The Banality of Evil

Recently released photographs of SS officers and nurses of Auschwitz relaxing and eating blueberries at their Solahutte, near Auschwitz.

Mirrors

In the Fifth Century, a.d.,
The Fifth Patriarch of the Dhyana School
arrived at Pao Lin Monastery and told the monks
that he who understands the Essence of Mind
would be given the robe, the Dharma, and the
Sixth Patriarchate.

Shen Hsiu wrote his stanza at midnight
by the flickering butter lamp on the
wall of the South Corridor. It read:

Our body is the Bodhi-tree,
And our mind a mirror bright.
Carefully we wipe them hour by hour,
and let no dust alight.

But the Patriarch already knew that Shen Hsiu
had not known the essence of Mind.
And, we might add, that while Shen Hsiu's stanza
makes him no zen master it might
make him a very good chinaman.

But Hui Neng, the monastery's woodcutter,
was prompted to give his stanza. He spoke:

There is no Bodhi-tree,
Nor stand of a mirror bright,
Since all is void,
Where can the dust alight?

The Patriarch, upon hearing Hui Neng's stanza,
handed him the robe, the begging bowl, and the
Patriarchate.

14 centuries later, my friend
who sees things so clearly
wrote on a flap of his travel itinerary:

If there is a mirror
Or if there is no mirror
I am the mirror

To which I can only add
this possibility:

If I am the mirror
It is not my mirror
We are the mirror

These dog haiku will win us no robe,
nor begging bowl, nor patriarchate.
But to us it does not matter
and we do not mind.

Clowning Around

The following excerpt is from James Howard Kunstler's "The Clusterfuck Nation Chronicle", published every monday morning. Kunstler's entry of 9/17/07 "Shocked, Shocked!" follows up on the recently released book by Alan Greenspan "The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World". While Kunstler may be right that Greenspan bears considerably more responsibility for the rise and fall of the housing market, noone can doubt the veracity of his observations when it comes to the cultural significance of the physiognomy of the venerable Greenspan. On this point, I quote Kunstler in full:

"In his old age, Alan Greenspan's face -- once darkly handsome in his youthful years as a jazz musician -- has taken on the strange appearance of a circus clown. Something about the way his lips have settled into a kind of thick fatuous smile, even when he is apparently not amused by anything. Is it one of God's clever little tricks to leave him looking like a clown in his valedictory years, or has his face just resolved into the perfect embodiment of leadership for a clown nation?"

I don't understand why Kunstler is not tapped to replace Andy Rooney on 60 Minutes. Observations like that are priceless--enough to make a working stiff chuckle week in and week out. If not 60 minutes, then at least the NYTimes. Somebody recognize this guy's talent!

Great Blue Heron

This is my variation of the classic Scotch spey pattern, the Grey Heron. Driving to work the other day, I came across a pair of roadkill blue herons and rescued them from an unceremonious funeral on the shoulder of the freeway. I nestled the pair together on the bank of a nearby river under the moon, where the gentle flow could be heard. They were a male and a female by the looks of it, possibly mowed down by some semi-truck as they were lifting up in flight at dawn off a nearby marsh. Here is my homage to the glorious bird, great fisher bird, the Great Blue Heron.
Great Blue Heron
Hook: Alec Jackson Spey size 1.5 top, size 7 Bottom variant
Thread: Danville Red 8/0 or Blue
Tag: Silver Mylar, Wine Unifloss
Body: Silver Doctor Blue Unifloss wrapped with oval silver tinsel; can also add Navy Blue Siberian Husky fur, dubbed loose
Hackle: Great Blue Heron neck hackle
Throat: Guinea Fowl, select
Wing: Great Blue Heron primaries, lighter underside out, tent style or looser Dee style acceptable; tented bronze mallard Spey side a variation

Teaching the Impossible to the Delusional

In the student reviews of my teaching I have often noticed that a certain fixed percentage find the course "boring" or "irrelevant" to their experience. These kinds of reviews usually give me low scores for motivating them and they might throw in some callous remark like "needs a new set of clothes" or "doesn't explain things so I can understand" and so forth. I used to get angry when I'd read these reviews, thinking to myself you don't deserve to say these things, you haven't the right to this view. I still think that, of course, but I see a new level of truth to these reviews and remarks. And no, no I don't recognize the validity of these remarks. Rather, I see in them all the hallmarks of delusional thinking--delusional thinking that has been drummed into these kids from day one.

It begins with the parents who are themselves deluded in important ways. First, the parents are anti-intellectual--they themselves hate learning and so they pass on the bad habits to their children. They read very little, watch TV to numb the boredom of their lives, and they generally have an authoritarian cast of mind (learnt from the work world) which they impart to their kids. For them the role of the teacher is to make up for what they lack, what they have failed to impart to their children. Their end of the bargain is simply we pay for it so you must supply it. And then they turn their kids over and expect a miracle--but, again, they don't really want a miracle because that would put them at odds with their children who would come to disrespect them for their anti-intellectualism. So the message to the kid is "yeah, go to college, but remember--its all bullshit, anyway." The bad intellectual habits that they engrain into their children are too deep and long entrenched to uproot in one semester. I have seen some remarkable changes in a few remarkable individuals, but about a third of every class bears the mark of this upbringing, a kind of recalcitrant anti-intellectualism and they cannot be shaken loose from their position. Why?

They cannot be shaken loose from their position because to be shaken loose is not like anything they've experienced before. Its not like being suddenly jolted with a good caffeine drink, nor is it like being entertained to the point of losing yourself, nor is it like a religious ceremony in which you are brought to tears. Rather, it is the somewhat disappointing and depressing awareness of the fact that you are ignorant. And, out of that awareness, can grow (if things go correctly) a sense of shame--of being ashamed of this fact. And, what can follow from this is a commitment to do what it takes to overcome one's ignorance. What these kids are expecting is to be moved rather than to move themselves. The media has a hand in this with its image of the superteacher setting young minds on fire like in Stand and Deliver or Dead Poets Society. When the reality of working for your keep dawns on them--that learning is not an hour and a half movie set in the Autumnal blazes of a northeast campus with the love affair, the inspiration, the soundtrack, etc., what a rude awakening it is. The journey must begin from a vivid sense of what one lacks.

Of course, many, many things prevent this journey from getting going. For one thing, it goes against human nature itself which tells us that we are okay as we are--that we're doing just fine. This is called the Lake Wobegon effect. Second, it requires giving up the anti-intellectualism bred into the kid by the parent. To overcome this one must also overcome one's parents--or, at least, their cast of mind. But to do so entails biting the hand that feeds and they are, after all, paying for this whole college experience. They must know the value of it or, even if they do not, the kid learns to get just as much from the college experience as is needed to reduplicate the relative success of the parent. And third, and this is the really important point I would like to make: the culture in which these children are reared--a culture which has shaped the thinking of the parents and of every "successful" individual in their lives is a culture that is a runaway train. It is a culture that valorizes consumption and accumulation of wealth to the detriment of learning and of uprooting these tendencies. This is why students regularly report that the only reason they go to college is to get a job to make more money. The rest of it is there as a kind of bad joke or painful bunch of bullshit that they have to endure until its over.

When these students open up Plato or Kant and discover that it is not Stephen R. Covey's Seven Habits of Highly Successful People what a disappointment it must be! This is why I cannot help these students and I'm quite happy when, at the beginning of the semester, many realize that my game--my teaching--is hard and painful for them and they realize they are not up for it. I gladly sign their drop course form, now, knowing why they are dropping the course more than they can understand.


Perhaps this kind of thing is what is needed to cut through the delusion: http://www.whatawaytogomovie.com/trailers-and-reviews/

Goldman Sachs raises yr-end oil price forecast to 85 usd vs 72 on supply worries

via Stryder ;)

the difference

I once met a man who, over a nice Italian dinner, explained to me that he had once taken a philosophy course years ago. "Philosophy is bullshit" he said, "and after I figured that out I just bullshitted on my final paper and got an A. That confirmed it for me: its all bullshit." Smiling smugly he finished his glass of wine and looked at me with the look as if to say: I've got your number.

It reminded me of the time I turned away from physics. I was a senior in high school and was prone to moodiness and depression. I became convinced that the physics course I was taking was bullshit also. I closed my mind, turned on my walkman, and dropped out of the physics course.

Years have gone by and I look back upon that moment of my turning away and I am ashamed of myself. I am ashamed that I assumed that my ignorance was superior to knowledge. I am ashamed that I turned my back on the great privelege given to me to learn, to know something of great value.

And that is the difference between He and I. Nothing more than a sense of shame.

glimpsing the ox

In the Oxherder's tale--a zen story told in 10 acts--the aspirant embarks upon a journey to capture the ox. In the first scene, the aspirant is 'seeking the ox'. (Notice the waterfall)

Here we have 'Seeing the traces', the second scene. I will not dispute the fact that he 'saw the traces', but I might add that he might just as easily have 'smelt the beast'. Thats how it was for me, anyway, today in the river. I smelt them--like a salty breeze in from the ocean. I knew they were here by their bouquet--gifting the river with the aroma of sex. And with that I saw traces...mud plumes in the tea colored flow. Yes, she had been here, finning in the shallows moments before. A mad dash upon seeing my boots coming over the gravels, into the deep flows she withdrew herself.

'Glimpsing the ox'. As I waded deeper into the flow, plumbing the depths, the trace of mud lingered and disappeared. Hefting the light summer line, the reverse single spey releasing line out and across, quartering down the river. One step at a time, I walked it out. No lead, no sink tip, just 10 feet of leader at the end of the floating tip, drifting the marabou spey down and across. Walking out into the deepest part of the hole, in the fading dusk, the unmistakable dark form of the salmon holding steady in the current. For a moment I glimpsed her levitating there and then she was gone--or, rather, I retreated. Ashamed and surpised by what I'd seen. It was that obvious. The dark pool swallowed her form.

The Divine Signature

If strong scientific evidence is not available, what grounds may we have for the existence of a God? The answer is not far away. The answer is not "out there", but within. Nothing more than a feeling, a trace, a signature left by the presence of the divine. This signature is there for us to contemplate in our isolation just when we were sure there was nothing more here. That love knocked Saul of Tarsus off his ass and he became at that moment the apostle Paul. What does it really mean? Did I really experience it? Shaking himself off in the dust these were thoughts that he must have contemplated and, after some reflection, put them to rest...