Good Song and Video: Иероглиф

When I first heard this on Радио Русский Рок I was astonished how similar Пикник ("Picnic") sounds to Malicorne. As I listened further, a second echo surfaced: Persone. (That's not the track I'd've chosen to demonstrate, but it's not bad and the best I could find on YouTube.)

So basically you've got the fusion of three awesome groups. A harmonic convergence – no pun intended – so remarkable I could not ethically keep it to myself.

And let's not forget that all by itself, without any call-backs, the song and performance are brilliant. (Иероглиф means "Kanji" in this context.) And you can't beat those Buddhist themes.

So give it a listen, with by all means that high-def video on full screen. This is one of the rare times the visuals enhance the literature.

WW: Freshly-made bed

The World's Most Unsettling Question

Cracked.com's Jason Pargin (aka David Wong) uploaded a particularly cogent article this week. His general topic is why the level of trust in the US has dropped to all-time lows, particularly among the young. Along the way he delves into such issues as who has the right to judge others, by what right, and what responsibilities that right implies.

The entire article is very good – no surprise to Jason/David's regular readers – but I found the following passage particularly compelling, given that it expresses an ancient Zen teaching on where things come from and what they are once they've come. (Otherwise known as dependent co-arising.)

Jason calls this "The World's Most Unsettling Question". And it just might be.

Think of the worst person you know of, past or present. Hopefully someone who you know quite a bit about. Now ask yourself:

If you were in their situation, would you have done the same things they did?

You're going to say no, because obviously you're not a serial killer or Nazi torturer or Alex Jones or whoever you picked. But when I say "in their situation," I mean the whole thing. You'd have their physical impulses, including any illnesses or personality disorders. You'd have their upbringing, their genes, any childhood trauma. You'd have all of the information that they absorbed over the course of their life – and only that information – and you would only be capable of processing it in the same way they do.

"Well, that's different," you'll say. "You asked what I'd do in their situation, you didn't say I'd actually become them."

But... what's the difference?

See the entire article here. It's well worth the click.

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

WW: Sand lance

(Ammodytes personatus. For some reason they often turn up dead or dying on the tidelands.)

Not The Only Seeker In Town

So I'm browsing through the Good Value Army, not looking to buy anything, when suddenly I spot 'mongst the random rummage...

This.

It's a seiza bench.

And not just any seiza bench. This one is made by Shasta Abbey, so you know it's up for serious practice. (Note the upholstery and rockered legs. That's quality sit.)

For the uninitiated, seiza means "kneeling" in Japanese. Which the Japanese, as a chair-free people, do a lot of. Which means all Zenners – even non-Asian ones – must do a lot of it, too.

And that's a problem, because as I've pointed out, we Westerners are a chair-bound lot. I'd go so far as to call us crippled, in this respect. (Though that said, I'm told the Japanese themselves no longer inhabit the floor as much as they used to, so that Japanese meditators of my generation and younger often experience similar difficulty in Zen practice today.)

But since Westerners also view cheating as a feat of intellect, sometime around the 1970s we adopted this modest little ruse, which allows a guy to sit like a white man while still looking all enlightened and everything. Truth is, even "kneeling" in this fashion will mess you up; I've often held this position for upwards of two hours, and can affirm that your knees and ankles will gently remind you they're there when it's over.

But wait! The bench is also a crutch to help you stand up! Beat that, anachronistic old zafu!

I've wanted one of these literally since I took the path, because it helps change things up during sesshin and there are other places and times where it's a more appropriate choice than a cushion. It also helps greatly in everyday life, such as when doing a project on the floor.

But sturdy and comfortable seiza benches are expensive, and I have this thing about buying stuff I can make.

In other words, I spent the last 16 years preparing to build one.

Which, as you can see, was very shrewd of me, because I've just scored this deluxe model for less than the cost of lunch. Just waiting there amidst all the wooden salad spoons and beat-up tennis rackets, for an old bald fellow dressed all in black to snatch it up like a thrift-store turtleneck.

Road it took to get here included at no extra charge.

WW: Rosehips

(Rosa rugosa.)

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.)