WW: Bodhisattva Day is 20 March!

(That's me in my cardigan on Bodhisattva Day 2014. This year Bodhisattva Day falls on Thursday – i.e., tomorrow. For information on the bodhisattva principle, Bodhisattva Day, and how to participate,
click this link.)

Appearing also on My Corner of the World.

Hero Practice

They warn you not to meet your heroes,
to leave them unknown quantities,
to avoid disappointment.

But have you considered this:

Meet your heroes.

See them.

Accept their humanity,
the very unremarkable nature of them.

Stare reality in the eye,
that heroes live in this world with us.

They are from here,
made of the same material,
worn by the same forces.

Raised here, hazed here, as convoluted and unsavable as the rest of us.

Penetrate the nature of heroism;
have you run off half-cocked without doing this?

Did your heroes disappoint you?

Or was it you?


(Photo courtesy of Esteban López and Unsplash.com.)

St. Stephen's Day Meditation

"I have learned silence from the talkative,
toleration from the intolerant,
and kindness from the unkind;
yet, strange, I am ungrateful to these teachers."

Attributed to St. Stephen, in honour of this his feast, 2024.






(Page from a mediævel manuscript on the martyrdom of St. Stephen courtesy of the J. Paul Getty Museum and Rawpixel.com.)

Good Video: A Disquistion On The Nature Of Idiocy

"Whenever I'm about to do something, I think, 'Would an idiot do that?', and if they would, I do not do that thing."

This is the opening statement in the above-embedded excerpt from a Northwestern commencement address by Illinois governor JB Pritzer. It caught my ear because it reminded me of my own rule of thumb: Nothing stupid is Buddhist. Listening further, I found similar agreement with several more of the governor's insights. Take this one:

"The best way to spot an idiot: look for the person who is cruel."

Been relying on this one since childhood. Beware: it's not just for those you dislike. For example, though I long binned ideology as the only thing dumber than dogma, I live mostly on the left. And these days, I'm surrounded by fellow travellers who believe focussed cruelty is an effective retort to racism, classism, homophobia, sexism, religious bigotry, sexual predation, a catch-all crime called "insensitivity", and literally any other arrogance conceivable by monkeys. And so they ramp about, rightwinging anybody they can spin into a target.

Which is why I'm uneasy in their company. Because without you're an idiot, you know that sooner or later, by that standard, we all hang.

The governor does have a somewhat outdated view of our evolution, however. As I recently explained, far from securing our survival, we had to skim our ancestors' reptilian instincts off the gene pool to avoid them scrubbing us. But Pritzer is exact when he points out that empathy and compassion are evolved states. They are in fact seminal to our extraordinary run on this planet.

So the cruelty so fashionable to this era can't be forgiven as innate. The vicious make a conscious human choice.

No natural selection there. Just a mountain of karma.

Anyhow, I won't spoil the rest of the video for you. It's an excellent – one might say, prophetic – 3 minutes, that quite stands on its own.

Be sure to note Governor Pritzer's closing declaration. That we've so long allowed cultural authorities to teach us and our children the opposite reflects poorly on our own selective fitness.

I respectfully propose that reversing this trend is the essence of engaged Zen.

The Most Hated Ideology

In 2015 I uploaded a post entitled Forgiveness. It's about forgiveness.

Last year, after almost a decade of being roundly ignored by the Internet, the article was flagged as "sensitive content", fenced behind a warning to visitors, and then a second fence that requires a Google sign-in to pass.

Evidently to shield children from my dangerous advocacy of compassion.

There are times when the irony on this rock gets so thick that one is literally at a loss for words.

Which is why I've haven’t said anything about this until now.

In the article, I point out that I've consistently attracted more mob-borne hatred when advocating for forgiveness than any other topic. By way of example, I cite reactions to a comment I made about Frank Meeink, one-time neo-Nazi who atoned for his hateful conduct and actively defected to the side of kindness and reason. And I wound the thing up with a reference to Angulimala, a figure from the sutras who renounced his career as a serial killer and became a disciple of the Buddha.

I've now re-read Forgiveness half a dozen times, with long periods of reflection between, and still can't find a single line any rational person would call offensive. (It's true I can get, shall we say, "passionate", about certain subjects, nay judgemental in some cases. But unless I'm blind to something, Forgiveness contains no such cases.)

Instead, it appears that someone – or several someones – reported this little-read post from my back-catalogue simply because I advocated mindful compassion toward a repentant Nazi.

More perplexing still, Google also agrees that this is too shocking a contemplation for unsuspecting surfers to stumble across unawares. And much too shocking for kids, under any circumstances.

So, hey. I've been wrong before. If any readers game enough to breech the safety fences could read the text behind them and explain to me where you find offence, I would be sincerely grateful.

Please post your thoughts in the comment section below, if you don't mind. My word that I'll be equanimous toward all, pro- or anti-Ring, that are on-topic and not personally abusive to anyone.

Because I think the Great Sangha needs to start talking about this forgiveness thing.


(Photo courtesy of Damian Gadal and Wikimedia Commons.)

WW: Compassion in the pit of Hell

(The world is still talking about the 40+ degree weather we on the North Coast experienced this week. I've lived places where that kind of heat wasn't unheard of, but to see it fry my green and temperate homeland was terrifying. [And uncomfortable; few homes here have air conditioners.]

The above photo was snapped beside a local bike path. It's a basin of water for the dogs that are often walked on this trail, presumably placed by the neighbour who lives behind the gate that's out of frame on the right.)

Appearing also on My Corner of the World.

Shame

"People who don’t have a sense of shame have no future."

Thích Nhất Hạnh



(The Cloak of Conscience courtesy of Anna Chromy and Wikimedia Commons.)

Hindsight

I was difficult when I was younger.

Part of me would like to go back and face some of those challenges and circumstances again, except... not be a jerk this time. Think it might help?

"Not making a bad situation worse." Right up there with "being grateful for your blessings", and "cherishing other people just because they're in the boat with you."

Lessons it took me longer than most to learn.


(Photo courtesy of Jonny Keicher and Unsplash.com.)

Lynch's Law

An old friend last week posted a link to The Cruelty of Call-Out Culture: How Not To Do Social Change, David Brook's timely and incisive denunciation of our current lynch-mob fad. (The link goes to the original NYT post, which may not be available to all. Sadly I was unable to find an unregulated source.)

In it, Brooks relates a recent NPR segment on two members of the punk scene who were tarred and feathered (virtually, so far), then shunned, utterly and irrevocably, by their erstwhile comrades.

The first target, best friend of one Emily, was accused of "sending […] an unwelcome sexually explicit photograph" to a woman Emily apparently didn't know. Emily instantly turned on him, intentionally busted up the man's circle of friends, and effectively destroyed his life. She's had no further contact with this professed "best friend" since.

And then Emily herself was called out, in her case as a one-time cyber bully, having among other things posted a piling-on emoji to an Internet thread mocking a classmate. More than ten years previous. When she was in high school.

She instantly came in for the Adulterer's Special in her own right and was shunned in turn, as deeply and implacably as her apparently irredeemable former friend, by the same crowd she too regarded and depended upon as family.

At this point some may repress a smirk, but it turns out putting folks' eyes out ain't all that tidy, droogies. Witness:

"[Emily's accuser said the act of denouncing her] gave him a rush of pleasure, like an orgasm. He was asked if he cared about the pain Emily endured. 'No, I don’t care,” he replied. […] I literally do not care about what happens to you after the situation. I don’t care if she’s dead, alive, whatever.'"

Let's be clear. In this man's view, death is a reasonable punishment for flippancy. I think the moral here is, vet your allies carefully.

In further justification of his aggression, this individual declares that he was physically and emotionally abused in the past. In response to which my Zen training has taught me to ask: "By her?"

I'll warrant the reply to that one is less erotic.

Although by Emily's figuring she made moral progress between her bitchy teenage years and conscientious adulthood, let's note that her actions at both ages were identical: flush a pariah and move in for the kill.

Perhaps most frightening of all, she even condones her own attackers' behaviour, accepting the Gandhic hotbox she helped build as a righteous reaction to her ostensibly inexpungeable crimes. In other words, it seems she has gained little insight from all of this. She's suffered, deeply and grievously, for nothing.

Which is my definition of hell.

As for her tormentor's delusions, let's crack those right now: victims of injustice are more responsible for their actions, not less. Far from green-lighting cruelty, survival obliges you to stand firmly and publicly against the megalomania and mindless brutality that brutalised you. Particularly when it metasticises into an untargetted orgy.

Some commenters to the article claimed that vigilantism is righteous because duly constituted authority has long ignored, condescended to, even criminalised the victims of social crimes. Basically, "bullies must be bullied because bullies won't bully the bullies who bully the bullies I bully."

Now there's a koan. But the Buddha already solved this one for us, 2500 years ago:

"Blood stains cannot be removed by more blood. Resentment cannot be removed by more resentment."

That there's a paucity of justice in this lazy world is woefully clear. That we can secure it by further injustice is the con of a grifter.

Due process and calm analysis – of everything, including intent and context – are the right and left hands of justice. And empathy is its brain. If after patient and thorough investigation a case turns up weak, the accused is usually innocent, at very least of the precise charge or degree. As unsatisfying as that is to those who burn for payback, there is no other route to a just society.

If justice is truly your goal, you have to get off the sofa and build a system that values and compels it. Which is exceedingly difficult to do. But anything less just triples the injustice.

Bottom line: the karmic benchmark here remains the same it's always been: "Am I different from my enemies? Do I eliminate suffering, or create it?"

It's a tough inquisition, and one I freely own I fail on a regular basis.

But it simply will not do to skip it.


(Graphic courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and a generous photographer.)

Compassion Kyôsaku

"[Kitano] was thin and not in good health, but Shunryu was mesmerised by the way he would lay out his bowing cloth and lower himself to place his forehead on it, and above all by the way he would rise up again. He was so frail that every time he bowed Shunryu thought he wouldn't be able to get up, but he did, time after time.

"Eventually Shunryu realised that it was harder for him to watch Kitano bow than it was for Kitano to do so."

David Chadwick, Crooked Cucumber



(Photo of Avalokiteśvara Bodhisattva statue in Bodhisattva garden of Truc Lam Tri Duc Zen Monastery courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and a generous photographer.)

Good Story: To See the Invisible Man

"And then they found me guilty."

I've been meaning to post on this found teisho since I launched Rusty Ring, away back in the Kamakura Period. Somehow I always found a reason not to; afraid to cock it up, I imagine. But conditions have conspired to kick me into gear.

It seems we've entered the Age of Vengeance, wherein no limitation on the godlike All-Seeing I will be endured. Both Right and Left are stomping about, meting out "justice" from a position of self-declared moral superiority, yet in style remarkably similar to a pogrom. (And also to each other. Here's a koan: if you must become your enemy to defeat him, can you?)

As for insight; empathy; forgiveness; compassion; the instinctive restraint that governs men and women of good faith…

Get a rope.

In such times, a hermit monk could do worse than invite his brothers and sisters To See the Invisible Man.

Robert Silverberg's seminal contemplation on the nature of true decency first appeared in the inaugural (April 1963) issue of sci-fi pulp Worlds of Tomorrow. I became aware of it in 1985, when it was faithfully adapted for the first revival of Rod Serling's Twilight Zone.

For those 20-odd minutes I was riveted to the television; though still in my early 20s, I'd lived enough to recognise the unflinching truth Silverberg was burning into my screen. It's nothing less than a Jataka Tale on the gulf that separates bourgeois morality from the real thing.

In this case, we have a man sent up the river for the crime of "being an arsehole". (No wonder Silverberg's utopian society has done away with prisons; with laws like that, there'd have to be one on every block.)

Will their ingenious, diabolic alternative sentence turn this egocentric bastard into a productive citizen? You'll have to see it to find out.

At this writing, two uploads of the Twilight Zone segment are available on YouTube:

• an integral print over Spanish subtitles has survived there since 2015
• and dendrochronology pins this old-style three-parter all the way back in 2008 CE.

The entire series is also available on DVD.

With track records like these, and any good luck, you'll be able to find at least one of them. The writing, performances, and direction are all excellent. Allowance allowed the changing norms of television production, it's aged very well.

If on the other hand you prefer to read the original, then by truly miraculous wrinkle of the Enlightenment Super-Path:

• the entire April '63 issue of Worlds of Tomorrow is freely available in ebook form, or...
• if you'd rather have just the text, the Ru-net offers it here.

For the rest, I'll leave you with my war cry:

"That which does not kill me, makes me kinder."

It's a simple insight that I realised soon after I become a monk.

It also explains why my own society frequently hates me.

(Mad-scientist chortle.)


(Photo from a screen-cap of the Twilight Zone episode.)

Tuesday, 20 March, is Bodhisattva Day

It's happening, droogies! This Tuesday the time comes again to emulate Mr. Rogers and throw down for Bodhisattva Day.

So:

ALL TROOPS BREAK OUT YOUR CARDIGANS!

That's pretty much it. No need to wear a colour-coded ribbon or do an interpretative dance or march about in the streets chanting "Hey-hey ho-ho!" or sing a bar of Alice's Restaurant and walk out.

Just wear the wool of compassion.

Or the acrylic. Your call.

Because enlightenment is its own movement.

Again, that's THIS TUESDAY, 20 MARCH. All over the world. Boys and girls. Buddhists and non-Buddhists. People who are legitimately cold and those who are just posing. Crunchy and smooth. Waterfall and window shade.

Tuesday.

20 March.

Cardigan.

Gassho.


(Photograph of Día de los Muertes ofrenda to Mr. Rogers at Carmichael Library courtesy of Albert Herring and Wikimedia Commons.)

An Education

Asleep on my lap in bed.

Three days ago I had the sad duty of accompanying my mother's cat out of this life. A cherished family member, he's figured many times in these pages, most recently only weeks ago.

Since I was a child I've seen many pets die. It's been educational, in some ways more than human deaths. There's so little drama when an animal goes, so little desperation. Our pets seem to die as they live: with acceptance, if a little apprehension. When they become too sick to sleep well, you see this come into their eyes.

He was just ten years old, but probably had liver cancer for some time before it became debilitating, and therefore noticeable to us. Suddenly he became lethargic, lost his appetite, and started holing up in dark places. Most alarming, he refused to purr, no matter how much affection was lavished upon him. By the time we could get to the vet, I was fairly sure what I was going to hear.

That same day, before our appointment, he began crying, loudly and urgently. Mostly from fear of abandonment, it seemed. Therefore I stayed close to him, except when he was in the lab. At last the attendant brought him into the examination room, laid him on an old pink towel, and left us alone for a few minutes. He lay on his side, his breathing shallow, a dull, half-open expression in his eyes, as if in meditation. I stroked his soft, thick fur and struggled to tell him what a good kitty he was, how much I loved him, and to thank him for taking care of Mom these last years.

At last the doctor came. I fondled the kitty's ears as she searched for a vein. Her calm competence at the end of a long workday helped keep me from crying, as long as I breathed mindfully and remained silent. I did my best to remain present, and not confuse the observer (me) with the events.

It came fast when it came, with so little disturbance the vet had to tell me he was gone. I stopped petting and stepped back from the table, and she swept him up in the towel. The last I saw of him was his head and ears, disappearing through the swinging door.

You and I will be lucky to go so softly.

One of the great strengths of Buddhism is its recognition of the universality of life. I've known too many animals to believe there is some qualitative difference between sentient beings. Cats are born; they live, to the best of their ability; and they die. Scientists warn us not to be anthropomorphic about this, but I warn them back not to ignore the evidence. If it's true we can't know what's going on in an animal's head, it's also true we can't know what's going on in each other's heads, either. Yet decent people don't assume that we can't fathom the feelings of a crying stranger, just because when we do it, we're sad, scared, or in pain.

That would be stupid. And as I've often said, nothing stupid is Buddhist.

Animals may love differently from humans, but they love. And anything that loves is worthy of love.

Also: life – all life – is brief and unrenewable. So love now.

Because sooner than later, we all pass through that swinging door.

We called him Sherlock, by the way. We'll never know what his real name was.

WW: Monday, 20 March 2017, is Bodhisattva Day!

It's that time of year again, friends. Time to get out your cardigan and represent for cool-headed compassion.

This Bodhisattva Day is more important than ever. (Somehow that keeps happening.)

So this Monday, 20 March 2017, let's see some wool out there, brothers and sisters. Click the link above for details.

And don't let the bastards make you mean.




(Photo [cropped for composition] of cool dude in weapons-grade cardigan courtesy of TheUglySweaterShop.com and Flickr.)

Tough Love

Once, when I was in Grade 2, my teacher had all of us save our milk carton from lunch. Afterward we folded it into a flower pot, filled it with dirt, and planted a single bean in it. Then we lined up our little pots on the windowsill and waited.

To nobody's surprise, within a week each had produced a shoot. Our teacher then divided us into groups and issued new orders. Group Number 1 got to leave their bean plants in the sun and care for them as usual, but everyone else had to stop watering theirs, relocate it to a closet, sit it on the radiator, or the like.

I was ordered to put mine in the refrigerator.

What happened next remains as vivid to me as this morning.

I have a loving, if independent, nature, and in the few days I'd been tending it I'd conceived an affection for the bright green tendril striving upward. I also wasn't a moron. What seven-year-old doesn't know what happens to a living thing in the faculty room fridge? Years later, as a teacher myself, I could have prepared a better lesson plan than that during passing period. Using nothing more than what I had in my desk.

On a Friday afternoon.

I hung back as the rest of my group came forward, hoping she wouldn't tally us. But she did.

"Robert?" she demanded. "Where's Robert? Don't you have a plant?"

I mumbled the affirmative.

"Bring it here."

I hesitated, carton in hand.

"Do you hear me? Bring it here."

"But…" I stammered, barely audible. "I don't want to kill it."

"What?" she snapped, incredulous.

I raised my eyes.

"I don't want to kill it."

At this point my teacher pitched what can only be called a power tantrum. "Oh, I see!" she snarked, enraged beyond self-respect. "Everyone else is participating, everyone else has to do what they're supposed to, but Robert (her voice dripped) doesn't want to kill his!

"Everybody look at Robert! He's not like us! He's special!"

I began to sob, and she continued to demonstrate why I have so little respect for authority. (And possibly why my attitude toward women was for so long uncharacteristically hostile.)

"You put that bean plant on the cart THIS INSTANT!" she commanded.

I did. But I didn't stop crying for some time.


Half a century later, I'm just starting to catch a whisper of public commentary about the state of empathy on this backwater planet. Not much. Not enough. But a few writers, here and there, are beginning to question the fitness of our souls to ensure our continued survival.

Empathy is the defining human strength, the single advantage that pushed our fangless, clawless arse to the top of this heap.

But we have a knotty relationship with the stuff of our success. The "toughness" and "courage" we admire in leaders and ourselves amounts most often to cruelty, self-centredness, and indifference. Those who betray a glimmer of "weakness" – empathy, compassion, sophistication, humanity, evolutionary superiority – are abused and ridiculed. The rest of us are conditioned to look on silently.

Which is why empathy needs claws and fangs.

In my life I've consistently been punished more severely for empathy than for cruelty. When guilty of the latter, I've been disciplined; when the former, I've been humiliated, ejected, and blacklisted.

Therefore, it's increasingly critical that decent, fully-evolved human beings learn the difference between insensitivity and just pissing others off. We must refuse to pipe down when advocating forgiveness, generosity, and the objective analysis of karma, regardless of sneers and threats. The alternative is what we already have, what's killing us progressively faster: government by the least human. Whether national, local, or in some grade school classroom.

Most importantly, we must actively patrol the state of empathy in our communities, and teach future generations to honour and protect their own evolved souls and defend those of others.

So check it out, bitch: this entire species depends on the beans we produce.

Stand aside, please.



(Adapted from Growing Up Home, copyright RK Henderson. New Life [photo] courtesy of Juanita Mulder and Pixabay.com.)

Half A School

“I am a survivor of a concentration camp. My eyes saw what no person should witness: gas chambers built by learned engineers. Children poisoned by educated physicians. Infants killed by trained nurses. Women and babies shot by high school and college graduates. So, I am suspicious of education.

"My request is:

"Help your children become human. Your efforts must never produce learned monsters, skilled psychopaths or educated Eichmanns. Reading, writing, and arithmetic are important only if they serve to make our children more human.”

(From a letter written to teachers by a Holocaust survivor. Teacher and Child, Haim Ginott.)

(Photo courtesy of Sam Shrestha and Wikimedia Commons.)

Bodhisattva Day is Sunday, 20 March 2016

Get out your cardigans, brother's and sisters! Bodhisattva Day 2016 promises to be a thunderous display of quiet wooly determination.

This Sunday, let's all button up and double down for compassion. Seems Kuan Yin's army can use all the swelling it can get these days.

Please recall that you don't have to be Buddhist, or practice any religion at all, to join. Compassion and humanity are universal values, and as Sigmund Freud might have said, were he a Zen student, "a cardigan is just a cardigan".

So let's wear 'em, troops! We gonna LIGHT this mofo UP!

See you Sunday in your Aran armour.


(Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and a generous photographer.)

New Year's Song: Et dans 150 ans

To commemorate this New Year's Day 2015 I offer a meditation on the passage of time. My brother's poetry here is so powerful I first took him for a Canadian. But on second listening I thought, no.

No. The prosody, the peculiar flow of his French; his unflinching insight, his cool under fire. This-here is a Frenchman.

Except better. Raphaël Haroche's father is a Moroccan Jew of Russian descent; his mother is Argentine. In other words, dude's a perfect storm. Prepare for bone-crystallising kensho.

Having said that, I should warn non-francophones that, as Canadian literary critic Mavis Gallant pointed out, "When poetry is translated, the result is either not faithful, not poetry, or not English." Here the author spins kaleidoscopic metaphors and convoluted word play (e.g., "bad choices" can also be "wrong guesses"; "let's drink to the street trash" becomes "let's leave them our empty coffins" when you turn it a certain way); as translator, I could only pick a shade and run with it. With luck the music and intonations will salvage some lost depth (and soften the stilted, un-English sequence of images) for non-French-speaking readers.

Finally, since the visuals in Raphaël's videos are famous for being a whole second song, I strongly recommend that you first just listen, without viewing, while reading the lyrics (below). That way your own impressions won't get wangled. Then, play the video again and just watch it, without reading. Mind blown a second time.

ET DANS 150 ANS
par Raphaël

Et dans 150 ans, on s'en souviendra pas De ta première ride, de nos mauvais choix, De la vie qui nous baise, de tous ces marchands d'armes, Des types qui votent les lois là-bas au gouvernement, De ce monde qui pousse, de ce monde qui crie, Du temps qui avance, de la mélancolie, La chaleur des baisers et cette pluie qui coule, Et de l'amour blessé et de tout ce qu'on nous roule, Alors souris. Dans 150 ans, on s'en souviendra pas De la vieillesse qui prend, de leurs signes de croix, De l'enfant qui se meurt, des vallées du Tiers monde, Du salaud de chasseur qui descend la colombe, De ce que t'étais belle, et des rives arrachées, Des années sans sommeil, 100 millions d'affamés Des portes qui se referment de t'avoir vue pleurer, De la course solennelle qui condamne sans ciller, Alors souris. Et dans 150 ans, on n'y pensera même plus À ce qu'on a aimé, à ce qu'on a perdu, Allez vidons nos bières pour les voleurs des rues! Finir tous dans la terre, mon dieu! Quelle déconvenue. Et regarde ces squelettes qui nous regardent de travers, Et ne fais pas la tête, ne leur fais pas la guerre, Il leur restera rien de nous, pas plus que d'eux, J'en mettrais bien ma main à couper ou au feu, Alors souris. Et dans 150 ans, mon amour, toi et moi, On sera doucement, dansant, 2 oiseaux sur la croix, Dans ce bal des classés, encore je vois large, P't'être qu'on sera repassés dans un très proche, un naufrage, Mais y a rien d'autre à dire, je veux rien te faire croire, Mon amour, mon amour, j'aurai le mal de toi, Mais y a rien d'autre à dire, je veux rien te faire croire, Mon amour, mon amour, j'aurai le mal de toi, Mais que veux-tu?

And in 150 years we won't remember Your first wrinkle, our bad choices How life screwed us over, and all those weapons dealers Who work for the men who pass laws for the government This pushy world, this screaming world The march of time, the melancholy The warmth of the kisses, and how the rain trickled And the love lost, and the ways they get you And so we must smile. In 150 years we won't remember How age subtracts, and hypocrisy crosses itself The dying children, the depths of the Third World The asshole hunters who blow away doves How beautiful you were, and the things ripped away The years without sleep, and 100 million hungry How doors swing shut if people see you cry The universal impulse to condemn without qualm And so we must smile. And in 150 years, we won't even recall The things we loved, and those we lost Come on, let's drink to the street trash! My God, we'll all end up in the ground! Such a disappointment! Just look how those skeletons sneer at us But don't glare back; don't make war on them They'll keep nothing of us -- or themselves -- in the end As well cut off my hands, or burn them And so we must smile. And in 150 years, my love, you and I Will be – softly, dancing – two birds carved on a tombstone In this high school prom for dropouts, I'm looking beyond Maybe we'll come back some day; shipwrecked, perhaps But there's nothing for it, and I don't want to lie My love, my love, I'll miss you so But there's nothing for it, and I don't want to lie My love, my love, I'll miss you so But what can we do?

He's right, brothers and sisters. In 150 years, no-one will remember a thing we've done or said, or that we ever lived; for the vast majority of us, our very names will never be pronounced again.

You can take it for cruelty or compassion, but you can't change it. Our human being survives time like a beetle survives a millstone. And in the same form.

May we all cultivate, in the coming year, that which endures.

Everyone

Everyone has a room to air.
Everyone has a soul to bare.
Everyone has a horn to blare.
Everyone has a cause to care.
Everyone has a task to chair.
Everyone has a doubt to dare.
Everyone has a bent to err.
Everyone has a hull to fair.
Everyone has a flame to flare.
Everyone has a growl to glare.
Everyone has a hound to hare.
Everyone has a glove to pair.
Everyone has a call to prayer.
Everyone has a chance too rare.
Everyone has a crow to scare.
Everyone has a song to share.
Everyone has a snipe to snare.
Everyone has a coin to spare.
Everyone has a debt to square.
Everyone has a scowl to stare.
Everyone has an oath to swear.
Everyone has a page to tear.
Everyone has a road to there.
Everyone has a robe to wear.

(Photo of Fuke Zen monk courtesy of Urashima Taro and Wikimedia Commons.)

Robin Williams and Atonement

I've purposely held off posting about Robin Williams until the tidal wave of pro forma anguish washed past and left us in a place of calm. I'll give the media this: this time the coverage wasn't schlocky and over-the-top. Which is good, because the man deserves better.

But given the way he went, and the fact that August has somehow become Suicide Month here at Rusty Ring, I've got stuff to say.

First off, Robin Williams was a crucial figure to my generation. I haven't seen this mentioned anywhere – not surprising, given that those of us who followed the Baby Boomers have always been studiously ignored. But Robin Williams was, to some extent, our John Lennon. The fact that he was apolitical suited us perfectly; so were we. His lightning genius was dazzling, his sword scalpel-sharp, though he never seemed to over-use it. He took down the officious and precious, but never harped or dwelled. In nearly every photograph a childlike gentleness glows in his eyes. He wasn't angry; he was self-mocking. In him we saw perhaps not ourselves, but what we wished we could be. And on a personal note, as a kid of Scottish descent growing up in the States, I'll be eternally grateful to him for finally convincing the Yanks that Robin IS TOO a boys' name. (Haven't been hassled about that since Mork.)

None of which I realised until he was gone. Sic transit gloria mindfulness practice.

With his passing, my man Robin also brought depression to international attention, resulting in myriad thoughtful, helpful articles about the relationship between creativity, damage, and loneliness. Last week my 2011 review of The Zen Path Through Depression trended worldwide, attracting hundreds of hits. So people are interested in the topic, and with luck some who need counsel are seeking it.

But one thing I haven't seen is any discussion of the collective responsibility for the condition and its consequences. Some time ago I read a study in which researchers assembled a group of depression patients and another of random others. Researchers gave each individual a series of open-ended true stories and asked them to predict the outcome. The depressed subjects consistently augured more accurately than those in the control group.

Get it? Another word for depression is insight. Often, depressed people suffer in part from the misfortune of not being as mentally incapacitated by denial as their cohorts. The implication is clear: at least some of depression isn't sickness at all; it's a tragic lack of sickness, in a world gone barking mad.

Last year I uploaded a piece partly addressing the issue of how to deal with such unfashionable insight, should you be so afflicted; suffice it to say that killing yourself because everyone else is crazy is unskilful, both for yourself and the world. But like Thich Nhat Hanh says: "Those who think they are not responsible are the most responsible." Therefore, today I'm talking especially to the non-depressed majority.

What can you do to reduce the suicide rate?

The standard Zen response is to be mindful of the seeds of violence in yourself and deny them water. Some of the best instruction in this highly effective practice is found in Claude Anshin Thomas's autobiography At Hell's Gate: A Soldier's Journey from War to Peace. In the meantime, here's a short list of possible first steps:

• If you belong to a church or other religious organisation that identifies any group of fellow mortals ("Satanists"; atheists; gays; intellectuals; competing religions) as individuals who must be "stopped"; converted by physical or social violence; or liquidated; leave it. 

• If you belong to a political party or movement that ascribes the problems we face to some superficially-defined group of people (immigrants; gays; rich or poor people; criminals; another race; proponents of a political or economic theory; another nation); leave it. 

• Boycott anger-tainment – shock jocks, call-in shows, intentionally biased networks, sensationalistic books and movies. Anything that's heavy on analysis and light on facts. Don't forget the red tops, too. The constant public shaming of Charlie Sheen, Lindsay Lohan, Amy Winehouse (who apparently still isn't dead enough), or whatever other none-of-your-business train-wreck is selling at the moment, dehumanises us more than you think.

• Too ambitious? Ok, just declare peace on somebody. Your choice. Choose one group that annoys the crap out of you and say, "From now on, you have my permission to be or do that." Slow drivers? Fast drivers? Loud children? People who use bad grammar? Obscenities? Residents of big garish houses? Those who dump their shopping trolleys in the car park for someone else to round up? (Ooo, that's mine!) 

Note that none of these are solutions to any problem, suicide least of all; rather they're a way to begin clearing the ground so solutions can develop. Maybe now that those self-centred bastards who strew their carts all over the place are no longer prompting a battle response, I will see the cause and effect behind their actions and perceive an end to it. Worst case scenario: I'll stop squandering my finite human energies on unproductive suffering. (Starting with my own.)

Once you start, it becomes addictive, this business of reason, acceptance, and forgiveness.

So go ahead, brothers and sisters: take that first step. See how it goes.

Until next time, honoured reader: Nanu-nanu.

(Still of Robin being human from the Bill Forsythe film of that title.)