Tuesday, March 25, 2003

Quote of the Moment

Mindfulness is a quality of awareness that sees directly whatever is happening in our experience and meets it face to face, without the intrusion of bias, without adding such forces as grasping, aversion or delusion to the experience. Conditioned to live in a state of grasping, we make futile attempts to keep pleasant experiences going on forever. Conditioned to live in anger and fear, we recoil from painful experiences as though we could prevent them from happening. Conditioned to live in delusion, we "space out" and become disconnected from the moment when an experience is not strikingly pleasant or unpleasant.

If we add together all of the times when we do not experience life fully because desire and attachment keep us from being present; and all the times that we try to separate from what is, out of anger or fear; and all of the times that we are spaced out, we end up with a pretty big pile of moments. What is left over is a tiny parcel of mindful moments when we are fully alive, not lost in clinging, resisting, or disconnecting. This is a shockingly limited way to live.
--- Sharon Salzberg

posted by Drew @ 9:45 PM | link to this post

Monday, March 24, 2003

Beautiful Day Outdoors

I began my day today with a romp at the beach with my sister's welsh terrier, Rocky. He was my companion throughout much of the day. Rocky and my mother and I went down to my sister Karen's house and spent most of the day playing in and around the pool. I got lots of sun and an extra large dose of chlorine. It was good not to be around the TV and the war obsession.

posted by Drew @ 9:57 PM | link to this post

Quote of the Moment

What is essential is not what happens to someone, but how they relate to what happens to them.
--- Sharon Salzberg

posted by Drew @ 9:39 PM | link to this post

Tuesday, March 18, 2003

Stumbling Along

I haven't been able to find my way to the keyboard recently. I've got lots to write about.

posted by Drew @ 9:14 PM | link to this post

Tuesday, March 11, 2003

An Email I Received at Work This Afternoon

This is a message from City Manager Weldon Rucker
RE:Bank Robbery Suspect At Large Near Civic Center
Please be alert to the fact that a man suspected of robbing the Mechanics Bank on Shattuck Avenue at approximately 3:15pm today is reported to have possibly entered Martin Luther King Civic Center, 2180 Milvia Street. The man is described as a Hispanic male, 5' 5", with tattoos on both arms. He is wearing a white tee shirt and blue jeans. Berkeley Police are currently searching the Civic Center building. If you see anyone in or around the building who matches this description, please call 911 immediately.

I don't recall if I got this email before or after a small group of Berkeley Police drew their weapons and headed into the men's room just down the hall from my cubicle. I'm glad I wasn't in the bathroom at the time. I don't know if they ever found the suspect. My suspicion is that he was actually looking for the customer service center, where people pay parking tickets.

posted by Drew @ 8:15 PM | link to this post

Quote of the Moment

It is important to look deeply into the suffering of others. Someone whose actions are unkind, whose thoughts are unwholesome, whose speech is unwholesome is certainly suffering a lot. When you look deeply and see this suffering, your heart will open and the key of understanding will reveal itself. So many people in our society were molested as children, and they continue to suffer their whole lives. Their fear and hatred never cease, and their self-esteem remains very low. If such people can learn to look deeply at their abuser's pain, if they can see the source of these unwholesome acts, see that their abusers are prisoners of a mind poisoned by anger, craving, and delusion, their hearts may open and their fear and hatred will gradually subside.
....
A five year old is very fragile and easily wounded. So many parents raise their children without mindfulness. They dump all their pain and anger on them, and by the age of five, the child is already filled with fear and sorrow. She may try to express those feelings to her parents,but her parents do not have the capacity to hear. A child so young does not have the capacity to explain her suffering. As she stumbles over her words, her mother might interrupt her or even shout. Such language is like ice water thrown over a tender heart. The child may never try to confide in her parents again, and the wound remains deep. Parents repeat acts like this over and over until their connection with the children is severed. The cause is the lack of mindfulness. If a father doesn't know how to control his anger, he may cut off communication with his son, and the son may suffer for his whole life, and himself be unable to communicate with teachers, friends, and later, his own son.
Thich Nhat Hanh from Teachings on Love

As I left therapy last week, my therapist suggested I look at an ad on a bus shelter nearby. As I headed out, I knew what ad she was talking about. There's one on the bus shelter on University Ave. The ads are placed by a group called Adults and Children Together (ACT) Against Violence. The image is a difficult one for me to look at without seeing my past.

posted by Drew @ 9:11 AM | link to this post

Sunday, March 09, 2003

Beautiful Day

I had been thinking I'd clean around the apartment a little today. I was expecting it to be cloudy and possibly rainy outside. Instead it's beautiful! And I don't think I'm going to keep myself inside much longer.

posted by Drew @ 1:09 PM | link to this post

Saturday, March 08, 2003

Holiday Heart

Ving Rhames in his most attractive role ever. I'm surprised I missed hearing about this one before now. I saw most of it last night. I was pleased.

posted by Drew @ 2:26 PM | link to this post

Mindful Morning

I had planned on going to a Day of Mindfulness at Green Gulch today, but decided to just enjoy being in Berkeley this morning. I went for nice walk this morning, then to breakfast at Saul's. I just returned from the Farmer's Market and feel a little better about having some food in my apartment.

I took off from work yesterday. When I found my way up to Ace Hardware to pick up some things I needed, I noticed rolls of plastic sheeting right along 'side the astro turf and indoor/outdoor carpet. Someone was buying some while I was there. I turned away and saw the boxes of duct tape, emergency flashlights and assorted other emergency gear. I got sick to my stomach. I tried to remember what I had come to buy, but couldn't. I left. I went for a long walk and thought a little about the impending war. I imagine it will start either just before I head to Florida or while I'm there visiting my family. Though to be frank it clearly has already begun. US troops are already on the ground within the borders of Iraq. US planes are already flying combat missions over Iraqi airspace.

I spoke with my mother this morning. She said she thinks she's "one of the only ones" in her bible study class, in North Florida, that isn't irate with the French. She (we) lived in France for a while in the early 60's. She remembers the awareness of the French of the horror of facing war on their own soil. She thinks it is very courageous of their government to try to remind the world (US) of the gravity of waging war. I can't help but think that we would not even be considering war with Iraq if we faced any formidable (real) threat here along the lines of what lies ahead for the people of Iraq and perhaps other areas in the Persian Gulf.

Mom mentioned a book she is reading published by the Moody Bible Institute called The Rise of Babylon: Is Iraq at the Center of the Final Drama? It is no doubt scary reading. I'm not sure why she reads these things. Of course, because she's reading it, I'll probably read it. Maybe I'll gain a little better understanding of the fundamentalist background of so many of the folks who are running our government. I've lost the ability to feel greater terror from the Islamic fundamentalists than I do from the now nuclear-armed Christian fundamentalists running our government.

posted by Drew @ 1:55 PM | link to this post

It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood.

posted by Drew @ 12:08 PM | link to this post

Friday, March 07, 2003

Pondering Possibilities

I've been thinking really deliberately about the administrative coordinator position that is open at the Buddhist Peace Fellowship. The focus of their work seems to offer more opportunity for me to find alignment with my values, but the pay is less and I suspect the demands on my time would be substantially greater. The deadline for applying is Monday. I'm not, yet certain what I'll do. Given my misgivings about the horrific role that religion is playing in the world right now, it is hard for me to so commit myself to an organization so anchored to organized religion.

posted by Drew @ 2:00 PM | link to this post

Tuesday, March 04, 2003

Quote of the Moment

From the perspective of conventional society, renunciants are dangerous. Their act of defiance consists in the fact that they refuse to participate in competition, accumulation, exploitation, patriotism, militarism and so on. They are willing to live without the transient benefits that such participation brings. They thus become difficult to control.

Most of the population of a modern Western country can be controlled through the debt system. Instead of slavery, we have mortgages. It works just as well and requires less overt oppression. Nobody has to be whipped or crucified any more. People, of their own free will, apparently, spend their whole lives to service their debts, their mortgage and pension plans. The renunciant has no or only minimal involvement in this system and so has nothing to lose. This makes them dangerous.
--- David Brazier in The New Buddhism

posted by Drew @ 10:01 AM | link to this post

Saturday, March 01, 2003

Sad Buddha

As I headed home this afternoon from helping Stacey load up her newly acquired pick-up truck, I was overcome by a very deep sense of sadness. I'm really going to miss having her friendship in close proximity. robert and I went over Thursday evening to have a beer and say good-bye. The reality of it all set in today, when we went over to help her carry down her stuff and loaded up the back of the pick-up. We had a nice brunch next door at O'Reilly's. It's just been a sad week for me.

I'll resist, for now, the desire to go off about usable nukes or corrupt cops and their friends, other than to offer this...

Quote of the Moment

"I'm the commander in chief of this goddamn place, and there is no way the command staff of my Police Department is going to step down at this time. It's a matter of public safety." --- Willie Brown

posted by Drew @ 6:45 PM | link to this post