bell hooks passed away today

Read her amazing interview with They in Lion's Roar. 

TTH quote: “if you have to choose between Buddhism and peace, then you must choose peace.”

“Buddhism is in your heart. Even if you don’t have any temple or any monks, you can still be a Buddhist in your heart and life.” 

"the true teacher is within us."

"Gloria Jean Watkins was born on Sept. 25, 1952 in Hopkinsville, Ky. to Veodis and Rosa Bell Watkins, the fourth of seven siblings. She attended segregated schools in Christian County, then went on to Stanford University in California, then earned a master’s in English at the University of Wisconsin and a doctorate in literature at the University of California at Santa Cruz. She adopted her great-grandmother’s name as her pen name in lower case letters, she told interviewers, in order to emphasize the “substance of books, not who I am.”"

Read more at: https://www.kentucky.com/news/state/kentucky/article256616171.html

Love

bell hooks had a powerful chapter on greed in her book all about love. I'm not going to summarize or quote it. It moved me a lot.

hooks thinks the best way to get love is to avoid romantic relationships and have a circle of family and friends who are truly loving, that stand the test of time. She thinks small communities are best for this.

I've gotten friendly with a Colombian woman at the park, who has a daughter one month younger than mine. She says in NYC, people are not friendly because everyone is wary and rightly so. But someone at the park with a child is unlikely to whip out a gun. I work to build community in my neighborhood. Unfortunately everyone worth being friends with works and comes home to gork at the TV. Mothers at the park are interesting but primarily concerned with the children, I have to run after my daughter when she runs away, which is not conducive to conversation. I'm thinking I'm going to make more of an effort to befriend the males that live near me. But to tell you the truth, I do want to move to a small town, I'm over NYC.

In the mail I have 2 more books on Love, never mind all the ones hooks recommends. The Forgotten Art of Love: What Love Means and Why It Matters is by a doctor with a doctorate, Armin A. Zahed, a professor at Johns Hopkins medical school.

Big Love is by Scott Stabile who is an inspirational writer from Brooklyn.

Lying

In bell hooks' all about love she writes about the importance of honesty in association with love in chapter 3. When someone asks her if she liked a present, she is honest with them. Often times people are upset at what they hear.

I think sometimes in language you have to translate social conventions into what they really are. If someone asks if you like a present, they want a thank you really. They don't want honesty. They may want a hint of honesty, to see if it was a good present or not. To my utter shame and cringing I once told my uncle that I didn't really like the Star Wars spaceship he got for me for Christmas. I think the sentiment is wonderful. My uncle loves me and tried to get me something I would like. All kids liked Star Wars. He was really sweet and I responded with harsh truth. I think speaking the unvarnished truth, at times, is socially jarring and shows a lack of empathy for the other person.

Another example is, "how do I look?" I think the important thing to communicate is that you love someone, find them capable of being attractive, that their presentation matches the awesomeness that you see in them. To say, "I don't like bangs," or shoulder ruffles or whatever isn't really something to break out at that moment if it is the truth. Of course people will be angry if they later find out that you don't like bangs, so there is some questions. Anyway, if you want to go ahead and say you're, "not a fan of bangs, but they seem to pull it off," that captures both truth and commitment to a person.

This brings up the question of verbal dexterity. I'm not great in the moment in communicating often. It is to not accept me to think I should stop this immediately. I've been learning scripts my whole life to try and be apt in the moment, but novelty outstretches my experience. I think to not understand that communication is a first draft, it perhaps a bit harsh.

Some people can hear the intention behind the words, and that is quite a lovely skill. But to use that knowledge for lying, well that's mendacity.

Having written that, we live in a time when lying seems to be OK for the President of the United States and his staff. And as per bell hooks, I'm not feeling a lot of love from the executive branch.

Love

 

In bell hooks' all about love she likes Scott Peck's definition of love as "the will to extend one's self for the purpose of nurturing one's own or another's spiritual growth."

She asserts that "love is as love does." One cannot abuse or neglect someone and then say they love them. Well, they can say that, but it's a confusion. Therefore patriarchy, sexism, racism, and savage inequalities are barriers to love. To participate, even unknowingly in these systems of oppression, any oppression is to not love.

In the chapter I just read, she talks about how parents think that abusing a child physically is OK, but that it's no OK for adults to abuse other adults. The family is perhaps open to autocrats and fascists. The idea that blood relations equals love does not equate with the above definition. Blood has nothing to do with it.

I find this book pretty amazing.

On another note:

Please consider donating to a friend who incurred medical expenses not covered in his cancer treatment by his insurance.