Tannishblog

As a neophyte Buddhist, I felt dumbfounded when I first heard the ideal that all people are inherently good. According to the Dharma, the innate, core attribute of humans is goodness. Furthermore, the teachings tell us that we lack nothing, that we have all we need already to find our path, to remain upon it and to reach it’s terminus. We are, on other works, perfect.

This thinking came as quite a shock. I contrast this to a view of Original Sin, wherein we’re deemed broken somehow, and we need to aspire to something despite our needing fixing. This leads to an absolution of personal responsibility: "I can’t help myself. God made me this way." It’s an easy out.

Perhaps because of an underlying belief in Godhead and all it’s accoutrements, I remember thinking on the perfection of others. At first take, it seemed far-fetched. Surely most people I knew weren’t behaving that way. They weren’t bad people exactly, but they didn’t view their lives as framed by the need to aid others as much as the compulsion to help themselves.

The Buddhist perfection is a refreshing alternate idea, but it comes with a catch. Because we’re inherently good and complete, we have a responsibility to utilize this understanding to help others. Because we’re whole, we have no excuse to act otherwise. To accept this responsibility is just a start, a baby step. The difficulty is in implementation.

Sometimes, though, we do the right thing automatically. I recall an early posting on citizen’s actions during the 9/11 horrors, wherein strangers aided others in a time of unthinkable distress.

 Impetus for correct actions need not be so vast. Wednesday, a few blocks from my home, the innate goodness in humanity surfaced. According to a Chicago Tribune story, a homeowner came to the rescue of his elder neighbor and saved him from a house fire.

(A) 52-year-old woman who lives in the home ran to a neighbor’s yelling that her house was on fire and that her 54-year-old husband was inside.

The neighbor ran to the one-story brick house, where thick smoke was pouring from all sides and flames were visible in the back, (Skokie Fire Chief Ralph) Czerwinski said.

The neighbor entered through the front door, crawled through heavy smoke into the living room, grabbed the unconscious man by the foot and pulled him outside, Czerwinski said.

Clearly, the hero had to work fast. Clearly, he was just a regular person who, when confronted with distress, did the right thing. As with the New Yorkers during the twin tower collapse, no thought was needed for the best of humanity to shine through. In both scenarios there was no time to think.

I note this as circumstantial evidence in support of Buddhist teachings of goodness. When we respond unthinkingly, automatically, we do the right thing. In a world as screwed up as ours, this is comforting. If we forget our conditioned "Me First" attitudes, underneath we are all decent people. No broken-ness, no flaws. If we awaken to this, we have no choice but to live expressing goodness, sharing in the perfection of humanity, and helping others in need. That’s reassuring.

My friend and blogging antithesis, Leucanthemum, has set me off again. In her latest column for her town newspaper, repeated here, she compares the Iraqi War with the Chicago Bears. Let that sink in a moment.

She’s referring to the media’s coverage of President Bush’s flip-flop on the status of the war; from "Absolutely, we’re winning," to "We’re not winning and we’re not losing." (As if the latter comment makes any sense. My father used to talk like that: "I may not always be right, but I’m never wrong." Say What?)

My favorite blogging flower defends the whole debacle, as usual. She’s consistent. But to compare a war to a football game leaves much to ponder. First, football, as all team sports and competitions, are highly stylized battles. That’s their appeal. That such events are entertainment to the masses and by extension huge business enterprises says mush about the un-evolved nature of human tendencies (see yesterday’s posting.) In may ways we’re still approach live much like Neanderthals.

Second, her comparison of a war where, I remind her, people are being killed, to a sporting event shows a great flaw in any person still foolish enough to support this tragedy - the dehumanization and trivialization of systemized, politically sanctioned murder.

Not to flippantly compare a war  with football games, but it seems to me, our troops have a hugely loyal fan base, and a history of mostly winning, even when they’re statistical underdogs.

Oh, but you are.

It’s still midseason, not even at playoffs, yet.   Of course we’re not winning, right now.  But that doesn’t mean we won’t, as long as we don’t do something Chicago-sports-stupid,  like giving up and coming home before the season is over.

The popular eighties band the Police sang about "Too many cameras and not enough food," and that mentality is exemplified by the war-is-spectator-sport crowd. They would rather see blood and destruction than a more evolved attitude of, say, rebuilding Iraq without losing billions of earmarked dollars in the process. I remember Hockey games were more popular with blood on the ice. While the home crowd is cheering, people in Iraq are dying. While we bolster support for a lagging team whose fans are slipping away, collateral damage is leveling cities, destroying families, exacerbating a cultural hatred that needed no help, destroying the lives and future of children both in Iraq and at home when they learn their beloved parents are not coming home.

This is not a sport, people!

Looking forward to the new year? A fresh start, a new congress, and hopeful vibes from the press. Maybe you’ve made a mental list of resolutions. While we reminisce about a tumultuous year, there’s always a smidgen of hope for better horizons. Isn’t that what New Years Day is about?

In the immortal words of Rocky J. Squirrel, "But that trick never works." Every year, the same thoughts, every year the same old crap. Congress will not magically heal. Health care will not suddenly become affordable. Wages will not become fair, nor businesses equitable. Wars will not stop. Greed and selfishness, thinly disguised by Power Politics, Capitalism and Free Markets (an oxymoron) will continue to rule our planet.

We have learned nothing, Perhaps we will never learn.

Until each individual acknowledges his or her contribution to the mayhem that is humanity, nothing can change for the better. I challenge you to look into your heart this New Years Eve, to try to view in an objective way your actions, motivations, responses and rationalizations. Look at your life as only you can. Be honest with yourself as you ask if during the past year you advanced humanity, expressed empathy, fostered understanding of others, promoted tolerance. If you can say this without lying to yourself, I commend you.

If you say no, then you have only yourself to blame for our world. Humanity is an aggregate of individuals, any reflection of the whole must also reflect upon each of us separately. In order to change our world for the better - and by this I mean a world of peace, health, prosperity for all people - we must each live our lives toward this goal as if we alone can achieve it. Only through a critical mass of people living out the changes they wish to see in the world will humanity ever progress. It takes all of us to stop war, for example, by stopping aggression in ourselves. If you and I resist the conditioned responses we’ve accumulated and forge new ones, we can make a difference.

In some ways we are so advanced. The sum of collected knowledge is astounding. What we have accomplished with this is sometimes wonderful, but all-too-often horrible. Despite this we have much growing to do. Spiritually and socially we’re in our infancy even as we show off our technological sophistication. As a species we’ve grown in only a few ways possible, not all the ways possible. We’re lopsided. If we embrace this truth, keep it close to our hearts, and - most importantly - do something about it, then we can grow in the areas we need. Unless each of us take action, we can expect more of the same out of the new year and every year thereafter.

Resisting the temptation to write another anti-Christmas diatribe, I find an article in the Washington Post on the holiday by Sankar Vedantan. One would think he comes at it from the outside, but in our nation one never knows.

The growth of Santa as the predominant icon of Christmas in much of the world grew out of the efforts of retail wizards such as John Wanamaker and Rowland Hussey Macy, founders of the modern department store. Much like the early church fathers, Wanamaker and Macy systematically laid claim to a Christmas of their own making in the 19th century

[…]

Business magnates who had once protested that holidays such as Christmas were a drain on the economy spotted the business potential of Christmas and encouraged the idea of gift-giving among family. Where Christmas gifts had once been primarily about charity, advertisers and marketers encouraged the notion that Christmas was primarily a family celebration and stressed the importance of reciprocal gift exchanges for friends and relatives. By the 20th century, American marketing geniuses led by Coca-Cola had seized on the advertising potential of Santa Claus. Although Santa’s ancestors in Europe and Asia had various religious connotations, the modern Santa is an American invention, with growing appeal in Europe and around the world.

"Coca-Cola to some extent owns Christmas," said Belk. In the 1930s, he added, "they had a painter commissioned to do one painting of Santa Claus every year . . . it seems likely that the red color of Santa’s outfits came from Coca-Cola’s paintings."

Children in non-Christian and non-religious homes in the United States now expect gifts at Christmas — and the practice is increasingly popular around the world as well. Santa is huge in Japan, for example, where Christians make up only a tiny slice of the population. In the United States, Christmas celebrations have also exerted a gravitational force on non-Christian festivals: Hanukkah and Kwanzaa share the modern Christmas notion of giving and receiving gifts.

Ah, yes. Merry (ching, ching) Christmas!

Then came the whim of Googling a common phrase. The second link sounds interesting…

Taking an evergreen tree, putting it in your house, decorating it with lights, sitting in the dark, and adoring it to Christmas carols is spiritual adultery. You profess to love Jesus, but you do so with the mementos and techniques of other lovers – the world and pagan religion. You are not content with Christ’s pure gospel – for it has no Mass of Christ. You have added the world’s seductions to keep you happy in your marriage to Christ. He is highly offended at your whorish ways.

Whoa! Even I wouldn’t write that. Fire and Brimstone all the way, but that’s just a warm-up. In an odd way, these two articles compliment each other. For a less rabid religious perspective, the meaning of Christmas is entwined in its history:

The traditions surrounding the celebration of this season are almost as numerous as the people who celebrate it. Through the years, the holiday has been adapted to local customs, culture, and history and so has produced an amazing variety of Christmas traditions around the world. Some, such as the giving of gifts or the use of a star, arose directly or indirectly out of the biblical nativity stories. Some, such as the legends of Saint Nicholas, have their origin in church history, historical fact that became legendary as it was embellished in story. Others, such as the use of evergreens and the yule log, have pagan origins but were transformed into distinctively Christian traditions. Others, such as the use of a crèche or caroling, arose first as local traditions in certain countries or regions that became widely adopted. And still others, such as, reindeer, elves, the North Pole, etc., have largely secular origins and are only loosely associated with the holiday in popular imagination or marketing techniques.

In the same space, a gentle jab at the brimstone gang:

The abbreviation of "Xmas" for Christmas, long reviled by many conservative and Low Church Christians, is not nearly as blasphemous as many contend. Rather than a sacrilegious removal of "Christ" from Christmas and replacing him with an unknown, as some claim, the "Xmas" abbreviation has a long history in the church. In Greek, the language in which the New Testament was first written, "chi" (c or chi), which is almost identical to the Roman alphabet "X," is the first letter of the word "Christ" (christoV, or as it would be written in older manuscripts, CRISTOS). In fact, the symbol of the fish in the early church came from using the first letter of several titles used for Jesus (Jesus Christ Son of God Savior) that when combined spelled the Greek word for fish (icquV, ichthus).

In the early days of printing when typesetting was done by hand and was very tedious and expensive, abbreviations were common. The church began to use the abbreviation "X" for the word "Christ" in religious publications. From there, the abbreviation moved into general use in newspapers and other publications, and "Xmas" became an accepted way of printing "Christmas."

The blog, Rationally Speaking pipes in by noting a recent "virgin birth" involving a Komodo Dragon at a zoo in England this past month (parthenogenisis), and finishes by explaining a major detail:

The obvious question, given the season, is: could Jesus (assumed he was a real historical figure) be the result of human parthenogenesis? Well, the process is unknown in humans so far, but then again it was unknown in Komodo dragons until this week too (though parthenogenesis had been described before in reptiles, but not in primates). Of course, given the peculiarities of human genetics, this would make Jesus a woman. Take that, Dan Brown!

Much more likely, however, Mary wasn’t a virgin at all, but simply a young woman. As is well known, the oldest Greek version of the Septuagint did use the word “virgin” referring to the prophecy of Isaiah, allegedly predicting the birth of Jesus: “ Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a Virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.” (Isaiah 7:14) Besides the apparently neglected little detail that Jesus was named Jesus, not Immanuel, the original Hebrew word was “ha-almah,” which means young woman, not virgin. To think that scores have been killed throughout history for not believing in a translation error. Ironically, ha-almah was translated into Greek as “parthenos,” the root word for parthenogenesis. Beautiful, ain’t it?

Ditto that. If wars aren’t about stealing resources from one another, they’re about religious ideological clashes. But I digress.

I guess the real meaning of Christmas is what you want it to be. Put ten people in a room and they’ll have a dozen interpretations. To quote a favorite contemporary children’s story, "A point in every direction is the same as no point at all." Do all these "meanings" hold true, or to they negate each other? Is there still meaning in this hackneyed tradition or, as I suspect, does it have no point at all?

Whatever. Be merry if that’s your thing.

Another week and another missed Friday Night Zen. But I was working on it, honestly, by trying to maintain an observer’s outlook during the evening.

Last night we gathered at my in-law’s house for the last day of Hanukah. What ensued looked a great deal like my family’s past Christmas celebrations. Besides the missing tree not crowding the parlor, similar details were present; too much food, occasional crabbiness, the whine of the caged dog and the shouts and perpetual motion of the children sometimes reaching unhealthy decibel levels. Even the piles of gifts in bright paper were there. All the sleepless nights and extra errands of the past few weeks lay on the floor in shiny bundles that were shredded with abandon in minutes. We soon packed up out new treasures and left: all done! (Today, I look at the stuff, just as I always do afterward, and wonder why.) The emotional texture was the same as ever, whatever we call our celebration.

I’m reminded of a moment a year ago when, near the end of a long drive with a coworker, we passed a highway-side business decorated with the glowing words: "Peace To All Faiths."

"How nice," I said, indicating the inclusive message.

My passenger, perhaps showing his fatigue from the long day, grumbled, "What’s wrong with ‘Merry Christmas?’ " Showing his bible college credentials, he was genuinely offended by what he saw as a "generic" quality of the greeting. His upbringing taught his to see such things as attacks upon Christianity. I see them as an attempt at dissolving exclusionary tendencies in the Christmas tradition in America. Perhaps we’re both right.

Every culture has developed some celebration of the onset of winter. Religioustolerance.org has kindly aggregated them for us. Even Buddhism has a winter holiday, although it’s incidental. The need for cultures to honor the turning of the seasons is not just a religious phenomenon. By perusing the list of solstice celebrations, I get a sense of it being more about humanity than about anyone’s religion.

I admit to a personal grudge against the exclusionary tendencies of Christians. My extended family was not too thrilled when I married a Jew, and years later were prone to giving our daughter gifts of Christian theme whenever we tried to be part of the family. Even today, my sister tries to bully her daughter in-law - a professed iccan -into hosting Christmas. The tendency is to believe that Christmas is their holiday, not part of a tradition that spans cultures, that is older than Jesus, or that has been largely co-opted by Christians for reasons of assimilating the masses.

Why does is surprise that in our Great Melting Pot of a nation, people of different extracts wish to be recognized? Why must we only acknowledge one set of rules in this one instance within a plural society? How do educated people justify their aversion to practicing brotherhood on what is to them the holiest day of the year? Christmas is not about Jesus, it’s about being productive members of humanity. To these people, I shout: "It’s not your holiday alone!"

To all my friends and neighbors still anticipating their big day: Live Peace. Join with your loved ones and expand your love to strangers. Give not only to your group, but to others as well. Share time, the most precious commodity; share humanity, the common denominator; Produce Joy and Enact Peace. Above all, recall our shared human heritage. These are the things Jesus would expect of us.

I had a friend recently comment on how he always wished the Federal Government ran more like a business. "That’s why I voted for Ross Perot both times," he said.

Umm, yeah…

Yesterday’s post at FinancialSense.com illuminated my friend’s wishes. It seems that the General Accounting Office in Washington slid a little note under the door of the White House. This 172 page report, entitled the Financial Report of the United Stated Government. The news is bleak. The chief comptroller of the GAO is back pedaling in a separate missive. Read Financial Sense’s take, it paints a great picture.

Despite improvement in both the fiscal year 2006 reported net operating cost and the cash-based budget deficit, the U.S. government’s total reported liabilities, net social insurance commitments, and other fiscal exposures continue to grow and now total approximately $50 trillion, representing approximately four times the Nation’s total output (GDP) in fiscal year 2006, up from about $20 trillion, or two times GDP in fiscal year 2000.

As this long-term fiscal imbalance continues to grow, the retirement of the “baby boom” generation is closer to becoming a reality with the first wave of boomers eligible for early retirement under Social Security in 2008.

Given these and other factors, it seems clear that the nation’s current fiscal path is unsustainable and that tough choices by the President and the Congress are necessary in order to address the nation’s large and growing long-term fiscal imbalance.

I guess the Government does run like a business. ENRON! But unlike any corporation, there is no Federal program waiting to bail out the affected parties. Most likely when we start bouncing checks to creditors like China, whole sections of America will be forfeit. Let’s all brush up on our Mandarin. Looks like we’ll need it.

Friday Night Zen is on holiday tonight. I’m meditating on latkes. OM, (belch!)

Happy Hannukah. (Is that how its spelled?)

Barack Obama is getting a lot of traction lately. I’ve seen his name in print on election 2008 projections eight times already. His speeches are gathering crowds, and he make a lot of sense. People are liking what they hear from him.

I’m not the only one noticing. Twice this week CNN has linked the junior senator from Illinois with Middle Eastern baddies du jour Bin Laden,  Saddam Hussein and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Some people don’t like the growing noise about the young senator. Now, the assassins are coming to the Obama party. His charisma and the rhetoric surrounding him are making people nervous, it seems.

As I continue to watch (with trepidation) the media circus we call politics in this country, I can’t help wondering if there really is a nefarious force hell-bent on the destruction of America from within. It sure looks that way. There are people in this country who will do anything to gain or remain in power. We’ve seen quite a lot of unscrupulous behavior from the Hill lately. After the resounding defeat of the Republicans last month, I can only guess that their tactics will get worse. Desperate tines and all that.

Regarding Obama, I am starting to get worried. I foresee a repeat of Bobby Kennedy in this Barack dude. I see a man whose relaxed style, charisma and message electrify a populace desperate for a hero, a media who’ll spin the whole thing out of control, and a resentful minority who will produce an assassin.

I’m too young to remember any details in the death of Bobby Kennedy, but I’m not too naive to think America has learned anything by that distant tragedy. I am jaded enough to anticipate a Southern Caucasian Christian taking down a black man every newspaper in the nation is linking with the presidency. I believe that racism in parts of this nation still represents attitudes fashionable one hundred years ago. Indeed, they’ve gotten worse lately.

I hope I’m wrong. I would like to believe in the transcendence of past ills and a progression of society that reflects an evolution of thought. Coming from a born-again Buddhist perspective, I hold out fervent hope that humanity will abandon its collective insanity someday soon, and begin to heal the myriad hurts afflicted upon itself. But I’m American enough to acknowledge that I’m not banking on it.

For all those Dittohead Righties out there who like to talk about the holy grail of "capitalism" and "free markets", a precautionary tale illustrating just how "free" a business man within an industry is these days. Not very.

"I had an awakening," the 64-year-old Dutch-born dairyman said. "It’s not totally free enterprise in the United States."

Or maybe it’s a belated reminder of how the 109th congress (RIP) may be known as the Best Congress Money Can Buy ™. Either way, the reality is that markets are owned in America. Owned things aren’t free at all…

Truth is subjective. We believe what we want to believe and ignore or deny the rest. Political scientists know this. Governments can, to a large degree, shape truth for many reasons. Joseph Goebbels knew this; Carl Rove knows this.

But media has changed in the intervening years. Goebbels didn’t have to deal with the anarchy of the Internet. As a medium, the Internet has the audacity of providing information without filters, submitted from anywhere and anyone, without regard of outside entities, business or political constraints, or political correctness. The Internet is literally the voice of the people, characteristic of mob mentality, and subject to misinformation and misinterpretation. So dynamic in its manifestations it is difficult to study; by the time academics formulate a experiment, the nature of the medium has evolved. Nonetheless, citizens turn to the ‘Net in increasing numbers precisely because it is unfiltered. It’s rawness is its’ virtue.

This poses problems with entities vested toward governance. As any spin doctor knows, the control of information is vital to maintaining status quo in governmental structures. The Internet subverts attempts at control in accelerated fashion, worrying the ruling elite and challenging ponderous institutional structures with its plasticity.

As governments try to counteract the flow of uncensored information and fail, tactics become desperate. Witness the increased need for Internet watchdog groups. The Committee to Protect Journalists notes that a growing number of jailed journalists have come from the online sphere. According to an AP report, nearly one third of incarcerated journalists have been jailed due to their online activities.

The bulk of Internet journalists in jail - 49 in total - shows that "authoritarian states are becoming more determined to control the Internet," said Joel Simon, the New York-based group’s executive director.

"It wasn’t so long ago that people were talking about the Internet as a new medium that could never be controlled," he said. "The reality is that governments are now recognizing they need to control the Internet to control information."

Other noteworthy imprisoned Internet journalists include U.S. video blogger Joshua Wolf, who refused to give a grand jury his footage of a 2005 protest against a G-8 economic summit, and China’s Shi Tao, who is serving a 10-year sentence for posting online instructions by the government on how to cover the anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown.

Please note the reference to "authoritarian governments" preceding a paragraph linking the US and China. Lets all ponder that together…

If jailing people fails to deter the dissemination of raw facts by unaffiliated bathrobe journalists or the braver corporate variety, expect government to begin to regulate Internet activity with the goal of suppressing certain embarrassing news.

Truth is clearly objective on the Internet. An adage for the age might be: One Man’s Truth is Another Man’s Spin. Look to who doing the spinning and ask yourself "Whom do they serve?" Personally, I’d rather be served by the likes of Joshua Wolf  than Karl Rove. What say you?