Peter Clothier

The Novice: A Book Review

2009-11-04T14:20:26-05:00

The Novice: Why I Became a Buddhist Monk, Why I Quit, & What I Learned, by Stephen Schettini, Greenleaf Book Group Press

If "The Novice" were fiction, it would be called a Bildungsroman--a novel of education. It's not fiction. It's the personal story of a young man who was brought up in Gloucester, England, where he felt himself a bit of an oddball with his Italian surname and an immigrant father who operated a fancy restaurant--exotic for its location, surely, on the main street of an English county town. In compensation, he chose to rebel--against his parents and their Catholic faith, against his school, against the rules, values and conventions of his middle-class social environment. The book is the long story of his battle with the rebel within, and of his coming to terms with himself as a finally liberated man.

His path is not a comfortable one, nor does Schettini attempt to make it so as he recounts it. We follow him from his early, angry years as a child and his defiant, shop-lifting youth to a disillusioned and disenchanted young manhood. At loose ends and casting about for some kind of meaning to his life, he breaks away from family and home, and takes us along on his cross-continental hitchhiking journey to India. Once there, he describes his discovery and embrace of Buddhism; he introduces us to his teachers and his fellow students at a Swiss Tibetan center where he goes to study, and to the often conflicted path toward his initiation as a monk.

We accompany him, back in India, to the Tibetan Sena Monastic University, and watch him grow disillusioned once again by discrepancies he perceives between the ideals of the orthodox Buddhist teachings and the devastating reality of a quasi-medieval environment rampant with hunger, disease, ignorance, and ubiquitous filth. We return with him to Europe and observe his downward spiral as he persists in obstinately questioning the certitudes in which his teachers would seem to have him believe--along with the upward spiral that brings him to a mature, less dependent sense of self and a release, not only from his monastic vows, but from the intellectual torment of doubt. He finds, finally, his heart, and the balance between heart, mind and spirit that can lead to the kind of inner peace for which he has been searching.

It's a lively read. Schettini excels at evoking the particularity of environment, whether natural landscape of bustling city. Here he is, describing his arrival at the foot of the monumental Bamiyan Buddhas (since that time, of course, barbarously destroyed by the Taliban):

Beyond the open space an enormous shadow dominated a sheer rock face at the western end. It was surrounded by several hundred smaller shadows--caves, most of them impossibly high. The lorry brought us into a direct line of sight, and the large shadow resolved itself into a niche in the vertical cliff. It contained something of immense bulk. In a flash of sunlight, the sandstone features were set in sharp relief and the ancient standing Buddha was revealed.

And here's a back street in Kabul, at night, in 1974:

The main streets were lit only dimly [...] I turned into dark laneways and the moon shone in eerie silence, full and accusing. Thick tobacco smoke and male conversation wafted from an open window. In a corner outside, a girl's voice crouched in a shapeless burka, whispering protectively over a bundle in her arms. The embroidery around her face rustled. A bubbling sound from within made me look up, and I watched a refilled narghile being set down amid a circle of men. One of them glanced in my direction and turned away. The girl's hand brushed my ankle and her voice pleaded. I dropped some coins in her hand.

This remarkable facility with language as an evocative tool brings us into the action and places us vividly in the situations Schettini describes. It moves us along, as readers, as much as does the narrative itself. We are present, engaged. That the author is able to bring the same clarity to describe his inner states and his relationships with those around him makes his story as profound as it is compelling to read. As one who myself abandoned the Christian beliefs with which I was brought up and who also found in Buddhism, later in life, the source of a potential inner serenity, I found myself resonating with much of Schettini's experience. His doubts and his intellectual conflicts, as well as the intensity of his pursuit of an elusive truth about the life we're given to live here on earth were intimately familiar to me.

I did find myself wishing that the end of the book--the mature commitment to a life of family and service--had seemed a little less rushed in the context of the whole. In terms of the personal journey, Schettini's re-dedication of himself as a teacher and counselor along the path to happiness could usefully have been given more attention than it receives in the final "Epilogue." Still, this remains a quibble that reflects, perhaps, my personal priority rather than the author's. All in all, a truly satisfying read.

The Form of the Book

2009-10-22T17:07:02-04:00

I'm rediscovering the pleasure of holding a nicely-made book in my hands. Most books these days, even the hardcover ones, have a mass-produced feel to them. No matter how well designed they are, how good the "look" of them, the paper feels toothless and the pages are hard to turn, the print is unexceptional, slick, and hard to keep one's eyes on.

The one I'm reading now -- more detail later -- is special. It stands out from every other book I've read recently, and I was not surprised to find that it was designed by its own author, a former Buddhist monk. I can't resist quoting from his postscript, entitled "Colophon" -- an end note about the book's authorship and printing. Here what he says about his choice of typeface:

This book is set in Linotype Sabon Next. In creating this typeface, Jean Francois Porchez revived a revival. The original Sabon typeface designed by Jan Tschichold was itself a revival of Claude Garamond's 16th century types for the 1960's. By referring to the original metal versions of Sabon for Linotype casting, Monotype machines and hand-setting, as well as Garamond's 16th century pages, Porchez has created a typeface of great utility and beauty.

Now there's devotion to detail for you. In the same passage, the author acknowledges the inspiration of Tschichold's collection of essays, The Form of the Book, subtitled Essays on the Morality of Good Design, whose "hilariously rigid principles," he writes, "have gravely influenced my ability to communicate visually and literally." Absolutely!

Don't you want to run out and buy this book, which so honors its own form. When you have it in your hands you have ... well, a real book. The typeface is attractive, inviting, and easy on the eye, which does not tire at all while reading. The paper has tooth to it, comfortable to the touch, and the pages turn effortlessly as you read. A further delicious touch is that the front ends of the paper, where the fingers reach to turn the page, are not straight cut, but ragged, torn. They remind me of those old French Gallimard publications (do they still do this?) where the pages were not even cut. You had to work with a paper knife to slice them open, to get inside the book to read.

What is this marvel of a book? It's called The Novice: Why I Became a Buddhist Monk, Why I quit & What I Learned, by Stephen Schettini -- an improbable name for a man brought up in Gloucestershire, England -- but then his journey, as I'm beginning to discover as I read, is improbable, too. The title is published in Canada by Greenleaf Book Group Press, and the quality of the book alone is more than worth its price. I'll be talking more about the content in due course. Suffice it to say that the texture of the writing is as meticulously attentive to detail as the book itself.

It's good to know that even in these days of often shoddy mass production, this kind of quality is still attainable to those who strive for it.

Family Fun and Fitness

2009-09-30T13:01:26-04:00

In the context of the current health care debate, I note with pleasure that my friend Knute Keeling has written a splendid and timely book. It's called Family Fun and Fitness: Getting Healthy and Staying Healthy -- Together, and its sub-subtitle is Eat Your Best, Be Your Fittest: How to Hook Your Family on a Plan for Lifelong Good Health. Hmmm. I guess it doesn't sound like something you'd immediately grab for from the bookstore shelf, but believe me, what the title lacks in zappy shelf-appeal, it makes up for in honesty and clarity. This book is exactly what it says it is -- including the fun part.

Absent in good part from the health care debate (a notable exception is the comedian Bill Maher) has been any sustained talk about personal responsibility. The media have in recent months made a lot of the fact that we're a tubby and sedentary nation--well, more truthfully, obese--and that we have been getting tubbier and more sedentary by the decade. Even President Barack Obama, in what I thought was an otherwise brilliant speech to both houses of Congress on the urgent national issue of health care reform, did not take the opportunity to issue a rousing call to Americans to stop smoking, lose weight, eat better, and exercise more frequently. He and his wife, Michelle, have certainly made efforts to set the good example, particularly with their much-publicized White House organic vegetable garden and their public concern for the health and well-being of our nation's children. (I wish Obama were able to announce categorically that he has overcome his addiction to cigarettes, but all I've heard on that front is the cautious suggestion that he only sneaks one here and there ... ) We know that if we were all, as a nation, to take personal responsibility for getting and staying healthy, the costs of health care would soon cease to skyrocket as they have been doing, and the additional cost of covering our millions of uninsured would surely be covered by the savings.

Which brings me back to Knute's book. In the interests of full disclosure the author is--as I noted--a friend, and I have been among the many grateful clients of his training services at our local gym. As a former athlete and a trainer, he knows a lot about the human body and how to keep it fit. With Family Fun, he makes his expertise available to anyone who will listen--and I hope that many people will. His message is an important one: in an initial chapter on "Kids in Crisis", he offers a frightening and well-documented analysis of the state of our children's health, along with a persuasive argument that there are constructive, do-able ways in which this crisis can be addressed. (Take a look at that impossibly beautiful and healthy family on the cover. It's Knute's. The guy with the blond, Viking good looks -- that's the man himself. The fun those children are having as they romp with their parents on the beach is surely genuine.)

Okay, about the content. I was impressed with the breadth and depth of knowledge that the author shares with us. He is up-to-date with the relevant information and statistics in the fields of medicine and social sciences, and he draws on that knowledge to underscore the urgent need for families to change those ways that are proven to be destructive of not only health but happiness. Knute understands the psychological and emotional implications of good health -- and the lack of it -- and argues for a program that will benefit not just the body, but the body-mind. Can there be any doubt but that children who are healthy, secure in their homes, and loved by those around them will do better in school -- and later, in the course of their lives -- than those who lack these early benefits?

Knute starts at the beginning, writing about pre-pregnancy, pregnancy, and the earliest days and weeks of life. With two little ones of his own to have observed, nurtured, and loved, he understands the needs of small children and how they are best addressed. Prime among his concerns, of course, are what goes into the body, how it gets processed into energy, and how that energy can be used for beneficial ends. He makes it all not only very practical but also very practicable. What he proposes can be done by any family with the commitment to a healthy life.

I'm no expert on exercise and nutrition, so I'm not going to attempt a synopsis of Knute's regimen. He takes a good look at the quality of food at the family table, with an emphasis on whole foods and offers some sound, sympathetic advice on how to approach the issue of junk foods with children who are exposed to the daily assault of advertisement and peer pressure. His chapters on exercise underscore the importance of flexibility as well as strength, providing easy-to-follow instructions for practices that can be followed without adding to the burdens of a busy, stress-filled day. The accompanying illustrations work nicely as visual aids to the text. I'll confess I have not tried any of the recipes included in the appendix as healthy and tasty alternatives to the fast food habits to which so many of us are addicted.

We are reminded forcefully by the current heated debate about health care that we are, as a nation, doing a generally pretty poor job of taking care of the bodies we have been given to inhabit for the course of our earthly lives. And we know, don't we, that it all boils down to a matter of choice. We can respect our bodies and live healthy lives, or abuse them, and succumb to the life-shortening ill-effects of overweight, lethargy, and disease. This book holds out the opportunity for the better choices, and makes the bad ones inexcusable for any truly loving family. One of its more delightful aspects is that, beyond being a simple how-to tome, the book is a lovely testament to the author's devotion to his own family. And while it is expressly written for those with young families, its content offers invaluable advice to people of all ages and conditions. I'm personally looking forward to the sequel ... for grandparents, like myself!

The Willing Suspension of Disbelief

2009-09-05T14:31:24-04:00

When Samuel Taylor Coleridge coined this richly associative phrase nearly two centuries ago he was talking, of course, about literature. Specifically, he wanted to justify his love of fantasy, arguing that "human interest and a semblance of truth" would serve to seduce the reader into an imaginative compact with the author. The thought came to mind this morning as I searched for a way to respond to yet another skeptical correspondent who demanded to know why he should continue to believe in the good faith of President Obama and his ability to enact significant health care reform.

Friends write to me to let me know of their distress. I get sometimes bitterly angry comments to my online posts. I read and hear what the left-wing prophets of doom assert: that Obama -- if he was really anything other than one more crass politician who deceived us into voting for him -- has already capitulated to the corporate oligarchy and the strident voices of the right. He should never have been so naÃ¯ve as to put his faith in the mirage of bi-partisanship. He lacks strength and sense of purpose. He should have spoken out earlier and more forcefully. He should be out there, leading...

I know. I hear these things, and I share the deep and troubling concern that gives rise to them. There is a whole big part of me that is ready to give up on all of it; to abandon hope in the weak-kneed Democrats who lack the vision and the conviction to come up with a plan they can agree on; and, yes, to blame a President who at times seems aloof from the fray and disconnected from the people who placed their trust in him as the last great hope for change.

And yet... there are times when the willing suspension of disbelief seems appropriate and necessary, in order to remain true to my own commitment to do what I can do for my fellow-beings with whom I share this planet. I share the skepticism. Call it, perhaps, realism: the facts of this country's recent history and its current affairs speak loudly. Deadlock and acrimony confront us everywhere we look -- here in my own state, California, and in the nation's capital. We are addicted to the material comforts of our lives, to such well-being as each of us has attained; and despite the demand for change on the left side of our national discourse, it seems that great power still lies in the hands of those who are adamantly, fiercely resistant to it. We are like some old, weary Gulliver, unable to break free from the multiple bonds of the Lilliputians who hold us captive.

In this circumstance, one useful strategy that stands between me and despair is the willing suspension of disbelief. I realize that it's a choice: it's "willing." But for the sake of my own sanity in a political culture that my more rational self deems utterly deranged and utterly beyond redemption, I make the active choice, for now, to suspend my disbelief. The act falls short of actually believing. I hold on to a small mental space where I acknowledge it to be a matter of intellectual and emotional choice rather than rational conviction. But the choice is still an empowering one, requiring that I not sink back into inertia.

It's also a "suspension." The mind-space I'm attempting to describe is temporal and provisional. I find that by suspending my disbelief I can more easily watch and wait, and find the patience needed to allow change to happen and, insofar as I am able, to help it along the way. It provides me with a place from which I can continue to act, in the hope that we can still return to our senses as a country, and that we can collectively reconnect with traditional values like compassion and responsibility toward others as well as for ourselves, with a sense of common social purpose, and with that truly American vision of "a more perfect union" that Obama has publicly embraced.

Call me naÃ¯ve. Okay. An idealist. I'd rather be an idealist than an ideologue. But I'm constitutionally and temperamentally averse to succumbing to the kind of inaction and despair I might find myself accepting if I chose to surrender my willing suspension of disbelief. I'll settle for "human interest and a semblance of truth." And for believing, passionately, that acting as if something were possible can be the catalyst to make it happen. This, at least, is the path I choose.

Solidarity (PO/PO)

2009-08-28T15:12:47-04:00

Some good folks have only half-way understood my PO/PO initiative (see prior entry) to be a letter-writing campaign. That's only a part of it. (Do these senators read letters anyway, I wonder?) The more important part, as I envisioned it, was about community action, demonstration, solidarity... Remember "Solidarity"--the movement that led to the liberation of Poland from Soviet domination?

So I'm asking the more than 70 percent of us who say we believe in significant health care reform to be "solid" with our friends, our neighbors, our families, ourselves--and yes, our online contacts. I'm looking for access to bigger platforms, more active support... Facebook (follow link to the group that's already formed), Twitter, big circulation blogs and political sites. Can you do this?

AND I want us all to show up at our local Post Office, letters or cards in hand, at HIGH NOON ON 09/01/09.

Will you help me? Will you broadcast this? Will you be there? Will you shake my hand?

Re: High Noon, 09/01/09: A Health Care March on Washington -- Close to Home

2009-08-22T10:52:02-04:00

JOIN ME! You've been following the news, as I have. NOW WE MUST DO SOMETHING. Here's my personal intention and commitment. It's quick easy, clean.... YOU CAN DO IT, TOO!

Step 1: I handwrite a brief letter to my Senators. "Dear Senator ..., I voted for you. I have placed my trust in you. I hereby respectfully request that you unequivocally INSIST on the inclusion of a public option or its equivalent in any health care bill that goes to President Obama. Yours truly, (signature.)"

(Find your senators' addresses here:)

Step 2: I place my letters in sealed, stamped envelopes, marked in bright, unmistakable letters on the outside: PO/PO (for Public Option/Post Office) in order to identify it as a part of this effort.

Step 3: IMPORTANT! On Tuesday, September 1 at precisely NOON o'clock, I drive, ride or walk to my nearest United States Post Office and silently place my letters in the outgoing mailbox. Suppose I were to find hundreds of like-minded people doing exactly the same thing at exactly the same time? I shake their hands. What about hundreds of thousands, if not millions of good-hearted Americans? We will all come to the US Post Office. We will all place our letters in the outgoing mailbox. We will all shake hands.

What's so complicated? I promise to do this no matter if I'm the only one in the entire country, but I invite you to join me. With your help in forwarding this email and your commitment to this simple action, we can stage a massive, elegantly simple, nation-wide demonstration that links cities, towns and villages throughout the country. It will require a few minutes of your time, but WE CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE.

YES, WE CAN! A vast majority of us say we want significant health care reform. Now is the time to back those words up with action that cannot be ignored or dismissed. PLEASE JOIN ME WITH YOUR OWN PERSONAL COMMITMENT! AND FORWARD THIS TO OTHERS WHO WILL JOIN US! Seriously. We will all meet at our US Post Offices all over the country at noon on September 1st.

Please use the comments here or on this post to RSVP for the "Health Care March on Washington."

UPDATE: If you can, please also support the in-person "March on Washington," originally proposed by Robert Reich and discussed in this Daily Kos diary.

Healthcare: Don't Scapegoat Obama

2009-08-20T12:52:57-04:00

It is now clear that we stand on the brink, ready to shred the last tatters of the great American experiment in democracy. We know from the polls that a huge majority favors serious health care reform, at least one poll suggesting as many as 85 percent. And yet a relative handful of nay-sayers have come dangerously close to denying us the reform we seek. These nay-sayers include a half dozen "Democratic" lawmakers whose livelihood depends on the good graces of insurance companies that stand to reap huge profits or suffer great losses from the kind of reform bill that eventually gets passed; and a minority of voters who choose to remain inexcusably but steadfastly ignorant of the issues even as they scream their opposition, and whose opinions are manipulated by the lies and fear-mongering promulgated by those same corporate interests.

It is a sad spectacle to watch as the man we elected to bring about change on any number of issues that face us as a nation is constrained by political necessity to modify his vision of significant and lasting change. I say "constrained" because I see President Obama as a pragmatist, whose political antennae are precisely sensitive to the line where what can be done crosses over into what cannot be done; and eventually as one who settles for the former. A realistic understanding of what simply cannot be achieved, given the socio-political system we have allowed to take over our country in the past half-century, may be anathema to those who long for radical change. I count myself amongst them. It is, though, sadly, a good deal better than no change at all.

The deplorable fact of the matter is that we have allowed the oligarchs to win. President Eisenhower famously warned us already in the 1950s--and with subsequently validated prescience--of the looming menace of the military-industrial complex. It seems from this perspective, in the first decade of the 21st century, that we "people" have surrendered our power largely to the corporate interests that currently have our government in their stranglehold. We have done this because we were willingly blinded to our long-term interests by the apparently irresistible appeal to our short-term gain. In allowing ourselves to be sold on the seductive--and clearly, in retrospect, deceptive--notion of "small government," we have handed the reins of our government to those who benefit most from its actions or inaction. In refusing to provide our government its lifeblood in the form of honestly paid taxes, we have foolishly ended up delivering that same money, de facto, into the insatiable hands of those who turn it to their profit. They profit from our health care and from our social services; they make money on our security, our military, even on our prisons. They make money on our money. The "privatization" of so many of the normal functions of government has resulted in fewer, more expensive, and less efficient services in virtually every area that affects our lives.

The obsessive and irrational fear of "socialism" that has gripped this country for so many decades has been manipulated by these same people. No question, socialism has produced some sickening, unconscionable excesses. But capitalism has produced no fewer. No political philosophy is immune from exploitation by those whose greed for power and economic gain exceeds their concern for the improvement of the lives of others. In this country, we have shamefully squandered a magnificent opportunity to demonstrate to the world that democracy can work, and have replaced that dream with a squalid oligarchy whose corruption is disguised by our embrace of a shabby illusion of freedom that comes in the form of material well-being.

So let's not scape-goat Obama. It's too easy for the rest of us to whine about the President's failure to persuade antagonists of what so many of us agree we need. He has done, is doing what can be done. But it's disingenuous to expect him to do it by himself. It's too big a job. Those of us who elected this man must recognize that we owe it to him now to do everything within our power to support him in his vision -- or sacrifice the right to sit back and complain. I heard one pundit say last night that we did not elect him to be a good President, but to be a great one. In order for that to happen, as it did with FDR, we must find the greatness within ourselves.

Friends, as the French say: aux barricades! Time to man (and woman) the barricades!

The "Carterization" of Barack Obama (Part V of a Series)

2009-07-17T12:00:22-04:00

This past Monday was the 30th anniversary of Jimmy Carter's malaise speech. It was this speech in which he -- modestly, but unwisely, as it turned out -- itemized a long list of complaints about his presidency from Americans of all walks of life, who had been invited to Camp David to meet with the President precisely for that purpose. Choosing not to take their criticisms personally, Carter identified instead a general malaise which he described as "a fundamental threat to American democracy ... a crisis of confidence. It is a crisis that strikes at the very heart and soul and spirit of our national will. We can see this crisis in the growing doubt about the meaning of our own lives and in the loss of a unity and purpose for our nation. The erosion of our confidence in the future is threatening to destroy the social and political fabric of America."

I was reminded that this is a good time to recall those remarks by a visit this week to the studio of the Altadena-based artist Lynne McDaniel, where I was drawn immediately to a striking double portrait of Carter and Barack Obama reproduced above. McDaniel titles it "Through Their Eyes." Presciently, it was done long before Obama's presidential campaign and election, and shortly after the famous speech he gave at the 2004 Democratic convention -- the one that turned the nation's head in this young man's direction. McDaniel used photographic images for her picture, and a part of the reason it's so striking is that she made one significant change: Jimmy Carter has Obama's penetrating dark brown eyes, while Obama has been gifted with Carter's blue ones. Hence, of course, the title.

I think it's an extraordinary and challenging piece of work -- and not only because the painting itself is so terrific. It is. McDaniel has done an excellent job with the likeness, and the quality of her line and brush-work need no comment from me. Much more than that, however, I find the painting rich in both profound and provocative associations -- which is the reason that I felt the need to share it. It deserves a wider audience than the one it has thus far received, hanging quietly on the artist's studio wall. (Please feel free to forward the image, with or without this post.)

Let's talk about those profound associations first -- the notion of two men from astonishingly different backgrounds who came to share the same destiny as the world's most powerful leader. The painting is a study of that power from two points of view--its devastating after-effects on the face of the older man, and its emanation in the form of hope and promise on the younger. It's a study, also, that tells us much about the psychology of the men themselves, and about the aging process; we read much in this simple juxtaposition of images about the physical effects of age on the human face, and the different kind of energy projected by two men at different stages of their life. It's also, profoundly, a study of black and white American relations, and the inexorable process of historical change. The picture confronts us, unambiguously, with a reality that has changed radically -- for the better, let's be sure to add -- in the past 40 years. McDaniel's painting seems to assert with calm assurance that black and white are, quite simply and inarguably, equal.

Provocatively, though, the painting also raises the frightening specter of the "Carterization" of Obama. I recall, as perhaps you do too, the hopes that we liberals and progressives pinned on Jimmy Carter when we elected him in 1977, after the bitter taste of the Nixon years and the interregnum of Gerald Ford. We wanted radical change, we wanted a more transparent and responsive government, we wanted an end to war and partisan strife, we wanted principled compassion and justice to prevail over heartless, self-first greed and power mongering, and we projected the responsibility for all these needs onto this one, all-too fragile figurehead who could never have hoped to match them.

When he failed to meet up with our expectations and projections, we began to think of Carter as weak and ineffectual -- and projected those qualities, in turn, on the man in whom we had vested so much power. The eventual failure of his administration was, to my way of thinking, as much ours as his. The American electorate began looking to Ronald Reagan for the daddy figure we seemed to need to take care of us, and to compare Carter's image unfavorably with the skilled performance of that screen actor, whose illusion of strength we were eagerly taken in by. (I say "We..." Not me, of course! It's never ME. Is it?) Sure, Jimmy Carter had his failings. He was, in reality, far from the perfect model of strength and manly authority we longed for. So we settled for the illusion instead.

It's my fear that we could easily end up doing the same with Barack Obama. When I wrote the original essay in this series, "When Do We All Grow Up?" it was this fear I had in mind. Once more we have a President who is far from perfect and far from all-powerful. He needs the help and support of millions of others if he's to achieve those things he promised us to strive for. Once more we are beginning to perceive -- and name -- the man's weaknesses, and our points of disagreement. And once more we risk creating the reality we project on him. Government, as I've tried to say, is a contract, depending as much on a willingness to be governed as to govern. I've tried to say that, certainly, yes, it's our job to criticize and hold our man's feet to the fire. We must do so, though, with a clear understanding of the risks involved in each of us promoting the achievement of our own particular goals at the cost of the substantive change we need -- a change that can only be arrived at through deliberate means. It's a big ocean liner we're all sailing on, to use that old cliche; it won't be turned around with a quick or easy spin of the wheel.

Let me be absolutely clear: Obama is not Jimmy Carter. I happen to think he's made of tougher, less relenting steel. I don't see him offering a "malaise speech," like Carter's exercise in self-deprecation, in order to mitigate his falling poll numbers. I'm not worried about Obama; I'm worried about US. And in this context, the juxtaposition Lynne McDaniel offers us in her painting is striking, yes, and poignant -- and more than a little worrisome.

Discipline (Obama, Part IV)

2009-07-15T16:45:39-04:00

It occurs to me that our culture doesn't do much to encourage us to respect discipline, much less practice it. We grow up believing it to be the enemy of creativity and an obstruction to our imagined freedoms; and while we grudgingly acknowledge its value -- for others, chiefly! -- it is not something we embrace with enthusiasm in our own lives.

This is a shame, because it's discipline alone that can teach us to prioritize, to strategize, to persist, and to achieve -- in our politics as well as in our personal lives. Let's start with the personal.

Each one of us, I think, faces multiple choices in our daily lives, and we do not have time for all of them. I don't know about you, but for me the days are more likely to seem too short than too long. Between the chores and errands and the necessities (like eating!), it's often hard to find the time to do those things I actually want to do; and there are so many of those that I won't get any of them done unless I make some choices. I have to prioritize, to choose among them those that are the most important. It's a kind of mental triage, much better performed when it's done mindfully than when I allow pure circumstance to make the choices for me.

Once the choices are made, it's a similar practice of discipline that I need in order to strategize the implementation of my plans. Without some basic organization, things tend to go rapidly awry. I will need the basic materials, I may need to enlist the support of others--who may be more reluctant than I to see it through. I will certainly need to organize my thoughts; or, if I prefer not to start out with the thoughts but rather develop them along the way, at least find that starting thread that will lead me where I want to go, and determine the time and place I need to make it happen.

Of all the disciplines involved, however, I think persistence is the most important -- and possibly the most difficult. There will inevitably be many distractions and many disappointments along the way, any one of which can weaken my resolve. The telephone rings, it's an important call that needs my immediate attention. The dog barfs on the carpet. The bills have not been paid, the leaves need sweeping outside in the garden. Or... the work is proving harder than I had imagined. The words won't flow the way I want them to. What I thought at first was an excellent idea turns out to lead me nowhere. I begin to worry about whether I've said it right, about how I might be judged by others.

I can soon find myself in a stew that only persistence can help me out of. Persistence is a discipline, too. It's a rejection of every distraction and excuse that comes along and a return of the attention to the task at hand. It's a refusal to be deterred from the purpose I have set myself, a quiet insistence on the pursuit of this particular goal. If I don't have it and put it into practice, I can forget about achievement. I'm not going anywhere.

These thoughts were prompted in good part by a much broader concern, this one on the national, even global scale: my continuing -- even increasing -- worry that we stand to squander the very opportunity we created with the election of President Obama. I keep coming back to this because I believe the country -- and indeed the world -- to be in very real danger. We're at a moment in our history where we need ourselves to exercise some of the discipline that attracted us to Obama in the first place, after the spectacle of a president who seemingly had none, and who drove us mindlessly into the abysmal mess in which we find ourselves today.

As I said earlier, we grudgingly admire in others the discipline that we lack ourselves, or fail to exercise. At the same time, it unnerves us. Our natural tendency -- eternal children that we are -- is to rebel against it. Barack Obama, it seems to me, is a man of steely resolve. How else could he have achieved what he has already achieved? How else could he have won the presidency, other than with those abilities to prioritize, to strategize, and to persist? And yet when we see him now -- prioritizing, strategizing, persisting -- we get impatient. Because the achievement of a particular goal might require a sidestep, a feint, a parry rather than a thrust, we are ready with accusations of backsliding and promises unkept. If a principle we hold dear becomes a willow rather than an oak, adapting its strength to the force of the wind instead of snapping in the attempt to remain upright at all costs, we natter on about the loss of integrity and the abandonment of principle.

I only hope that Obama's discipline will outlast our impatience and our skepticism. A man of willowy strength, he understands better than his adversaries the power of knowing when to bend -- and when it's important to stand straight. I choose to believe in his integrity, that those things he put forward as his beliefs and the promises he made when he campaigned and we elected him are still his beliefs and promises. He may not be able to achieve them all in the time at his disposal. It's possible that he'll be brought down by the weight of the multitude of less disciplined minds who seek to satisfy more immediate needs and reap more immediate rewards. For myself, having trusted him enough to cast my vote for him, I'm planning to trust him to take the longer view.

Obama: Is it Time to Give Up? (Part III of a Series)

2009-07-08T16:59:51-04:00

This is the sad--and sadly serious--question I'm asking myself today. Is it time to give up on a political system that is now so irremediably broken that it has become impervious to our needs and irrelevant to our lives? Do we just leave those we elected as our representatives to get on with their incessant partisan blather while we get on with our lives? Is it time, as Voltaire suggested at the end of "Candide," to "cultivate one's garden"? Many friends have taken this path ahead of me, good-hearted and intelligent people who are no less concerned than I about the quality of our lives and our common future. I have understood and respected their choice without, myself, wanting to make the same.

I'm not sure what, right now, may have triggered this question. Perhaps it was watching Future By Design, the film about Jacque Fresco, who advocates a (quietly) revolutionary approach. He sees no beneficial outcome for the human species in adhering to outworn habits of thought and action; as he sees it, the old model of corporate, economic and political power is serving to get us only deeper into the mire we have already created. What's needed now, he says, is a whole new model, a whole new way of thinking about ourselves, the way we live with each other, the way we make decisions...

I have been clinging on to the notion of hope. I think I will still cling to it, when all's said and done, for at least a while longer--perhaps for long enough to see what happens with the health care legislation this year. But I have watched with increasing dismay as "the system" manages to re-establish itself after the ripple of the Obama election, which I had seen as a greater disturbance than it seems, from our current perspective, to have been. It has not taken long to return to the depressing, circular cliche of "politics as usual." I have watched a mind I still consider to be superior and visionary constrained by political and social contingencies that stubbornly reject the possibility of change--out of fear, our of habit, out of ideologies long since proven to be barren. I have watched the ranks of the nay-sayers grow serried on both left and right. I have watched the failure of a social system born out of a belief in the rights of the individual, as the individual grows more strident in demands whilst the larger needs of society are buried in the resultant discord. I have watched as once-great states--most notably our own, California--become ungovernable and jettison even the safety net that protected the children of the poor. I continue to watch as the world goes mad with greed and commerce and the obsession with "growth," on the one hand; and with need, hunger, war and pestilence on the other. I watch as the world's population continues to grow beyond our ability to cater to the needs of all, or even most of its inhabitants. And I watch as those in power stand idly by and bicker over trivialities as the planet speeds on toward its possible destruction.

So is it time to give up? Not on humankind, for God's sake, no. But on the system we have created in order to govern ourselves and serve our common interests and our common goals? Last summer I visited a friend in Oregon and was disappointed in his lukewarm reaction to Obama. He had already given up on the old, and was embarked on the search for something new. Perhaps out of despair, but not despairingly. His wisdom was/is to see stalemate for what it is, and to test the potential for salvation in small groups gathering together to cultivate individual integrity and responsibility, and to take action in the world in the context of a communal good. He was, as I see it, beginning to "cultivate his garden." He calls it creating sacred lifeboats.

I have been telling myself that I'm not that far along that I need to jump overboard. I have been persisting in the hope that things can change within this broken system; that this Barack Obama can change hearts and minds, as a preliminary to making those significant changes in health care, the economy, the environment, world peace... the changes that we sorely need. Call me quixotic, naive, gullible, but I want to hold on to that hope a while longer yet. Which is why I have been posting these Obama pieces in the past couple of weeks, in the attempt to get my own head straight--and convey something of my personal struggle with others who may share my views.

The fact that I have received so much response in bringing up these matters suggests that there are many who share my doubts as well as my by now somewhat desperate hope. I'm particularly saddened that there are those who have read my words as a dismissal of the importance or urgency of gay rights. I understand, I think, where they're coming from, but that was far from my objective. It's one, only, of many points on which I personally disagree with the President without dismissing him, and without using my disagreement to withdraw my support or undermine his efforts. As he has often said, it's not about him; it's about us. He needs me, as he needs all of us who seek to bring about serious change in America. I was talking with a gay friend at the gym today, who said this: "I need to believe in that man." We agreed that Obama is having to walk a crooked path, not the straight (no pun intended) line that those who hew to a straight (ditto) ideological path would have him do. For now, I'm choosing to believe that he's playing a canny game to reach goals that we share. And unlike Rush Limbaugh, I do want him to succeed.

So my answer still is No, it's not yet time to give up. It's a time to be pragmatic rather than ideological. Time to push forward, against the deadwood opposition. Time not to let personal needs and anger get in the way of a last chance to return to sanity. It's no sacrifice of principle to recognize that uncompromising adherence to principle can sometimes serve only to achieve the opposite of its goal. As Shakespeare cautioned us in one of my most frequently used quotations, it's sometimes necessary to follow the crooked path in order to find our way: "by indirection," Hamlet said, we "find directions out."

That said, and while I understand the caution of his approach, I would wish that our President could see his way to be more bold in word and action, and take more risks than he has been willing to do thus far. So far as I can tell, the worst is already happening. We have nothing left to lose.

When Do We All Grow Up? (Part II: Obama the Quarterback)

2009-07-01T11:55:25-04:00

Perhaps I shouldn't have been, but I was frankly surprised by the response to the piece I cross-posted last week from my daily blog, The Buddha Diaries. It was called, if you remember, "When Do We All Grow Up?" and its subject was the kind of foot-stamping impatience with which progressives of all persuasions seem to be greeting Obama's first six months in office. Responses to my thoughts ranged from "Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!" to angry resentment and rebuttal.

Don't get me wrong. It's not that Obama is--or should be--above criticism. Don't count me among those who believe he can do no wrong. I am equally skeptical of those who invest the man with messianic qualities. But I do believe that criticism can be productive and supportive, if offered in the context of the bigger picture I was attempting to invoke.

When the critic allows his or her particular point of disagreement to become central and exclusive, though, the criticism soon becomes narrow-minded, parochial, and destructive. Thus, if I allow Obama's immediate resolution of the extremely delicate Guantanamo problem to become the exclusive yardstick by which I judge his performance, the sine qua non, I risk trying to bathe the baby while I watch the bath water drain away--to pervert an already overused metaphor. If I disagree with him on one, or two, or three issues, must I give up on him altogether and, worse, descend into dismissive vitriol?

The problem is that all-or-nothing progressivism plays into the hands of those who would destroy Obama at any cost--as they attempted to destroy Bill Clinton in the 1990s. While Clinton was able to hang on by the skin of his teeth, remember, it was at the cost of being elbowed further and further to the right in his political agenda. The divisiveness that results not from honest argument, but from anger, resentment, and bitter accusations of betrayal, lends both credibility and power to vitriol from the other side.

One of my respondents suggested the analogy of someone we'd hired to do a job and who should now be taken to task for failing to do our bidding. I prefer a different analogy: I see the President less as a hireling, and more as the captain of a sports team, to whom we've chosen to delegate the responsibility to make decisions in an ongoing series of ever-changing, unpredictable situations. In this analogy, we risk being the complacent armchair quarterbacks.

Then, too, the history of our recent decades should remind us that it's easy to sit back and whine about "the government," as though it were some evil, alien entity separate from ourselves. In doing so, we forget that the government is us. It's a compact between ourselves and those we have chosen to represent us. My point, to put it in a slightly different way, is that in each furiously riding the hobby-horse of our individual freedoms and in demanding that our individual needs be met, we fail on our side of the compact: we become, in effect, ungovernable, even as we blame it on the government.

I realize that my readers may not do so, but I still count myself a progressive. If I had been able--had the society in which I live made it even halfway possible--I would surely have voted for Kucinich. Given the realities of who we are as a society, my question is this: Do we really want to nitpick our current Democratic President to shreds, and clear the path for another right-wing ideologue to follow him--whether in four years, or eight? We complained quite bitterly about the ideological rectitude demanded by the other side. Do we want to sacrifice our own ultimate goals to another brand of ideological rectitude?

I think it's possible not to abandon our ideals and to exercise our right--our duty--to question policies we judge to be wrong-headed, all without losing sight of the big picture. I voted for Obama because I believe him to be a thoughtful man with all the right intentions; because I believe that he does have a firm grasp of the big picture--what Bush Senior dismissively called the "vision thing." I did not vote for him because I thought he could fix every problem in our society within six months, no matter how pressing; or that he would say nothing that I disagreed with; or so that he would take uncompromising stands on every issue. I voted for a man I thought would work, with whatever circumspection might be necessary, to achieve a more just society for us all.

When Do We All Grow Up?

2009-06-24T17:52:25-04:00

(An invitation: in a moment of sudden and inexplicable insanity, I signed up yesterday to Twitter. Let me know if you Twitter too. We could "follow" each other...!)

Okay, I do understand where they're coming from, this growing chorus of liberal critics of Obama. Like them, I'd wish for him to take many stances and promote many policies that have not yet been forthcoming. I want a public health care option. In fact, I'd rather go for a single payer system, nation-wide. I want equality for every citizen, no matter what their sexual orientation. Gay marriage? Of course! Gays in the military? Way past time. I'd like nothing better than to hear a strong voice in opposition to the power of multinational corporations, financial institutions and insurance companies, and I'm all for strict regulation of their activities. I don't trust any of them. I want an end to the depressing saga of the Middle East, and peace between Israel and the Palestinians. I want Guantanamo closed. I want us out of Iraq, right now, and I do not want us getting any further involved in Afghanistan--but I also want the Taliban and other extremists to be disempowered and neutralized. Oh, and yes, of course, while we're at it, I want to see an end to totalitarianism in states like Iran and North Korea.

All these things I want. But let's for God's sake not be childish. Let's not stamp our feet and pout because we're not getting everything we want this instant. We've gotten ourselves into a huge, stinking mess, and it has taken us collectively years--well, decades--to do it. Is it not a trifle disingenuous for us to expect this one man, Obama, to step up and wave a wand to get us out of it all at once?

Let's be honest. The problems that we face right now have been a long time in the making, and they result from choices we ourselves have made along the way. Was it not we voters (not me, of course!) who decided back in the 1970s that we did not like paying taxes, and elected Ronald Reagan to cut them for us (though even He, the Great One, remember, in fact did the opposite!) Have we not spent years protecting and insulating ourselves from the rest of the world--its disease, its poverty, its hunger and other deprivation? Have we not allowed the bigoted and the blindly religious to determine policies toward everyone the least bit different from ourselves? Have we not worshiped at the illusory altar of "strong leadership," while we ourselves do everything to subvert it? And, out in the world, have we not been at pains to promote the myth of "a strong America," as we stomp around in heavy military boots? Have we not listened without the benefit of critical judgment to those who shrieked hysterically about "socialized medicine"? Have we not bought in, endlessly, to those who would sell us snake oil, or promised us a free lunch? Have we not eagerly grabbed, ourselves, at easy profits, idolized false prophets, and celebrated empty notions of success? Have we not raised celebrity above substance, our own material comfort above that of others?

Did we not expose ourselves to the ridicule of the world by impeaching a president for a minor sexual indiscretion? And electing--and, incredibly, reelecting--another of inconsequential intelligence and clearly limited understanding to the most powerful office in the world? Did we not allow ourselves to be lied to, cheated, and led by our noses into an unnecessary and painfully costly war?

And now, as though in recognition of all this, we may have half-way repented, electing a man who sees things differently, who acts with forethought and circumspection, who wisely recognizes limits--both his own, and the country's--and is willing to listen to the opinions of others rather than spout his own agenda. (And Bill Maher wants "more Bush"!) We have elected this man, and now feel entitled to berate him for not providing an immediate resolution to all our problems.

What children we all are! How lacking in patience, foresight, and forbearance! How incapable of seeing anything beyond our own immediate needs. How gimme, gimme, gimme, now! I look around and I wonder, for God's sake, when do we all grow up?

Are We Stupid?

2009-05-28T18:20:03-04:00

In one corner of my mind, I have been watching the threat of the imminent meltdown of the California economy. What was once amongst the most thriving of states with an enviable infrastructure and an education system to rival any other is now approaching bankruptcy. Our once-vaunted system of schools, colleges and universities, already sinking low in comparison to other states, is now facing massive budget cuts that will ensure its further deterioration. Hospitals and medical clinics will likely be forced to cut back on already inadequate staff and services. The poor, the unemployed, the homeless will have fewer resources to protect them. Children, in this affluent society we have created, will go hungry every day because their pitiful lunch programs will be cut.

So the question is, are we stupid? The taxpayer's revolt that started in the 1970s and brought us Ronald Reagan has now become an unquestioned axiom of our political culture. Our Schwarzenegger was elected on the promise that he would never raise taxes. He would listen to "the people" and obey their wishes. Now that "the people" have roundly rejected his last hope for budgetary salvation, he swears that he will listen again, and start making cuts into the last lean meat of surviving social programs.

Friends, we have brought this on ourselves. We have chosen to believe, collectively, those who assured us that we could have all the services we need without paying for them. We have indulged in an absurd system of propositions and initiatives that purports to give voice to the people, without educating those same people to understand the simple connection between what we pay for and what we can expect to receive. We have kidded ourselves that this is true democracy, when it is in fact no better than mob rule. We have allowed greed and prejudice to substitute for reason and sane policy.

Democracy is nothing without education. The capacity for critical thought and responsible, sometimes selfless action is its most essential ingredient. The ability to see further than the day after tomorrow is also a useful attribute. Sheer, blind, thoughtless, self-first stupidity is a poison that has slowly been killing it here in California and throughout the country. I had hopes, with the election of our new president, to have finally perceived a glimmer of electoral intelligence. Now I wonder if I was simply kidding myself again.

Still the Mind

2009-05-13T14:10:41-04:00

Those who have taken any interest in Buddhist teachings will already know that there are many different approaches to the dharma. For those who also enjoy the listening experience there is a pleasure in store in the form of a new release from Sounds True, a double CD offering by Bodhipaksa called Still the Mind.

Okay, let's first get a little bit of exotica out of the way. Bodhipaksa hails originally from Scotland, and brings with him, even after a number of years in the U.S., the delightful hint of a remaining Scottish accent. Combined with a wonderfully gentle, mellow intonation, his voice itself is enough to charm the ears off his listener. Its calming effects seem in themselves almost enough to "still the mind."

So that's a nice bonus. But that's certainly not the meat of the matter, because Bodhipaksa also has an impressive understanding of the dharma, which he shares with the ease of one who is comfortably familiar with his material. There's no straining, here, for definitions or for explanations, just an easy flow of thought which invites close attention without demanding mental gymnastics.

The first of the two CD's, Session 1, takes us from "Starting Where We Are," through an introduction to those "Five Hindrances" that so often come along to stand in the meditator's way, to a discussion of "Mindfulness" and a invitation into "Calm Abiding," where the mind finds stillness. Along the way, Bodhipaksa guides his listener through short, two-minute sessions of breath-counting meditation in preparation for the second disk, Session 2, which is essentially two half-hour guided meditations. His approach is to move from numbering each breath after the outbreath to numbering each breath after the inbreath, to letting go of the numbering altogether -- abiding in stillness -- while quietly observing the different qualities of each as we proceed.

I have no doubt that "Still the Mind" would be a wonderful introduction to meditation for the beginner. But I'd also like to stress that even for a moderately experienced (though still very much amateur!) meditator like myself -- and for anyone who shares with the vast majority of we humans an insatiably busy mind -- Bodhipaksa is a confident guide who provides fresh insights into the process of calming it down for long enough to watch it working, and teach it healthier habits.

The meditation experience can take numerous forms: it can be a constant battle, and difficult, hard work: it is often demanding, sometimes intensely boring; and even painful -- or all these things together. Bodhipaksa's special gift (one of them, let's say) is to show us how the experience can also be a deeply pleasurable one.

Build Your Own Spaceship

2009-05-04T13:03:32-04:00

Readers of my travelog, England/France, might recall that I had the good fortune to have dinner one evening with the science writer Piers Bizony and his family. After dinner, in his recently-built study behind the house, I was awed by some of the books Bizony has produced about space exploration and the universe beyond our earth, with their spectacularly beautiful and mind-bending illustrations (like this one...

... but not actually this one. You'll have to check out his books to see what I mean.) Anyway, he was kind enough to let me have a copy of a (by Bizony's standards) tiny -- and affordable! -- new paperback, How to Build Your Own Spaceship: The Science of Personal Space Travel, and I have just finished reading it.

"Tiny" is a wild misnomer. The book may be small in size and length, but it covers a truly amazing amount of material -- much of which was surprising and fresh even to one who has followed the adventures of human beings in space since the first Sputnik dazzled us with its little, insistent beep and its infinitesimal point of light across the night sky. In part, the book is a potted history of these events, put together by one whose evidently vast knowledge is shared easily and without pretension with the lay reader. The progress from Sputnik through man's landing on the Moon to today's exploration of the planet Mars and the possibility of future visits there -- a matter of little more than half a century -- is hard for the intellect to grasp. Bizony walks us through these monumental achievements with casual grace and an engaging sense of humor and perspective.

In part, too, the book is true to its title: it's a companionable reference guide to the technology involved in building a spacecraft, getting it off the ground, and navigating it beyond the confines of Earth's gravity. For one who, like myself, finds the technology of your average automobile hard to fathom, Bizony manages to make the reader comfortable even when he's way out of his depth. Thanks to readable prose and the obvious passion of my guide, I found myself enjoying even those paragraphs where I hardly understood a thing about, say, the construction materiel or the propulsion fuels he was writing about. I trusted him enough to just go along for the ride.

The reason for this, I think, is the nice conceit implied in Bizony's title: that he's actually talking, with clear-sighted pragmatism, to someone who might take him up on his challenge. In fact it's not really a conceit. He assumes a reader as passionate as himself to participate in the grand vision. And indeed, as he makes clear, there are those people out there -- not simply the outlandishly wealthy who are already funding non-governmental space projects that are within an ace of actualization, like Sir Richard Branson's Virgin project, already advance-selling seats to (not quite so wealthy, but still very well-heeled) thrill-seekers for brief sorties into sub-orbital flight starting possibly as early as 2012. Many of these people, like Branson, are in it for the fun -- not to mention the business opportunity. But also, as Bizony is at pains to remind his readers, there's all kinds of room in the space game for amateurs who can afford to venture no further than their own front door. He is skilled in engaging us in the possibilities.

The nay-sayers about space exploration, of course, are legion. My own sympathies lie most with those who insist that we need the money more urgently for schools and health care than for interplanetary travel. That rightful, if pedestrian, wisdom is outweighed for me, eventually, by the belief that the need to feed our imagination and to create a vision for the future is just as great as the need to find solutions to our terrestrial problems, many though they be. Bizony's delightful book opens the door -- and the eyes -- to realistic possibilities that do not involve the expense of taxpayer dollars but rather those of enterprising individuals who are in it for the sheer joy of adventure and the excitement of ever-new discovery.