Tannishblog

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan expressed concern yesterday that the Israel-Lebanon conflict will become "a major humanitarian disaster." Talk about stating the obvious!

What makes this war different from any other? I don’t recall him saying this about the US forces in Iraq, even though America all but wiped its ass with the Geneva Conventions. Over 100,000 Iraqi citizens die and not a peep out of him. Did he say the same when Russia was in Chechnia? Or when anyone was in Afghanistan?

All war is a "humanitarian disaster." All. Not some wars and not others, not some wars more than others. All.

Unless war itself is outlawed in the human consciousness, then we are all in grave danger. With more nations obtaining the Pandora’s Box that is atomic weaponry (thanks again, USA,) all mankind is threatened. Now that the box is open, we need to rethink the tried-and-true method of gun-barrel diplomacy. Until we do, the future has only one resolution: mutual annihilation.

As Albert Einstein noted: "If we don’t eliminate war, war will eliminate us."

With all the warfare happening today, I find an appropriate quote from the Tao Teh Ching:

In the army, the Lieutenant Commander stands on the left.
While the Commander-in-Chief stands on the right.
This means that war is treated in a par with a funeral service.
Because many people have been killed, it is only right that the survivors should mourn for them.
Hence, even a victory is a funeral.

There is nothing in warfare to gladden the heart. All eventualities express the frailty and the limitations of humanity. Whatever God you may worship, war is a failure of faith. In our current state of technological warfare, too easily can the situation get our of hand. While many bemoan the deaths of civilians caught in the crossfire, any whom ignore the violent among us is as culpable as if she pulled the trigger herself.

On July 21, 1985, I married a girl smarter than me in every way. She knew more, lived more, loved deeper; she had a fiery center that cut through into goodness. She was and is a crusader of truth and a bringer of justice. She cares for all around here, and over the years she has taught me how to live.

She is my hero.

Today, upon reflection of 21 years of marriage, I thank the serendipity that brought us together, the joy I feel when I hug her, and the peace her strength has given me. Lastly, I thank her for bringing me a daughter that is more than a broken man can hope for, who validates my existence every time she smiles.

It occurred to me that the US government cannot hold back the tide of research on stem cells. If we don’t advance the science, other nations will. We can be assured of two things: American scientific leadership slipping another notch, and a grabbing of market share of any resulting viable product by foreign corporations unencumbered in their research, ensuring the US to play "catch up" in what promises to be a lucrative marketplace.

Our new-found squeamishness will cost Americans money in the long run. It guarantees a widening of the income/entitlement gap because only the richest Americans will be ale to afford to travel to France, say, for state of the art hospital care. You can bet the squeamish, religious ones will gladly pay for any beneficial care for their loved ones regardless of how the technology was obtained. Don’t ask, don’t tell.

From the Pew Internet & American Life Project comes results from the latest research study on Bloggers (PDF link). Interesting stuff.

"Who knows where the winds of outrageous fortune will take you…" Or something pompous like that. Who knows where the randomly chosen link will take you. That’s more like it. From Mike Shea’s Website, via Reddit.com,  I found Stephen King’s "Everything You Need To Know About Writing."

It’s all there, in under 10 minutes.

The heat wave finally broke and, in typical Chicago fashion, the humidity coalesced into rainfall. Such is the environment I drive through this morning. My car could use washing. It's covered by particulate matter from airline exhaust (the parking lot at work is situated at the edge of O'Hare Airport). As I ponder this, my mind is brought back to last Saturday's viewing of Al Gore's movie - again.

Another thought interferes - another recurring theme here. How disconnected society is from spirituality. In a brief time, geologically, mankind has gone from stealing burning sticks after lightning sparks wildfires to nanotechnology and microchips. Quite impressive. Our spiritual maturity remains stunted, however. As evidenced by our President's latest photo-op surrounded by test tube babies, the ensuing First Veto (coming halfway through a second term presidency) reminds me how backward we still are in our spiritual beliefs. On many levels we hold to same myths, first formulated during our fire-gathering days, of inhuman deities and divine wrath, initially created to keep the fear of the unknown at bay. Through all our development as a species, we still believe in the boogeyman.

There's more at work here. I'm reminded of an article I found some years back entitled Economics Without Ethics: the Crisis of Spirituality, by Bishan Singh. Many salient points to be found there. My favorite quote is this:

…Spirituality is the enemy of the capital-centered economy. Where materialism has advanced, spirituality has declined. And where spirituality is high the capital-centered economy has had difficulty gaining a foothold.

By working to convert all values into monetary values, economists make money the be-all and end-all of human enterprises and endeavor. Materialism becomes the living culture, money-making the religion, money the god, banks the temples, and economists the oracles.

Any God before this god, any Religion before this religion, any Culture before this culture, and any Spirit before this spirit is the enemy. Spirituality is anathema to materialism…

Mr. Singh is spot on in his analysis. The dissimilitude of our development as a sentient species bears witness. We stress childbirth over population controls even as we strip the planet of resources. We speak about the sanctity of life while military proliferation grows exponentially. Our very history is a catalogue of warfare. We elevate greed over charity, wealth above compassion. While paying lip service to age-old values of decency, we train our future business people to manipulate the government for financial gain. Corporations have more power than the people who make them work. In fact, we give much of our liberty to advance corporate welfare, at eh expense of human welfare.

It's sad, really. Perhaps a few people will survive our folly. Then maybe they'll have the benefit of gleaning wisdom from what is rapidly becoming the World's Most Documented Extinction.

In light of our current focus on Israel and Lebanon (and our ignoring Iraq and Afghanistan), I bring to you, via my weekly email from Dzogchen.org , a Buddhist perspective on war. This may explain why I'm so "far-left" on the issue, or why there's never been a war to enforce or to indoctrinate people into Buddhism.

……. At the end of the talk someone from the audience
asked the Dalai Lama,
"Why didn't you fight back against the Chinese?"
The Dalai Lama looked down,
swung his feet just a bit, then looked back up at us
and said with a gentle smile,
"Well, war is obsolete, you know."
Then, after a few moments, his face grave, he said,
"Of course the mind can rationalize fighting back…
but the heart, the heart would never understand.
Then you would be divided in yourself,
the heart and the mind, and the war would be inside you."

 How refreshing!

Does anyone else thing this odd? Kofi Annan and Tony Blair calling for an international "stabilization force" to calm the hostilities bewteen Israel and the Hezbollah. Roll these word around your skull a minute… forced stabilization, hmm… Is this a new oxymoron?

Isn’t that just what the US is trying to do in Iraq after pulling the plugs on the establishment over there? Yes, Saddam was a bad boy - whatever, but he had control. There’s been none of that since we got involved. And in Afghanistan, forced stabilization is unraveling as the Taliban begins a rebound. The immortal words "But that trick never works," apply here.

Blair’s statement -

"The only way we are going to get a cessation of hostilities is the deployment of an international force," Blair said at a news conference in St. Petersburg at the end of the G-8 summit.

- is not necessarily true. Not that I endorse this, but hostilities would end when one side wins. Israel has a habit of winning the wars they fight. If Hezbollah insists on firing rockets into a sovereign state, insists on clinging to their terrorist reputation despite inroads toward civility, then they deserve what they get. Unfortunately for them, Israel hits what it’s aiming at.

I would love to see a peaceful solution. Bringing in a third group to the  party, armed and armored, can only confuse the situation. Doing so cannot bring peace or stability. Unless one considers the situation stabilized as a result of mutual annihilation.

Any UN "stabilization" forces would only be able to witness events, like having front row seats to the execution.

Blogging on politics is playing hell with my Buddhist practice. I feel myself regressing into the angry man I want to overcome. sometimes, during my meditations, my thoughts latch into a point my subconscious brings to fore, and I try to phrase it into a coherent post. Then I realize what is happening, and I return to my breath, chagrinned at myself.

In the context of blogging, it is impossible to hold a conversation. Bloggers can only trade virtual punches through their posts, with a time lapse while the sparring partner takes aim. Such sparring is often without virtue. Anonymity make people tactless, bold and sometimes stupid. When I suffer from such ailments, I do so because I slip into familiar patterns I know are dangerous. I do so because I forget the Dharma.

I find reading the news causes frustration that turns into anger which, when the steam runs out, gives way to despair. I believe this is common. Much anger and disparagement is evidence in Blogopolis. I have a familiarity with anger and despair. They’re old friends. One on each shoulder, they’re sometimes mistaken for chips, sometimes for boulders. The very act of scrounging for content, tempting my muse, is my downfall.

There’s a saying in the Dharma which I’ve always liked: "Will it matter in one hundred years?" If the answer is "no," as it likely is, then the reasoning is that it doesn’t matter now. This works fine on a person scale, but with the confluence of crises happening in the world, I find it hard to answer "no" to that question. I cannot help but believe that what happens now will affect the next hundred years dramatically.

It’s hard to see the nation one lives in become an empirical war machine. People don’t want that. But in America, the average person has no say. Gone is the illusion of the power of individual vote. Gone is the fallacy of rule of the people.Gone is any say in the matter at all. We are told lies, spoon-fed fear, and condemned as traitors if we dare question. Karl Marx, Adolph Hitler, and George Orwell are all laughing in glee.

Humanity must turn away from this path. Between war, disease, hunger, pollution, religious conflicts, and the widening imbalance of wealth, the road before us is dark, indeed. I’ve heard much lately how my views are unrealistic or naive. I keep hearing the same thing from dissenters - that the world "doesn’t work that way."  These otherwise intelligent people miss how that kind of thinking is part of the problem, how by doing nothing to change the status quo they are enabling mankind to escalate atrocities. Acceptance of what many call "human nature" is a failure to understand that humanity must rise above the base instincts that we live under: murder; hatred; greed. Responding to our faults by reciprocating them is not the answer to our global issues.

To me this is obvious, to many it is not. As a result I despair, then I get angry, then frustrated at myself for internalizing such anxiety. The cycle repeats. As there seems no end to outward strife, there is also no solace from inward strife. The extremes are not reconcilable.

 I am sometimes paralyzed between seeking inner peace and the outer manifestations of conflict I read about daily. While I know that humans are intrinsically good beings, I cringe at what is going on in the world. Even as people profess to intimate knowledge of a loving God, they fire missiles at each other. While the affluent, educated minority of the world have an unprecedented technological power to aid the poor, feed the hungry, and heal the sick, instead they control government to find ways to hoard their wealth. Such is the dichotomy of our age.

I struggle to find peace within when there is none to be found without.This blog exacerbates my distress. It’s tempting to quit Tannishblog, re-bury my head as I did for many years, pretend nothing’s wrong and quietly age. Instead I speak out, try to turn a few minds, to enlighten however feebly, thereby doing what little I can to aid others to question the madness. If people cannot overcome our penchant for self-inflicted injury, then we are doomed. Until that is determined I will continue to offer an alternative. And you thought all we Buddhists did was navel-gazing…