January 2009 Archives

Last Saturday Hardcore Dharma wrapped up its study of Zen Mind: Beginners Mind by Shunryu Suzuki A contentious read!  Some folks loved its experiential wisdom (I certainly found reading the book to be a mindfulness practice in and of itself, requiring my utmost attention).  Some folks found it overly “big-minded,” ultimate-reality focused and vague.  I did find the experience I look forward to in reading a dharma book; that is the “I understand, I agree and I feel better” emotional process was missing.  “Where are you when I need you, Jack Kornfield,” I lamented.  

Yet at the same time I found myself confronting my relationship to my meditation and dedication to Buddhism fairly deeply.  While sorting through Shrunyu Suzuki’s ideas of having no gaining ideas, no expectation of outcome, his reminder to think of Buddhism as “nothing special,” I came face to face with my true tendency to often use meditation and mindfulness as lotion for the irritation of my mind.  I found that often, instead of coming to the meditation practice as a way to calm my mind so that I could explore reality more deeply, I often came to “fix” my mind.  To calm me down, to get me to work, to get me focused, to bring about artistic catharsis, to avoid smoking a cigarette and so forth.  Like so many balms that I employ in my life: yoga, baths, a glass of wine, running, I had started to use meditation as “mood management.”  I started to use it towards self-improvement.  I mean, meditation is good for you.  Listen to Alan Wallace speak and you’ll get pumped to devote the next three years of your life to attaining the ninth stage of Shamatha.  And what’s the problem with that?

Reading ZMBM I came to the conclusion that the problem is not that you think meditation is going to be good for you, improve you as a person, an artist, a lover a friend.  The problem is that in order to see the illusory nature of our beliefs, its essential to let go of these ideas of improvement.  I know that’s what Suzuki Roshi is saying, but it made sense to me, for the first time again, this week.  Going into meditation in order for it to calm me down pits myself against myself.  Going into meditation accepting the momentary, flawed state of my mind and reality and not try to change it, to rather simply be curious about it, allows me to be in the present moment.  Because the greatest struggle in my sitting practice recently (and I know for many people this has got to be true) goes like this: 

Non-verbal breath focusing. 

Thought 1: I am going to feel so much better/ be super productive once I can really learn how to do this all the time.

Thought 2: Stop thinking, Julia, you just said you were going to feel much better when you learned how to experientially focus on the breath and now you’re thinking. 

Thought 3: Don’t chastise yourself Julia, just get back to the breath.  Discipline!

Non-verbal breath focusing. 

Thought 4: See, Julia, that’s so much better.  If only you could learn how to do that all the time you would be so much smarter/more productive. 

Thought 5: Ai Chihuahua, Jules!  Stop thinking.  You're thinking. Stop thinking. You're thinking.  Oh, honey, please, please please stop thinking …. 

And on and on. 

Here’s a quotation that particularly interested me in ZMBM:

“I discovered that it is necessary, absolutely necessary, to believe in nothing.  That is, we have to believe in something which has no form and no color – something which exists before all forms and colors appears.  This is a very important point.   No matter what god of doctrine you believe in, if you become attached to it, your belief will be based more or less on a self-centered idea.  You strive for a perfect faith in order to save yourself.  …In constantly seeking to actualize your idea, you will have no time for composure.  But if you are always prepared for accepting everything we see as something appearing from nothing, knowing that there is some reason why a phenomenal existence of such and such form and color appears, then at that moment you will have perfect composure.”

Those were my thoughts on this week.  You guys?

According to journalists newspapers are dying. Now, many journalists work at newspapers, creating a potential conflict-of-interest, but I will give them the benefit of the doubt. Dailies in small cities are nearly disappeared and formerly great papers like the Baltimore Sun are barely alive. Even the New York Times recently mortgaged its pretty new building for badly needed cash to stay afloat. Journalists' predilection for hailing the demise of their own industry is famous, but this time they're right  (an excellent discussion by Eric Alterman traces the downward arc with plenty of context).

Enter: Smarmy, self-satisfied (at least, at the end) fluff piece on the first newspapers to go online in 1981.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WCTn4FljUQ]

"Richard Halloran: Owns Home Computer." Priceless. But the bearded editor from the San Francisco Examiner delivers the money quote:

And we're not in it to make money, we're, ah, probably not going to lose a lot, but we aren't gonna make much either. 

It's easy to make fun of people from the past who didn't see massive, paradigm-shifting trends coming, even as those trends were bearing down on their tiny brains like an eighteen-wheeler with blown brakes. It is, in fact, both easy and fun.

In this case, however, the KRON report is cool because it anticipates both the promise of news via the internet and most of the dynamics that are killing newspapers today: a majority are/were local, and reliant on local advertising and subscriptions; newspapers didn't anticipate the seismic effect the internet would have on their business model, and continued running 1980-style operations in 1999; with the exception of the Times and a few others, newspapers' websites are still organized like physical broadsheets, instead of taking advantage of RSS and social networking technology to deliver their product.

Downloading the news may have cost a user $10 in bandwidth fees and two hours of time in 1981, but now it's free and instantaneous and consumers have no incentive to pay for it. 

My concern: What happens to this wonderful blogosphere when we run out of primary source material? As Alterman points out:

Despite the many failures at newspapers, the vast majority of reporters and editors have devoted years, even decades, to understanding the subjects of their stories. It is hard to name any bloggers who can match the professional expertise, and the reporting, of, for example, the Post ’s Barton Gellman and Dana Priest, or the Times’ Dexter Filkins and Alissa Rubin.

In October, 2005, at an advertisers’ conference in Phoenix, Bill Keller complained that bloggers merely “recycle and chew on the news,” contrasting that with the Times’ emphasis on what he called “a ‘journalism of verification,’ ” rather than mere “assertion.”

Still, industries and professionals adapt:

The survivors among the big newspapers will not be without support from the nonprofit sector. ProPublica, funded by the liberal billionaires Herb and Marion Sandler and headed by the former Wall Street Journal managing editor Paul Steiger, hopes to provide the mainstream media with the investigative reporting that so many have chosen to forgo. The Center for Independent Media ... [has created a] Web site called the Washington Independent. It’s one of a family of news-blogging sites meant to pick up some of the slack left by declining staffs in local and Washington reporting, with the hope of expanding everywhere.

And so we are about to enter a fractured, chaotic world of news, characterized by superior community conversation but a decidedly diminished level of first-rate journalism. The transformation of newspapers from enterprises devoted to objective reporting to a cluster of communities, each engaged in its own kind of “news”––and each with its own set of “truths” upon which to base debate and discussion––will mean the loss of a single national narrative and agreed-upon set of “facts” by which to conduct our politics. News will become increasingly “red” or “blue.”

Two gems from our pop culture vaults that I've come across in my internet trawlings (thanks Paul R). Both make me think that either commercials were a lot more transparent in their intentions thirty years ago, or the American people were more gullible. Compare the earnest and obvious nature of both of these (although Ronald does seem awfully a lot like he would have a white van with tinted windows parked outside) with the ironic/caustic/epic scale of today's commercials. But, like most of today's commercials, neither of them say a thing about the usefulness of the product, or why it's needed or better than comparable products. Both of them make empty promises - one promises fun with a creepy clown if only you eat a certain kind of hamburger, the other promises fun with a bubbly blonde if only you use a certain kind of shaving cream. They also are both pretty close to one-angle one-take which says a lot about how much more stimulation we've decided our eye-brains require.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krXP_TUZqsk]
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OM59nSkjEWU]

I am going to start out this post with some questions we ask ourselves:

What is my intention? What is my behavior? What is my role in the problem/suffering? What is my attachment to the goal? How much do I know? When do I react in anger and fear?

What is the reality of this situation? How do I think about other people that are involved? What are my perceptions/assumptions of  the other person/people? What do I see as the potential effects of taking action (on myself, on others, on my surroundings,  etc…)? What are the things that prevent me from taking action?

These are questions we came up with at the most recent  Integral Activism meeting. The integral activism framework intends that the questions could be applied to the three different levels of engagement: on a personal level (myself), interpersonal/group level (my interactions with one or more individuals or working with a group, including doing service or volunteer work), or on a political/community/collective level (as a group working with other groups or as a community engaging our state government, or as a country interacting with other countries).

When we first brainstormed these questions, we were talking about being aware of our behavior when we engage in activism work. Then someone pointed out that we may be asking ourselves these questions on one of the levels, but often we don’t work on asking ourselves these questions on all three levels.

For instance, while I may be asking myself these questions on a personal level as I go about my daily life, how often do I move those questions to what we are doing with the Back to the Sack’s work to reduce the use of plastic bags? To demonstrate:

• What is our intention of doing this work? To reduce plastic bags use.


• What is our role in the problem? presuming we are fallible, and some of us do use a plastic bags on occasion (for example, I have when I have forgotten my reusable bags).


• What is our attachment to the goal? We want New Yorkers to use less plastic bags.


• What are my perceptions/assumptions of  the other people? We assume that many New Yorkers may be hostile to the idea of not being able to use plastic bags. We assume that many people might not see the importance of getting rid of plastic bags. We also assume that many may not think it is worth the effort to switch to reusable bags.


• What are things that prevent us from taking action? Here I can only use my personal example - I am afraid that people will react negatively towards me. I feel I may not be prepared enough to defend my point of view. I am concerned I don’t know enough about the situation.