Response to T S

Pessism and cynicism reign, or rain down upon the masses. The only people who do not see this are cocooned in the delusions but will be inevitably wakened to life's harsh realities. Okay, I can't write dark and poetically.

The guys from South Park, parker and stone, recently said in an interview that the only truly crazy people, though they used a more benign term than crazy, are atheists. They also make fun of religion, but to believe in nothing is just weird. Agnostics seem to be alright.

What am I getting to? Look at the big picture. The big picture sucks. The best way to become pessimistic is to look at the world as it is. Oh wait, look a beautiful picture of a family playing with a puppy. My faith in the beauty of life is restored. Maybe not, people are people kind right now by people who do not give one shit that they are ending someone's life. Sometimes they are even overjoyed. It is truly a horrible world. The sum total of all our existences seems like an excercise is cruelty and futility. People are designed to covet, take, and defile.

Love. Love will solve are problems. That is all we need. Love, the ultimate impossibility. To desire someone so much that you want them to be a part of you. But, you will always be left wanting. No one can become you, or know you that well, as well as you know yourself. My head head itches, I don't move. Can my lover/partner ever possibly understand that without me telling them? What a burden. To have someone satisfy some of your needs but in the end leaves you wanting.

Have you ever walked outside and thought "being alive smells wonderful today."? The sheer pleasure of any one of the five senses can be appreciated every moment. It is a blessing, though not from any particular god, to be alive. The Hunted, a movie with Christopher Lambert, yes, him, gives us a good quote, from a Japanese female. "Do you want to die quickly or slowly?" Slowly." "Why?" "So I can enjoy every last moment of life." A little hard to appreciate. When I am in pain, I usually only think about getting out of the pain and back into a bottle. But the it is a very Buddhist outlook, though not from every Buddhist sect.

This very ego-centric way of looking at life can seem very limiting and escapist to a degree. The challenge comes with expanding it to encompassing world changing actions. Or, agruing how the world can be saved through enlightenment/you become one with everything to put it simply. But, both topics have filled books written by other people so I will end here for today.

Three Gorges Dam

I have always been somewhat of a fan of the Three Gorges Dam project. Maybe not because it was the wisest thing to do, at least according to many scientists in the West who criticize it. But, the sheer audacity of the project and the will behind it has impressed me. Just moving all those people forcefully was a feat in itself. There are times when the US government could copy a page from that book (The book of a government doing something regardless of the people). Wait, they do do that kind of thing. Well, if only they weren't simply bastards and destroying the country.

Back to the big dam. The lake/reservoir is filling up with trash and waste because of a fairly dry year. There is not enough water for the river system to process the garbage, or something. Soon they will be raising the water level again and all the junk that is near the shore will also join the floating trash in one big cesspool :(. This is exactly what people had predicted would happen. This is planning at its best. Sometimes I am amazed how China manages to have so many people. It is a giant trainwreck.

Previously, maybe two weeks, there was a story about a town that had a couple hundred cases of lead poisoning in kids. Some, like 2 or so, we have permanent brain damage. This was all because a selfish factory near the down refused to follow proper procedures after having been warned numerous times. The plant has since been shut down. Elsewhere, polluting plants are pumping large amounts of SO2 into the air, causing acid rain. This is destroying the viablity, without the excessive use of fertilizers, of large tracts of farmland in China. In about 20 years, China will be importing food from elsewhere. Factory owners and most government officials are useless in China.

This is not to say that other countries, America, don't also suck. But, they suck in different ways. But, China probably has to be studied on a more local level. That is one of its main problems. Everything is designed to be guided by the central government. China would benefit from micro-planning at the local level. Also, more decentralization. When wrongs are perpetrated against communities, they have to petition the central government for reparations/justice. The distance involved is prohibitive. The government officials have no stake in the community becuase of regional divisions/loyalties. It just doesn't work. Damnit.

Reading

I had to get this link down before losing it. It is almost beyond comment in the naivete. Everyone should not be bothered in thinking abstractly and thinking about more than the next Big Mac.

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/14823087/?GT1=8506

Some more Zen

The unltimate dilemma is between focusing on the small or large picture. Universe-wide consciousness, or non-consciousness, and living through the small things in life. It might not come down to this, but that is where I feel Dogen's philosophy is taking me. In order to eliminate suffering one embraces the universe, in simple terms, and does not worry about this body and life. Wait...hmm...okay, you yourself may not achieve lasting enlightenment until the body is gone. Eveytime you practice zazen, sitting meditation, you become one with the It (the universe and beyond/everything and nothing). Beyond zazen, as an enlighten person/entity, it is also your duty, but it is beyond duty, to help all achieve the same awareness. It is not a duty because it is a necessity to want to eliminate all suffering in the universe. If you were apathetic towards others, then you are not enlightened. Where does that leave this?

In other zen things I have read parts of (zen 365 days a year or something), they focus on being aware of the little things/constantly aware, by being constantly aware you don't forget the little things. The two zens, rinzai and soto, though there are the original Chinese Zens, but I am not sure how much of that has survived continuously in China, seem to different focused. But, I say this from total inexperience in Rinzai Zen, other than the fact that they use koans. I am just arguing against the seeming detachment of Zen...but because t is Buddhist, there is attachment to all life. The nature of the attachment is different in Zen. It is even more beyond this earth than the others.

Why this post? I am stating an intitial dissatisatisfaction with Soto Zen. In my heart, I feel more in tune with an earthly slant that demands more caring and caretaking. In the end I will do my best to clarify some of these things as I study more. Sorry to drag this out.

Dogen and Soto Zen

Have been slugging my way through a book on Dogen, the founder of the Soto Zen sect in Japanese Buddhism. It is pretty amazing stuff. The way in which he approached the Buddhist teachings and existence were/are revolutionary. I am loathe to try and summarize what the conclusions are, as I feel I would to a poor job, so I will just try and stick to a few minor points that can hopefully be extrapoliated to more practical thought streams.
The thing that is most difficult, and yet interesting, is how his views are based on non-duality among concepts that seem to appear dualisticly (don't know if that is a word, but it is all I got). For example, existence and no-existence, are both important aspects of existence. But, no-existence is not the opposite of existence. It exists independently from existence, and is part of the same whole. A better relationship is the one between Being and non-Being, which is similar to the whole existence thing. Non-Being is not the opposite of Being. It is beyond being, and a reflection of being with everything. The awareness that Being also is non-Being, because you Be so much that you are part of everything. But, the identity of you is going, so you are non-Being as a "you" that lives, you are Being. Once we achieve this awareness and become enlightened are impermanence is understood and embraced. But, you are beyond such concepts as embracing. That is about as far as I can get in explaining a little of the philosophy.
The intriguing thing is in eliminating the duality inherent in the concepts. Things like life and death exist as opposities. Without life, is there not death? Yes, but when you change the nature of how you define the terms, then you can go beyond the conventional. One of the terms used, nonanthropocentric, I think, was intriguing. It means removing Man as the center of a philosophy. If you define Man, or things related to him, as the defining characteristic of your universe, then you are kind of limited in how you are able transcend the ideas about the univerese and beyond. I suppose this is true in all cases. How you define your terms limits how far you can go. So what this post has degraded into is an idea that everyone knows...hmm.
I guess it breaks down to people understanding the terms by which they lead their lives. How do you define what defines you? (That soundd kind of lame) I'll get back to this later.

Politics

I don't usually like to dwell on politics specifically, but it is a midterm election year and all the news is about what is going to happen. The Republicans are going to lead a smear campaign and try to focus on terrorism while the Democrats are going to be anti-Republican, but not too much. The way people are supposedly acting in America makes me want to return and become in the cause for common sense. Life has become about hate and victory. Hate of everything that is different, and victory against all who oppose us in our cause.

Yes, their are many people toiling away to make the world a better place by simply living their lives and improving upon our systems. But, they do not control the purse strings that are in control of the global economy. The world needs to refocus on the micro and forget about global politics. Global politics are simply the things that have the potential to destroy the world. If everybody focused on the samll ways they are impacting the environment and the people around them, then the whole world would benefit. If every factory in China understood the environmental havoc it is wreaking upon its people, then China would turn into the beautiful land it once was, not filled with corruption and wasted lives (yes, wasted lives is one of the harshest things I can say, as life has unmatched potential to bring joy). If Americans looked at how we were imposing our will on others and over-consuming, then the environment would breath a little sigh and maybe people in other places would sort things for themselves.

No, we can't ignore the world and let people commit atrocities until some part of the conflict is eliminated (usually the weaker half). We should put are faith in a bigger system, or just act in a smaller microcosm. A quote that is old, but I recently came across, but probably read before "When two small countries have a conflict, the UN steps in and the conflict disappears. When a large and a small country have a conflict, the UN steps and the small country disappears. When two large countries have a conflict, the UN disappears."

We all, me especially, should have a sign above our mirrors that says "What do you see?"

I want to write about some Zen stuff that was breathtaking(?). I couldn't find a better word. Beautiful and complex, my brain still hurts from trying to understand it all. I am just trying to see how it fits into my life-view. If I accepted it, would I have to abandon some of my Jodo Shin beliefs. We will see as I read on, but I mainly just didn't want to leave this post to waste.