tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-58142904190247521772024-02-18T18:19:25.647-08:00The Second HandleLooking to the past to try and deal with the futureCamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11267977679155752397noreply@blogger.comBlogger49125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5814290419024752177.post-30577858308959646742014-06-26T17:44:00.001-07:002014-06-26T17:44:07.453-07:00Climbing out of the rabbit holeThe passion of my youth was getting down to the roots of the big ideas, be whatever those big ideas might be. Delving into them, arguing over them, examining them from this and that way. A good bit of distance removed from my youth now, I've found that those big ideas are all too easily acceded to, all too not easily turned into anything resembling practice.
That practice, that daily life, Camhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11267977679155752397noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5814290419024752177.post-81027770568301924362013-03-20T18:31:00.000-07:002013-03-20T18:31:19.276-07:00Honest ChoicesMillions of choices get swallowed up by our conditioned responses each morning. Rightfully so. We have to live, and living can't involve millions of decisions in a morning. We are lucky to make a handful of good choices in a row with the best of sleep, let alone after being woken by a crying baby four times in the last eight hours. This conditioned living is important to Camhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11267977679155752397noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5814290419024752177.post-41861086159027722012012-05-24T20:59:00.001-07:002012-05-24T20:59:18.713-07:00DisengagingYour sanity and your ability to watch large amounts of news don't get along too well with each other.
You'd have to be overwhelmed by the enormity of humanity's suffering and your inability to do anything about it if you did nothing but watch and read news. Either that or you'd have to desensitize yourself to the point that nothing really affected you. Both are equally problematic.
Camhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11267977679155752397noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5814290419024752177.post-29086795020401527722012-05-05T19:13:00.000-07:002012-05-05T19:13:03.485-07:00An egalitarian cosmopolitanism
One of the tragedies of humanity is that we very rarely have the ability to wholeheartedly and completely embrace our experiences. This seems to be even more true when you think of travelling. Experiencing new places and cultures should serve to broaden our views of ourselves and others, but they're all too often just used as a marketing tool. They allow people to pare down Camhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11267977679155752397noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5814290419024752177.post-75641398430711832632012-04-23T19:45:00.000-07:002012-04-23T19:45:21.744-07:00Do you claim all of your home?One of the central problems with associating the idea of home too much with a place is that you're making a claim to be a part of something that you probably do not even begin to understand.
Our ignorance is unlimited.
When you say that you are proud to be from a place, you should do so knowing what that place really is and what it has been. Pride in nationality or group often stumbles Camhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11267977679155752397noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5814290419024752177.post-51549364090203849562012-04-14T19:58:00.000-07:002012-04-14T19:58:29.419-07:00Where do you live?Understanding home is pretty difficult. We normally assign a pretty generic place name to the idea of home. The further away we get from the place the more and more generic it gets.
Right now I live in the city of Mississauga. If someone from around here asks me where my home is I would tell them "Mississauga". I own a little bit of land here, have a house, just built a Camhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11267977679155752397noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5814290419024752177.post-27028156607246442312012-04-12T14:02:00.000-07:002012-04-12T14:02:21.244-07:00The Stoic is cosmopolitan
Nope, wrong one.
Interesting, but nope again.
Cosmopolitan in it's old, little understood, sadly too often reserved for just those who travel around staying in luxury hotels kind of.
Two weeks ago I'd planned on doing a short series about fatherhood, but hey, the baby is here, and being thrust into fatherhood kind of removes the immediate will to write about it.
Camhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11267977679155752397noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5814290419024752177.post-19009088257165617072012-03-27T19:25:00.000-07:002012-03-27T19:25:05.598-07:00Making it up as you go alongI begin this writing project by talking about names. I was anticipating the birth of my first child at that time, and here I am now, still anticipating that same event. Now, of course, that anticipation is building and building as it gets closer and closer to her arrival. Soon I'll add another title to the list that I've been building up over the years.
This week I plan on Camhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11267977679155752397noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5814290419024752177.post-46960508388809002432012-03-19T19:27:00.000-07:002012-03-19T19:27:54.119-07:00My cup overfloweth, buddhism as daily practiceImagine your mind as a cup.
This cup fills itself.
Thoughts and reactions and ideas slowly bubble up from the bottom.
Whether you are optimistic or pessimistic; you are full.
There's no need for anyone to come by with a pitcher and top you up.
You are overflowing.
What drops out of you dirties up your table, splashes onto others, requires towel after towel after towel to clean up.
You tryCamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11267977679155752397noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5814290419024752177.post-49996310339520510192012-03-14T13:13:00.000-07:002012-03-14T13:13:42.384-07:00Finally, the Fourth!There's a spare minute in my day, and so I can finally put up the final part of the Basics of Buddhism. There are Four Noble Truths. #1, #2, and #3 are done.
#4
There's a way to set things right.
All great ideas are centered around solutions.
The world is full of problems, and people by and large want answers. Those answers might work and they might not. They could Camhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11267977679155752397noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5814290419024752177.post-22084225350869216712012-03-03T09:00:00.002-08:002012-03-03T09:11:57.004-08:00Suffering isn't a broken legSome people like things simple, some people like explanations. The problem with simple things is that they don't always represent the underlying complexity of what's going on. The problem with complex things is that they can hide the real simplicity that underlies much of our life.
Here's the simple stream of consciousness reply:
The word suffering sucks. It has too little and Camhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11267977679155752397noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5814290419024752177.post-72173412829996679492012-02-27T14:20:00.000-08:002012-02-27T14:20:53.915-08:00My problem with the third truth of BuddhismJust in case you forgot the first two, they are, in my words:
1. Life is Awry
2. Grasping and craving create suffering
Number 3 seems almost anti-climactic: You can get rid of suffering.
Sounds great huh? Everyone would love to have a life with no problems, no suffering.
But....
Is it really possible?
Not is it possible for someone who spends their life pursuing that goal,Camhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11267977679155752397noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5814290419024752177.post-40649925710051472752012-02-22T14:04:00.000-08:002012-02-22T14:04:12.142-08:00Zenterpretation for dafcarteCamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11267977679155752397noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5814290419024752177.post-56457774233941904192012-02-21T15:52:00.000-08:002012-02-21T15:52:58.030-08:00Hairless Monkeys Grasping at the AirThose crazy monkeys keep trying to grab the moon, never realizing that all they're seeing is a reflection of it in the water.
A couple hundreds of thousands of years have left us far less hairy than them, but it hasn't made us any less confused about what is around us.
We reach far more deeply than they do, and many times we get our hands on something, but that thing is almost never really Camhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11267977679155752397noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5814290419024752177.post-45594806920231081002012-02-10T19:47:00.000-08:002012-02-10T19:47:49.830-08:00Monkeys reaching for the moonThe condition that we find ourself in doesn't really make much sense.
Life, ultimately, is awry.
The way that this condition has been described in a lot of English translations of Buddhist texts is suffering.
Not being a linguist, and not knowing any Pali or Sanskrit or anything besides my own understanding of what I've read and learned, I don't think that English word really matches up withCamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11267977679155752397noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5814290419024752177.post-42952841397682699272012-02-07T13:05:00.000-08:002012-02-07T13:05:02.953-08:00Rule #1 Life is AwryThere was a week of studying nonstop getting ready for class, then half a week of being sick and slowly getting better, and now I can get back to what I had planned on putting up here a couple of weeks ago- a basic explanation of some of the central ideas of Buddhism. Here we go:
#1 Life is Awry
Some doors just don't close properly.
At nighttime we see things in corners thatCamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11267977679155752397noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5814290419024752177.post-12535203847794781302012-01-20T19:04:00.000-08:002012-01-20T19:04:40.889-08:00We're strangers in our own brainsThere's surprisingly little going on in our heads, even when they seem full of every thought, worry, and stray wisp of consciousness that we can muster. Our stream of consciousness never really dries up, and even when we want it to be still so that we can stop and focus and think, it largely just does what it will.
That stream of consciousness is a lot like a summer blockbuster, a Camhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11267977679155752397noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5814290419024752177.post-86309121684867716252012-01-17T13:12:00.000-08:002012-01-17T13:12:25.703-08:00Decide what to be and go be itThat's a really fun smile. That's Sharon Lebell.
I've never met her, but sometimes there are people out there who you can just imagine really getting along with.
She is apparently a master player of the hammered dulcimer. I couldn't really say what a hammered dulcimer is, but Google of course can, so here it is:
Not that I've ever heard her play the dulcimer. &Camhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11267977679155752397noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5814290419024752177.post-59139242125475432292012-01-11T13:04:00.000-08:002012-01-11T13:07:23.763-08:00Reading is hardI spend a bit of time each day reading The Meditations, not reading in depth or for any great reason, but just finding a random bit and reading it. When I do that I use an old translation by George Long, replete with thee's and thy's and didst's. There's nothing about past speech which makes it in any way "better" than modern speech, and there are arguments to be made that putting Camhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11267977679155752397noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5814290419024752177.post-16023721389543858302012-01-09T14:08:00.000-08:002012-01-09T14:08:14.171-08:00Living in truth, looking at the little bitsWe're all worlds unto ourselves, but we live in a pretty crowded solar system.
When I'm not mindful of what I'm doing I find myself focusing my attention far away from myself, reading lots of random news articles and generally obsessing over how the world is failing at doing a million things. That's not too hard to do, there are millions of articles out there to read, millions of Camhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11267977679155752397noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5814290419024752177.post-13275429477655026202012-01-05T12:54:00.000-08:002012-01-08T05:53:02.329-08:00Opening up your worldviewOne of the things that first attracted me to Stoicism was its call to be a citizen of the world, to be a member of an interconnected humanity rather than a citizen or resident of a specific location. We do, however, live in a very geographically bound world, and regardless of what people may say, the world is far from flat for most of us. We don't often get the chance to truly Camhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11267977679155752397noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5814290419024752177.post-29920908521526464342011-12-30T19:42:00.000-08:002012-01-08T06:13:36.385-08:00Democracy for the sake of dignity, thanks VaclavIn my younger days I believed all kinds of things. I thought that I'd live in Indianapolis for most of my life. That never played out. I thought that I'd probably be self-employed. You never know, one day maybe. I thought that democracy was preferable to other forms of government because it brought economic growth. Way off on that one. We're currently Camhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11267977679155752397noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5814290419024752177.post-37312236059642760772011-12-20T15:44:00.000-08:002011-12-20T18:33:07.568-08:00Always looking backwards, vol3Two very interesting thinkers passed away this week. One was very interesting, got a ton of press, and will likely be forgotten within a generation. The other was very interesting, went through long periods of being largely ignored, and will likely be read and reread for the next several centuries. The first was Christopher Hitchens, the second was Vaclav Havel.
Havel Camhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11267977679155752397noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5814290419024752177.post-48081004388549445972011-12-15T18:41:00.000-08:002011-12-20T18:33:23.003-08:00Freedom to bare it allWhen does "empowerment" to display yourself morph into just another type of exploitation?
Some of the first wave of women who broke social taboos paved the way for a newer generation of women who sell an exploitation of their sexuality as empowerment, and children whose main sense of values are transmitted through the mass media are left with that view of what it means to be a woman, Camhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11267977679155752397noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5814290419024752177.post-3862058623136658962011-12-11T13:21:00.000-08:002011-12-20T18:35:39.945-08:00Mind and body and childrenSome will tell you that there's no such thing as body, that everything is an illusion created by the mind.
Others will tell you that the mind is simply an extended string of biochemical processes and reactions. They're probably correct, but being verifiably, scientifically correct isn't always very useful when it comes to broader questions of humanity.
We need to establish and Camhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11267977679155752397noreply@blogger.com1