Jul 04 2008
Happy 4th, everybody.
I’ve been back for a few weeks now and I’m finally getting my life back in order a bit; at least enough to do a little blogging again.
Where have I been? Only the most awesome place on earth: Manly Beach, Australia. I sold a piece of software I had been working on for quite a while and it was actually the second time this company bought the rights to something I had written, so I knew what I was in for.
Jun 30 2008
Thich Nhat Hanh writes in Being Peace (1987):
The fourth practice is Covering Mud with Straw. You know when you walk in the countryside after a rain, it is very muddy. If you have straw to spread over the mud, you can walk safely. One respected senior monk is appointed to represent each side of the conflict. These two monks then address the assembly, trying to say something to de-escalate the feeling in the concerned people. In a Buddhist sangha, people respect the high monks. We call them ancestral teachers. They don’t have to say very much; whatever they say is taken very seriously by the rest of the community. One says something concerning this monk, and what he says will cause the other monk to understand better and de-escalate his feeling, his anger or his resistance. Then the other high monk says something to protect the other monk, saying it in a way that the first monk feels better. By doing so, they dissipate the hard feelings in the hearts of the two monks and help them to accept the verdict proposed by the community. Putting straw on mud– the mud is the dispute, and the straw is the loving kindness of the Dharma
I want to put straw on the mud. I am not a senior monk. I am just another person asking us to stop the fighting, to pause, unconditionally to cease the hostilities. Maybe if we just stopped and breathed, we could find refuge.
I am inhaling all of the darkness and misunderstanding and hurt feelings and anger and sadness of the past few days, and I am exhaling peace and relaxation. I am inhaling the disputes and arguments, and I am exhaling peace and happiness. This practice is called Tonglen.
Pema Chodron has written about tonglen:
This is the core of the practice: breathing in other’s pain so they can be well and have more space to relax and open, and breathing out, sending them relaxation or whatever you feel would bring them relief and happiness.
Enough talking. Enough explaining. Enough thinking. Enough. Let’s try breathing. Let’s try stopping and breathing. Let’s just stop.
Thich Nhat Hanh writes:
In the peace movement there is a lot of anger, frustration and misunderstanding. The peace movement can write very good protest letters, but they are not yet able to write a love letter.
He could be talking about blogs. He could be talking about us. May we be excellent to each other. May we all be safe. May we all be well. May we all be peace.
Jun 30 2008
A Simple and Humbling Ideal: I try to be respectful to the person in front of me. It’s not exciting like freeing the slaves, it’s not beautifully whole like non-violent resistance, it’s not intoxicating like deep spiritual realization, nor is it grand like changing the world. And since it is not a great cause with a long grand march to an imagined glorious outcome, the results are in almost immediately. It’s not uncommon for me to be reminded that I’ll never be perfect it. (At those moments, I like to think dreamily about the day all humans will live in freedom. Ah, sweet distraction.)
There’s this guy who really gets under my skin. I love to say ironically funny or insightfully critical things about him behind his back. Yeah, I’m that kind of passive aggressive guy–afraid of confrontation but arrogant nonetheless. Surely you know the type. I wish I weren’t petty like that. But there are a lot of different ways to disrespect people. At least my way is occasionally funny. OTOH, with explosive anger sometimes you get to see frighteningly spectacular displays of household goods being creatively employed contrary to their intended use.
There are all kinds of violence, aren’t there. I lived for a couple of years at the Center for Non-Violent Action. My wife and I were young while the other couple were experienced hands in the peace business. One day my wife (ex) said to me, “They talk about and work for peace a lot, but if you think about it, they are pretty violent to each other.” The plain truth of her claim was inarguable.
Jun 29 2008
Your Mama if I Want To,
You would say Your Mama Too, If it Happened to YOU!
Conflict is inevitable
Conflict develops because we are dealing with people’s lives, jobs, children, pride, self-concept, ego and sense of mission or purpose
Early indicators of conflict can be recognized
There are strategies for resolution that are available and DO work
Although inevitable, conflict can be minimized, diverted and/or resolved
Oh really? Who is the know it all that sez so? I say to them
Your Mama!
Your mama is so dumb, she came here and posted jokes about herself.
NO! Mama would never! Mama knows stuff! She is pretty smart. Sometimes she is a bit stubborn, though…. Here is what she said:
She said, “Your Mama is so dumb, I found her peaking over a glass wall to see what was on the other side.”
So, what you are telling me is that sometimes poor communication and the seeking of power causes a person to not see the obvious, right through the clear and open glass?
YEP! Sometimes!
Well, Your brother is so hairy, BIGFOOT is taking HIS picture!
Don’t be ‘dissing my brother! Just because he disagrees with YOU personally, regardless of the issue! Why if you could see his body language here on this blog, you would know that he is much more sincere than you might think he is from reading what he typed.
Jun 22 2008
When I was younger, I used to believe a lot of things I now find remarkably stupid. For years, I dated a beautiful woman who was just a couple inches shorter than me. For reasons I find baffling now, I had the notion in my head that in a couple, it was important for the man to be taller than the woman. So I didn’t like it when she wore high heeled shoes or boots when we went out together. I can’t pinpoint the moment that I got over this particular prejudice, but it retrospect, it baffles me. We actually fought about this once or twice.
Before reading below the fold, read this post by Micha Ghertner.
Jun 18 2008
Once upon a time, there was a story that began, “
for pfiore8
You who read this grant me life. I was born not long after the towers fell, when perhaps the strangest thing happened to me, the boy who wouldn’t shut up; I took a job where my responsibility was to always be present but silent, to hear and not to say. My father once said, “Everyone is necessarily the hero of his own life story.” But some of us make a different choice. Seeing ourselves as a poor man’s Rosencrantz, we volunteer to be the supporting cast of a more brilliant story. We forbear our own audition-worthy monologue in the hopes that the luster of refracted light from more brilliant sources shall bathe us in its reflected glory.
May 19 2008
But the one thing throughout this period that Americans could always depend on, even after Nixon and the collapse of public faith in the president’s morals, was that the lies the American president told would always be the very best lies that science, computerized research, and Washington’s most devious spooks could produce. Our president may lie, but he will lie effectively and spectacularly, with all the epic stagecraft and lighting and special effects available to the White House publicity apparatus. He is never a hack, never a half-assed, off-the-cuff, squirming, my-dog-ate-my-homework sort of liar. Or at least he wasn’t until George W. Bush came around.
“They hate us for our freedom” was possibly the dumbest, most insulting piece of bullshit ever to escape the lips of an American president.
–Matt Taibbi, The Great Derangement: A Terrifying True Story of War, Politics, and Religion at the Twilight of the American Empire
They Hate Us.
Yes, They do.
“They Hate Us For Our Freedoms”
The ringing words of presidential banality. Inspiring, after a fashion.
The community Bush limited his comments to hate us.
Not because of our freedoms…they don’t know us
We won’t let them.
They no nothing of our freedoms.
They no nothing of freedom. Not yet.
They know what they dream, and we’re not in those dreams.
Only in their nightmares.
They hate us because they don’t trust us. Not yet.
The people I am limiting my comments to hate Us.
They hate Us for our freedoms.
Conservatives in power and their minions selling it on cable. They.
Liberals like me…someone with questions, actually expecting answers. Us.
Our freedoms, guaranteed. Us.
Freedoms, meddlesome nuisance to Standard Operational Conduct. They.
They hate Us.
May 16 2008
Howdy!
Welcome to the Grand Opening of the Docudharma Tradin’ Post!
Now open for business 24/7! Make the jump to browse products from our store.
Apr 21 2008
If you’re a kossack, and live within 100 miles of Cleveland, Ohio, then this diary is for you.
(and if you’re not, feel free to go visit the original diary and rec. it anyway, so those of us who are within that area can see it!)
Another good reason to rec this over there: Wouldn’t it be nice to see a non-Primary race diary on the Big-O rec list? 😉
Jump with me…
Apr 17 2008
I’m thinking that it might be time to do an essay rescue, so I’m inviting your contributions.
It can be your own or another’s, the one cardinal rule is that it can’t have appeared on the Front Page already.
Please include a link. Tell me what you think makes this essay something that we should reconsider now. The volume of submissions will determine how I choose to display the results. It’s not that just having it submitted here, especially by someone else, is not recognition, but if there are only 3 I might be tempted to just promote them and if there are a thousand I’ll have to worry about how to present them.
No guarantees. Judgement of the referee (me) is both final and arbitrary. Order of presentation is random and not reflective of merit. Non-presentation is not reflective of merit, simply of relevance to current events.
Apr 17 2008
dK is functionally down. I can’t rate (I can still see hidden so I suspect it’s not all about me) so what’s the point?
I have duties tonight as host of TDS/TCR and I’ve spent most of the afternoon trying to write that.
At first I had 2 hours of chasing down a link to Jon’s guest, and after that another 2 hours of trying to grok my response.
I’m going to post it below, but I think for the show (if I can post at all) I’m going to go with the abbreviated version-
My Mom said, “When you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say it.”
Jon-
Stephen-
- Philadelphia Eagles Cheerleaders, Ed Rendell
The original-
Apr 11 2008
I am not the fine man you take me for. No no. I come in April to sell a string of horses and try my luck in the streams. What I got for the stock I lost at the wheel, and the flake I washed up I drank the fuck away. I don’t know as I’ll get home at all. I sold my boots. I owe $9 to a whore.
~Deadwood
There is something that troubles me about blogging. What troubles me is that we choose what we post, what we share about ourselves, how we present ourselves to others. I wouldn’t have it any other way; relationships with other people online are ill-defined at best, and as much as I like many of you, you are by and large strangers. You are not entitled of more of me that I choose to give you, which is a two-way street, of course.
Like most of you, I try to be intelligent, thoughtful, and courteous when I post. I hope that I succeed more than I fail. But what I think is that being smart or being nice doesn’t mean that I am good. I don’t know that I’m a good person, and I don’t know that y’all are either.