Edmonton...Part 1

I know this is old news already, but most of my life works that way. Always several days behind.

Last weekend I was in Edmonton playing for the yearly Oktoberfest to Rocktoberfest at the Shaw Conference Centre. The other band was Trooper. I have to say, Trooper has got to be one of  the best rock bands in the country. Yeah, a bunch of old guys (I know, DT, what is old, anyway? Not as old as Mick Jagger maybe, but relatively speaking…old…old as rock…old as mountains, the rarefied heights of rock…brought down to earth and a picturesque valley in Alberta viewed from a glassed-in escalator winding down the side of the hill…I’ll never forgive you for denying me the use of the phrase “old guys”….)

Where was I? Oh yeah, Trooper…old guys who are masters at putting on their show…I remember seeing the Trews last year (and they were at the Halloween show this year too), watching their finale and thinking, “This is old stuff…I saw Lighthouse (or Steppenwolf or Alice Cooper or Springsteen or any number of bands) doing exactly this thing thirty years ago. For that matter, Trooper is probably doing pretty much what they did thirty years ago too…but then it was original and interesting and it was theirs. It was not Trooper imitating Spike Jones. Or even Elvis.

Anyway, these guys are great. If you get a chance to see Trooper, go go go. If you are of a certain age, you will sing along with every song.

Interview With an Honest Boss

Click on title. Go to website. See what your boss really thinks.

Meditation Files #4

Jamyang Khyentse Chökyi Lodrö said, “Look, it’s like this: When the past thought has ceased, and the future thought has not yet risen, isn’t there a gap? Well, prolong it. That is meditation.

Here is what I experience. It is possible to prolong or, in the first instance, notice the gap between thoughts. But this applies only if I limit my definition of thoughts to discursive thought. If I take into account the totality of perception, however…the pain in my back, the sound of  floors creaking, the colour of the wall, the play of shadows, the tension at the back of my tongue, incense, music, breathing, the movement just at the edge of peripheral vision, the way my hands rest on my knees…on and on…there are no gaps. Discursive thought stops or slows just long enough for me to perceive some other object.

But then, they say also that thoughts in themselves are not a problem. In fact they are utterly natural. And inevitable. So are other perceptions. The problem arises from our grasping after thoughts. Following the story line. Getting involved. Mere awareness of thoughts or other perceptions is not a problem.

Sand Mandala at C2G2

Out on a day pass today from the Yoni School. Suzy Homemaker and I went to view the sand mandala produced by the Namgyal monks at C2G2.

What a marvellous, intricate piece of work. Textured and nuanced. Flanked by a small Buddha altar, complete with dorje and bell, Shakyamuni Buddha thangka, water bowls, food offerings, candles and incense. In C2G2!

A mandala is a representation of the palace of a deity. Tibetan Buddhism has a whole raft of deities, a catalogue of initiations for those who desire them. Each deity has his or her mandala, all similar, each one different, each one unique. But they all have the same sort of floor plan. Several floors (reproduced two-dimensionally) which is what makes the mandala design. Four great entrances representing the cardinal points.

This mandala had no deity at the centre, on the top floor, only a lotus. The lotus is replete with symbolism too, of course. And it is the flower which represents Chenrezig, the bodhisattva of compassion, whose mantra is Om Mani Padme Hum, probably the best known of all mantras, capable of propelling one swiftly along the path of enlightenment if recited one-pointedly and with great faith. So even though Chenrezig is not depicted at the centre of the mandala, I suppose you could still say it is Chenrezig’s mandala.

Of course mandalas are stylized. Each figure carries symbolic meaning. Still, they are intricate artworks. Their creation requires great concentration. How easy it would be to apply too much sand in one spot, or breathe or sneeze at the wrong moment. And what do you do? Start over? Unfortunately, I couldn’t ask the monks because they weren’t there.

Not only does the sand mandala represent the deity’s palace. It also represents the universe. Which is why sand is the medium. Meant to instruct us on the fragility of our reality. One puff and it’s all gone. Sand represents the emptiness of all phenomena. Full of colour, fantastic and beautiful forms. Completely impermanent. In fact, the mandala is created for the express purpose of wiping it away in the end. This to remind us of all the time we spend foolishly pursuing worldly, ego-driven, ego-grasping, ego-clinging, ego-fixated goals which, in the end, cannot deliver the satisfaction we really crave and will be scattered by the winds of death and impermanence anyway.

PS. I just realized that saying it would be easy to sneeze might be misleading. The monks wear masks while creating the mandala, for that very reason. No fans nearby either.

Also, there was an interesting installation there too...a giant Buddha head surrounded by racks of plaster hands in various mudras. All placed in pull-out "bins". The public is allowed to write on these hands with markers provided for the purpose...to leave messages on them for the people of Tibet.

Hey! Macarena 3

The Macarena was a no-go. Why? Because the crowd of Donauschwabens was definitely not of the butt-wiggling sort. Somehow we were misled about the relative age (and hipness) of these Hawgtown Schwabs. Methuselah would have been a spring chicken compared to most of them. Even the venerable old Bird Dance was too much for them. They sat at their tables staring at us while we played it…except for about six younger ones who pitied the poor band struggling to get old farts to show signs of life.

I’m exaggerating a little. Most of them were quite old. But as long as we played music that they liked, which meant heavy on polkas and waltzes, they danced a lot and obviously enjoyed themselves. But they were unexpectedly reserved too. I think they were too cool to be silly with the Bird Dance. Too much Schwabische dignity. I can imagine the expressions of horror if we had tried to induce them to Macarena wigglebutt.

John Robarts' Hat

J. Clive’s a funny guy sometimes. Known him for six years or so now and still finding out small details…little stories he tells now and then.

Like tonight…with his Oktfest gear he wears a green felt hat that looks good on him…not exactly German style, but close. Tonight we were out smoking during a break and we got talking about hats because my crazy bal’head is turning into a freezyblue col’head…or will soon. Talked about the Biltmore hat factory in Growlf. It’s been bought out by some guy from Kentucky because he wants to reproduce the fedoras of the 40’s and 50’s…like Bogey used to wear. Apparently they’re cool again.

Anyway…J. Clive remarked that his hat…a Stetson manufacture…was the hat of former Ontario Premier John Robarts. I said, “Now that you mention it, it is like hats I’ve seen Robarts wearing in pictures.” But then, a second later, it clicked. “You mean, that hat is actually John Robarts’ hat?” I asked, and J. Clive said it was. He was friends with Robarts’ son in the 60’s. They hung out at the Robarts cottage, summers, up Lake Huron way. Speeding on the back roads. Getting crazy drunk. Taking advantage of being the son of the Premier. One day at the cottage, J. Clive picked the hat off a peg on the wall and put it on. The Premier told him he could keep it. So nearly 40 years later he still wears it, and it’s still associated with beer.

Hey! Macarena 2

Tonight I spent an hour or so putting finishing touches on Macarena. It sounded good. Then I decided to rename it since it was going under the name Maca3, ie the third version of it. I wanted to change it to, what else? Macarena. So I did. Now, you have to realize that this keyboard works like a computer. DOS style. Only 8 characters allowed, then a file designation like exe or doc or whatever. In the case of the Korg, the file extension is .SNG (for song). Macarena is eight. So I renamed it.

All of a sudden it had disappeared. Wouldn’t load. Something illegal had occurred according to the message that kept coming up. For some time, I was frantic. I turned the air blue with what’s known in Buddhist circles as harsh language. Fortunately it wasn’t directed at anyone (except maybe myself). I saw a minimum of fifteen hours work going down the drain. Plus not being able to make the Donauschwabens wiggle their butts.

Only one thing gave me any hope. The display showed a file there. It was the same size (88Kb) as the previous Maca3 file. I don’t know what inspired me, but I decided to rename it again, this time adding .SNG to the end of it. That worked! The file came back, just as it had been before. Talk about relief.

And I learned something. See, an ordinary computer (or the program at least) adds the file extension automatically. The Korg didn’t. Now I know I have to do it.

Hey! Macarena

I’ve spent the last four evenings working at my keyboard. No, not the typinglike one, the pianolike one.

Doing what? Making a version of the Macarena. We have a gig this Saturday in Hawgtown playing for Donauschwabens. No, not Dachshunds. Dachshunds would want to hear…oh…You ain’t nothin’ but a hound dog…How much is that doggie in the window…Black Dog by Fred Zeppelin…Move it on over (in which George Thorogood frequently says, “Move over little dog, a big old dog is movin’ in…) That’s what Dachshunds want to hear. Donauschwabens want to hear the Macarena. So they can slap themselves all over and wiggle their butts. (Like a Dachshund?) Come to think of it, the Macarena is sort of like the Latin version of the Schuhplattler!

The Macarena is now at least 10 years old. I used to have a version of it, sequenced, on my old keyboard. It was a pretty good version. But unless you’re fluent in Spanish, it’s a bitch to sing. It moves very quickly. But the old Peavey keyboard is dead. And we hadn’t played the Macarena for a long time, and I didn’t like to sing it anymore (not knowing what part was coming up next cuz we never played it anymore…) But the Hawgtown Donauschwabens said it was one of their big tunes of the night…so…I’ve resurrected it on the new Korg. No, not the Corgi. I don’t think Corgis and Dachshunds would really get along. Anyway, we’ve never played for Hawgtown Donauschwabens before. We have played for Lunchbucket Donauschwabens many times over the years. But not the Hawgtown ones. So we want to impress them, eh?

Ve must gif ze peeples vhat zey vant, ja?

The Altitude Song

I have to correct a serious oversight in my postings.

Voin has been working on a CD of original songs for well over a year. Two, maybe. In the last year it has really begun to blossom and come together. It so happens that I’m playing keyboard on most of the tracks. Some singing too.

Last Wednesday, Oct. 12, Voin’s tune The Altitude Song had its first public airplay on 1090AM…OK, I know, not the hippest station in the country, but what the hell, it’s something.

The reason I mention this is because the end of the tune has a spoken word piece written by me, let’s call it Those Boys Were Crazy.

I didn’t get to hear the first play on radio. But I sure hope it gets more, and what’s more, that the CD creates a bit of a buzz for Voin. He’s a good songwriter…knows how to make good hooks…especially lyrical hooks. Pretty good with woids.

More information on this: the album is to be called This One’s For Kenny. It’s a reference to Kenny Hollis, who you might remember as the omnipresent MC at Lulu’s for many years. Well, Kenny was also the lead singer for that famous Kitchener 70’s band Copper Penny. Voin was the first guitar player in that band, and the guy who wrote most of their earlier hits. Kenny died a couple of years ago, and Voin never really had a chance to say goodbye the way he wanted, so this album is his way of doing that.

He called on the talents of a bunch of friends, all old rockers from way back, ‘cep fer me, Mr. Polka Head, and basically got ‘em all to do it fer nuttin. And that’s because being involved in a good project with good talent is more fun than work. Slowly the songs have come together. I’ve been able to hear many of them from the absolute beginning…guitar and voice…to nearly finished product. The transformation is sometimes amazing.

Anyway, a bunch of old farts getting (get this, my Werd program won’t let me drop the ‘g’ in getting) getting gittin together to rock and roll…well, count-ry too and other odd things. Watch for this CD. According to Voin, labels are interested…Call up yer local DJ and ask him/her when he/she is gonna start playin that Altitude Song. OK?

Oktoberfest Events (The Last Waltz)

I heard for the second time that the man who collapsed at the tent on Friday night did not make it. This is a sad thing. Sudden and unexpected (although perhaps not unpredictable since it was confirmed that he had a triple bypass only a few weeks ago). It casts a pall on everyone’s memory of Oktoberfest. I really feel sad for the people who were with him and his family.

My own final moment of Oktoberfest for ’05 was also something sudden and unexpected. Extremely unusual too. After we were done, as my brother was in the process of saying final goodnights, a young guy came bounding up the stairs. He grabbed my microphone and started to shout into it. One of the security guards was right behind him and took hold of him, trying to pull him back down the stairs. I, meanwhile, began to wrestle with the young guy for the mic, which was still on its boom stand. He wouldn’t let go. I had the mic. He had the mic. The stand was wobbling. My music book went flying. He still struggled to hold on. Wouldn’t let go. Suddenly I saw his big white face wide open in front of me. I gave him a left jab. Not too hard.

He let go of the mic and fell back into the waiting arms of the security guard. The last thing I heard him say was, “Hey! That guy punched me!” I don’t think he got too much sympathy from the security guard. In fact, later, the supervisor came to me and said, “My guy says thanks for the soft landing!”

Well, to tell the truth, I surprised myself. It’s fifteen years or more since I punched anybody. I don’t even know how to do it, really. Which was a good thing for that guy. Really, it was just a little tap that startled him enough to make him let go.

People’s reactions struck me, though. One audience member, another young guy, came up right after and shook my hand. He was of the opinion you can’t let people get away with that shit. Steffie Jr., 21 years old, was also impressed. J. Clive reminded me that self-defence is justifiable even in Buddhist terms.

This wasn’t self-defence, really, but protection of one’s “territory”. On the weekends, especially, because they are so busy, we struggle with keeping people off the stage. They get drunk. They get exuberant. Mostly they’re just having stupid fun, but you can’t allow it to migrate onto the stage. Too much expensive equipment. And if one gets up, it’s like an invitation for more.

So I smacked him upside the head. Too weird.

Oktoberfest Events

Two things happened at the gig last night, the penultimate night of Oktoberfest. One was cosmic, sort of. The other was tragic.

The first: have you ever been in a large crowd in an enclosed space and listened to its roar? The big tent is unique in this perspective, I think. I’ve never been anywhere else where the roar of the crowd is so intense. It’s not a response to anything in particular, although the band can certainly get them roaring when it wants to. But this buzz I’m talking about is just the background level of thousands of people talking all at once. It becomes a kind of white noise, which, I’ll mention in passing, can also make it difficult for the band to perform because that noise is at a certain pitch and can easily get loud enough to interfere with what’s heard on stage.

Last night, early, the beginning of the second set, or maybe the third, the band played a medley of polkas. Steffie began singing the first song, and as I played it seemed as if the entire crowd was singing along with him. Just as if we were at a soccer game and the crowd was singing that song they do, you know the “Olé Olé Olé Olé” thing. A rather ghostly sound travelling around the tent.

That’s fine. The crowd often does sing along with us. But this particular song happened to be in Croatian. And nobody was singing along. It only sounded as if they were. I can’t explain what caused this sonic anomaly.

The second: at about 8pm. a man collapsed at his table, the victim of some sort of seizure or heart attack. We were about to go back on stage, but delayed our start so that the floor would be clear when the paramedics moved him out on a stretcher.

It seemed to me a rather long time before they did move him, but I don’t know much about that kind of stuff. They had moved the tables away and cleared a substantial space. From the stage we could see someone performing CPR. At last, they had him on a stretcher and wheeled him out past the right side of the stage. (Not the side I’m on.) Voin later said he didn’t look too good.

At the end of the night we heard that this man had died.

We also heard that he’d had open heart surgery only three weeks ago.

I don’t know if either of these are true because it’s second-hand information. Still, even if it’s not true, it’s not a happy memory of Oktoberfest. I watched the area where the man had fallen. It took a long time for that space to fill up again.

Now, there’s a symbolic statement, if I’ve ever made one.

Bald Head Brigade

My crazy bal’head is still taking people by surprise. My aunt and uncle came out to the tent yesterday to hear the band. They stood in front of the stage looking around, my aunt shouting up to my brother, who’s the drummer of course, “Where’s Larry?”

When she finally noticed Mr. Bal’head off to the side, she nearly fell over. Her son, who’s had his head shaved for years, tipped his cap in salute. Another bal’head joins the ranks…

Speech by Al Gore

Click the title to go to a speech Al Gore gave to the We Media Conference in NYC on Oct. 5.

I think the American people made a huge mistake when they failed to elect Al Gore in 2000. And I think Al Gore made a huge mistake when he didn't fight hard enough to prevent that election from being stolen.

(Making assumptions. I assume the election in Florida was seriously rigged.)(Assuming also that Al Gore was too decent an individual to get down in the mud with assorted Bushes. I suppose that would ipso facto make him ineligible to be president.)

Meanwhile, I wish to hell Al Gore would work on getting the Democrats to say something intelligent, do something intelligent, pull themselves together...can you imagine Dick Cheney as president?

And, by the way, what does ipso facto really mean? Is that Latin, like tempus fugit and veni vidi vici et tu Brute?

Dave FM Update Again

Heard the first snippet of accordion contest today. Come On Eileen, Dexy's Midnight Runners. The guy who called in won. Hooray! Two fewer people that'll be showing up at my venue!

Just kidding.

Carlos, the DJ didn't play very much of the tune. Ten notes maybe. But I only caught the denouement. I didn't hear the runup.

The Holy Communion of Politicians

I heard today on the radio (not Dave FM) that this weekend there is to be a conference at the Vatican. One of the topics for discussion will be whether Roman Catholic politicians should be barred from participating in Holy Communion if they espouse policies which contravene Church Doctrine.

Please note that I am now using capital letters because we are speaking of Important Things.

You may remember that a Bishop in Calgary threatened to do just that to Paul Martin for his support of same-sex marriages.

It’s an interesting and complex debate. I think the Catholic Church has the right to decide who gets to participate in the Sacraments. Ie. to decide who is Catholic and who is not. But just where does this intersect with public policy?

Politicians have a choice to make here. If they have strong religious beliefs, these should be known to the public, and voters should include this in their consideration of whom to vote for. I think it would speak to the strength of character of a politician who put his/her election on the line by standing up for the beliefs of their religion. This is what the Catholic Church is telling politicians they must do. If you want to be Catholic, you must be opposed to abortion. You must be opposed to same sex marriage.

Fine. On the other hand, any politician worth his salt must be able to represent and respond to all his constituents. Not everyone is Catholic. Not everyone is opposed to abortion or same sex marriage. If I were a Buddhist politician, I think I would not denounce the existence of Canadian armed forces. They have their purpose. (Now if that purpose were to engage in foreign aggression, that would be a different matter.)

Can a politician say, “Such and such are my beliefs. I hold them strongly and my personal preference is to have these values supported by public policy. However, neither I nor my religious institution has the right to impose these on the whole populace. Sorry, but the Church will just have to stay out of it.”?

Would that satisfy the Church?

This is not what Paul Martin did with same sex marriage. His government actively promoted the policy. His Church saw that. I wonder, did It also see that the government was simply acknowledging a legal fait accompli?

Dave FM Update

Well, you see what happens when you shoot off your mouth prematurely. You end up having to backtrack.

Lucia called today, enthusing enthusiastically about the job I performed for Dave FM. About how everyone was so impressed. What a great job I did. Gave them so much, Carlos the DJ who’s running the contest was (is) able to play teasers beforehand to get people prepared, will be able to play just a few notes, then give more notes, and more until the notebook is filled.

And Lucia asked if there was anything they could do for me! Like a few bucks? She actually did ask that.

(At this point I’m thinking: she must have read my bitchin on the Mental Blog. But it couldn’t have been that. She doesn’t have the address yet. She sent me an email, but I haven’t sent her one yet.)

So….now I’m somewhat mollified. (Did I say mortified?) I informed Lucia there was in fact something she could do for me. And I told her about Voin’s CD, which I hope will be ready in a couple of months. I asked her to consider playing some of it on the air. Of course, Lucia’s not the one who decides that because she’s in promotions, but she promised to pass it on to the music/program director, and I’m sure it doesn’t hurt to have her putting in a good word. I gave her a little history of it and told her about Voin and how the album came about and also that the music would be appropriate for Dave FM. And that’s no lie. There are a bunch of tunes that fit perfectly into Dave’s format. So with any luck, Voin’ll get his stuff played on at least one mainstream radio station.

I also tactfully pointed out the dilemma she had put me in. I can’t believe I was tactful. Tact is not my strongest point. Especially when I’ve been steaming for a couple days. But there I was. Mr. Tact. President of the Canadian Tactile Association. And Lucia did get it. Made her even more grateful, I think.

After all that, Lucia said if there was anything I wanted personally, just to let her know. I couldn’t really think of anything. I’m happy if Voin gets a shot.

And by the way, the name of the band will be 2 Cents Left.

Mr. Bacon, does this qualify as an über-posting?

Usin Werd fer Blogettes

Ah been usin werd ta make these yer poasts. Doan seem ta make much difrents cuz ah aint tried to do nuthin fancy er nuthin so far.

Lunchbucket Letdown at Dave FM

So, today I did this thing for Dave FM 107.5. Lucia, the promotions director called and asked if I could play portions of rock songs from the 80’s on my accordion for this little “guess the song being played on the accordion” contest they were running. I said, sure I could do that…when? Like, in two days? (This conversation took place on Monday.)

OK, so I wracked my brain…no I racked my brain, stretched it tortured it exorcised it interrogated it inquisitioned it until it blurted out several snippets of accordionized guitar riff. And today I went to the studio in Lunchbucket and blatted it out into digital recording heaven. Stairway to Heaven (OK, I know it’s not 80’s but it is classic…) Mony Mony Home For a Rest Don’t You Want Me Baby Shout Layla Rock Lobster Sweet Home Alabama…and more.

This is all very nice. Of course, I didn’t get paid to do this. I don’t know whether you know this, but radio stations are cheap. Let’s be charitable: they run on skinny budgets. Except CFRB. In any case, not paid. But that’s OK. Always happy to do a good turn and have a little fun.

Except here’s the kicker. The contest they’ll be running over the next few days (until Oktoberfest I guess) is to give away tickets to a Sam Roberts concert being held at Queensmount, where our old buddy Walter Ostanek plays!

So, dear Lucia had the nerve to ask me to do something for free to promote an event which competes with the venue my own band plays at!

Nice, eh?

(PS. Arlene! Are you there, Arlene?! Can you hear the accordion demons pounding the keys to the gates of hell?)

Jet Blue Emergency

Anybody happen to catch that emergency landing by the Jet Blue plane out of California? I don’t normally watch CNN but I happened to be over at Voin and Paulie’s the other night doing some recording on Voin’s album when this happened. (Do you still call them albums? CDs. Voin’s CD.)

Voin had CNN on while we were recording. Here’s this jet. Been flying around for a couple of hours. On takeoff, I think, its front landing gear had jammed. The wheels were twisted sideways, the gear couldn’t retract. It was going to have to land like that.

Well, we watched this plane land at LAX. A picture perfect landing. Pilot kept the nose up until the last possible second. Then it touched down. I was convinced the wheels would collapse, but they didn’t. They stayed solid. Started smoking, then burst into flames as they skidded down the runway.

But the amazing thing was this pilot. He kept that jet straight as an arrow down the centre of the runway. The front wheels, twisted and flaming as they were, never veered from the white line.

I don’t know what it was like on the jet, but on TV it seemed as if the plane came to a nice gentle stop. Everyone breathed.

Now, that’s the pilot I want the next time I fly.

Vajrasattva 3

Experiment failed. The picture appeared here, but I didn't get to do what I wanted to with it.

Larry Keiler: The Unauthorized Autobiography

I've added a link to Larry's autobiography. Can't say how often I'll be posting to this. The content of the autobio will be episodic, ie. not exactly structured. Just stories as they come to mind.

PS. You know that term biopic? The first time I read it I pronounced it the same as myopic.

PPS. The problem with novelizing in a blog is that the postings appear latest on top. So, for example, there will be an addition to my first posting there, a continuation of it in fact, but that will appear before the beginning on the blog page. Don't know if there's any way to remedy this. You'll just have to read from the bottom up.

Vajrasattva 2

Vajrasattva

I'm performing experiments. Bear with me.

Yoni School for Wayward Poets #4 (More Program Notes)

Two more possible characters: Malton McGuilty, a political pote and compulsive liar; George Slitherman, whose health is bad but remains combative whenever he gets the chance.

Eye Candy 1

God Speaks

Oddly, this particular sign looks familiar to me. As if I've seen it somewhere in Lunchbucket. (I mean the sign itself, not the message, which is old and well-worn, but then, after all, it is after midnight. I can't always think of blazingly original stuff.

On a lighter note...

A stray sentence from Thomas Wolfe: The packed stands of the stadium, the bleachers sweltering with their unshaded hordes, the faultless velvet of the diamond, unlike the clay-baked outfields down in Georgia.

Reminds me of why the bleachers at the baseball field are called what they are. Unshaded. Because the spectators are bleached by the August sun, the poor bums who can’t afford to sit in the grandstand, the poor bums whose bums are not bleached but compressed, numbed by hard slats of bleacher benches. And that, of course, is why they invented the seventh inning stretch.

What an evocative term, bleachers. How malleable the English language. And I wonder who first used that word to describe that mosh pit of the common man, that mecca of baseball lovers all across the continent. What happy inspiration, what circuitous synapse suggested the relation between bleach, sun and old bones of baseball bums athwart the fields of dreams?

Maybe it was a touch of the sun.

Paying to Die

I drove past a crash on the 407 today. Must have been about five or ten minutes after it happened. At least two vehicles were involved – a minivan and an oil tanker truck, not an 18-wheeler, but a smaller one. There were quite a few vehicles stopped along the side of the road both ways as well.

The tanker truck was on its side in the median, smashed up pretty bad. Very bad. The driver’s compartment was flattened. I saw the driver of the minivan sitting in his vehicle, someone talking to him. He seemed all right.

But as I  drove up alongside where the tanker lay, I saw a man and a woman on their knees, obviously tending to the driver of the truck. I had a rather sick feeling when I saw that. It wasn’t good, judging by the condition of the truck.

A minute later an ambulance came roaring along the shoulder from the other direction. But I heard later on the radio that an air ambulance had been dispatched.

I also heard later that the driver of the truck died. He hadn’t been wearing his seat belt and was thrown from the vehicle. I don’t think it would have mattered. Break every bone in your body being thrown out, or get squashed in the cab of your truck.

The 407 is a toll road. Imagine paying to die.

I spend so much time on the road. See quite a few crashes. Sometimes, driving, I get flashes of me in one of them. Hope I’m not psychic.

Blogger fer Werd

Damn! I fergot to use the Blogger fer Werd program to do those last 2 posts.

It has one disadvantage. As far as I can tell, you have to open a new Werd file every time you post. You can’t just have one continuous file and only post sections of it.

Oh, yeah, Sharia law...

By the way, personally I'm glad that the McGuinty decided to nix the introduction of Muslim-based "arbitration" into the legal system of good ole Ontari-ari-o. And to level the playing field with all them other religions too. Why?

I remember the days when ecclesiastical law and civil law were identical. (I don't really remember them. Only in the historical sense.) Western society struggled for hundreds of years to throw off the inquisitorial shackles of ecclesiastical law. Would we really want to go back there?

Nukes if Necessary: Pentagon

That's the headline I noticed in the National Toast this morning. And if you click on the title, it's the link that leads to the document of which it speaks. You'll find it in the top right corner of the web page, titled jp3_12fc2. The actual title of the document is Doctrine for Joint Nuclear Operations.

I downloaded it. It's about 70 pages long. I'll probably find time to read it in the next ten years. (Hope the Pentagon doesn't find it necesssary to nuke in the meantime.)

Bush, more than any other president I can think of in recent years, has really led the push to redefine the US nuclear and pre-emptive strike policy. This document is a step in that direction. It basically says the US reserves the right to use nuclear weapons first if a hostile nation (or some other entity, like a terrorist group) is planning an attack. It primarily refers to nuclear attack, but also includes conventional attack which the US thinks might be overwhelming.

Basically, it says, "We'll nuke first if we get really nervous."

A lot of people over the years have tried to get the US to enunciate a "no first strike" policy. But come on...really...the US has never had that. The atomic destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was a pre-emptive strike. Japan was working on a nuclear bomb. USSR too. And Germany, of course, but the US was heir to German expertise after VE day.

The problem with pre-emptive strikes is, you can always manufacture reasons why it's necessary. You don't have to look any farther than Iraq to see how that works. Conventional weapons are bad enough. A pre-emptive nuclear strike is a nightmare in the making. The implications are much vaster than they were at the end of WWII. (Which suggests to me that the US would only use it against a much weaker power that it was sure didn't have nukes or friends with nukes.)

I think this is only part of what I think....?

The other part of what I think I think relates to the simple fact that you can download this document from the Internet. In fact, it was originally on a DoD website. Anybody can get it. It suggests two things to me:

1. In a certain sense, the US is a remarkably open nation. Strategic, military, policy, memos, minutes of meetings....all fairly readily available for those who care to look. Don't you think that's amazing?.........or.........

2. All of this publicly available stuff is nothing more than blowing smoke up our asses to make us think we can have some influence when, really, they'll blow nukes up our asses whether we like it or not...

I Saw the Figure 5 in Gold

I Saw the Figure 5 in Gold
Charles Demuth 1928

A fairly famous painting, apparently, inspired by this pome from William Carlos Williams, one of my favourite potes:

The Great Figure

Among the rain
and lights
I saw the figure 5
in gold
on a red
fire truck
moving
tense
unheeded
to gong clangs
siren howls
and wheels rumbling
through the dark city

It Worked

There you go. Microsoft and Google have found another way to tighten their grip on the computers of the world.

New Addition

I’ve just downloaded some software that lets me use Microsoft Word and post directly from that program. I’m testing it now.
If it works, this is very good, I think. Word has more functionality than the Blogger wordprocessor.

Shaving My Head

I didn't make it to the day with a 9 in it. Shaved my head this morning. (Yesterday morning now...) Looks like I'm going to want to do this every couple of days...

He's Down on His Uppers

Everybody knows that phrase, right? It means, more or less, he's down and out, had a run of bad luck, looking for a job, lost his house, his business, whatever.

Last month I read Dos Passos' USA, a massive novel that covers the history of the US from about 1900 to 1930. Dos Passos uses that phrase frequently in the book.

Now I'm reading Thomas Wolfe, You Can't Go Home Again. He uses the phrase, or a variation, as well.

It took me a long time to realize what the phrase actually refers to. When you're on your uppers, it means you've worn the soles off your shoes. All that's left are the uppers.

That's getting poor.

Don't Forget to Log In Goddammit

I've just been reminded, in an expensive way, that I really must log in to the blog before trying to post. If I'm not logged in when I try to post, I get sent to the log-in page and then the post disappears. There's a recovery button, but I just lost about half an hour's work because the recovery button didn't recover the entire post. And it was an interesting bit, too. It'll just have to wait now. I haven't got time to reconstruct it.

Yoni School for Wayward Poets #3 (Program Notes)

Characters are accumulating at the school: Suzy Homemaker, of course. Larry. LaLaLeo who thinks he's a dog and sleeps most of the day. Cosmicat who thinks she's a cat and sleeps most of the day. And Mr. Perfect Always-Right, possibly a British hyphen who thinks he knows what everyone else is thinking.

White Trash & Niggers

white trash & niggers
better learn how to swim
when paperthin freedom meets
Mississippi mud

and moonshine over Pontchartrain
is pie in the sky
and pie in yer face
shoo-fly pie

shoo shoo

sho'nuff get outta town
unless you fixin to drown

white trash & arabs
niggers too
can't eat bullets or drink blood

for survival

can't read the constitution
from homemade gondolas
can't swing from the tree of
intelligent design

noway nohow nomo'

cuz when the levee breaks
they got no place to go

white trash & niggers

can pray

hallelujah

for the national guard
death to suicide bombers
the dawn of the rainbow
new homes on higher ground

Yoni School for Wayward Poets #2

Oh look! There's Suzy Homemaker with her fabulous EasyBake oven.

"Whatcha doin' Suzy?'

"I'm baking bread. See...flour yeast water hotter close the lid go round and round rise the dough you know tiptoe through tulips timer watch don't watch the watched pot never boils but bread bakes automat ickly prickly heat in the summer chillblains in winter gotta go the dough is rising the roe is dying."

"Umm, OK."

"Yes, I'm baking bread breaking beds pillow feathers in the air sneezy dopey wheezy grumpy lumpy knead the dough need dough though I can't remember why oy vy oh yes knead the dough and lumpy mattresses better get a water bed hotter bed for baking bread."

"What kind of bread you baking?"

"Don't know can't say won't go, I'm experimenting with flowers wry and spelt I miss spelt butterfly plants flutter by and hostas held hostage by crickets down in the hallway halfway to the rising sun the rising dough do you think I should put in some sunflower seeds?"

"Whatever you kneed, Suzy..."

Emailing Posts

As of a couple minutes ago, you can now email my eternal posts to anybody whose email address you know. Click on the envelope next to comments.

Not to be used for "excessive self-promotion" the disclaimer says. Which leads to the question, "How much is too much?"

Spam Comments

Believe it or not, the Mental Blog has been victimized twice by spam in the comments section! How the hell does that work? Hardly anybody reads it, but some idiot in LaLaLand manages to send spam to it.

Yoni School for Wayward Poets #1

People ask me, "What's it like at the Yoni School for Wayward Poets?"

"Fruit flys," I say.

"Fruit flies?" they ask.

"Yes."

Text Message

I've posted a lot of photo type things lately, so here's some text to chew on.

A week ago I shaved my head. Since then the back of my neck has been cold. My sinuses are stuffy. Any connection? No idea. Well, not true exactly. I'm sure the back of my neck is cold because there's no fur there anymore. The sinuses are another question.

I look at myself in the mirror and think, "Why did I not do this a long time ago?" On the other hand, keeping the pate pristine is a pain. But at least I don't have to do it every day. My friend Windsor says the Zen monks in Japan have a system (there's a Japanese word for it which translates into something like "4 & 9") by which they shave on days that have a 4 and a 9 in them. So this morning, it being the 4th, I got out the razor.

Too bad I don't have a digital camera. I'd post a photo.

But then, that would defeat the purpose of concentrating on text...

Sunday Morning Coming Down

A Second Possible Epitaph

New Orleans is Sinking 2

Here are some images I borrowed from the Net. We've all seen them or ones like them. I hope the owners of the pictures don't mind...at least I give credit...




Over the last couple of days the chatterboxes on talk radio have been spouting off about how the military and the police should shoot to kill looters...(I didn't have an opportunity to listen to Rush Limbaugh this week, but I suspect he would have been one of the loudest...)

I can't make much of a comment about looting...most of these people were simply looking for food and water.

What I'm wondering is: given that everybody knew a major hurricane was going to hit; given that people were warned to leave New Orleans; why did the National Guard (or whoever) not arrive before the storm and evacuate all those people they must have known would be stranded in the city because they were too poor to own cars or buy a plane ticket or even a bus ticket? Why did the authorities just leave them there? Before the storm would have been the time to show up with guns and herd everybody out of town.

2 Quotes on Interdependence

Everything is interdependent. This friendly statement just begins to skim the surface. What Buddhist contemplatives are saying is that in the whole universe right down to the subatomic level, nothing exists purely objectively or purely subjectively. We can say, "Oh, it's mere appearance. I get it." We can focus in and observe that nothing exists in the mind purely subjectively or objectively, that there is profound interdependence. But when we really experience this, our perception of the world as a whole is profoundly altered.

-- from Buddhism with an Attitude: The Tibetan Seven-Point Mind-Training by B. Alan Wallace, edited by Lynn Quirolo, published by Snow Lion Publications

All events and incidents in life are so intimately linked with the fate of others that a single person on his or her own cannot even begin to act. Many ordinary human activities, both positive and negative, cannot even be conceived of apart from the existence of other people. Even the committing of harmful actions depends on the existence of others. Because of others, we have the opportunity to earn money if that is what we desire in life. Similarly, in reliance upon the existence of others it becomes possible for the media to create fame or disrepute for someone. On your own you cannot create any fame or disrepute no matter how loud you might shout. The closest you can get is to create an echo of your own voice.

Thus interdependence is a fundamental law of nature. Not only higher forms of life but also many of the smallest insects are social beings who, without any religion, law, or education, survive by mutual cooperation based on an innate recognition of their interconnectedness. The most subtle level of material phenomena is also governed by interdependence. All phenomena, from the planet we inhabit to the oceans, clouds, forests, and flowers that surround us, arise in dependence upon subtle patterns of energy. Without their proper interaction, they dissolve and decay.

-- by Tenzin Gyatso, the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, from The Compassionate Life

Yes, and I've had it said to me that the moment you "realize" emptiness, or interdependence, which amounts to the same thing, nothing ever appears the way you thought it did.

Here's what the thought of interdependence does to me: it is a goad to action. When I see the images of New Orleans, just as an example, I am aware that there is a connection between myself and the people there. Even my previous posting proves this...gas prices. It moves me to think, there must be something I can do...

At the deepest level, this impulse to action is the bodhisattva vow...to do whatever one can to alleviate suffering...This points unmistakably to the central Buddhist teaching that wisdom (realization of emptiness, profound interdependence) is identical with compassion. Tsong Khapa says at some point these two come together. When you stop wavering back and forth between the two, you've got it...

Problem is, for me at least, the sense of interdependence, the impulse to action, is not yet strong enough. Overwhelmed perhaps by the anguish of it all, not able to see the benefits of all-embracing compassion...

Oh, blah blah blah...maybe I'm just too self-centred and lazy.

Gas Prices

There are rumblings of price gouging by the oil companies in the wake of Katrina. The price of gas rose in Lunchbucket by 25 cents per litre overnight. The news tells me that in the US, gas rose by approximately 17 and a half cents per gallon! I'm pretty sure 25 cents per litre works out to a dollar a gallon. Seems like a bit of a discrepancy to me.

New Orleans is Sinking

I have two whole thoughts about Hurricane Katrina and the mess in New Orleans.

1. It's a powerful demonstration of how vulnerable we are in the west, dependent as we are on oil, electricity, all the modern conveniences. It doesn't take long to reduce the most technologically advanced society in the world to a state of chaos.

2. I certainly hope the world responds to this disaster with the same concern and compassion it showed during the tsunami disaster. Just because the US is rich and powerful doesn't mean they don't need and wouldn't appreciate help.

Belated birthdays

Oh dear, Larry forgot to celebrate his birthday, Aug. 7. And Happy-o to Mr. Back Bacon, July 29.

Check New Links

A couple new links. More to come...soon.

Larry's Moody

Larry's moods, so dependent on things
When things are working right
Larry's mood is light
When things are working wrong
Larry's face is long

Official Document #1

Below, a copy of Larry's official driver's abstract:

64 parts to a moment

(64 parts to a moment +
64 parts to a moment +
64 parts to a moment +
64 parts to a moment) =
a moment

A Serendipity

I had a delivery to York University today. To the Physical Resources building. Now, it's been nearly 30 years since I lived at the main campus. Another life. Another Larry. Seems like a dream now.

Anyway, I had no idea where this building might be. But I knew the main entrance on Keele St. So I drove south on Keele looking for the sign. I saw a sign come up quickly and turned fast so's not to miss it. Turned out not to be the main entrance. Shit, just a side road. Now where'm I gonna go?

I drove down the road a space to find a place to turn around. And there, on the right, was a sign reading "Physical Resources". Bingo! Wrong turn. Right road.

Now this is a huge sprawling building...the physical plant way back there, out-buildings all around. How to find the right place to go? I walked in the first door. No sign. No indication that this was the main entrance to the building. And inside, nothing but two long hallways with doors on either side. It'll take forever to find the right one, #1045. You know universities. The arrangement of rooms is not guaranteed to be logical or intuitive.

But then I look to the left, and there it is! The room I'm looking for. Right there.

I delivered that package from Guelph to North York in just over an hour. Sometimes all the threads come together to make a pin-stripe suit.

Two Stories from Geshe Kalsang

These stuck with me, although he really only mentioned them in passing:

1. In the course of teaching Point 1 of the Seven Point Mind Training, which says, "First, train in the preliminaries," he told us this story. One of the preliminaries is basically to learn the proper sitting position for meditation. The vajra posture, or full lotus...This is the posture you see the Buddha sitting in. But, Geshe Kalsang said, we should notice that all the representations of the future Buddha, Maitreya, show him sitting in a chair with both feet on the ground. (I think this is called the Royal posture.) But anyway, he laughed and said, "Maybe he knows something about the West..."

This is significant, really. It may be that the next wave of Buddhist practitioners will be Westerners. The Chinese forced the Tibetans out of their isolation, and now the Tibetans are spreading the Dharma to a West starved for spiritual knowledge. Everybody has trouble with that meditation posture though...

2. While teaching part of Point 2, which says "Meditate on the great kindness of all" he recounted a story of his childhood. Geshe Kalsang is a refugee, as are all of the Tibetans in India and around the world. When he arrived in India with his family, they were in a camp. In this camp were bunk beds, he said. Not only double bunks, but some triple. And he said he remembers clearly that stamped on the side of the beds was the word CARE. To him, this was a symbol of immense generosity, that people from the other side of the world "cared" enough to send beds and other supplies, to come and work, just to help poor refugees from a snowbound land. Part of his teaching that everything we have comes through the generosity of others.

Letter to the Editor

Here's the unedited version of a netter to the leditor published today in the Lunchbucket Liar, the local newspaper:


Dear Editor:

Here's a suggestion for cutting back on our consumption of electricity
to avoid the possibility of selective blackouts.

Currently, all electricity providers have the capability of cutting
power to individual homes of those who fail to pay their bills. My
list of people who have not paid their bills, metaphorically speaking,
includes:
1. the boards of directors and senior management of Hydro
One and OPG;
2. the government and members of the Ontario legislature;
3. the IESO (or whatever the heck it's called these days).

They have failed to pay their bills to the citizens of this province through mismanagement, poor service and political incompetence. They have lacked the foresight to provide this province with a rational conservation policy, alternative energy policy, or plan for the production necessary to meet entirely foreseeable increases in demand.

So, why don't we just cut the electricity to all their homes? Perhaps that will wake them up to their true responsibilities, other than simply trying to convince ordinary people they are hydro hogs.

Adventures in Modern Recording

I did some recording for a children's songwriter tonight. Four songs. Another two to go. Maybe three. An exercise in leaving one's ego at the door.

One of the songs was a ballad. I used a rich, mellow sound for the tune. Practising it the last couple of days, I had worked out a short phrase that repeated throughout the song. The rest was a bit of an improvisation. I was quite pleased with the effect. Pleased with myself. Of the four songs, this was the one I liked the most, as I had worked it out in my head.

The boss wasn't quite as impressed. After the first take, he came over to me and asked for something different. Nothing to do but give him what he wanted and let go of the little phrase that had pleased me so much. That take is still there, but I doubt that he'll use much of it.

The Wizard of Oz as Buddha

If I only had a brain.
If I only had a heart.
If I only had the noive.
(What makes a muskrat guard his musk?
Courage!)

Popeye's I is in his yams.
And popping out of spinach cans.
DoveTaler's I's in her eye.
And I saw a licence plate today that said
"Izdaby"

OK...
Scarecrow is wisdom
Tin Man compassion
Cowardly Lion...joyful perseverance?
All bodhisattvas.
Glinda a dakini...powerful female with a hint of mischief
Wicked witch a wrathful deity
Dorothy? Spiritual seeker...
Wizard of Oz...master of illusion...
demonstrator of emptiness...the magician not
fooled by his own magic

Notes on Emptiness #8

Here's one:

Descartes thinks, therefore he is.
But thought is not continuous.
It only seems so.
Thought comes.
Then it goes.
This one...Next one...
Is Descartes in between?

Notes on Emptiness #7

Interesting that I should use the analogy of projections on the screen. Geshe Kalsang, who is teaching us the Seven Points of Mind Training this weekend, used exactly the same example. This is a line of thought used in the Mind Only School. Nothing exists except as projections of our mind. He reminded us that when you go to a movie, you watch the images on the screen, you get so involved, you feel the emotions...But they are only images projected on a screen. There is actually nothing on the screen itself! After all, it's only the play of light.

The Madhyamika-Prasangika school is more subtle than this. Things do exist, in a conventional way. We agree to their existence. Was it Berkeley who kicked the stone and said, "Feels real enough to me..."? Something is there. We feel it, we hear it, we smell it, we taste it...We label it. ie. give it a name. It's just not there in the way we think it is.

In what way is it there, then? Ah, that's the 64k question. The answer lies in the extended analytical meditation you are supposed to do, always questioning your perception of phenomena. The primary phenomenon to question is your self. Your concept of "I".

A "simple" question to start with. When you think of "I", where is it, exactly?

Notes on Emptiness #6

Thinking this morning of those optical illusion drawings. Like the one that switches from a young Parisian women wearing a feathered hat to an old hag with a wart on her nose. Or the one that switches from two faces to a vase or chalice.

These are good illustrations of emptiness. What you see depends on your focus. Foreground and background are interchangeable, but reveal different pictures according to how you focus. The two aspects of the illusion are separate pictures but are also indivisible. The young woman cannot exist without the old. They are simultaneously a whole and individual parts. The parts that make up the hag are essential to the existence of the young woman and vice versa.

If I remember right, most people see the young woman first and after a time are able to see the hag. One feels a certain sense of wonder and delight when the transformation occurs. And after that, you can never look at that image without seeing both. I imagine this is the same sense of wonder one feels when a genuine realization of emptiness occurs.

We spend our whole lives looking at the foreground, never even realizing there is a background. If once we can shift our perspective enough to see the background, to bring it up front, our view of the world must change forever.

Now, take one step farther back and see yourself as the observer of the image. Another step in the exploration of emptiness. Because, really, the picture is meaningless without an observer. And the observer does not exist without something to observe. Thus, the two are separate but indivisible. Individual but united. Both one and not one. Interdependent. Empty.

Here, the observer (me) is the foreground. The picture is the background. All the activity is going on in me, the foreground, and being projected onto the background. Like looking out the window of my eyes and seeing the world pass by like a film on a screen. What if the screen suddenly comes to the fore? How different things would look!

Taking Vows

I witnessed a friend take barma rabjung vows tonight...the preliminary vows to becoming a monk in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition.

The other night I took the Bodhisattva vows.

That felt like a serious commitment to me. And it is. But this...there is a visible, palpable difference. A tangible sign of commitment in this lifetime. Although he is not yet a fully-ordained monk, he now has the robes of a monk. He has the serious precept vows...vows which I have promised myself and taken to heart as best I can, but not in a formal way as he did tonight. I admire him for his courage. But I fear for his stamina.

Lama Phuntsok, who transmitted the vows, talked about the significance of taking them. They are not something you put on or take off, depending on how you feel. They are not something you can keep by default, as in, "Oh, I forgot to steal for a whole year!" He said taking the vows was like saying, "All right, from this moment I begin the conscious work of becoming a good person."

When I took refuge, Sonam Rinpoche said, "Now you are guaranteed to achieve enlightenment...but you must work for it." Tonight Lama Phuntsok said, "When you take vows you understand that no one is responsible for your enlightenment but you." And of course, the Buddha said no one can give you liberation or enlightenment. He was only the finger pointing at the moon.

A Question...or two

Is there a special hell reserved for suicide bombers?

I'm going to have to look up Dante...see which circle of hell holds those who kill in the name of God.

And what does God really think of those who presume to know what God is thinking?

And really...what was he thinking? Or she? Or it?

Or was he thinking at all? In the middle of my God complex, when I thought I was omnipotent and untouchable somehow, my mother said to me, "Larry! What were you thinking?" And my only response was, "I guess I wasn't thinking..."

Would God be that sheepish?

PS. My acronym for God: SHI: She/He/It

And if you're a Taoist, you know God really is SHI. God seeks out the low, the quiet...there you find the Tao...

Notes on Emptiness #5

Self is glue that keeps our parts together...
also flypaper in which we get stuck...

A Response for DoveTaler

DoveTaler posted this comment about my possible epitaph: Do you really believe it - this re-birth stuff? Or do you think of it as a student - interesting proposition.... intellectually fascinating...

The short answer is yes. I really do believe it and not just as an interesting proposition.

Even before I began the study of Buddhism seriously, I considered this a strong possibility. Not that I have memories of previous lives, but I always wondered where certain aspects of my personality came from. Out of thin air? Mere intellectual curiosity? Where did my fascination with revolutions, especially the Russian revolution, come from? My almost automatic opposition to authority? My musical talent? My precocious literacy?

For years I have been interested in Freemasonry...(this came out of a single reference in War and Peace when I was 12 years old for heaven's sake)...and the Knights Templar...and all the Holy Grail legendry. And then Penny, my partner, has an affinity with the Languedoc, which was a central locale for Templar activities and certain Gnostic Christian movements. How to explain these odd circumstances?

As a youngster I was fascinated by the American Civil War. I even had dreams about it. In which I was simultaneously a Rebel footsoldier and a dashing behatted, grey-gloved lieutenant in the Confederate cavalry.

The Mayan civilization has also held a certain fascination for me. I have been in Mexico twice in my life. Both times I've made special trips, unaccompanied because no one else was interested, to the Mayan ruins.

You can say it's because I'm attracted to history. And so I am. But not just any history. I'm not especially interested in the history of the Inuit, for example. No, these are specific places and times. Why? I don't know, except to think that maybe, just maybe I was there.

You can say it's just a curious mind, but I ask, what drives that curious mind. When you look at them, they are bizarre things to be pursuing. After all, in front of my nose is beer, sex, food, TV, sports, politics, all the diversions a modern western society can conjure up. That's what most people pay attention to, isn't it? But nooo...I have to dick around with the most abstruse subjects.

So. (As Veronica would say.)

So. Then I met the Dharma. Now, I'm a wide thinker, but maybe not a very deep one. But if you follow the Buddhist logic of mind to its end, you see that there is no end. Or rather, I should say, if you try to trace the path of your mind to its very beginning, you see there is no beginning. The Buddhist logic says nothing occurs without a cause. And furthermore, the cause must be of the same variety. (That's not the right word, but I can't think of it just now.) In other words, an orange can't be the cause of a thought. The only thing that can cause thought is a previous thought.

So. When you get to what you think was your first thought after conception...what caused it? What preceded it? It must have been a thought. It could not have come from out of nowhere. In other words, there was thought before conception. If so, it must have been with a different body. Basically, the mind is beginningless and endless. Only the wrapping changes.

This makes complete sense to me, so yes I believe the rebirth thing. It explains to me why I might be so interested in all that goofy stuff. Karma makes sense then. Cause and effect make sense. Life makes sense, or at least holds out the possibility of making sense, if you spread it out over more than one. Life becomes fair when you look at it this way. I mean, why should I be here suffocating in luxury with millions of others living in horrifying poverty and degradation...if there's only one shot at this life thing? Why are some criminals rich and successful while honest hardworking people eat dirt? To me, that makes no sense. That makes the universe seem a capricious, even malevolent thing. I think it would mean that Nietzche was right.

This way, everybody gets a shot. More than one. We have all eternity to get it right.

I could say more, I guess, but it comes down to this: the universe never wastes anything. It's one immense recycling plant. Six billion minds being used like throwaway lighters? How wasteful.

Or one more thing which always impressed me: the Dalai Lama has said there is evidence that rebirth occurs, but no definitive evidence that it does not occur.

Hmm.

Sidebar Links

All right, just so there's no confusion....(Ha! when has there ever not been confusion?)....the link that says "World's Worst Buddhist" is a real link. It belongs to my good friend Sen. Macon Sirius Bacon, a venerable Dixiecrat of good patrician lineage who simply can't keep the y'all out of his drawl....

Well...no...but go there, you'll find out.

One Possible Epitaph

Click here for interesting Billy Joel video thing

Fooling with the Mental Blog

I think now I have discovered two ways to add links to this bloginous mass of html. You'll notice a links section in the sidebar. Current links are default thingies copied and pasted into my template. Eventually I'll get around to putting my own real ones in. (Those links do work...I'm just not particularly interested in them...)

The Way of the Buddha Pt. 3

Why’m I thinking about this right now? Because tonight I am going to Toronto to take teachings on and receive the Bodhisattva vows. I’ve taken these vows before with HHDL in the course of Kalachakra. But somehow, and incredibly I might add, this seemed almost a “by the way” thing. Tonight is a formal taking of the vows.

The Bodhisattva vow seems a serious thing to me. A vow for all eternity really. A vow to be a practitioner. A vow to torment a perfectionist.

For those not sure, the Bodhisattva vow is essentially to lead the numberless sentient beings to enlightenment (in the most efficient way possible for each individual sentient being) no matter how long it takes. Ie. to keep returning to the world until the world is emptied of unenlightened ones. By the way, numberless is a Buddhist synonym for infinite. So we’re talking about a fairly long time here, I guess. The Bodhisattva agrees to forgo his/her own final nirvana until all are enlightened.

A tough choice for one whose predominant theme in life seems to be escape.

The Bodhisattva vow is a commitment to achieve the union of compassion and wisdom (as Buddhists understand these terms) and then act for the benefit of all sentient beings. The perfect amalgam of student and practitioner. He/she accomplishes this through the practice of the Six Perfections…the first of which is Giving or Generosity. There’s a one or two hundred page section of the Flower Ornament Scripture (Avatamsaka Sutra) which describes the myriad ways in which Bodhisattvas practise giving.

Me, I give down-and-outers under the Spadina bridge a toony. It’s a start.

PS. But the Puritans, or whoever, weren't too far wrong when they said Charity begins at home. And this too, is a tough hoe to row. I think when Jesus told us to turn the other cheek, he meant be kindest to the ones who annoy you the most...starting with yourself.

The Way of the Buddha Pt. 2

The Buddha practised
Fine-tuning the fingers of enlightenment
I play with ham hands
On the bones of self

Bush Is Serving Up the Cold War Warmed Over

I don't want to bore you too much, but this op-ed piece in the LA Times really bought my eye. Eventually I'll get off the political stuff and write some moody poetry or something....OK?

Robert Scheer
July 5, 2005

The "war on terror" is turning out to be nothing more than a recycled formulation of the dangerously dumb "domino theory." Listen to the way President Bush justifies the deepening quagmire of Iraq: "Defeat them abroad before they attack us at home." If we didn't defeat communism in Vietnam, or even tiny Grenada, went the hoary defense of bloody proxy wars and covert brutality in the latter stages of the Cold War, San Diego might be the next to go Red.

Now, the new version of this simplistic concept seems to say, "If we don't occupy a Muslim country, inciting terrorists to attack us in Baghdad, we'll suffer more terror attacks at home." The opposite is the case. Invading Iraq has, like the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan before, proved to be a massive recruiting tool for Muslim extremists everywhere. Even the embattled CIA, which the White House is struggling to neuter as a semi-objective voice on foreign affairs, recently declared the Iraq occupation to be a boon to terrorists.

Yet the president stumbles on, demanding that we support his Iraq adventure lest we sully the memory of the victims of Sept. 11, 2001. "We fight today because terrorists want to attack our country and kill our citizens, and Iraq is where they are making their stand," said Bush last week. Actually, no. We fight in Iraq today because Bush listened to a band of right-wing intellectual poseurs who argued America could create a reverse domino effect, turning the Middle East into a land of pliable free-market, pro-Western "democracies" through a crude use of military force. This is rather like claiming a well-placed stick of dynamite can turn a redwood forest into a neighborhood of charming Victorians.

Furthermore, it is not Bush and his band of neocons who are fighting — and dying — for the Iraq domino, but rather raw 19-year-old recruits, hardworking career military officers and impoverished or unlucky Iraqis. And foreign terrorists linked to Al Qaeda are in Iraq because it is a field of opportunity, not because it is their last stand.

For four years the White House has framed the war on terror as an open-ended global battle against a monolithic enemy on many fronts, rather than employing a modern counterterrorism model that sees terrorism as a deadly pathology that grows out of religious or ethnic rage and must be isolated and excised.

From the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, Bush has systematically sought to parlay the public's shock over a singular, if devastating, terrorist assault by a small coterie of extremists into what amounted to a call for World War III against a supposed "axis of evil." But these countries — Iran, Iraq and North Korea — shared only a clear hostility to the United States, rather than any real alliance or ties to 9/11 itself.

In the process, Bush has justified an enormous military buildup, spent tens of billions of dollars in Iraq, reorganized the federal government, driven the nation's budget far into the red and assaulted the civil liberties of Americans and people around the world, all without bothering to seriously examine the origins of the 9/11 attacks or compose a coherent strategy to prevent similar ones in the future. Meanwhile, Osama bin Laden remains at large, as do his financial and political backers in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere.

But why has the White House pursued this nonsensical approach over the loud objections of the country's most experienced counterterrorism and Islamic experts? Because it allows the administration all the political benefits the Cold War afforded its predecessors: political capital, pork-barrel defense contracts and a grandiose sense of purpose.

And because the war on terror has no standard of victory, it can never end — thus neatly replacing the Cold War as a black-and-white, us-against-them worldview that generations of American (and Soviet) politicians found so useful for keeping the plebes in line. It's a one-size-fits-all bludgeon.

The terrible, unspoken truth of the war on terror is that the tragedy of 9/11 has been exploited as a political opportunity by George W. Bush, Halliburton, the Pentagon and the other pillars of what President Eisenhower dubbed the "military-industrial complex" in his final speech as president.

The former general who led us in World War II warned of the dangers of an unbridled militarism. "In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex," said Eisenhower, a Republican, in 1961. "The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes."

Consider yourself warned.

PS. I have to copy and paste these things, rather than put links, because they only keep these articles on their website for 2 weeks or so. Then you have to pay for them.

The Way of the Buddha

Over and over I am reminded that the Buddha taught a path, a way. He didn’t build some edifice for us to stand in and marvel at. The heart of Buddhism is practice. Therefore, the right question is always, just as with Jesus Christ, “What would the Buddha do?”

And over and over I come to the conclusion that I am a good student of Buddhism, but not a very good practitioner.

Support Our Troops!

That’s what I’ve been seeing more and more on the backs of cars with Ontario license plates. You know, those crossed yellow ribbons, many with a US flag emblazoned on them.

What’s up with that? So much for the repeated sentiment in Canadian media that Canadians are becoming increasingly anti-American. Apparently, a whole raft of Ontario citizens think they are Americans!

And what the hell does it mean…support our troops? You mean those poor Canadian suckers over in Afghanistan? Well…OK.

And what the hell does it mean…support our troops? Support the troops in their undoubted desire to get the hell out of that mess in Iraq? Well…OK.

But this is a different message than the one I’ve been seeing on the backs of transport trucks…something like “Support our troops whenever they go. No aid or comfort to the enemy. No way.” What enemy? Whose enemy?

For the US to fight terrorism, that’s one thing. But to invade Afghanistan as the heart of Terror-land is another thing entirely. Especially when they are unable to capture, or even locate, the presumed ringleader of international terrorism after 4 years! Same goes for Iraq. As late as last week, Donald Rumsfeld was still repeating that long-discredited claim that Iraq and Al-Qaeda were related. Something tells me that neither the defeat of terrorists, nor truth, nor justice, are exactly what the US administration is after.

Whether there were good reasons to invade either of these countries and bring about regime change is a whole different discussion. These were not the reasons that brought about the current state of war.

No, the poor deluded Ontario-Americans with yellow ribbons tied around their necks have been sold a phoney enemy.

Oh man, you gotta read this!

I copied this from NY Times:


July 2, 2005
Taking the Prostitution Pledge

Since 2003, the Bush administration has required foreign groups fighting AIDS overseas to pledge their opposition to prostitution and sex trafficking before they get money from Washington. Last month, the administration expanded the requirement to American groups. On its face, this law seems innocuous. Who supports prostitution?

But in countries like India, controlling AIDS among prostitutes and their clients is the key to keeping the disease from exploding into the general population. So some very effective programs are built around trying to make sure that prostitutes and their customers use condoms. The groups who run these programs try to gain the trust of prostitutes by providing them with health care and teaching them about safe sex. They argue that being forced to state their opposition to prostitution would limit their ability to do that. Brazil turned down a $40 million grant from the United States because it did not want to imperil successful programs.

The Bush administration and some of its supporters disagree. They argue that anything that makes life more tolerable for prostitutes encourages prostitution. That would include organizing sex workers in India to stand up to abusive clients, or helping Bangladeshi prostitutes get shoes so they can leave the brothel to visit a health clinic. Initially, the Justice Department ruled that the prostitution pledge could not be required of American groups because the American Constitution guarantees the right to free speech. The administration's turnabout would seem vulnerable to a constitutional challenge.

The new anti-prostitution requirement may have a hidden purpose: to take away the right of American groups working on family planning overseas to counsel abortions. On his first day in office, President Bush signed a reinstatement of President Ronald Reagan's policy blocking American funds for overseas family-planning groups that so much as mention abortion. Both restrictions are the work of Representative Christopher Smith, a New Jersey Republican. The abortion gag rule has never applied to American groups, for the same First Amendment reasons that the prostitution pledge did not. But the decision to strip Americans of their First Amendment right to speak as they please on prostitution opens the way to an attempt to keep them silent on abortion, too.

Moral Relativism

The problem plaguing the Bush administration and its supporters...Republicans, evangelist Christians, deep social conservatives...is that they are trying to straddle the highway of morality and they've got both feet in the ditch. On the one side, domestically, they're pushing moral absolutes...Texas hangman's justice, the so-called sacredness of life (Terri Schiavo), anti-abortion, anti-gay...there must be more but I can't think of it right now. And on the other side, mostly international, they're sinking in the moral quagmire of war in Iraq, war on terrorism, neglect of Africa, politics of oil, politics of the Middle East, war on the liberties of their own citizens.

These are the same people. It's a disgrace to let Terri Schiavo die, but not such a big deal for millions of Africans to die of AIDs. Gay marriage is an abomination, but bombination of children in Baghdad is OK.

It's impossible to square this circle. What is absolute about morality? Murder is wrong. But state murder is OK? Even the Buddha, in a previous incarnation, killed in order to prevent the death of 500 others. The key was in his knowledge, his motivation, and the acceptance of the consequences. What Republican has that much insight?

My Way or the Highway (to Hell)

I've been reading Henry Miller again. Sexus at the moment. Read it many years ago, but I'm recycling. What an odd juxtaposition of philosophy and pornography. He must be the first writer to put the words "cunt" and "Lao Tzu" on the same page. No wonder he got himself into so much trouble.

Which brings to mind the erotica seminar at the recent CanWrite conference...I couldn't stay for the whole thing, or even most of it. But I did have one observation. All the panelists were women. Why is that? Women write erotica and men write pornography?

At least I was able to hear that we've all gotten past the "throbbing member" and "heaving bosom" stage. Apparently. On the other hand, I did happen to overhear the panelists discussing (before the session started) how hard it was to read out loud in public words like "nipples" and "blow job".

But that's not really what I meant to write about. Here's a quote from the "First American Publication" of Sexus, the Black Cat paperback, which must have employed amateur or semi-literate typesetters or lazy proofreaders...either that or they were so preoccupied looking for the sexy bits they forgot to pay attention to integrity of the manuscript...Anyway, p. 270 of the paperback:

The world has not to be put in order: the world is order incarnate. It is for us to put ourselves in unison with this order, to know what is the world order in contradistinction to the wishful-thinking orders which we seek to impose on one another.

I don't know enough about Miller's life to know whether he really believed this or not. Seems to me anyone with a modicum of wisdom eventually learns this. But knowing and practising are two different things. And don't I know that...?

Knowing and practising...What Miller says here has actually been percolating in my brain for a couple of months. I think it's mostly what is wrong with the world today. We're beset by fanatics everywhere who insist on having everyone do things the way they would like to see them done. Nobody wants to mind their own business anymore. We're all too busy minding everyone else's business. And so we go from a concept of government (for example) in which people freely band together in order to promote the common weal, the greatest good for the greatest number, to a seriously anal nanny-state which has the temerity to say "You'd better start eating fruits and vegetables instead of french fries or we might have to exclude you from any sort of health care..."! ie. we don't like your lifestyle, therefore, we're going to make it illegal. I begin to understand what the Michigan Militia is on about....

OK. So maybe I really am an anarchist at heart. And why I was so attracted at the tender age of 15 to Marx's idea of the withering of the state.

Yep, everybody wants things ordered to suit themselves. And so they begin to meddle. There should be a 12 Step program for compulsive meddlers. Probably every politician alive could be a member. You know, one of the slogans is Live and Let Live...

Of course, if you're a Buddhist, you maybe realize that this is a congenital condition. You take what is and organize it by means of the senses and sense consciousnesses...you organize it to suit yourself. You perceive it this way and no longer see what is. Rather, you see an interpretation of what is. One step removed from reality.

Ah, but knowing and practising...Here's what I want to get at...see, the next step, of which I have been egregiously guilty in recent months, is that what we do next is take our interpretation of what is and try to order that to suit ourselves. By now we're twice removed from reality! How many times have I set rules about the way things should be? And nobody seems to be listening! And when you come up against the intractability of reality, the invariable tendency of reality to be precisely what it is, all the way down to coffee grounds on the kitchen counter...the utter impossibility of lining up all the condiments in a perfect row just because you say so...what happens? You get angry. Thus is born the meddler! The self-righteous arranger. The warmonger. The dictator. The abuser.

How does that saying go? "If you want serenity, resign as manager of the universe."

Mad Cows

From an article in the NY Times on June 11/05 reporting on the discovery of an American mad cow, possibly one that was not fed in Canada:

Beef has soared to record prices in American grocery stores, and meatpackers have struggled from the lack of Canadian cattle they normally count on.

What a weird world, eh? A few months ago the US farmers convinced that judge in where was it? Wisconsin? Minnesota? One o them there border states...to put the stall on reopening the border. Hole up there, Bessie! So what have we got? Americans suffering. Canadians suffering. Cows suffering. Cows most of all, I guess.

I still cannot comprehend what flaming idjit decided it was a good idea to feed a bunch of ruminants meat byproducts. And how the hell did he convince anyone else?

But having said that, I bet we're going to find in the not too distant future that the US has been lying all along about the incidence of BSE in that country.

And Speaking of Lyrics

Back in '73, Steppenwolf released an album called Monster. The title tune was a brief history of the creation of USA, leading into the disaster of VietNam. Find that if you can and listen to the words.

Part of the song is a section called "Amerika" which goes like this:

Amerika, where are you now
Don't you care about your sons and daughters
Don't you know we need you now
We can't fight alone against the Monster

Leon Trotsky Puts His Finger On It

Here's an interesting tidbit from Trotsky written in 1932:

At the present moment Germany is passing through one of those great historic hours upon which the fate of the German people, the fate of Europe and in an important measure, the fate of all humanity will depend for decades.

In 1932 Hitler ran for President of Germany but lost. Meanwhile the Nazis were in a state of combat with the Communist Party, the direction of which was controlled by the Stalinist Communist International.

It wasn't until January 1933 that Hitler became Chancellor in a coalition government. Then in February...just days before an election...the Reichstag fire. Hitler managed to put the blame for that on the Communists, although there is still great suspicion that it was in fact the Nazis themselves who set the fire as an excuse for a security crackdown. In any case, the Communists were soundly defeated in the election of March 5, 1933. Hitler won a majority of seats in the Reichstag, and within a couple of months had stripped it of its powers. He then proceeded to annihilate all workers' organizations.

Trotsky clearly saw this before it occurred. Perhaps he was thinking of Italy and Mussolini. He compared the situation to that of a ball sitting at the top of a pyramid. The ball might slip right, or it might slip left. He argued for decisive action by the German Communists...something which was impossible because of its slavish adherence to the almost invariably wrongheaded policies of the Comintern.

But now...think of what he said there. How right he was. Germany slipped right. Right into war. World war. Millions of deaths. Billions of dollars worth of destruction. World War II created both Communist China and the Iron Curtain. "The fate of all humanity for decades..." We're still living with echoes of the Holocaust. We're living with nuclear weapons...developed in order to win the war.

It's a shame that Trotsky had to spend so much of his later life fighting rearguard actions against the Stalinists. The history of the Soviet Union would have been much different if he had not been manoeuvred out of power. (It may not have been better, but it would have been different...)

But in all the reading I've done over the years about this, I still cannot figure out how Trotsky managed to let himself get beaten by a man who was so much his intellectual inferior. We might think that Trotsky was not ruthless enough...but his record during the civil war contradicts this. So what was it, exactly, that allowed Stalin to gather so much power to himself?

Maybe Trotsky's flaw was this: he always relied on the logic and the justice of his arguments. He analysed the evolution of the Soviet Union into a bureaucratic state bolstered by lies, fear and intimidation. He did not see, perhaps, that in one way at least, Hitler and Stalin were identical: not logic and justice, but power. Power was their primary argument.

Brigitte Bardo

Brigitte says think of everything as contingent
All fluid, all in flux
nothing static, all things intermediate
sleep the prelude to waking
dream the dawn of reality
life the afterbirth of death
death the doorway of life
cycling, cycling
nothing stays the same,
nothing static
stillness full of movement, sound...
the noise of TV alters the shape of shovels
three floors down in the garage
moment by moment everything collapses, reassembles
too fast for thought
64 parts to a moment
the blink of an eye already too much to consider.

No need to wait for death, says Brigitte
Bardo is here now
in the space between thoughts

And speaking of the Buddha...2

What would the Buddha do?

He'd say, "Jesus Christ! What the hell are all you moneychangers doing in the temple? Get out! Enlightenment is not a commodity. Go sit. Find a tree. Spend forty days in the desert. Don't come back until you've found the real gold."

Or not.

And speaking of the Buddha...

Coincidentally, this is also the one hundredth anniversary of Buddhism in Canada, the first temple opening in Vancouver in 1905. There you go, Buddhism in Canada is as old as Alberta. Something for Ralph Klein to think about.

Victoria Day or?

Yesterday just happened to be the day on which Buddhists traditionally celebrate Saka Dawa, the anniversary of the Buddha's enlightenment. I'm sure the ghost of Queen Victoria thrilled to the sight of all her Canadian Buddhist subjects lighting candles, burning incense and filling the sky with fireworks.

"For us? Oh my children, thank you, thank you. You are loyal and sweet and we shall not forget you. Now excuse us while we go to see if Prince Albert is still in his can..."

Laura B's Lucky Charm

Just what exactly is Dubya thinking? I watched the news last night wondering how those guys in Washington could even remotely think that Laura or anybody could recover goodwill in the Middle East without right action. What level of unreality are these people working with? It's almost a truism...the people are not collectively stupid. (You can fool some of them some of the time...) They can't help but see poor Laura's Charm Offensive as Uncle Sam's Offensive Charm.

If I were Laura, I'd be tellin' Dubya when I got home, "No sugar for you, honey, 'less'n you set up straight 'n fly right!"

Canadians will fall for a pretty face. But Hezbollah won't. You need to have some there there before you go there.

Kerouac Gets a Comeuppance

I have always said that the greatest shock Kerouac ever got in his life was when he walked into my house, sat down in a kind of stiff-legged imitation of a lotus posture, and announced he was a Zen Buddhist ... and then discovered everyone in the room knew at least one Oriental language.

Kenneth Rexroth, 1971

Notes on Emptiness #4

obscure birdcalls from the big pine next door
disappear when you search for them
like trying to thread the needle of emptiness

Cornell Ring Cycle #2

the weight of Wagner
under heavy grey sky
too much for this suburban guy

the wit of Williams
little wagon red
wonder what the cavedweller said

Cornell Ring Cycle #1

walking down Cornell
with my buddhanature tucked under my arm
blue jay squawk, crow caw
cardinal breaker breaker breaker
robin warbles Christopher who?

squirrel sez Nuts!

Short Buddha Pome

Look at me, ignorant buddha
warming up in the practise room
memememe...

Haiku #1

skeletal remains
broken tires on the road
spring cleaning

Will the real Belinda please stand up?

www.belinda.com
www.belinda.ca

Meditation Files: #3

Look around you...nothing comes from nothing
everything has its cause
what is the cause of you?

Body has a physical cause...the blending of earth fire water air
but the body is not you
Mind is not earth fire water air
Mind is what?
What its cause?
Is the mind you?
And if your mind loses its body...is it still you?

Sign for a Garage Sale

Books!
Thin books: 25 cents each or 3 for $1.00
Fat Books: $1.44/100grams
If your name has a Y in it and you correctly guess the number of Whys in the book you want, it's yours.
No book may leave without a cover. If the book you want has no cover, we'll rip a cover from another book and tape it to the one you want.
Canadian Classics are rare. If you have one and give us $2 we'll take it.
American Classics must pass through the metal and lie detectors.

Yikes!

A whole month gone by with no posting!

Let's put it this way. I've been otherwise occupied. As I just told a friend: burrowing under the Yoni School for Wayward Poets. Digging a big tunnel. Like in the Great Escape.

Trivia: The movie was fabulous, literally. Steve McQueen was never in that prison camp. Nor was James Garner. In fact, there were no Americans involved in the Great Escape.

Many things going on. I should really put in a little every day. Then I wouldn't have to try to play ketchup. Most significant for me right now is the possible transformation of my Buddhist study group into some form of Dharma Centre. No time to go into it right now, but soon.

Wolfowitz Confirmed as Head of World Bank

I don't know why, but somehow I thought this would never happen. I'll be surprised now if the World Bank can ever establish itself as an institution for the "world", rather than an instrument of policy for the West, and particularly the US.