As my blogging goes through a weird and wild transformation, I have found myself attracted to many seemingly unrelated phenomena.

I found a Buddhist site that I have both attraction and aversion towards.  I’m not sure about the fellow who writes the blog, but he does have a great blogroll (if you’re into the Tibetan Buddhist lineages) and reprints some of the most treasured Tibetan Buddhist texts which were translated at great expense of time and money, not to mention the daring and courageous activities of those teachers who fled Tibet starting in the 1950s who were determined to help spread this 2,500 year old philosophy to the west (an amazing story in itself).

Anyway, that’s neither here nor there, except I found this picture and post so adorable:

Baby, It’s Cold Outside

Winter is definitely here, everybody is making plans for the holidays, and the hearth is merry. But, what of the little stinkers? Do they just magically cope with freezing temperatures?

Now is the time to pay special attention to setting out food and water for the small creatures of the fields and air. This is their most difficult time of year, when they must fight for survival.

It doesn’t take much to begin the habit of tossing a couple of extra bags of seed on the cart when you’re in the supermarket. What can it cost? Ten or fifteen dollars? Stop buying the National Enquirer, back off the booze, and the Viagra, and you could feed a whole zoo.

If you are expecting anything normal, please skip to the next essay … oh wait, this is Docudharma, scourge of the intertron!

Nevermind.

String Around the Spiritual Finger

If compassion were

a person standing before me

or an animal, a tree,

or a chair or even a computer

or an I-pod,

I would bow before her, him, it

with some real confidence.

So write something

to effect you are not pure

but covered with slung shit,

encrusted, all sorts of gross images

till it can be seen, felt,

smelt, tasted, heard.

Then a shift of vision

to the lotus which grows

from that very exact same shit

and the vision I had a thousand

lifetimes ago about being

mired in that vile manure but

of my own free will

looking directly up at the

White Tara deity,

embodiment of compassion

from that foul pool

of obscuration and hopelessness,

and willingly feeling

I was contributing

to that compassion,

looking miraculously

upward, it was

no different than

standing in midtown

or wall street

walking down the street

never even thinking to

look up and then

you look up

and everything is

entirely different,

your view has

transformed.

a crazy thing!

so understand

and remember:

homage

to Tara is

homage to

compassion

1/22/09 – I didn’t have anything to blog about, but I wanted to drop in and make my dharmaniac mark for this is what I’m up to lately and what’s on me mind

The verdict:

MILAN (Reuters) – An Italian judge sentenced 23 former CIA agents to up to eight years in prison on Wednesday for the abduction of a Muslim cleric in a landmark ruling against the “rendition” flights used by the former U.S. government.

Judge Oscar Magi dropped the case against another three American defendants and the ex-head of the Italy’s Sismi military intelligence service, Nicolo Pollari, as well as his former deputy.

From the Guardian:

The Americans are accused of kidnapping Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr, also known as Abu Omar, on Feb. 17, 2003, off a street in Milan, then transferring him to U.S. bases in Italy and Germany. He was then moved to Egypt, where he says he was tortured. He was released after four years in prison without being charged.

The trial is the first by any government over the CIA’s extraordinary rendition program, which transferred suspects overseas for interrogation. Human rights advocates charge that renditions were the CIA’s way to outsource the torture of prisoners to countries where it is permitted.

The convicted Americans have been tried in absentia.

It would be good to have a copy of the decision in this case – in English, as I don’t speak Italian.

I know this is going on the front page and I will try the best I can to make every effort to earn that privilege, given my subject matter.

We’ve had some uproars with Underdog’s essay, where he is grappling with how to respond to authority on a blog.

Today I encountered a bit of that as well and was challenged as to my own thinking.  I imagine this, in a way, like Underdog was the big brother, getting kicked around first so that by the time I got dealt with it was far less being kicked around-ish.  As the youngest of six children, well, my parents were pretty worn down by the time it came to tell me what to do.  Heh.

I don’t consider Meteor Blades primarily as someone who posts at Daily Kos, someone who has taken on the job of Moderator in Chief, even though he has accomplished a great deal in that area.

To me, he is much bigger than that.  Just google him.  I’ve seen him post on one particular website which was begun as a hate-Daily-Kos site – he was excoriated and sarcasm and bile was dripped all over him.  It didn’t seem to faze him much.  I’ve seen him at Booman.  And of course he has posted here as well, since the beginning of Docudharma.  He came here as well to DD to pay Underdog the respect of addressing his concerns.

Underdog was amazing in how he allowed all of us to experience his innermost feelings in a very difficult situation.  He opened himself up fearlessly.

How much authority are any of us willing to obey?  What is obedience, anyway?  If it is voluntary, then that’s a far different experience than if we are either forced or coerced or tricked etc.

One of the most bizarre notions to come out of the struggle for health care reform was being told over and over again, “Oh single payer never had a CHANCE!  It was never on the table!” said in tones by my fellow Democrats that implied one would be truly insane to suggest single payer be the starting point for any negotiations.

Well we’ve seen how that worked out.

If we’re lucky, we’ll get a weak and watered down public option that will take several years to get up and running, and we’ll be spending those years fighting tooth and nail with vested interests who will do everything they can to make it even more watered down and weak.   And the same will hold true for all the other regulations proposed in the health care bills, with insurance and pharmaceutical companies spending millions to create loopholes that will benefit them and make the rest of us suffer.

We’ve been playing defense far too long.

Yes I know, we have the Conservadems to deal with, we have those nasty Blue Dogs, we have a media who likes nothing better than to pursue inanities for ratings rather than inform the citizens of this country, we have many and dire obstacles in our path.

So why play defense, given that?  What is the advantage?

I don’t need anyone to tell me that injustice is immoral.

I don’t need to hear that intangibles like justice and morality are nice when you have the time for them but during this political season it isn’t pragmatic to use those intangibles to deal with present problems.

I don’t have to organize a community or canvass a neighborhood or contribute money to candidates or even be politically savvy to know this and to act upon it.

I am a citizen.  As one individual, I am as powerful as I allow myself to be.

Justice and morality – without being mindful of those intangibles we will simply continue to go on as we have been going, pessimistic, angry, watching others suffer and seeing no change in that suffering while those persons of privilege continue to enjoy their good fortune.

I am happy for those folks who enjoy their good fortune.  I do not believe their good fortune takes anything at all from me.  I’m funny that way.

But I don’t consider it good fortune to see other human beings, my brothers and sisters on this planet, suffer – and to turn away is equally as painful because in order to do that I have to block off my own heart.  That is not good fortune either.

It’s intangible, you see.

Jack Teagarden and Louis Armstrong, “Ole Rocking Chair.”

At the end of the video (courtesy of YouTuber pinkieldred) these words appear … you hear a narrator reading, I believe, something Mr. Louis Armstrong wrote about the time he first met Mr. Jack Teagarden.

One day when I was playing on the riverboat, we put into New Orleans and standing on the levee was this tall white cat named Jack Teagarden who wanted to meet me.  He was from Texas and I never heard of him, but he said, “You a spade, and I’m an o-fay.  We got the same soul.  Let’s blow.”

The rest, as is said, would only be commentary.

Tuesday in America, almost autumn of 2009.  Beat in the USA.

The other day Duke1676 posted a diary at Daily Kos entitled Words Do Matter Mr. Obama.

See, here’s the thing.  The advocates for progressive immigration reform  have reached a big obstacle when it comes to moving forward on this issue — the progressive activists and the Democratic Party itself.  The challenge is to change the dialogue so that progressive bloggers don’t repeat and feed the same old right-wing memes on the issue — the same old ways that we saw during the “debate” over the Iraq War, over FISA, over the notion that because Democrats are supposedly seen as “weak on security” they have to move far to the right in order to convince the average American otherwise.

The most recent example of this as described in Duke’s diary, is that during President Obama’s speech, he made a point of using the term “illegal immigrant” as a political choice when talking about how undocumented workers will not be covered under healthcare reform legislation.

Yeah, it’s just a word, isn’t it, why get all bent out of shape about it?

(crossposted from orange)

Just finished watching President Obama’s speech in Cincinnati.

I really liked it.  And it put to rest something that has truly disturbed me when it comes to the notion that President Obama should not … and even CANnot, show anger.

I thought he showed a whole lot of anger.  I thought he showed it very well.

When he spoke about those who are lying about his health care reform, those who say we’re trying to “kill granny,” and he said he had “one question” for them — “what is YOUR solution?”

I saw the anger.  I saw it blaze in his eyes.

I have to wonder why folks think that for Obama to show anger he has to go hysterical and lose his temper.  And I have to wonder why those of us who have counseled that he should show his anger have been admonished to see this is a racial issue.

I understand the historical context.  I understand that for generations if a Black man showed his anger, trouble followed both him and his family.

I understand that.

What I don’t understand is the misunderstanding, the assumption towards what most folks like me mean when we say we want to see Obama’s anger.

It’s a sterotype in itself, that assumption.

He showed anger and passion in that speech.  It was a real barn burner, imo, after a kind of slow start.  And I think it was good for him, as well, to be in the midst of the kinds of folks who worked so hard to put him in office, for him to get that jolt of support and be reminded of the great energy of his campaign.

He didn’t waffle, he didn’t get wonkish.  He spoke about health care using a big narrative, connecting it to families and workers and the strength of our economy.  He showed his anger with what we are ALL angry with — greed, selfishness, an old way of doing business that benefited the few at the expense of the many.

He showed anger in his own way and I felt that and applauded it.

I hope he shows that passion and anger this week when he speaks before Congress.  I hope he can show the American people that he is angry FOR us, that he understands what too many folks are suffering.

And I hope that finally, the notion that Obama cannot show anger will end, that we won’t fear for him any more when it comes to that reality.