who are miserable. In Tibetan Buddhism this is a visualization practice called tong-len, selflessly giving out our goodness and strength to those in need of it. "Health and wealth to others, sickness and poverty to myself." This is basically a method of grinding down the ego, that which separates us from our authentic self, our fundamental connection to all things.

Mercer himself is a kind of Amitabha or thousand-armed Avalokiteshvara figure, infinitely capable of listening to the troubles of others and forgiving them. His name, though etymologically different from the root of mercy, is so close there can be no doubt that he is meant to embody mercy itself. He is also similar to Krishna of the Bhagavad-Gita, as he speaks one on one with his devotees, giving them advice to "get on with it." For example, Deckard the bounty hunter, has doubts about his job of "retiring" androids. Mercer's words to him urge him nevertheless to go forward and do his duty. He says "we all must violate our identity...the ultimate shadow or curse of life"...this is what Joseph Campbell calls the basic horror at the crux of the world: life feeds on life in an unceasing cycle, and we are part of that process. Krishna tells the reluctant Arjuna, distraught at the prospect of killing his rebelling relatives,

"Indestructible, learn thou, the Life is, spreading life through all; It cannot anywhere, by any means, be anywise diminished, stayed or changed...Let them perish, Prince! And fight!...Birthless and deathless and changeless remaineth the spirit for ever; Death hath not touched it at all..." (Sir Edwin Arnold translation).

Mercer tells Deckard, "I am your friend. But you must go on as if I did not exist...there is no salvation." Deckard asks, "Then what are you for?" "To show you that you aren't alone." Mercer shows all the universality of suffering and the power of forgiveness. He utters this paradoxical statement: "You will have to stop searching for me because I will never stop searching for you." Mercer also appears in the nick of time at an apartment complex to warn Deckard that one of the androids is outside about to ambush him. Later on Deckard has a mystical type experience in the badlands, without even an empathy box, seemingly becoming Mercer himself in his endless quest.

Naturally the powerful media powers object to Mercerism. Buster Friendly and his Friendly Friends sponsor an expose of Mercerism, showing it to have been Hollywood produced, and even find the actor who played the part. Yet Mercer himself is not fazed by the exposure of the human origins of his religion, he forecasts nothing will change because what he offers is shared empathic unity of humanity. As it turns out, Buster Friendly and his guests are in actuality androids who, along with their manufacturer and all runaway androids, dream of destroying Mercerism forever, because it emphasizes the one thing they lack: empathy. I think certain parallels could be made with today's secular politically correct media.

Blade Runner ignores this subplot of course. It is more interested in creating sympathy for the "replicants", a politically correct term for androids. Rachel is nice and deserving of being saved when Deckard runs off to live with her in the end. In the book she turns out to be one of the chief agents helping murderous androids, and kills Deckard's live pet goat out of spite. Androids have no feeling for living beings, they torture a spider for kicks in a world where life is rare and therefore sacred. You can be quite sure that if the androids ever took over they would casually kill humans in the same fashion. One might imagine we were discussing Communists vs. capitalists in the Cold War era...should we see the Communists as extremists bent on world domination no matter what the cost to human freedom, or are they "just like us" deserving of a break, everything is relative, be nice to them despite their hostile actions and they will be great friends one day, coexistence is great...This is somewhat ironic as PKD was a rebel in his day, afraid that by fighting the Communists we were destined to become like them...in fact this is somewhat the theme of the novel...but he could not depict the androids with as much warmth as Scott...he was highly suspicious of beings that had no empathy...

PKD of course was so paranoid and anti-capitalist himself that he could not imagine a future in which the impersonal corporation did not rule the roost...even to the extent of creating near-perfect androids who sometimes revolted and killed their human owners. Of course in a real world the public through their exercise of free government would force the manufacturers to create many failsafe devices within androids to render them harmless or easily inoperable if malfunctioning. So Scott carries this thought forward into his postmodern society, emphasizing the dystopia of a polluted world run by selfish evil corporations who operate as if no government existed.

Happy Birthday President U.S. Grant

2005-04-27T12:01:00.001-07:00

U.S. Grant was one of the greatest American presidents, despite what propaganda you may read in the history books. It was Grant alone who made valient efforts to enforce black rights, after Johnson's failure to enforce the law. Despite the political unpopularity of such moves, he did not back down. It was Hayes who followed who made a deal with the Southern Democrats to violate black voting rights that overturned Grant's humane and constitutional policy.

Grant was the first modern president and made sure the US steadily advanced toward becoming a world power. After the chaos and destruction of the Civil War, Grant's careful managemant of domestic and foreign policy brought about a dramatic rise of America to the forefront of nations.

There is a great book on Grant by Frank J. Scaturro called President Grant Reconsidered. You can find Frank J. Scaturro's book here.

Because of the intellectuals' bias against him, they could not even see the humor behind a traveling Grant's remark about draining the Venetian canals; they could not imagine he had a subtle sense of humor. Does this remind us of current affairs or what??

Napoleon's nemesis

2005-04-04T14:40:00.001-07:00

Having just seen a cable TV program about the rise of Napoleon, I thought to myself, who is the real hero of the Napoleonic era? The British would say either Admiral Nelson or the Duke of Wellington. And we would expect the French to offer up old Nap himself as world statesman and reformer, not to mention military genius. The Russians would put forward Czar Alexander I. But I want to offer an alternative to all these, the man who from the start tried to forge an alliance between a British constitutional monarchy and a French one, the man who always worked for peaceful solutions to the problems of European power politics, the man who secretly orchestrated the overthrow of the dictator Napoleon, saving France and creating the framework for the 100 year European peace following Waterloo.

This man is Maurice de Talleyrand, the wily and cynical French diplomat who served all of the French governments during this era. He attempted to form an alliance between France and England in the early days of the French Revolution, but this became impossible when the crazies took over in France and killed the king and anyone else they could guillotine. Later Talleyrand helped Napoleon come to power, realizing France needed a strong leader who also seemed a reformer. Every time Napoleon secured a victory, Talleyrand urged lenient terms to the defeated in order to secure a lasting European peace, but each time a paranoid Napoleon refused, suspicious that these countries would rise up against him later, and so imposed the harshest terms. Thus he created the very situation he wished to avoid: a dormant but seething Europe waiting for its chance to renew hostilities. Talleyrand never ceased to urge for reconciliation and generosity, Napoleon never overcame his self-fulfilling paranoia.

Talleyrand, a friend of freedom, risked his life trying to thwart the megalomaniacal ambitions of Napoleon, who even dreamed of conquering America some day. Talleyrand's loyalty was not to the madman who created the world's first police state, but to his country and to Europe as a whole. Alexander Hamilton, who did so much to establish the capitalist framework of American financial and industrial power, was his friend and inspiration. Talleyrand's great wish was to meet President Washington, but this was not to be, due to the hostility of the wacko French revolutionary government of the time.

When Napoleon's intemperate ambition led him to invade Spain in 1809, Talleyrand, the freedom fighter, began to plot against him, realizing that the tyrant recognized the rights of no people, country or sovereign. Later Talleyrand tipped off a naive Czar Alexander I of Russia not to align himself with Napoleon, but to guard himself against Napoleon's slippery promises. It was due to this infusion of backbone in Alexander that frustrated Napoleon's plans and led to his incredibly disastrous invasion of Russia, which was instrumental in removing him from power in 1814.

At the Congress of Vienna Talleyrand successfully defended France's old boundaries and led the formation of a plan for the peace and security of Europe as a whole. Napoleon's escape from Elba and subsequent defeat at Waterloo did not prevent Talleyrand's grand vision of a British and French alliance of constitutional monarchies planning for peace in Europe. Later in 1831 when Europe could have come to blows over the Belgian rebellion against the Netherlands, it was Talleyrand as ambassador to Britain who helped resolve the difficulty without war, creating a neutral Belgium.

While it is undeniable Talleyrand was a womanizer, a gambler, an enthusiastic bribe-taker, and political intriguer, his dedication to political and economic freedom never wavered through his long career. Countless thousands would have lived if his visionary project to create a stable Europe had not been subverted by the man he raised to power, Napoleon. If Russia had not suffered the trauma of French invasion, perhaps political liberalism could have spread its influence as opposed to the statist Czarist regimes that followed, thus negating the likelihood of its tragic fall into Communist tyranny. If Spain had been spared the terrible guerrilla war against the French, the deplorable conditions leading to the Spanish Civil War in the 1930's would not exist. Two world wars of the 20th century could have been avoided if the militant German nationalism created by French aggression had not been fostered.

Sandy Burglar gets off easy

2005-04-01T10:03:00.001-07:00

Sandy Berger's slap in the wrist misdemeanor guilty plea for destroying Clinton administration documents regarding the terrorism threat in the US is pretty outrageous. And on top of that, he now admits he lied about misplacing the documents; he actually shredded them. Whether he was destroying incriminating margin notes or he thought he was destroying the only copies of the documents, we will never know. As I said here before, as pointed out so well by Dick Morris, it is due to the terrible lapses in counter-terrorism during the Clinton years, that these problems have arisen for Bush to deal with.

Maybe we should call him Sandy Burglar. And he was widely assumed to be Kerry's choice for Secretary of State. Such is the caliber of top officials we avoided on November 2 of last year.

Lesson of the Shiavo case

2005-03-24T15:33:00.001-07:00

The focus on Terri Shiavo and the legal battle swirling around her seems to miss an important component, and that is the reason why she became ill in the first place. As paragraph 15 of most articles will briefly tell you, she incurred brain damage due to her heart stopping due to a chemical imbalance brought upon by bulimia. The lesson to be learned from all this is to increase awareness of this psychological disorder and how to prevent it. While it is undeniable that Americans are getting disgustingly fat these days, the "technique" bulimia sufferers use to stay thin is obviously counter-productive, i.e. binging followed by disgorging, resulting in a whole array of serious health problems.

I think this whole Shiavo episode teaches us the importance of resolving problems before they get too serious, and our health professionals and educational gurus should increase efforts to make people aware of the hazards of bulimia. While some say it is itself the result of a chemical imbalance, I think psychology lies at the heart of the problem. And that means it can be cured. Healthy eating and regular exercise would prevent obesity in the first place. Of course, the sitting practice of meditation would also reduce this sort of obsessive-compulsive behavior. So let us not forget the hidden message in this Shiavo case, and that is to cultivate our health now and not let things get out of control, leading by chain reaction to far more catastrophic consequences. As such it is a good lesson of the law of karma.

Time out of Joint

2005-03-23T08:44:00.001-07:00

I have suffered a painful tragedy...I cannot find my copy of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, the novel by crazy old Philip K. Dick later made into the noir classic Bladerunner. I must have had it since 1972 or so. Cannot remember if it was an Ace or DAW paperback, they are becoming collector's items in their own right. If my search and destroy mission at home does not find its target I will be forced to buy another copy online. So this puts on hold my comparison of the movie version and the book. Just for starters, the book takes place in a depopulated San Francisco, and the movie in an swarming Los Angeles.

The PKD theme of what is reality is evident in the book, raising the question of who we really are...in a broader scope, the question of what outside reality is, is brilliantly dramatized in Time Out of Joint, an early classic, in which a man living in a 1950's suburban enviroment discovers his community was built to trick him, and the real time is decades later. It seems likely to me the writers of The Truman Show were aware of this book and lifted the plot whole.

Another example straight from a PKD short story is Total Recall with a similar plot, this time with interplantetary connections. The Matrix also could be a takeoff on PKD's Ubik, in which people are kept in a half-life state of suspended animation but are able to communicate with the living and sometimes with each other.

This suspicion that all is not as it seems, inspired by a "healthy" dose of paranoia in PKD's case, would be seconded by the buddhists and other mystical traditions, who question our normal acceptance of reality. I recall the head of the Sakya lineage made the remark to a group that what we saw before us was not real. How this can be interpreted is open to dispute, one can belittle such assertions as clerical hocus-pocus to mystify the masses into accepting religous leaders as needed guides to salvation/enlightenment. The buddhist doctrine of sunyata or emptiness is quite subtle and complex, but bascially makes us question the solidity of the physical and mental world.

Why meditation works

2005-03-15T22:11:00.001-07:00

Many think meditation is some kind of spacey out of this world experience suited only for eccentrics and people who want to avoid reality. This is obviously an outcome of our Faustian outgoing pragmatic cash on the barreled cultural bias, suspicious of non-productive activity, or worse yet, non-activity. Why sit motionless when you could be doing something? Something quirky or subversive must be going on here.

Yet sitting practice is not some sort of lackadaisical lazy lounging around, it is hard work. First of all, one must maintain a strict but relaxed posture, back straight, not leaning against anything, eyes open, legs crossed in some fashion, usually sitting on a cushion, maintaining silence, watching one's breathing and mentally observing the chaos the mindstream produces without following its seductive come hithers. One of the hardest things to get used to is to realize just how chaotic our subconscious gossiping mind is, and still sit quietly observing it. In this way we become familiar with our neurotic patterns, and they lose their grip on us. We become so acquainted with our games we no longer take them seriously. This is called cutting ego. Ego here means belief in a solid unchanging ME. Does this mean we lose our sense of identity and become vegetables or simpletons easily swayed by the most persuasive propagandists? No, it means we can relax and be who we really are, free of uptight defense mechanisms, and confident in our ability to think for ourself and defend our point of view.

We will not notice any improvement in our life while we meditate, only afterwards. Subtle changes will occur in our environment if we take the time to do sitting practice on a daily schedule. Problems that never get resolved will work themselves out without our input, favorable coincidences will present themselves, we won't take ourselves so seriously anymore, and people will respond favorably to this opening up. Gaps of fresh air occur in our solid suffocating cocoon-like world, and we can see clearly where before we were blinded by our own point of view. Meditation helps us become ourselves, what we really are, and there is no reason to be afraid of this.

My buddhist bio, ready or not

2005-03-10T21:21:00.001-07:00

I became interested in buddhism during my college years at UC Santa Barbara. During that hippie era, I lived in Isla Vista, next to campus, which was one of the hotbeds of the radical/anarchist movement as well as being a psychedelic New Age hippie haven. The local psychic would read your palm at the coffee house and the nude beach was only a short walk away.

I was on the SDS hit list because in my newspaper column I poked fun at their leader's efforts to whip up the crowd to close down the university. When there were no riots in the streets there was quite an interest in Eastern spirituality, but there were no organized groups except for the Yogi Maharishi's organization, which actually bought one of the larger apartment buildings for a year. They used to burn incense sticks taped to the swimming pool fence and Hindu chanting could be heard as you walked through the courtyard. This was rather humorous to me as the football team lived there the year before, drinking beer and listening to rock and roll.

I also was invited to a Religious Studies class one day by the professor at which the head honchos of Nichiren Shoshu (the so-called buddhist guys who chant for Cadillacs) were supposed to give an explanation of their beliefs. But instead they went right into their heavy-handed conversion rap. Since the lackadaisical RS students did not raise any serious questions, I took it upon myself to argue with the Nichirens about their obnoxious brainwashing techniques as well as expose their political ultra-nationalism in Japan, which was not well known here, and was informed by the chain-smoking Japanese leader that I was going to hell....I considered this a victory. Also later their group did not catch on locally, which did not bother me a bit.

I attended a few discussions about Zen led by a libertarian grad student, (who proposed the strange idea that beer was preferable to pot,) but found the sitting posture nearly impossible, so badly out of shape I was, both physically and mentally. I would sit in a corner of my apartment living room but get embarrassed when my girlfriend walked by and stared at me. I really had no idea what I was trying to do, I have to admit. This is what happens when you don't have a meditation instructor. But through my reading of Eastern spirituality vs. Western philosophy I determined that the buddhist path was more grounded in practical experience and I wanted to try that out myself. I really wanted to know what enlightenment was and thought I could find out pretty soon.

A few years later Chogyam Trungpa gave a talk at a house in Santa Barbara, but I heard about it a week too late. After all, why would anyone living in the Isla Vista god realm bother to drive a few miles to Santa Barbara, where real working people lived?? I had recently read his book Born in Tibet so I had some idea of who he was. I later went to this house and met some of his students and there seemed something genuine about them. In fact a guy I knew who came with me, a New Age charlatan of the worst sort, declared that the vibes in the house were definitely bumming him out and he was leaving and not coming back. This impressed me, because if Trungpa Rinpoche's vibes got to this nut case then Rinpoche must be a great teacher. I became determined to hook up with his group in LA when I returned there.

Subsequently, I joined the Los Angeles Dharmadhatu, and took the opportunity to attend Trungpa Rinpoche's seminars in Rocky Mountain Dharma Center, and later in Berkeley/Santa Cruz. I also lived one year in Boulder to be close to the source and another year in Denver for the same reason. I returned to LA and kept in touch with Trungpa's students.

I also became registered as a religious volunteer with the state corrections system. At first one of the Zen students and I used to make the long haul to the prison once in a while. This was in response to a request by the chaplain who said some of his guys were interested in Buddhism and wanted to meet with any Buddhist group on the outside. We were so ignorant we did not realize we could not enter the prison wearing blue jeans, as that is the standard prisoner issue, and in case of a riot the guards want to know who to shoot. So we had to drive over to the local mall and buy other clothes and change into them before we were allowed into the prison. As my companion was female I was suddenly stuck by the avid attention her words and presence received compared to mine, but upon reflection I realized we could convert the whole prison yard to the buddhadharma or any other religion if we brought in enough women volunteers to talk to the guys. One day driving home I made the comment, "It seems we are all in prison, not just the cons at the joint, but all of us imprison ourselves somehow with our ego."

Later I carried a big bag full of zafus (meditation cushions) to the prison twice a month to a meditation group I started there. The prisoners were quite sincere and were grateful someone on the outside cared enough to meet with them. Some of them had access to a great number of buddhist books donated to and purchased by the prison library. Therefore some of the guys there were better read in buddhism than I was, and this made the discussion groups very lively. I kept this group going by myself for about three years.

I propose buddhism and meditation are certainly compatible with Republican politics, but I will admit I am in the minority about this. I think some sort of contemplative practice is at the heart of every religion, and such practice does not have a political label or bias. I believe we should not be content to believe in the faith created by the founder of whatever our religion is, but actively attempt to practice the contemplative techniques these founders used to reach their insights into spirituality. Only then can we truly think for ourselves, and become what we really are.

A show-off

2005-03-09T13:54:00.001-07:00

100_0065
Originally uploaded by Sherab.

If I could read the label I would tell you what it is.

Vicious bulldog

2005-03-09T13:50:00.001-07:00

100_0090
Originally uploaded by Sherab.

"Kaiser" fighting for control of his spiked collar --- he cannot live without it.

Peruvian cactus

2005-03-09T13:08:00.001-07:00

100_0075
Originally uploaded by Sherab.

This guy is about ten feet tall.

Dangerous companions

2005-03-09T13:00:00.001-07:00

100_0068
Originally uploaded by Sherab.

The handy cacti-in-a-pot

2005-03-09T12:59:00.001-07:00

pot
Originally uploaded by Sherab.

A visit to Tohono Chul park

2005-03-09T12:54:00.001-07:00

100_0080
Originally uploaded by Sherab.

Wild things.

Samsara and Nirvana are One

2005-03-04T21:09:00.001-07:00

One of my old favorite dharma texts is the Zen Teachings of Huang Po, translated by John Blofeld. It is the type of book one takes on hiking trips in the Sierras, for it contains very heady thoughts such as this which need solitude in nature to properly absorb:

"The Master said to me: All the Buddhas and all sentient beings are nothing but the One-Mind, beside which nothing exists. This Mind...is all that you see before you--begin to reason about it and you at once fall into error...The One Mind alone is the Buddha, and there is no distinction between the Buddha and sentient beings, but that sentient beings are attached to forms and so seek externally for Buddhahood. By their very seeking they lose it, for that is using the Buddha to seek for the Buddha and using mind to grasp Mind."

Of course this kind of speculation can lead to misty Theosophy or Transcendentalism, cute romantic offshoots. But the main point Huang Po alludes to is skepticism about the nature of duality itself. While duality is a necessary component of conceptual thinking, that does not make it real. In all mystical traditions, duality is overcome by some sort of integrated sense of oneness, or, as Chogyam Trungpa preferred, zero-ness. In our practical day to day life, if we can overcome the rigidity and concreteness of our dualistic thinking habits, we can perhaps gain an insight into the "wholeness" or "interdependence" of situations, and act appropriately. As is often said in Chinese buddhist texts, all things are interconnected in the Net of Indra.

Hey, I said it first

2005-03-02T10:31:00.001-07:00

Found this on Little Green Footballs.

Here is text:

NEW YORK More than one in four Americans would go so far as to utilize nuclear bombs if need be in the fight against terrorism, according to a national survey reported today by The Gallup Organization.

Gallup asked Americans whether they would be willing or not willing "to have the U.S. government do each of the following" and then listed an array of options.

For example, "assassinate known terrorists" drew the support of 65% of all adults. "Torture known terrorists if they know details about future terrorist attacks in the U.S."won the backing of 39%.

Finally, the option of using "nuclear weapons to attack terrorist facilities" drew the support of 27% of adults, with 72% opposing, which would shatter the taboo on using these weapons militarily since the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Experts agree that the power of today's weapons, their range of damage and the peril of drifting radioactive fallout far exceeds the bombs used against Japan. That support has declined 7% since 2001, however.
***
So as you can see, my proposals have been considered and found necessary by approximately 75,000,000 Americans.

Ignoring the Gorillas in the Living Room

2005-02-28T23:26:00.001-07:00

Everyone knows N. Korea and Iran's nuclear capacity/ambitions are the most dangerous threats to world peace. And everyone knows the United States has the capability to neutralize those threats in a day's time using its tactical nuclear weapons. And everyone knows this won't happen...but why not??? Communist China could easily bring N. Korea to its knees through closing the border, but does not. Why? Because after all, N. Korea is also a Communist country, albeit bizarrely backward economically. So they dither. So either we make it clear to them we are going to nuke the N. Korean military and allow the South Koreans to liberate the country, or we tell the Chinese Reds we are going to give Japan and the Republic of Taiwan nuclear weapons.

If we can't stop the crazy N. Koreans from spreading nuclear weapons around the world to every mullah and tinpot dictator who hates America, then what's the difference if Japan and Taiwan get them too? I think Communist China would cave in and agree to push the nutty regime in N. Korea to relinquish nuclear weapons pronto, rather than have their age-old enemies across the sea gain the nuclear equalizer.

As far as Iran is concerned, they are obviously hoping the dictator Putin of Russia will provide them with nuclear technology and also protect them from American attack. But if Putin is such a cretin that at his European visit with President Bush, he belligerently asked Bush why the US government fired Dan Rather and the CBS screwups, why should we trust his relationship with a fellow dictatorship in Iran? This guy is totally misinformed.

The only drawback to nuking the Iranian nuclear power plants is that it would probably turn the majority pro-American population against us, given the emotional appeal of nationalism. However, what should we do, sit on our butts waiting for the Iranian people to overthrow their obnoxious fanatical leaders, who would kill as many of them as it took to repress the revolt, or just zap their nuclear facilities once and for all? After all, these nuts make no secret of their desire to destroy Israel as soon as they have the military capability. Do you think we are not close behind on their list?

So the upshot of the deal is: Bush has to clean up the mess left behind by Clinton who wanted to be adored on the international scene rather than make tough decisions. When rogue regimes disregard international law and start spouting nuclear wings, they become dangerous outlaws to be shot on sight. It is the world's duty to destroy these outlaw regimes who starve and mutilate their own peoples, and replace them with freely elected governments responsible to their citizens. Otherwise, some day soon we will get out our maps and have to start scratching out our cities one by one as they go up in radioactive smoke.

Old trustworthy

2005-02-28T16:11:00.001-07:00

100_0013
Originally uploaded by Sherab.

The old trusty rusty air compressor, leaking oil by appearances, ready and willing to serve until further notice.

Buddhist fireworks

2005-02-24T20:19:00.001-07:00

Someone on the buddhist chat line posted a moderately funny joke circulating among conservative blogs recently, concerning bin Laden's rough reception in the afterlife by various dead American heroes and Presidents, and this was one buddhist's response:

"The absolute violence of the aggression imbedded in this post exploded with the precision of colour coded smart bomb of bloodymindedness that dripped with slimy hatred, rotting smelly revenge and poisonous spitefulness so as to engender this response that though positively motivated somehow feels equally infected with aversion and washed with its glorious display of karma...I had to stop to double check that this was indeed being propagated by a member of the Buddhist Organisation and practicing Buddhist....May this be of benefit."

If this sort of purple prose isn't over the top, I don't know what is. If I were the writer, I would save this sort of pulling-out-all-the-stops response to a real event, rather than a harmless joke. When the UN is closed down as the morally bankrupt organization it is and demoed, then go ahead, scream and shout like crazy if you're a liberal. But unfortunately this hysterical style of argument is the norm rather than the exception...many liberals just can't get used to the idea of being contradicted, especially in their safe havens as the universities, major media, foundations and in this case, buddhism.

Being a conservative buddhist is not an easy position -- one's fellow buddhists are all liberal and can't believe you are quite sane, and one's fellow conservatives are doubtful of non-traditional religion, which might be pagan. But I maintain buddhism is inherently politically conservative in its karmically-based attitute that where and what we are is the direct result of our own actions -- no whining allowed. It also embodies the conservative values of justice and freedom for all in its emphasis on compassionate action in the world. The willingness of American soldiers to sacrifice their lives so that foreigner peoples are freed from oppression and tyranny is the highest example of bodhisattva activity.

Non-theistic morality

2005-02-15T12:52:00.001-07:00

Dostoyevsky declared in The Brothers Karamazov (I think) that "If there were no god, then all things are permitted." This is the usual theistic attitude toward morality. But I think there are several flaws in this rather drastic statement. First of all, it gives free rein to anyone whose belief in God has lapsed for some reason, to engage in anti-social behavior...in fact the doubter may feel compelled to "sin" since that is what is expected of him. And then the atheists would also feel they were excused from societal prohibitions.

What is wrong with social controls being based on respect for each other? This kind of respect is incorporated into buddhist beliefs and practices.
I think a case can be made that morality can be based on something other than belief in God....the buddhists have been doing it for 2,500 years. In their case, the doctrine of karma acts as an impersonal force which deters selfish behavior and promotes good deeds. Also, their belief in reincarnation means they believe every sentient being has been their mother in some previous existence, therefore compassion for all life is generated. These beliefs are reinforced by the practice of meditation, which forces one to examine one's mind and see in vivid detail how selfish one really is, and therefore inspires one to engage in less painful selfless activity.

It does seem that social morality without religious input often leads people astray. But buddhism proves religion can exist without a supreme deity.

CNN's Eason Jordon resignation

2005-02-14T10:36:00.001-07:00

This controversy about Jordon's slandering American troops has been brewing for 2 weeks and the mainstream media has tried to ignore it until now...seems like they wanted to protect one of their own...now all they can say is he is a victim of a rightwing-led blogger witchhunt...when in fact his recent statement is only one of many anti-American slanders.
If there is any conspiracy at work here it is the liberal media desperately trying to ignore the blogosphere and impose a news blackout on the developing story. NBC, CNN, ABC, CBS, and the liberal newspapers--The New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, USA TODAY etc.--made a conscious decision to keep a major news story away from the American people.

This is like Rathergate all over again.

Avalon here we come

2005-02-12T00:12:00.001-07:00

Has anyone seen this weird cyperspace Japanese/Polish film called Avalon? I caught last half or so of it tonight on TV....more interesting and less pretentious than kung-fu crazed Matrix, gives some disturbing thoughts about nature of human competition. One aspect of this game-playing culture that ties in with Castaneda for example is the tonal/nagual duality; that is, no matter how soaring one's spiritual experiences are, if one does not take practical and boring care of the physical body, then "the game" and all of one's vast and complex intellectual/mystical experiences are lost and don't mean anything, period....but that if one integrates body and mind in a perhaps heavyhanded way, then one can benefit from such experiences and be a boon to humanity, in the classic heroic pattern as outlined so well by Joseph Campbell.....

Off to a grand start

2005-02-11T19:11:00.001-07:00

We are setting off on that grand journey called by our ancient ancestors "the blog." These ancestors lived at least 5 to 10 years ago, a millennium by modern standards. These brave souls actually wrote their thoughts down in that new medium called the Internet and lived to tell about it. Some had axes to grind, some wanted to communicate with their fellow beings, others just wanted to splash their diary across the universe, since it was now possible.

So as the saying goes, if they can do it, so can I.