A Buddhist At A Catholic Confirmation.

My son did Confirmation yesterday. He's 13. His Abuela was his sponsor, holding his shoulder throughout much of the 2 hour ceremony. I had a lot of thoughts and feelings during the ceremony. I kept saying "beautiful" to myself.

Background: His mother is Catholic and I'm a Buddhist. Since I found Buddhism I have decreased my sarcastic atheist humanist comments, and really appreciated other traditions. Since I love spirituality, I was all for my sons having a religious education. We had a Buddhist naming ceremony when he was an infant.

My older son declined to be confirmed, though he was baptized and did communion. I try to engage him about science, and spirituality and humanism, but it's still a bit over his head. I tried to imagine what his secular humanist rituals would be? Going to a movie? Watching the Super Bowl? He's not into sports. He's more into superhero movies and video games.

First off, I'm always jealous of the building. What a beautiful building with amazing visual reminders of spirituality. Churches are truly holy places, no matter what shenanigans humans do there. As a Buddhist in America I go from schlumpy rented rooms to people's houses. There's no money in Buddhism the way it seems you can get rich in Christianity.

My son's sponsor (and indeed her daughters) exemplifies the spiritual kindness I aspire to, and when the father discussed light as a metaphor for spiritual guidance, I really saw her as a wonderful guide and example. Beautiful.

I was flooded with memories of boredom in church in the summers I spent with my grandparents. I loved my grandparents so much and I miss them every day. At the time, I was kind of resistant to Christianity. My parents are atheist and non-religious. My mother refused my offer of a Buddhist statue in her garden. My father has a Buddha in his backyard.

I thought about that lovely book Priestdaddy. A young poet's father got a dispensation to keep his wife and family when he got the calling to God. I remember he liked to play guitar in his room in his underwear. The writer is a gifted poet.

The incense was cool (smell), I like trying to reach all the senses during ritual, and I want more ritual. The bass in the organ made the ground tremble (touch). Of course sight it the dominant sense with the colored windows. I did not take communion, but taste is engaged there. And of course music was lovely (sound). They put oil on my son's head (touch). There are more than 22 senses, but those are the 5 major ones.

I thought about the doctrine of the clean slate. With confession you wipe the slate clean, are forgiven. That could be a huge weight off your shoulder. It's not true that you are necessarily forgiven by any victims and the consequences of your actions still go on and on. I could see how that might be an interesting spiritual gambit.

My higher power is the dharma, the example of the Buddhas and the spiritual community. But if you want to call the great unknowns "God", then that isn't horrible. We know so little. We are so puny. I think spirituality is standing up in the face of that awe and articulating our hopes of a higher evolution.

I'm watching Farscape and I love when Zaan prays to the goddess, she is female. I switch to female pronouns when I do reading at AA.

I find that Christianity keeps plugging away at God in a really tedious way, but I also like rituals so I was torn. There are worse things you could do.

I was helped by AA in the idea of trying to keep the focus on me, and not do everyone else's inventory. It's so easy to slip into judgmentalism, for me anyway. My son yawned, and then put up his hand sending the positive energy to his brother, and I joked with him that he was sending his yawn. My ex-wife doesn't like talk and gave me the hairy eyeball. I kept thinking about Rowan Atkinson saying, "the holy spigot", and Monty Python skits. There's a certain amount of humor for those who don't take life seriously. I'm not one who always feels the unbearable lightness of being, but my ex certainly is on the other end of the spectrum. Everything seems serious and sacred to her, people joke too much.

On the other side of that is that when I was a cross country runner in high school, we noted that those who believe in God ran faster than those who didn't. It was an informal anecdotal gathering of data, but I think there is some comfort in engaging in a spiritual tradition. My son is a soccer player, and he's really hung in there and really improved. He is a light to me.

I also liked all the family around. It is a ritual of coming of age for my son and celebrate my son's growing up and development with family. I liked the community, when everyone turns around and shakes everyone's hand. Seeing the pride in the eyes of family was heartening.

I didn't like the idea that a nun praying made the day a good weather day. I'm not Christian but I don't think God is a Santa Claus god that grants certain people their wishes. There is a lot of hooey that ropes one in, but I think that is to be avoided by me. Spiritual materialism isn't easy to avoid, and to be honest the biggest religion in America is consumerism. Is it a losing battle for me to try and read all of Shakespeare's plays? I want to collect the whole set, it launches a desire to see expensive plays that I cannot afford (Glenda Jackson is doing Lear on Broadway right now).

What I do like is the Saint Francis prayer. Except for the plugs for the Christian dogma, it essentially captures the spiritual kindness I admire (Bodhisattva):

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me bring love.
Where there is offense, let me bring pardon.
Where there is discord, let me bring union.
Where there is error, let me bring truth.
Where there is doubt, let me bring faith.
Where there is despair, let me bring hope.
Where there is darkness, let me bring your light.
Where there is sadness, let me bring joy.
O Master, let me not seek as much
to be consoled as to console,
to be understood as to understand,
to be loved as to love,
for it is in giving that one receives,
it is in self-forgetting that one finds,
it is in pardoning that one is pardoned,
it is in dying that one is raised to eternal life.

My son chose his confirmation name to be Francis of Assisi. (His Buddhist name is Shantikara), and he read the prayer to the family back in his sponsor's place.

When people pray they need to reconcile their wishes with the reality, not hope Santa Claus will bring them a present because they are worshiping the strongest god. That was a quote I loved from Wild. She realized she was praying for God to change things instead of the grace and mindfulness to cope with the reality. 

The Study of Suffering

I'm reading The Book Thief and I add it to the books about Germany during WW2, and the holocaust. There are so many books about this time and this particular brand of suffering. It makes you want to eat, the food shortages. It is a journey in to European culture and Jewish culture. Now I alternate between Israeli and Palestinian novels. This is a hot spot of conflict in the world.

But you can also read memoirs of ordinary abuse, or the abuse like a woman being educated and shot for it. It's hard to imagine the ban on education, I think education is so important, but the death instinct has forces

I'm also reading about the Irish potato famine. I'm one thirty second Irish (Great Grandfather) and perhaps more, who knows in the slush of American heritage. A northern european mutt, adding in Ecuadorian heritage to my sons and some Cherokee for my daughter. The smoosh of genetics.

I was particularly offended by a father giving away Katherine in Taming of the Shrew and someone recommended I read "Traffic in Women" by Gayle Rubin. The article helps to explain how women were given away by men, from an anthropologist viewpoint.

Despite one black woman conservative saying there is no racism in America, I read extensively of the African-American literature. I worked with a man who talked about getting paid less than his white co-worker. I apologized to him for my race. In social work school I learned that to deny racism was perhaps the racist thing in the world. To deny the existence of others suffering is a common strategy. The horrified anxiety of seeing others suffering causes us to turn our gaze and deny it. That didn't happen.

It's much easier to blame the victims of systematic violence, racism, sexism, classism. Since this happened to you, then you must have somehow asked for it. If you are poor in America you must be doing something wrong. You have a challenging school? Raise above. People do raise above and get out, you can do the same.

Forget reading, look at the homeless person you next see. I worked as a social worker for many years and saw suffering up close. I'll forever be unable to unsee what I saw, though I have blocked and forgotten quite a lot of it. People are suffering. Turn on the TV and watch the wars around the world. A lot of suffering you see is through a book or the TV but you also see it in real life. Perhaps you are stuck in an Emergency waiting room, or you drive past a car accident. You can't avoid suffering, experiencing it yourself or seeing it in others.

While religions can cause suffering, they are also one of the few institutions that suggest to not avert your gaze, to reflect on it. Can you keep your gaze on suffering when you see it? Do you notice the efforts to push it away, the horrified anxiety we feel.

Buddhist Prayer of Forgiveness

Buddhist Prayer of Forgiveness

If I have harmed anyone in any way, either knowingly or unknowingly through my own confusions, I ask their forgiveness. If any one has harmed me in any way, either knowingly or unknowingly through their own confusions, I forgive them. And if there is a situation I am not yet ready to forgive, I forgive myself for that. For all the ways that I harm myself, negate, doubt, belittle myself, judge or be unkind to myself, through my own confusions, I forgive myself.

Hildegard von Bingen

Hildegard von Bingen (1098 – 1179) was a German Benedictine abbess and polymath active as a writer, composer, philosopher, mystic, visionary, and as a medical writer and practitioner during the High Middle Ages.

Turns out there are 4 other movies about her on Amazon Prime (4/13/19), and 3 of them are free. I watched one called Vision. It was subtitled. That led me to Hildegard, a 45 minute drama in English. Then I watched the one based on a one woman play, that was enhanced for the film.

Seeing so many different shows about her, they each had a different slant, but they all this various aspects of her raise to believing in her visions, and the help of her brother, the taking on of the authority and establishing her own monastery, and her intensity and challenges. She developed a relationship with a younger woman who had visions too, and once documentary noted that her disciple was more read for a while.

"Hildegard was elected magistra by her fellow nuns in 1136; she founded the monasteries of Rupertsberg in 1150 and Eibingen in 1165. One of her works as a composer, the Ordo Virtutum, is an early example of liturgical drama and arguably the oldest surviving morality play. She wrote theological, botanical, and medicinal texts, as well as letters, liturgical songs, and poems, while supervising miniature illuminations in the Rupertsberg manuscript of her first work, Scivias. She is also noted for the invention of a constructed language known as Lingua Ignota."

Her spiritual intensity, calling out the venial leaders, and her music are amazing. Listen to angelic music on Spotify. She is an amazing composer.

1/1/2023: I found a Ordo Virtutum version on BBC (2003) (Reddit).

Maha-parinibbana Sutta quote

"...the monk, nun, male lay follower, or female lay follower who keeps practicing the Dhamma in accordance with the Dhamma, who keeps practicing masterfully, who lives in accordance with the Dhamma: that is the person who worships, honors, respects, venerates, & pays homage to the Tathagata with the highest homage. "

The Lotus Sutra Translated by Burton Watson chapter 16 quote

"Because living beings have different natures, different desires, different actions, and different ways of thinking and making distinctions, and because I want to enable them to put down good roots, I employ a variety of causes and conditions, similes, parables, and phrases and preach different doctrines. This, the Buddha's work, I have never for a moment neglected." The Lotus Sutra
Translated by Burton Watson, chapter 16

ReligiousVoices Buddhism

Archbishop Scroop from Henry IV part 2

I've always been interested in the specious reasoning of so-called spiritual people to be violent.

Here is the justification from Archbishop Scroop for warring:

we are all diseas'd
And with our surfeiting and wanton hours
Have brought ourselves into a burning fever,
And we must bleed for it; of which disease
Our late King, Richard, being infected, died.
But, my most noble Lord of Westmoreland,
I take not on me here as a physician;
Nor do I as an enemy to peace
Troop in the throngs of military men;
But rather show awhile like fearful war
To diet rank minds sick of happiness,
And purge th' obstructions which begin to stop
Our very veins of life. Hear me more plainly.
I have in equal balance justly weigh'd
What wrongs our arms may do, what wrongs we suffer,
And find our griefs heavier than our offences.
We see which way the stream of time doth run
And are enforc'd from our most quiet there
By the rough torrent of occasion;
And have the summary of all our griefs,
When time shall serve, to show in articles;
Which long ere this we offer'd to the King,
And might by no suit gain our audience:
When we are wrong'd, and would unfold our griefs,
We are denied access unto his person,
Even by those men that most have done us wrong.
The dangers of the days but newly gone,
Whose memory is written on the earth
With yet appearing blood, and the examples
Of every minute's instance, present now,
Hath put us in these ill-beseeming arms;
Not to break peace, or any branch of it,
But to establish here a peace indeed,
Concurring both in name and quality.

Buddha and Shakespeare

Not sure if I can swing a narrative for all these links. I've been obsessed with Shakespeare lately and recently explored the antisemitism in Merchant of Venice. So today I just googled Buddha and Shakespeare.

Here is a link about how we create our worlds with our minds, with Hamlet quote.

Wise Attention points out that Shakespeare helps us to imagine different perspectives. They are both heroes of consciousness for him.

This person looked for similarities after being on retreat.

Here is a review of Buddhism, Shakespeare, and deconstruction.

Here is a review of Whacking Buddha: The Mysterious World of Shakespeare and Buddhism, by Mark Lamonica.

There is another book Buddha and Shakespeare. It came out in 2004 and there are no reviews of it on Amazon.

I had thoughts on how to avoid harm after reading Jo Nesbo's Macbeth.

I've also explored the idea of fathers giving away daughters in marriage and the oppression of women.

Shakespeare has replaced my study of the suttas, and Dharma. I don't know if it's possible to have overload but since 2004 I've been reading a lot of Dharma and I wanted to cast a wider net. I read as a Buddhist now.

And yet I still like to hear biographies of Thai Forest Monks.

Article on animal consciousness in the Atlantic

"Apart from Pythagoras and a few others, ancient Western philosophers did not hand down a rich tradition of thinking about animal consciousness. But Eastern thinkers have long been haunted by its implications—especially the Jains, who have taken animal consciousness seriously as a moral matter for nearly 3,000 years." (ROSS ANDERSEN MARCH 2019 ISSUE Atlantic)

"Female trout “fake orgasms,” quivering as though they’re about to lay eggs, perhaps so that undesired males will release their sperm and be on their way. We have high-definition footage of grouper fish teaming up with eels to scare prey out of reefs, the two coordinating their actions with sophisticated head signals. This behavior suggests that fish possess a theory of mind, an ability to speculate about the mental states of other beings."

Roy on Caste

You've been vocal against the caste system in your fiction as well as your non-fiction. How do you navigate your own caste identity?

I don't have a caste identity, because I am not a Hindu. A lot of people thought my father was a Brahmin, but he was not. He was a Brahmo Samaji, who then became a Christian. But that argument that only Dalits can write about Ambedkar or one shouldn't write about Gandhi—that's an opinion, but I don't agree with it at all. My caste identity is totally muddled; I don't fit in anywhere. The RSS keeps putting this thing out that she is actually a Christian, as if that immediately means I would grow horns. Everyone says whatever they like.

As for criticism, you can't react to it in some stupid way—you have to accept that it is a complex thing, and you have to take care of what you are saying and why you are saying it.

India is so complicated—people outside can't fully grasp the way caste operates. People think if you write in the vernacular, you are a radical person. But that's not true because the vernacular itself is colonised by the upper castes. A lot of radical Dalits choose to write in English, for instance. There are so many streams of things that are happening.

Attachment

I forget where I got that photo and I'm trying not to steal and give credit, get permission, so if anyone knows, please let me know.

If suffering is a cue to turn to the Dharma, then we shall have plenty of cues. One recent article I felt grateful to read was by Robina Courtin, whom I'd never heard of before. Here is a quote:

"Attachment is such a simple word, but it’s multi-faceted. At the most fundamental level it’s that feeling of neediness deep inside us; that belief that somehow I am not enough, I don’t have enough, and no matter what I do or what I get, it’s never enough. Then, of course, because we’re convinced that’s true, we hanker after someone out there, and then when we find the one who triggers our good feelings, attachment manipulates to get him, convinced that he’s the one who will fulfill my needs, make me happy. Then we assume he’s our possession, almost an extension of myself."

I've been reading Montaigne's essay: That to study philosophy is to learn to die. I see Hamlet read it. There's a part in it where I thought of the 6 Element meditation, that Bodhipaksa teaches so well. This essay is pretty hard to read, and I've read a lot about death: How We Die, Denial of Death and When Breath Becomes Air. (I've been reading Montaigne because he was an influence on Shakespeare. I'm currently reading A Midsummer Night's Dream, which is pretty trippy. Quite amazing.) Attachment to life is the ultimate attachment.

One of the things about the TBC is that they don't do some of the modern presentations, they don't use the word attachment that much. That's more of an IMS word.

I'll end with a quote from Jane Eyre:

“I can live alone, if self-respect, and circumstances require me so to do. I need not sell my soul to buy bliss. I have an inward treasure born with me, which can keep me alive if all extraneous delights should be withheld, or offered only at a price I cannot afford to give.”

Meanwhile the fear of people listening to themselves and not chasing the twin muses of capitalism and tyranny, was blown up in China.

In The News

The Smithsonian has a great article on the Diamond Sutra.

Two teachers are facing the consequences of their actions.

Zen at War

The history of internment is not a glorious moment in American history. Zen at Work points out that Buddhists were not immune to nationalism, to pro-war statements. I'm not saying that to justify any cruelty, I'm just saying it wasn't a sure shot to say "Buddhists" are not warlike ever. There is other evidence that "Buddhists" can be violent.

A nation doesn't have one religion. A nation therefore can't practice a religion because it is not unified. Sure, there are "Buddhist" countries. If you consider genocide by a Buddhist country, then that disproves a country practices a religion. I don't believe a true Buddhist can commit much violence, but even a vegan diet includes the death of insects due to machinery. How to you consider others and minimize violence is the question.

I hope American can maintain some religious freedom, and not just for majority sects of Christianity. Tricycle has an interview with Williams, who has a book about practice in the internment camps for Japanese Americans, which is called American Sutra: A Story of Faith and Freedom in the Second World War. It looks like an interesting story and history. I am curious about Buddhist's experiences and practices, Japanese-American experiences.

Internment is similar to the wall. We can accept any problems but if one Japanese-American causes trouble, that is too much. Angel Mothers, not the original group, but the radical right wing group who co-opted the term, that takes exception to their children dying at the hands of a non-citizen. As if being murdered by a citizen would somehow be acceptable, as if a dead child isn't horrible enough. Indeed 1200 children have died since Parkland, for our love of guns and America's misinterpretation of the constitution. Democrats should definitely abuse presidential powers and declare an emergency for more gun control when they inevitably regain the white house.

The same wackado principle was in place at Riker's Island when I worked there. COs could bring in drugs to sell and use, rape prisoners, and commit all manner of crimes, and whatnot, but if you weren't a CO, they made sure you were not carrying in any contraband and I had to go around and around the checkpoint to get scanned.

It's the us/them thinking. So much othering. Call me unpatriotic if you want, but I want to live in an inclusive America that works to solve real problems, not just keep "others" from creating problems.

I feel a connection to Japan because my mother was born in Japan in 1947 (to Americans during the Occupation).

I note that Iniesta, a legendary central midfielder who played for Barcelona FC for 16 years, is enjoying his time playing for Kobe in Japan. There they don't see losing as quiet as tragic, and perhaps have a more zen attitude. Sounds so sane.

I hope we can distinguish those who are mistakenly violent in the name of spirituality, and those who truly work towards truly practicing ideals. This discernment will help to avoid idiot compassion.

The hope going forward is that being Buddhist won't disqualify one from being American. I can imagine things turning a way that will make it "un-American". Don't forget that Buddhism was hounded out of its birthplace in India, through competition, conversion and absorption. The burning of Nalanda is a low point. America's love of religious freedom isn't that firm that you can say it can't happen here.

The end of Buddhist Monks, A.D. 1193

The raise in American Buddhism is interesting to me. "Though the religion born in India has been in the US since the 19th century, the number of adherents rose by 170 percent between 1990 and 2000, according to the American Religious Identity Survey. An ARIS estimate puts the total in 2004 at 1.5 million, while others have estimated twice that. "The 1.5 million is a low reasonable number," says Richard Seager, author of "Buddhism in America." This is from the Christian Science Monitor in 2006. "

"People are looking for experiential practices, not just a new belief system or a new set of ethical rules which we already have, and are much the same in all religions," Surya Das says. "It's the transformative practices like meditation which people are really attracted to."

The Pew Center write, "The number of Buddhists around the world is expected to increase between 2010 and 2030, rising from 488 million to about 511 million. However, the global Buddhist population is projected to decline after 2030, falling to 486 million by 2050, roughly where it was in 2010."

It is considered dramatic for Buddhists to become around 1% of America. Twelve percent consider Buddhism as an important influence, 25-30 million people.

Buddhist have been persecuted in the history of Earth. And have done persecuting.

My job is to work to decrease the harm I do to others, to think about others and understand the context that I am in, with empathy, and see the larger picture than just my own selfish comforts, pleasures and avoidance of pain. To work towards embodying and exemplifying the ideals I find attractive and aspire to.

And as usual the Venerable Bhikkhu Bodhi has some answers for fostering peace: "While the endeavor to achieve peace may often be frustrating, we should remember that nothing truly worthy can be achieved without effort. Peace and justice may be slow to arrive, but we will never obtain them without a struggle."

The clogging burden of a guilty soul

"The clogging burden of a guilty soul." Bolingbroke in Richard II, act one, scene 3. He's condemning Mowbrey. In the spiritual life the most control you have is over your life. It's best to worry about yourself, though of course we always talk about others to figure ourselves out and how to relate to others.

I never really believed it when the fellow in Crimes and Mistermeaners skips away, as though he is untouched by his crimes.

You can justify your actions when you do something that is not so good, but in the end when you hurt people, there's a kind of mark (if you ever hope to be empathetic).

I always think about the gladdening. The gladdening happens when you're ethically clear and don't have negative stuff to "clog" and "burden".

In the Anapanasati sutta, mindfulness of respiration, after you've tuned into the breath and tuned into the body, you listen for the positive effects of the meditation. I think like metta, you can't force these things. Most in metta I look at things that might block the flow. Same thing with the gladdening. What is blocking the flow of gladdening.

I probably take refuge in confort, pleasure and convenience most, but I try to take refuge in the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. I've also been practicing some bardolatry.

Later in scene 2, act 2, Bushy says to the Queen, "lay aside life-harming heaviness."

Meditation can go wrong if you don't have the proper supports for the insight, "I had come to believe, simultaneously and sequentially, that I was: dead, alive, omniscient, immortal, non-existent, gay, straight, telepathic, a flower, a pulse of pure energy and a nuclear bomb."

silk and Gandhar

I thought this website expressed the dilemma well: 

"Do we go on killing billions of innocent insects or do we somehow stop silk production, which actually accounts for less than 0.2% of the total textile production in the world.

But what about the fact that silk production is a very important tool for economic development, especially in the rural areas of developing countries? Labor-intensive, high income-producing silk production (sericulture) can be found today in over 40 countries. The majority of households involved in this economy come from Asia with China employing over 1 million people. India is second in production, employing over 700,000 households, but India is the largest importer and consumer of silk.

It may be the answer can only be a personal one to avoid silk and pass the information on to others who may not know how silk is produced.

We could instead choose to promote man-made fibers such as nylon, olefin, polyester and rayon instead of silk. But even that decision can constitute an ethical dilemma. These fibers are made from chemicals and petroleum derivatives and we are becoming more and more aware of the effects of these products on global climate change and environmental pollution."

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They discovered a bunch of statues in Gandhara. It was along the Silk Road:

Here is an article about the subject.

Fundamentalism

Are "Westerners" allowed to decorate with a Buddha? Why would anyone worry about what someone has in their living room? There's all kinds of thinking that, with my personality, am against, but I don't imagine that impressing my personality on others is a worthwhile project.

There are billboards in Buddhist countries that are against whatever that is. What a thing to be against.

Link 1 is a photo

Link 2 is an article with photos. A monk opines:

“That’s only a symbol. From my point of view, the real Buddha is not in there, the real Buddha is inside you. When you wake him up, you understand everything clearly, and then you see that Buddha is just a symbol.”

That said, he understands why some people get up in arms about the use of the image.

“For beginners, they feel the image is the Buddha, but for advanced people or those with understanding, they dont mind, they don’t care.

“Buddha is not on a statue or anything else outside, it’s in my mind. Anything that happens outside my head, does not affect what happens inside.”

Now that's the kind of thinking that strikes me as clear and spiritual.

Link 3 is a reddit discussion about the issue

To me this is a kind of move towards fundamentalism, and someone commented that it was a political ad.

What if a bunch of fundamentalist Buddhist invaded America? That would be bizarre wouldn't it.

In the moment

"A famous story tells how, while sheltering in a cowherd's hut, the king got a telling-off from the cowherd's wife. Why? He accidentally let her cakes (or bread) burn on the fire when he forgot to watch them." From the BBC website about King Alfred.

Ulysses S. Grant

Do you see bodhisattvas everywhere?

I'm listening to Ulysses S. Grant's memoir and a history book on him and I can draw this picture:

Grant going amongst the fallen on the battlefield giving them water and small comforts that he can offer.

Grant hiring black men and paying them wages in Missouri where everyone else has slaves and did not like him hiring workers, and working alongside them.

Despite depression, introversion, a propensity to be swindled, inattention to details and alcoholism, he comes alive with a sense of justice about the issue of abolition and honoring his commitment to a country that educated him to raise to General during the Civil War and later becomes president.

Challenging myself

Latest vegan TEDx talk. Actually it came out in April 2018. I have been a vegetarian on and off in my life since I learned you don't need to eat meat in a nutrition class at the University of Wisconsin. I've been a vegan off and on since my best friend, and my life partner converted. The three main reasons for veganism, for the environment, for health and for ethical reasons are perhaps the best way for me to enact my ethical hopes.

Meanwhile in Burma there's a monk who preaches war: The Venerable W. And he's a Donald Trump fan! The NY Times has a review of the documentary. I didn't know anything about the 969 Movement.

I am really attracted to the ideals of Buddhism. The reality of a Buddhist nation can be different. Living in a Christian country, I dream of living in a Buddhist country.

I believe this is why Pema Chodron beats on the drum "start where you are." We've got to keep our eyes wide open. Where are we really. Let's be honest.

There was a recent article about William James and Josiah Royce. It said that James believed that we know so little about the world that we should be tolerant of others. I thought that was pretty cool. Royce said that loyalties mark out being. I'd like to read more about this. Ever since I read that article, I've been asking myself what am I really loyal to?

It's a bit like the refuge question. What do you take refuge in. Really, not just what I wish I was taking refuge in. When I'm exhausted working through the night, I meditate. It is so hard to meditate in exhaustion and being more mindful of exhaustion can be painful. But I emerge from meditation more mindful and integrated. It is worth it.

When I buy a hamburger on the way to work because I'm hungry and that is a cheap option, I am not being loyal to my vegan ideas. This is a deeply held belief of mine, allegedly, but the reality is that I slip from time to time. "I am not enlightened yet" is a great moral excuse, but I need to challenge myself to ask why. I must not hold the belief too closely.

I believe we will make the most hay by challenging our own lack of integrity. The land mines inside me are what I need to watch out for. The lack of tolerance inside me is what I look out for. The lack of integrity inside me, is what I need to look out for.

I don't mean we can't criticize others and play out this internal battle in the large stage.

I don't know why ethical struggling isn't the main conversation. I think people hide their struggle with living up to their ideals because if others knew their struggles, they would be giving away negative self information.

Never mind that a 10 year old has figured it out about veganism.