Buddha's Birthday

Depending on the calendar you wish to follow today, the 8th day of the 4th month of the Chinese calendar, is Buddha's birthday. Other calendars such as the Gregorian have it coming later in May or even next week to coincide with the  full moon. Whatever.

Regardless, Happy Birthday to you all. Namaste.

John Lennon

John Lennon would have been 72 years old today. His murder in New York way back on December 8th, 1980 was/is one of the so-called time markers in my life. The world has been a lesser place since he left. It is only appropriate that the lyrics for "Imagine" get remembered today as well.

"Imagine"Imagine there's no heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today...

Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace...

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world...

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will live as one

Longest Day

Today, June 21, is the summer solstice in the Northern Hemisphere, which means it's the longest day of the year in 2011.  The summer solstice occurs when the sun is the farthest north in the sky, directly above the Tropic of Cancer. The exact moment of the solstice today will occur at 17:16 GMT or 1:16 pm EDT today.

Here in the U.S. we usually consider this the first day of summer but in many other cultures it is considered midsummer and, of course, for our friends 'downunder' today marks the winter solstice or the first day of winter.
For those of you at one of the poles you will have a full 24 hours of either daylight or darkness (daylight at the north pole).

Here at chez Monk you can tell it is summer because we are eating full meals just from the garden. Last night it was roasted baby Kubocha squash, fresh sliced tomatoes and cucumbers with Greek feta and Kalamata olive oil and roasted new potatoes. Glorious!

Everyone enjoy the first day if summer and the longest day of the year (or the longest night). It's going to be a long day for me regardless since I have to work from 130pm to 1030pm.

To all my fellow pagans may your Litha be bright and blessed and to all my fellow Buddhists Namaste.

I Refuse To Accept

I had to work today so I didn't get a chance to post this this morning. If you have been visiting here for any time you have figured out that I am probably what many call a socialist or at minimum a dirty hippie. What I really am is someone who tries to live a life of peace and love. I have embraced the teachings of the Buddha and to some degree it is because I lived through the struggles of Dr. King to find the way to a better future for all of us.
In celebration of Martin Luther King Day, a portion of his Nobel acceptance speech:

I accept this award today with an abiding faith in America and an audacious faith in the future of mankind. I refuse to accept despair as the final response to the ambiguities of history. I refuse to accept the idea that the "isness" of man's present nature makes him morally incapable of reaching up for the eternal "oughtness" that forever confronts him. I refuse to accept the idea that man is mere flotsam and jetsam in the river of life, unable to influence the unfolding events which surround him. I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality.

I refuse to accept the cynical notion that nation after nation must spiral down a militaristic stairway into the hell of thermonuclear destruction. I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right temporarily defeated is stronger than evil triumphant. I believe that even amid today's mortar bursts and whining bullets, there is still hope for a brighter tomorrow. I believe that wounded justice, lying prostrate on the blood-flowing streets of our nations, can be lifted from this dust of shame to reign supreme among the children of men. I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds, and dignity, equality and freedom for their spirits. I believe that what self-centered men have torn down men other-centered can build up. I still believe that one day mankind will bow before the altars of God and be crowned triumphant over war and bloodshed, and nonviolent redemptive good will proclaim the rule of the land. "And the lion and the lamb shall lie down together and every man shall sit under his own vine and fig tree and none shall be afraid." I still believe that We Shall overcome!

Social Justice

I was challenged by a commenter last week when I posted the thing about Glenn Beck and his charge to listeners to abandon their church if it mentions "social justice". Terrance Heath at A World of Progress does a pretty good job of addressing the issue. The commenter opined that Beck was correct and that there was no such thing as 'social justice' and never has been nor never will be. Whatever!

Joe On Socialism and Tea Partys

Joe Bageant has another response to a reader up and I think it is worth a read. The reader challenges Joe's previous arguments for socialism and, as usual, Joe responds with wit and a deep insight into exactly what is wrong with our world today. In response to the reader's challenge on there being no successful demonstrations in the world of socialism working (citing China and Russia as examples) Joe responds, in part, with his definition of socialism:

To my mind, socialism is this:
A community and national philosophy, a commonly shared and not necessarily politicized way of life wherein the first priority is the fundamental well-being of the people (also known as "the masses," a term you have probably been programmed to wrinkle your brow in ominous suspicion of.) "Fundamental well-being" means that everyone eats well, enjoys safe and adequate homes and a common standard of good health. It means that children are educated to do more than just the rote tasks that serve corporate empires. It means the man actually doing the work man negotiates the value of his labor. It means that somewhere in the last third or quarter of his life, that working man, after enjoying his freedom, bacon and common work, and diligently sustaining his fellow men, is released from his toil. Released into security and peace and modest but guaranteed sustenance. He is free to nurse his aches, chase old women or take up Bourbon or Buddhism. Or both, as I have. Whatever he chooses as a free man in a free and benevolent socialist society.

I sure don't have any arguments with it.

Nature's Little Rule Book - 1st Rule

I stumbled upon a very interesting website the other day and while it hasn't been updated since 2007, apparently, there are some very good essays to be had. One the most interesting and provocative was an essay by the site's owner Oneida Kincaid called "Nature's Little Rule Book". It is written by Mother Nature to us humans and reminds us of some of her basic truths and rules. I think it would be fun and possibly interesting to post the 10 rules over the coming weeks and see what kind of discussion(if any) it generates. Here is the introduction and the first rule:

Oneida Kincaid: Nature’s Little Rule Book

Hello, dearies, this is Mother Nature. I’m speaking up here because you humans seem to have an awful lot of difficulty understanding and living in accord with the rules of life on Earth, so I thought I’d lay it all out for you in a very simple and direct form. This is very important, so please pay close attention.

Rule No. 1 - Life on Earth is a web, NOT a pyramid.

At first glance, this rule may seem obvious, even trite. “Well, of course,” you may say. “I know that! Tell me something I don’t know!”

But this rule is not directed at your rational mind, which probably knows perfectly well that life on Earth is a complex interweaving of hundreds of millions of different kinds of organisms and processes. Instead, it is aimed at your cultural mind, the one that has been trained from the day you were born to believe in the mythology of your modern culture - a mythology that, when it is lived out in billions of peoples’ lives around the world, is destroying the web of life on Earth.

“Hey, wait a minute!” you are probably thinking. “We modern, scientific people don’t believe in myths anymore! Myths are only for less developed, pre-scientific cultures.”

But given that you humans seem almost completely unable to alter your destructive way of life even though your supposedly rational, scientific minds are generally quite aware that you are destroying the fabric of life on Earth, it seems rather obvious there’s something else going on than just rational, scientific thinking. That something else, I suggest to you, is mythical thinking.

In its most basic sense, a myth is simply a story that attempts to explain to the people of any given culture how something came to be the way it is. A mythology is a collection of myths that, taken together, attempt to explain and express a culture’s deepest understanding of the world and how it works, and the place of humans within it.

Of course, you modern humans don’t see your myths as myths, you think they’re The Truth, just like every other culture from the Greeks to the Maya has viewed their myths as The Truth. That’s what’s tricky about myths - they don’t appear as myths to those living in them. So although you think modern people have progressed beyond all that mythology stuff, the fact is that snuggled up right beside your scientific understanding of the web of life is the pervasive myth that life on Earth is a pyramid - with humans at the very top.

According to your modern mythology, the broad base of the pyramid of life is populated by all of the bacteria and other supposedly “primitive” forms of life that are viewed as being animated by merely the instinctive struggle for biological survival and reproduction. In your mythology, as one climbs up this mythical pyramid, life becomes more and more complex until suddenly there is the great leap to the much-vaunted self-consciousness and presumed “superior intelligence” that allegedly makes you humans so “special” and “unique” among all the rest of life on Earth.

A more extreme form of this “myth of the pyramid” goes even further, lifting humans completely off the top of the pyramid and placing them in the space somewhere above it. In this version, humans have somehow magically transcended the whole messy, instinct-driven mass of life: there is the “natural” world - nature - and then there are humans.

This mythic imagery of a pyramid with humans at top is designed to emphasize several key, interrelated aspects of the “story” being told by the mythology of human civilization:

One, that humans are so special and different from all other forms of life on Earth, that you have somehow been elevated “above” everything else;

Two, that because you are such a special species, you are exempt from the rules of life that govern every other species on Earth;

Three, by virtue of your superior position at the top of the pyramid, you humans are somehow “meant” to rule over and use the rest of life on Earth for your own purposes; and,

Four, even though your supposedly “civilized” way of life is driving you to both a human and ecological catastrophe, you can’t give it up because that would mean giving up everything that makes you humans “special” and admitting that you are not, after all, “meant” to be at the top of the pyramid, dominating and using the rest of life on Earth.

In other words, the guiding mythology of modern society is the “myth of human exceptionalism” - a story that tells you that humans are so utterly special that the rules of life that apply to every other species on Earth somehow don’t apply to you; that the world was, in effect, made just for humans so you could have a stage upon which to show off what a wonderful and “highly evolved” species you are; and that you have no choice but continue acting as you have, even though you now face ecological catastrophe as a result, because that would mean not fulfilling your supposed “destiny” as the most wonderful, special species that has ever walked the face of the Earth.

The myth of human exceptionalism also tells you that humans are so special that, unlike every other species on Earth, you can somehow control your fate (and the fate of everything else that lives on Earth). That is the enormous - and fateful - conceit and drive behind agriculture and the entire edifice of human civilization that agriculture has inevitably spawned - the desperate attempt to wrest your fate from the “hands of the gods,” to become as gods yourselves, supposed masters of your own fate. But you are not gods, you do not have the gods’ wisdom about how the world works, so you are making a real hash of things in your vain efforts to be as powerful as the gods.

I hope that by now it is clear that, regardless of how you modern, “advanced” humans like to think about yourselves, the fact is that you do have your own unacknowledged myths and mythology. In and of itself, that is not a problem. What is a problem is that your particular mythology - the myth of human exceptionalism - has led to the point where Earth now stands on the edge of a sixth mass extinction, one caused not by an massive asteroid from space but by 10,000 years of humans living an unsustainable myth.

What is worse is that you seem helpless to do anything to stop your incredible destructiveness, even though you now stand on the brink of ecological and human catastrophe. In such a dire situation, it really does become imperative that you try to tear the blinders off and take a hard look at the mythology that is driving you to persist in such a destructive way of thinking about and living human life on Earth. In short, you need a radically new way of thinking about and living human life on Earth.

P.S. I know some of you might jump ahead and read all the rules but let's just focus on one rule at a time.
P.P.S. I did a quick Google for Oneida Kincaid and came up pretty blank. If one of you are better at this sort of thing than I it would be interesting to know what has become of her since this was posted in October of 2007.

Sitting on Buddha

This little guy uses the Buddha in my garden to announce his presence in the world on a regular basis. He sits and barks at the world for long stretches. Today I was ready with the camera and he stayed there long enough for me to get him from both sides. Thanks little buddy.

Nirvana Day

I shouldn't let this day pass without also noting that in the tradition of many Mahayana Buddhists it is the observance of Nirvana Day. This is an observation of the Parinirvana -- death and entry into Nirvana -- of the historical Buddha. While the entire concept of Nirvana and the Buddha is not amenable to words there is a poem that strikes me as something close.

High Flight

Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds...and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of...wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there,
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air.
Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
I've topped the windswept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or even eagle flew.
And, while with silent, lifting mind I've trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

This was written by John Gillespie Magee, Jr.,an Anglo-American aviator and poet who died as a result of a mid-air collision over Lincolnshire during World War II.

Secret My Ass!

There is a book flying off the shelves of bookstores around the country. Oprah has covered it at least twice on her show. It is called "The Secret" and claims to hold the answer to life's deepest mysteries. It has sold more than 1.3 million copies in the United States alone. It is written by an Australian TV producer Rhonda Byrne. I haven't read the book but I have read enough about it to understand how dangerous it truly is.

Here is the secret..."The Secret" is, very simply, the "law of attraction." Despite it's claim of revealing hidden wisdom "for the first time in history," the concept dates back more than 3,000 years to early Hindu teachings that "like attracts like." The author writes "Everything that's coming into your life you are attracting into your life, You are the most powerful magnet in the universe . . . so as you think a thought, you are also attracting like thoughts to you."

Even though she has her physics a little backward, when it comes to magnets, it's opposites that attract, it is supposed to be the power behind geniuses such as Plato, Newton, Beethoven and Einstein. It's purported to be the ultimate shortcut to success and the American dream. Anyone who wants it badly enough can be a multi millionaire or even president. It is odd that nothing about hard work, talent, education or even luck is mentioned but if you are to believe "The Secret" all you have to do is "put in your order in with the universe." Ask. Believe. Receive. It's just that easy!

As usual all of the hard core believers fail to remember that every coin has two sides and that there is an ominous implication to accepting Byrnes' promise. If bad things happen to you, it's all your fault. As surely as your thoughts can bring you health, wealth and love your thoughts are also the cause of your illness, poverty and misery.

I am not making this up! This inverse reality is spelled out very clearly: "The only reason why people do not have what they want is because they are thinking more about what they don't want than what they do want." Follow this twisted logic to its end and you find that everything that happens to you is your fault. The soldiers dying in Iraq are to blame for their own deaths, all the people in New Orleans who lost their homes...right again, not thinking the happy thoughts. On the surface this might sound harmless enough but there is something very sinister hiding behind the glitzy self help screed. It is spelled out quite clearly in the book:

"Imperfect thoughts are the cause of humanity's ills."

"The only reason any person does not have enough money is because they are blocking money from coming to them with their thoughts."

Do you see where this is going? It's the age old scam of blaming the victim, of creating the impression that there is some external agency to blame for the condition of the world. The devil is the cause of sin in the world. Accept the truth(AKA Jesus, God, Allah, etc.) and the world will beat a path to your door. You are weak and a sinner and cannot be expected to walk the straight and narrow all the time. That is why Jesus died on the cross, don't you know, so that you could sin without worry and as long as you accept Jesus into your life and acknowledge your wickedness you will rise up to heaven when the trumpet sounds. Hallelujah! This whole misplaced philosophy, while attractive and comforting, excuses the pain and suffering of the world by some abstract excuse that people get what they deserve. This sham allows people to blame the victims for their lot in life and relieves one of any responsibility for anything outside of themselves. This is a bad thing.

This is the philosophy of separation and exclusiveness that, in reality, is the root cause of all the pain and suffering in this world. This is very subtle but very insidious. I can ignore the pain and suffering in Darfur because it is something outside of me and caused by some lack of the people there. They obviously aren't thinking positively. If they were truly good people then God wouldn't let this happen to them.

This thinking is the tragedy of modern religions whether they be Christian, Muslim or whatever. It surely isn't the teaching of Jesus or Buddha. Who realized that as long as we kept ourselves separate from the universe and everything in it we would suffer. "The Secret" is just another excuse to reinforce the ego and separate ourselves further from the peace that is found in accepting our oneness with everything around us. The starving child in Darfur, the dying soldier in Iraq, the homeless man in New Orleans or the drowning polar bear in the Arctic are diminishing the universe and therefore diminishing me for I am not separate from them nor they from me.

The way of the Buddha is to know yourself,
To know yourself is to forget yourself,
To forget yourself is to be awakened by all things.

-Dogen
Genjo Koan