The Crazy Ones

I had planned all day long to do today’s shopping by bicycle. But by the time I was ready to shove off, clouds had gathered in the gray skies—clouds that could easily let go a rain shower or two.

The thermometer read 55° F. I began to rethink my idea of riding my bike to Andy’s, the grocery north of town. I could drive my car instead.

My Subaru sat unused in the garage. Even this short trip would spew a lot more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than bicycling. 

I thought of my adult children both of whom are, by choice, car free. I’m on spring break; I have plenty of time to ride. Rain or no rain, the exercise would do me good. And it would do me good to know that today I made a small effort to shrink my carbon footprint.

I zipped on a jacket, rolled my Riv out of the garage, and pedaled to market. As I approached the bike rack, I saw two other cyclists loading their bike bags with groceries. Seeing them pleased me.

Perhaps they saw the pleasure in my face, for they were both friendly. We cyclists stick together. We had a conversation about shopping bikes and the pleasures of riding. We three were surrounded by perhaps a hundred shoppers who had arrived by automobile. None of the car drivers seemed to take pleasure in each other's company.

“It’s so cold,” said one of my new friends. “We must be crazy to ride our bikes.”

I didn’t feel crazy to have chosen my bike, especially in light of what scientists say about climate change. On the contrary, I usually feel, if not crazy, then at least in active denial of reality when I get behind the wheel of my car and twist the key in the ignition. I felt sane, actually, and happy to be among new friends.

“Well, maybe we're crazy,” I replied. “But maybe the crazy ones are the people who drive their cars.”

My new friend smiled, “You may be right. Maybe they’re the crazy ones.“

Saving Dolphins

Here. Metta in action.

The Most Astounding Fact

It is interconnectedness week here at Mindful Heart. It's the theme of the reading we're doing in our study group tonight, it was the theme of yesterday's post about seeing the earth at night from space, and it's a part of the message in this astonishing video that features comments of physicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson. Just as the Joni Mitchell song said back in the day, "We are Stardust."


Enjoy!

Flying Over Earth at Night

View the Earth as seen at night from the near-earth orbiting space craft, Sky Lab. This is a time-lapsed video compilation, so it's speeded up from what you would see if you were up there looking out the window.

The flashes of light at the end of each segment is the arrival of dawn which happens every hour and a half up there. Look sharply at 1:08. Yep, that's the boot of Italy as you fly down towards Israel and Cairo.



Look at this image. Do you see Italy? You're looking south at Italy from somewhere over the French/German border.

We live on a small and fragile planet. We are interconnected. It's obvious from space.

I wish we humans could release of all our nationalistic tendencies, zero out our military budgets, and get down to the business of taking care of our precious little lifeboat in space.

It is long past time that we do.



Flying Over the Earth at Night 
Video Credit: Gateway to Astronaut Photography, NASA ; Compilation: Bitmeizer (YouTube); 
Music: Freedom Fighters (Two Steps from Hell)

Tea on Tomales Bay

Yesterday's paddle on Tomales Bay was as pleasant as it could possibly be. I got an early start and paddled near shore. 

I had no human companions on this trip, but abundant animal life surrounded me for the whole trip. Solitary paddling offers sublime serenity.

I passed over and startled many bat rays and leopard sharks who seemed to be basking in the clear shallow waters along the eastern shore of the bay.

I could see the bottom most of the way

Inside a lagoon bounded by a railroad bed.

pulled up at Millerton Beach

Second flush organic darjeeling tea

enjoyed leisurely, a sip at a time

Johnson's Oyster farm

Great flock of coots

Friend Paul's yacht, Lion near Tony's Seafood

Simple Truth

Here's a new dharma song by Eve Decker, who some time ago, came to our little sangha in Sebastopol, Society of Friends of the Buddha.

Eve has since moved back to Berkeley and I miss her....

Listen:




Thank you, Marc, for letting me know about this!

Urban Icarus

Take a moment to see this:

Cultivating Metta as a Path of Awakening

I have found a number of interesting audio podcasts On the Secular Buddhist Association's website.

One podcast has left a particularly strong impression on me. This is the one by John Peacock on the cultivation of friendliness, Metta. 

Peacock puts the cultivation of friendliness on an equal footing with the cultivation of wisdom. I have found in my own experience that the cultivation of Metta is as effective and as powerful as the cultivation of wisdom. My world has transformed with Metta practice. It's a much happier place.

Peacock recommends practicing Metta as an insight practice—not as a concentration practice as I had been taught at Spirit Rock. This small shift from concentration meditation to insight (listening) practice made quite a difference for me.

Peacock's talks presume some familiarity with Buddhism, but I hope that even relative newcomers might find these talks well worth listening to.

Here's the introduction to the talks on the Secular Buddhist Association's website:

In much contemporary Buddhist teachings, the paths of the heart are often relegated to second place behind the primacy of Wisdom on the path to awakening.  

In the earliest texts, however, the Buddha appears to consider the cultivation of kindness and compassion as a fully viable and equal path to awakening, to enlightenment, to Nibbana. This will be the premise of the morning’s discussion.

Link to Peacock's Talks

Link to Secular Buddhist Association

Monk & Tiger

On meditation retreats I've noticed that animals are much less skittish around humans. I've gotten very close to deer and wild turkeys. Lizards seem to know that you won't step on them and don't scurry away when you walk near. I actually was watchful so I would not step on them.

Meditation can result in the ability to acquire a calm mind and a cultivate a remarkable spirit of generosity.

In Thailand, a monk shared his meal with a tiger. Look:

Photo credit:

Wojciech Kalka  Thank you!

http://500px.com/phot7733o/461

Famous

Here's another poem by Naomi Shihab Nye. Some time ago on May 18, 2009, I posted her poem, "Kindness" which has garnered more response than most of my posts.

This poem speaks to many things, among them the importance of fidelity to one's inner purpose and of the primacy of particularity. Like all effective poems, it speaks best for itself:

FAMOUS

The river is famous to the fish.

The loud voice is famous to silence,
which knew it would inherit the earth
before anybody said so.

The cat sleeping on the fence is famous to the birds
watching him from the birdhouse.

The tear is famous, briefly, to the cheek.

The idea you carry close to your bosom
is famous to your bosom.

The boot is famous to the earth,
more famous than the dress shoe,
which is famous only to floors.

The bent photograph is famous to the one who carries it
and not at all famous to the one who is pictured.

I want to be famous to the shuffling men
who smile while crossing streets,
sticky children in grocery lines,
famous as the one who smiled back.

I want to be famous in the way a pulley is famous,
or a buttonhole, not because it did anything spectacular,
but because it never forgot what it could do.


—Naomi Shihab Nye

23 and 1/2 hours....

Here's a short presentation on my favorite form of regular exercise: walking. I so enjoy walking! I never knew, really knew just how good it is until after seeing this little video.

Enjoy!

Your First Adventure

The following video clip is about a quarter hour long. Though it is without words, I found it utterly captivating. I can find no words to do it justice.

Find 15 minutes. See for yourself.

Murmuration

Here's a video clip that Steven Leak from The Golden Fish passed along my way. It shows an impressive flight of starlings over the Shannon River in Ireland. It happened that soon after viewing this video we saw a very similar (though much smaller) flight of starlings over a vineyard not far from our house.

Murmuration from Sophie Windsor Clive on Vimeo.

This video appears on wired.com where you'll find an explanation of it.

It is pretty impressive.

Power of Nonviolence

Forty plus years ago, I participated in a number of nonviolent anti-Vietnam war protests at Berkeley. I was among those students who were tear gassed. Had my generation of protesters been as disciplined and as non-violent as these UC Davis students who refused to disperse Friday, I believe our efforts would have been far more successful. I believe that the Vietnam war would have ended much sooner—sparing countless lives. The power of nonviolence is real. If you haven’t already seen the video of John Pike pepper spraying non-violent protesters, you can find it here. I found it quite upsetting to watch, especially the first part. I strongly encourage you to watch this clip all the way to the end. The clip is about eight and a half minutes long. You won’t want to miss the final 90 seconds. It shows the overwhelming power of disciplined nonviolence.



 



I’m going to guess that many Mindful Heart readers have yet to see this second clip of an assembly of students as the UC Davis Chancellor walks to her car. You see a stunning instance of the deafening power of non-violence.




 






Two further notes: 

I understand that students pay approximately $12,000 each year in tuition. It’s now time to review and reduce the pay of police. According to the Sacramento Bee, last year Police lieutenant, John Pike, was paid—I cannot say he earned—a salary of about $110,000. His salary is a lot higher than those offered to instructors at UC Davis. This in unconscionable. His salary is, in my opinion, well out of proportion to his contribution to the education of the students who pay his salary.

Note Two
Under California law, the use of pepper spray in California is illegal unless used in self defense. There is NO exception in the law for police. This officer needs to face trial for this crime, along with the others who conspired to commit this assault against the protesters.  The District Attorney should do jail time if he refuses to prosecute. California Penal Code Section 12403.7 (a) (8) (g) Any person who uses tear gas or tear gas weapons except in self-defense is guilty of a public offense and is punishable by imprisonment in a state prison for 16 months, or two or three years or in a county jail not to exceed one year or by a fine not to exceed one thousand dollars ($1,000), or by both the fine and imprisonment, except that, if the use is against a peace officer, as defined in Chapter 4.5 (commencing with Section 830) of Title 3 of Part 2, engaged in the performance of his or her official duties and the person

A Message of Hope

Here's a TED talk, 10 minutes long, that might fill you with optimism for our future. Perhaps the ideas in this video can zing around the Internet and occupy our imaginations (and Occupy Movement discussions—it's always best to talk face to face) so we can get our priorities straight.

I think many others feel—as I do—keen frustration that the "leaders" of our country seem to serve so faithfully the interests of the already rich and powerful instead of the commoners like everyone I know.

Watch this TED talk and see what you think.

Do you agree we can do better than building more nuclear power plants?

Live Simply

Here is a heart-felt message from a young man....

(I am large, I contain multitudes.)**

As a kid growing up in California in the fifties and sixties I came to believe that the “me” I called Dan Gurney was separate from everything outside of my skin. I saw my situation as just another “Me versus the World” drama.

Inside I thought I was totally germ-free. To stay healthy I thought I needed to follow the rules of general hygiene and keep my environment as close to germ-free as possible. 

Image credit: http://modaainc.blogspot.com

Since then I have gradually become aware that my boyhood ideas were quite incomplete. In the past several months I have come across several articles that make the point that most of the cells inside my skin aren’t even human cells. 

For example, the California Monthly (a journal that comes to me from my alma mater, U.C. Berkeley) recently featured an piece titled “The Teeming Metropolis of You” by Brendan Buhler that begins:

You are mostly not you.That is to say that 90 percent of the cells residing in your body are not human cells, they are microbes. Viewed from the perspective of most of its inhabitants, your body is not so much the temple and vessel of the human soul as it is a complex and ambulatory feeding mechanism for a methane reactor in your small intestine.This is the kind of information microbiologists like to share at dinner parties....

My body, the one that I walk around in every day, could be regarded, quite reasonably, as a complex community of living microbes. 

From this perspective, we look after multitudes of sentient beings when we look after our bodies and minds skillfully, you know, according to the advice grandpa (hopefully) taught you: getting enough rest, taking regular exercise, eating nutritious food and perhaps most important, cultivating a warm heart, a forgiving nature, and a contented outlook. 

For me, knowing all this (I am large, I contain multitudes) is a happy twist on the Mahayana Bodhisattva vow to save all sentient beings. 

**By the way, the title for this post comes from Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass. I do not believe Walt was thinking about the microbes in his small intestine when he wrote that line.

Link to the article in California Monthly, The Teeming Metropolis of You

The Secular Buddhist

Recently I found a ready-to-go media source to fill the "silence" when my mind has bad breath and needs to freshen up. It's an archive of podcasts on The Secular Buddhist. There’s a timely interview for Halloween featuring David Chapman.


***************

Addendum: Since posting this I've listened to several more podcasts and I find these podcasts quite worthwhile.

I am very glad to have discovered this archive of interviews on Atheism and Buddhism. I find the host, Ted Meissner, to be remarkably warm and open-hearted while also exhibiting his discerning intellect.

I find that his overall approach to Buddhism—and the path he's travelled from Zen to Theravadin practice combined with scholarly study and a healthy degree of skepticism—to be similar to and resonant with my own.

Check these podcasts out. The Secular Buddhist Podcasts.

Steve Jobs and Me

Steve Jobs and I had the same Buddhist teacher, Kobun Chino Otogawa. Kobun was my first Buddhist teacher. I have come to increasingly appreciate Kobun. Kobun was my teacher in the mid-1970’s. In about that same time period, Steve studied with Kobun too. Kobun.

Steve gave the commencement address at Stanford University in 2005. This excerpt from Steve’s remarks reveals Kobun's teachings. Kobun taught me a similar thing:

Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.

Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart…

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

If you wish to read more about Steve Jobs and his connections to Buddhist teachings,  visit NeuroTribes where this excerpt appears in a post by Steve Silberman.

A Voice From the 1%

Here is something worth pondering... some thoughts from one of the richest Americans about our tax system.

Here's an excerpt:

...I am not part of the yacht and private jet set, which represents an even smaller subset of incomes than mine. The threshold for inclusion in the top 1% of income earners in 2008, the most recent year for which published data is available from the IRS, was $380,354, enough for an extraordinary life but nowhere near enough for a harbor berth in St. Moritz. Nevertheless, I am - for now - comfortably ensconced in that demographic. Herman Cain's 9-9-9 plan would save me roughly $400,000 a year in taxes, and President Obama's tax proposals would cost me more than $100,000, yet I support the latter and consider the former laughable.

Thus you can imagine my amazement this summer when I watched the Republicans in Congress push the United States to the brink of default - and the world to the brink of ruin - over whether to repeal a portion of the Bush tax cuts and raise my taxes by 3.5%. I know a lot of people with high incomes and even the conservatives among them were confused by that sequence of events. Here is a secret about rich people: we wouldn't have noticed a 3.5% tax increase. That is not only because there isn't a material difference between having $1 million and $965,000, which is obvious, but also because most of us don't actually know how much money we are going to make in a given year. Most income at that level is the result of profits rather than salary, whether it comes in the form of bonuses, stock options, partnership distributions, dividends or capital gains. Profits are unpredictable and they tend to vary wildly. At my own firm, the general rule of thumb is that if we are within 5% of our budget for the year, everyone is happy and no one complains. A variation of 3.5% is merely a random blip.

I was not amazed but disgusted when John Boehner and his crew tried to justify the extremity of their position by rebranding the wealthy as "job creators." While true in a very basic sense, it obscures the fact that jobs are a cost that is voluntarily incurred only as a result of demand. Hiring has no correlation at all to profits or to income - none. Let me keep more of my money without increasing customer demand and I will do just that - keep it. Perhaps I will spend a little more of it, though probably not, but even if I do it won't help the economy very much. Here is another secret of the well-to-do: we don't really buy much more stuff than everyone else. It may be more expensive stuff, sure, but I don't buy cars, or appliances, or furniture, or anything else more frequently than the average consumer. The things I do spend more money on are services such as travel, entertainment, restaurants and landscaping, none of which generate well-paying middle class jobs. There, in a nutshell, is the sad explanation of what has happened to the American economy over the last 25 years of "trickle down" economics.

Better yet, read all of this thoughts.

A Voice From the 1%