Tannishblog

I’ve got some catching up to do, after vacation and all. My mailbox had 1107 emails in it when I got back. buried deep in the pile are the following two gems, courtesy of Lama Suryas Das:

The whole idea of meditation is to develop an entirely different way of dealing with things, where you have no purpose at all. In fact, meditation is dealing with the question of whether or not there is such a thing as purpose. One is not on the way somewhere. Or rather, one is on the way and is also at the destination, at the same time.

~ Chögyam Trungpa, Rinpoche
from Meditation in Action

This from the founder of the Shambhala tradition of Western Buddhism, how was remarkable in his grasp of western psychology and how to reframe the dharma to appeal to the modern mindset.

But this weeks quote hits a bit harder, I think, because it doesn’t come from a reknown buddhist teacher, but from a contemporary American novelist who happens to think like one. To wit:

Nearly everyone is aware of dramatic changes in the world. Yet we continue to live in the assumption that we can ride out the changes without changing ourselves, coasting, as we have always coasted, on the historic wave of human development. What it will take to wake us up is a wave of equal size traveling in the opposite direction. That wave is already on its way.

~ Verlyn Klinkenborg, NY Times

Can’t we all feel the freight train coming? Complacency has its price, and it’s steep. Humanity has been far too willing to do nothing about the state of the world. We’ll pay for that, and soon.

Cindy Sheehan: poster girl for accountability in government. She deserves our support. She deserves answers, not empty platitudes. If her son was gunned down in the street, she would expect and she would get more answers as to why during the resulting criminal investigation or trial. But her son died in a war, just another faceless expendable, so she gets nothing: no answers; no solace; no peace.

As she gets no quarter from the administration, so she gives no quarter. Her vigil outside of our Worse Ever President’s vacation hideout is commendable. This man gets more vacation time than a tenured CEO, and he needs to know that there is no place to hide from the lies, the atrocities he’s committed. I say “Hang in there, Cindy!” you and many others, silent in their grief, deserve to hear why America’s young are dying. All grieving parents, all Americans need to hear the truth about the war in Iraq.

For the rest of us, who so far have not been personally touched by Georgie’s War, we have ways to show our support for Cindy Sheehan and the many she represents. Act For Change has a link set up to petition the President and First Lady to meet with Cindy, here. The Pen is writing a harder line with another petition, here. Show your support, get on the grass roots bandwagon!

Or is that a lawnmower, hmm.