Monkey See, Monkey Do

in talking with my housemate tonight, i’m becoming really interested in a couple views.

1. in thinking of nations and governments, viewing them similar to conscious entities. they have a form of consciousness, containing perhaps more diverse paradoxes of thought and emotion than an individual human mind, but yet the have the ability to ’see’ the world and feel separate from the other nations; and there can be a form of thought, projection, visualization of ’self’ and ‘other’ in how a nation relates to things inside and outside of itself.

2. that the well being of that nation has more to do with its evolution and maturity, just like individual human minds evolve and grow, the nation’s consciousness can grow or recede, can be subject to addictions, obsession, small mindedness, and selfishness.

from this then when i think of America, it appears to me to be a very complex kind of mind. mostly wrought with emotions like fear, greed, and indifference toward many other peoples and situations.

but that American consciousness has the capacity within it to be completely self aware, to know itself so well that it understands how its own consciousness forms and what influences are at work within it. that self awareness can then be cultivated and empowered, and through that self awareness an understanding of how our collective fear arises can be known, how our collective greed occurs and how it can be overcome, and how our indifference arises and how and why that is not a good nor reasonable attitude to have. so aside from the specific content that is in our collective American mind (like terrorism, oil, safety, taxes, or whatever) what would help us the most is cultivating more and more our self awareness of how our collective mind works. why does a culture of fear develop and what are its influences and effects. why does a culture of greed develop, etc. whatever we see our collective consciousness beholden to, why does that occur and what are the systemic causes and conditions, and what are the systemic effects of those attitudes.

i’m sure many people already think this way and many leaders have this in mind already. but it also seems like many people do not think this way. they get caught up in the specific content of the moment, instead of the overall system at work.

the next US election is coming up on November 7th, and now is the time to update your registration if you’ve moved or register if you just need to.

my housemate has setup a web site to rally folks to vote. check it out. get involved. find people to register or encourage everyone you know to register. the more people vote, the more responsive the government is to the people’s opinions (instead of their funders being the loudest voices). even if your party isn’t expected to win in your district, the closer the vote is the more your views are presented. it matters.

visit her site, blog about it, get the word out:
http://yourethedecider.com

i just went to a divorce ceremony tonight for friends mike and karin. i was there for their wedding about seven years ago, and they had another ceremony tonight very much like the wedding. but they said vows of friendship and released each other from their marriage. i have pretty amazing and unusual friends. but you know it was beautiful, really beautiful. and they also shared what was good and not so good about their relationship and what the reasons were that they were getting divorced with the group of about 60 friends that were there.

it was quite a learning experience for all of us to hear the inner workings of their marriage and not-workings and hold them in all of that with love collectively. the most amicable and open and clear break up i’ve ever seen, frankly. they modeled this ceremony after their friends george and jamie who got divorced in a similar way a few years ago. i’m glad i was invited to this ceremony.

there’s something I like about processing the relationship, but then sharing that process with one’s community in an open, honest, and complete way. something beautiful to me about it. and in the case of these friends it seems to be really helpful for folks to all stay in community together when they break up, instead of dividing up one’s sets of friends and bifurcating the community. processing the breakup in some way publicly then involves the community in supporting the new way of relating and creates some sort of group completion for it. designing a ritual around it seems to mark the transition. odd I know, very californian, but i’m really appreciating what my friends are doing around relating and being in community - i’m super proud and inspired and grateful to have them and be part of their lives.

so the hot linux distribution this year seems to be ubuntu, a variant of debian linux.

but etymology of the word ubuntu is fascinating and profound. it’s a word from the bantu languages of south africa that describes the interconnectedness and co-dependent origination of our sense of humanness from society.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu attempted this description in 1999:

A person with ubuntu is open and available to others, affirming of others, does not feel threatened that others are able and good, for he or she has a proper self-assurance that comes from knowing that he or she belongs in a greater whole and is diminished when others are humiliated or diminished, when others are tortured or oppressed.

during my recovery, i sat still by watching episodes of the 1973 TV series
kung fu with david carradine.

i loved watching reruns of that series growing up, well before i had read anything about buddhism. something struck me about it, and my dad would tease me about my interest in the show sometimes calling me ‘grasshopper’ just like the zen masters would call the young kwai chang in the show.

seeing the series now, after i’ve studied so much in retreat, is like discovering a shining gem in my youth. the show is surprisingly accurate philosophically. and even the way carradine portrays the wandering monk lost in the old west is consistent with my experience of buddhist monastics. though i don’t know any ass kicking shaolin monks personally. i mean his demeanor and evenness.

i captured some of the quotes from his teachers, to see how they measured up to my buddhist philosophic studies. Click “more” to see some of them.

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did you know that the average body temperature isn’t really 98.6?

according to the book 200% of Nothing: An Eye Opening Tour Through the Twists and Turns of Math Abuse and Innumeracy by AK Dewdney, the original German study that found what was ‘normal’ rounded to the even degree of 37 degrees Celsius. More recent studies have shown that only about 8% of people really do rest at that temperature (tested orally) and the average is more typically 36.4 to 37.1 Celcius (or 97.6 to 98.8 fahrenheit).

after a long, long sleep thanks to some night time anti-cough medicine, i woke to find my temperature returned to it’s normal but slightly more chilly 97.2 degrees fahrenheit (36.2 C).

i have a super slight fever still, so i’m continuing to take this illness seriously. but i’ve had to reschedule many of the meetings and social plans that i had for the week. getting sick like this is so frustrating.

We all long for heaven where God is, but we have it in our power to be in heaven with Him at this very moment. But being happy with Him now means:

Loving as He loves,
Helping as He helps,
Giving as He gives,
Serving as He serves,
Rescuing as He rescues,
Being with Him twenty-four hours,
Touching Him in his distressing disguise.

yesterday i was fighting the beginning of a cold. today it’s full blown and beyond was i anticipated. i just woke from a two hour nap but i fear this is going to interrupt my day tomorrow as well.

karma: all effects are the result of multiple causes and conditions, often beyond our complete comprehension. but often positive actions result in conditions for future positive effects. as exemplified by this eight minute clip titled “spin dj is a god”:

UPDATE: The film is no longer on YouTube, but you can go to this site and click “watch it”.

the buddhist view of karma is often misunderstood by westerners, who i think have a very pop cultural understanding of karma as some sort of brownie point system that cross lifetimes. the rice seedling sutra in the buddhist cannon talks about karma much more in terms of effects from causes, and our lives making sense because the situation we find ourself in is the very reasonable result of causes and conditions. it’s not magic particularly.

but then it goes further or in my lineage we talk alot about how the mind becomes conditioned. when you have a thought and act on it, then you condition your mind. so if you yell out in anger, your mind becomes conditioned that way and the next time you’re angry you will be more likely to act in that way. so there is a particular interest in buddhism of how the mind becomes trained by ordinary action, what effects that has on us individually and in society, and how to work with that effectively and mindfully.