Approaching DC from the Air

Arlington cemetery is right by the Pentagon,
by the place where the plane flew in.

I don’t claim to know if war is right, only that it hurts.
So much of this life I enjoy is based on forgotten sacrifice.

OSU Cover Letter

Dear Colleagues in the College of Science,

I hope you’ll consider contacting me if your department requires an interim instructor in the biological sciences.

As you can see from my résumé, I combine a strong background as a research scientist with extensive teaching experience. I most enjoy lecturing at the undergraduate level, and am particularly interested in teaching and mentoring young people.

My greatest strengths are in making complicated material lucid and accessible to a range of learning styles, and in conveying genuine enthusiasm for a topic. I’ve taught lectures and lab classes, using pedagogical techniques ranging from inquiry-based learning to straight-ahead didacticism.

If you look carefully, you’ll see that I’m revisiting my academic roots after a hiatus. I’ve been living in Zen monasteries as residential trainee for the past two-and-a-half years. I came to this discipline via the same driving curiosity about fundamental questions that sparked my interest in neuroscience and my graduate research in the genetics of lifespan and aging: What are we? What does it mean to be conscious? What does it mean to be alive? I found intensive meditation practice to be a deeply satisfying way of investigating this human life from the inside.

One of the primary foci of my Zen training has been communicating the essential truth of things to others so that is understood on an intellectual, as well as intuitive, level. I am extremely interested in working with undergraduates in a manner that implicitly celebrates the wonder of the natural world and our place in it, utilizing the framework of scientific reasoning and the vast store of our factual knowledge about how living things function.

Although my current interest is in a temporary position, I could very well be available for a longer commitment. I hope that you’ll contact me if I might be of service to your department and your students.

Sincerely,

D G

Teaching

I had the honor of sitting in on two first-year Japanese classes at OSU.

I didn't learn any Japanese-- the classes were not nearly my level-- but I did learn that I really like young adults, and I'm more interested than ever in teaching undergraduates.

Ireland's Time, Oregon's Trees

I am getting excited about this trip to Ireland. Particularly seeing the North. Even though I say I want to look into Ireland's future, I'm nevertheless thrilled at the prospect of seeing old Christian and pre-Christian sites. Especially Emhain Macha.

Oregon is just as old as Ireland. Our soil and our rocks are as ancient, our hills as dignified. And in some ways it's so beautiful that Ireland can scarcely compare.

Fall is brilliant this year. In these rolling costal mountains, the maples are like golden spheres nestled in green velvet hills. Vistas change by the day, as colors become more mottled, and slowly start to fade. Like any living thing. The vineyard across the way is dusted with brilliant yellow across the tops of the vines, but the sheltered underparts are still green.

What Ireland has is tangible evidence of thousands of years of human aspiration and strife. Forts build to repel Vikings, Norman, and William of Orange. Old market towns and grand walled cities. But there are almost no old forests there: you might find a forest park on an old estate, or a new timber plantation. In Oregon, even the "new" forests are a hundred years old, and they're complicated, mossy and beautiful. Especially at this time of year-- breathtaking.

What Ireland has are people, and a march of human history that is stunning in its scope and often-terrible beauty.

The Once and Future Ireland

I’m planning a trip to Ireland. Or wishing I could plan. I might make some plans, but inevitably there would come along a shutdown or a slowdown or an overbooking or a bank holiday weekend. Whatever logistical masterpiece had been concocted stateside would unravel in the face of Ireland’s joyful chaos. It’s inevitable; if you ask directions of one of the 50% of Irish who are young—under 25—you will surely find yourself in impenetrable Gaeltacht. Even if you started out in Dublin! Nothing you trust at home works here: not your plans, and not even the once-mighty American dollar.

The Irish appreciate irony and other literary furbelows, and so they must particularly chuckle that the Americans – those starry-eyed tourists who propped up the economy for decades --are these days irrelevant. Actually, at worst, they’re irritating: their stingy bottoms take up a pub stool where natives and repatriates with fat pocketbooks could otherwise sit.

It true what they say: Ireland (a developing nation when I last visited six years ago) has become the richest country in Europe. It’s a silly time for a penniless Zen girl to visit, but my curiosity is piqued. Are the country roads still narrow and unstriped? The towns still sleepy? The teens still aching for someplace exciting to expend their youthful energies? Of course that undeveloped stodgy charm is what brought the tourists, possibly a rapidly-vanishing phenomenon in our right.

We wanted those tiny roads, with stone walls that flashed by scant inches from our car’s tender side panels. We wanted those picture-postcard views of thatched cottages; those sheep crossing the road; those crinkly-eyed old men in tweed. Even Dublin, with its swank boutiques and up-and-coming restaurants, was a destination because visitors were drawn to the history: the Georgian buildings; the cathedrals; the gracious parks and avenues that kept the Anglo-Irish from feeling homesick during long centuries of occupation. And all those antiquities and oddities were there, compliantly waiting to part us from our dollars. The “Leprechaun” shops along the Ring of Kerry. The Aran sweaters handknit for you by a certain Mrs. Kelly. The tourist trade was done well, and it had to be: whole towns and regions would have crumbled otherwise.

And so they came to Ireland. We did. As if by magnetism, returning. Even if we weren’t full-blooded, had lost our kin, and didn’t know exactly which county or region was ours. That mysterious yet totally bankable feeling of returning home is shared by full- and diluted-blood Irish alike. Nostalgia for the ould sod kisses the cheek of New World quadroon and octoroon, too. Ireland, our native soil, calls to us, a shimmering green jewel in a sea of magic….

Of course the reality of that long-ago life was anything but romantic for those who left their homes. Only the full force of Victoriana, an undiluted syrup forcefully applied in contradiction of all fact, could make life in old Ireland out to be a pleasant thing. The charmingly-huge families crammed into dirt-floored cottages. The soul-killing work. Religious violence and oppression. Poorly-conceived rebellion and brutal retribution. And the famine that obliterated millions, while others fled, and landed in America as refugees, there to enjoy the quaint benefits of hatred and discrimination.

To this day, the Irish national and personal psyche seems marred by that past. Go back to Ireland, listen carefully, and you will begin to see the dark side of this heritage. After a round or three at the pub, having been charmed to pieces by the legendary friendliness of the Irish, it may suddenly strike you that although you’ve told your life story to the fellow on the next barstool, you don’t know a single thing about him. Or that the girl who drew your pint had a funny bruise on her cheek. That the old people glued to their stools along the bar are there because they can’t or won’t go elsewhere. Come to think of it, there’s an awful lot of drinking going on for “nothing being the matter”.

This is the tough hide of the soul, the wounded determination to survive, to hide, to smile when it’s time and celebrate while you can. There and here, the Irish have been tenacious, faithful, and dogged. The alcoholic norm, and the friendliness that conceals rather reveals, are outdated but once tragically-useful means of coping with a pretty depressing set of circumstances. They may not know it themselves, but the Irish have been wiser and tougher than they let on.

Lest this sound simplistic or judgemental: you who are abroad, take a moment to reflect on America’s cowboy past. And notice all the ways the Wild West still marks our behaviour, as individuals and as a nation. To Americans this influence is largely unseen, precisely because it is so fundamental to the national psyche.

So here are the Irish, themselves still, but richer than before, moving forward. Ireland’s long stasis is over. As the money flows, it touches every aspect of life. Slowly the high cobbled city streets, the green hills dotted with cottages, are being crowded out by new construction.

If you don’t like change, and few do, there’s something sad about a picturesque countryside decorated with gigantic new houses for modern “small” families -- only three or four children. Whatever the baggage might be, it now has economic power behind it; prosperity has arrived, with all the promises and betrayals of what money can buy. Whatever depression, shame or inferiority moves undetected below the surface now navigates a bright, uncertain future.

It’s this future that I want to find out about. Accepting that everything changes, that the tiny towns and quiet roads may be gone, that the old people with their shocking innocence will die out, I come instead to see what Ireland will bloom into. Whatever has happened is gone, but it is all a preparation for what is to come.

The future involves everything about the past, every hidden possibility and pitfall, every bright potential in the human heart. The future is where Ireland faces the possibility of becoming a freeway-riddled post-industrial wasteland. It’s where she succeeds or fails in finding a way to skilfully address abuses of—and also by—an exploding immigrant population. The future is where the old ways, the wholesome and infuriating old ways, silently fade, leaving only an imprint of uncertain origin.

This is a switch, from rural to industrial, that Japan did not do well. In the space of a few decades, an agrarian country was brutally transformed into a wasteland. For centuries, isolation and poverty bred a beautiful practical simplicity. Now, lush hillsides have been obliterated, thanks to too much cronyism and too little regulation. Some Japanese really do see this sad destruction as “progress”, a triumph over the wild, the unspoiled, and the mundane.

Even if you can’t plan the specifics, it is possible to meet the future with open eyes. Now–while the past is still strong, while people remember, and the old ways still move the blood—now is the time to think and talk about what Ireland will become. And that’s why I’m going this time. To take part in that conversation.

Knowledge of Self

Knowledge of Self
Originally uploaded by 真斗.

"We cannot truly know ourselves without others to serve as our mirrors." -Daisen Takamitsu

(thanks to Matthew Combs for this)

Mistrust in Mind

Inside a Master's Magical Mind

Monday, October 17, 2005
TOM HALLMAN Jr.

ALBANY -- A blanket of ivy hides one side of the 100-year-old house not far from Albany's old downtown. Peeling stucco on one corner reveals a crumbling foundation. Sheets of plastic and old curtains block the windows, some shaped like keyholes. From the street, the place looks abandoned.

The only way into the house is through the back door, where a doorbell produces alien tones that summon the man of the house. With a great flourish, Jerry Andrus waves his arms toward the dark unheated interior.

"Welcome," the 87-year-old says in a gravelly voice, "to the Castle of Chaos."

The man one of the world's best-known magicians calls "the Thomas Edison of magic" has been up since dawn, puttering around the workshop he set up decades ago. The room is jammed floor to 10-foot ceiling with tools, electronic equipment, cords, switches, pieces of metal and gizmos that look as if they're from the set of a 1950s science-fiction movie.

No more than three people can fit in what once was the dining room of the house Andrus has lived in since childhood. Even then, they must walk single file along a 2-foot-wide trail worn into the hardwood floor. The path ends in a small clearing surrounded by mountains of debris. Buried somewhere is a manual typewriter Andrus last saw about 1970. Years ago, junk filled the living room of the house and blocked the front door, which hasn't been opened since the Kennedy administration.

Like a CD player on random shuffle, his mind bounces from one subject to the next. He makes up words and nonexistent medical conditions, writes them down and files them -- he has more than 79 pages' worth so far. But mostly he obsesses about inventions, magic tricks, illusions, songs, poetry, prose and, above all, the complex nature of the human mind and the ways he can fool it.

Trying to explain him to the uninitiated is like trying to describe the color blue

He never attended college. Yet he's lectured at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard and Stanford. He's most comfortable in his workshop. Yet he's performed across the United States as well as in England, Spain, Chile, Germany, Japan, Finland, Belgium, France, Holland and Denmark.

For the past 30 years, Andrus has recorded his thoughts, sometimes minute by minute, on a tape player he carries in his pocket, and the total now amounts to more than 2 million words, many collected in four thick volumes titled "Some of the Scribulations of Jerry Andrus." He printed them on the press he used to keep upstairs, in his bedroom. The remainder are on the laptop he bolted to a treadmill in the middle of his kitchen. Andrus wraps a thick fabric belt around his middle to steady himself, turns on the treadmill and walks at a fair clip while pecking at the keyboard.

Always tinkering

Andrus steps over the treadmill and leads the way to his workshop. With his thick white wavy hair and metal-framed glasses that make his brown eyes appear large and intense, Andrus looks like what you might imagine when you think of an inventor working out of his house. He wears brown pants and a long-sleeve white shirt with four pens in the front pocket. His 1980s digital watch includes a 20-button calculator. "I haven't used the calculator in years," he says. "Somewhere around here, I have the owner's manual."

He worked as a lineman for a power company and retired at 53. A lifelong bachelor, he's devoted himself to creating and inventing. He can't leave well enough alone. Using his thumbs just to hit the space bar on his computer seemed inefficient. So Andrus rigged up separate keys that allow his thumbs to capitalize letters and make changes to the computer's programs.

He tore apart his lawn mower, moved the motor and installed a small bike wheel on the front and two more on the back so he could easily maneuver around trees. He devised a welder's helmet with a series of levers that allowed the operator to raise and lower the protective lenses by opening and closing his mouth.

On one wall in his workshop is a massive electric organ Andrus built from a kit. He outfitted it with dozens of switches and levers that allow him to play with his fingers, elbows and knees. He also installed an electric eye so he could play by moving his body through the beam.

An ex-soldier's dream

Andrus rummages under a table, looking for one of his optical illusions. He can't find it, of course. So he opens a battered briefcase and brings out a deck of cards. He shuffles while explaining that when he got out of the Army after World War II he wanted to join the Portland Society of Magicians. "To be admitted," he says, "I had to have a trick. I was shy and uncomfortable on the stage. I had three minutes with a 50-cent piece. Halfway through, I dropped the coin. I picked it up but was too embarrassed to proceed. A year later, I came back and did OK."

Andrus watched magicians perform card tricks, and he eventually learned the shuffles and sleights of hand passed down through generations. But Andrus, always tinkering, set out to invent new card manipulations. And then -- no longer the shy man on stage -- he began performing.

"I was at a convention," he says. "All the best magicians were there, and I did a trick. The effect is where the cards are all mixed up, some face up, others face down. Typically, you do a slop shuffle, talking and misdirecting and then spread the cards out, and they are all face up. I did it but with no pass, no slop shuffle or misdirection. They were floored."

Rick Killion, a California magician, says Andrus' sleight of hand is "from another planet."

"He can make cards do what no one else can," Killion says. "He'll put four aces in the deck upside down, and they appear on top, right-side up without the standard shuffle. He can make an entire deck vanish. He fools other magicians."

Andrus is the most senior member of the Magic Castle, a private club for magicians in Hollywood. A couple of times a year, Milt Larson, the owner, brings Andrus down to perform close-up magic and illusions. "He's an absolute genius," Larson says. "People consider him the last of the living legends. Most tricks are based on old principles. He does things that are difficult to explain. You've got to see them. He pulled off an optical illusion where a giant mask that was on the stage suddenly appeared over the audience and scared the hell out of everyone."

Mindful of fooling the mind

Andrus is the most senior member of the Magic Castle, a private club for magicians in Hollywood. A couple of times a year, Milt Larson, the owner, brings Andrus down to perform close-up magic and illusions. "He's an absolute genius," Larson says. "People consider him the last of the living legends. Most tricks are based on old principles. He does things that are difficult to explain. You've got to see them. He pulled off an optical illusion where a giant mask that was on the stage suddenly appeared over the audience and scared the hell out of everyone."

Jerry Andrus shoves the deck of cards back into his briefcase and sets it on the workshop floor. He roots around the room, looking for one of his optical illusions. He pulls out a massive wheel with a three-dimensional spiral he created on a metal lathe. He spins the wheel, telling a visitor to stare at the center and then quickly turn and look at a photograph on the back wall. The images undulate.

"I'm fascinated by the way the human mind works," he says. "The mind is the most intelligent thing in the universe. The reason we can fool it is because we're on autopilot."


A book of his illusions was published in Japan. Others have been featured in science magazines. In past years, he's lectured at colleges as well as at the Hewlett-Packard research lab in San Jose, Calif. His subject was the mind, vision and the way the brain functions. His audiences were made up of experts studying cognitive science -- how humans think. "Optical illusions violate the way the world works," he says. "In an optical illusion, the eye tells you one thing and the brain tells you another."

He pulls out other illusions he invented and explains them, one by one. Finally, he packs them away and leans back in his chair. He holds out his right hand. His thumb trembles. "Don't know how much longer I'll be able to do this," he says. "That tremor isn't going away. And my memory isn't as good as it used to be."

He glances around his beloved workshop.

"I've never thrown anything out," he says. "I got that tripod over there for next to nothing. Never know when I might need it."

He pulls a deck of cards out of his battered briefcase. He shuffles in silence, lost in thought.

"When I die," he finally says, "all this will be hauled off to the dump."

He wipes his eyes. A cold, he says as he briefly turns away. Just a cold. He clears his throat and holds out the deck.

"Take a card," he says. "Please, take a card."

---

Dear Mr Hallman,

I really enjoyed your profile of Jerry Andrus, published in yesterday's Oregonian. I haven't been able to get over the possibility that his creative legacy might very well end up in the dump when he dies. Surely there must be a better way to honor someone that special and well-regarded! Some university would surely love to have his papers, and the city of Albany should want to turn his house into a museum.

Such possibilities require both energy and funding, assuming Mr Andrus is at all interested in the first place. As the writer of this article, you may already know of well-qualified folks stepping forward to see if they can help out with such an effort.

If nobody else has the skills or impetus to help, I'm wondering if you could help me get in touch with Mr Andrus. I would very much like to see if I can help him preserve his work--or at least put him in touch with people who can.

I grew up in the Willamette Valley; I was trained as a research scientist; I've returned to the world from a few years living in two Zen monasteries, and have recently moved to Corvallis. I have plenty of energy, a fair amount of time, and a great respect for quirkiness and genius. I'm also not afraid to ask questions, get in touch with people, and generally pursue a project.

If journalistic protocol or your own standards preclude your putting me in touch with Mr Andrus, of course that's 100%_ OK_. I can always go to Albany and poke around on my own. Still, you might be able to tell me that others are already looking into this effort. And if it does make sense to try to help out, you could give me some idea for how to approach Mr Andrus. He seems like quite a character.

Many thanks,

Delia Garigan (aka "Shu")

Suzuki Shunryu Roshi on Monastic Life

"When I was at Eiheiji monastery in Japan, everyone was just doing what he should do. That is all. It is the same as waking up in the morning; we have to get up. At Eiheiji monastery, when we had to sit, we sat; when we had to bow to Buddha, we bowed to Buddha. That is all. And when we were practicing, we did not feel anything special. We did not even feel that we were leading a monastic life. For us, the monastic life was the usual life. But once I had left Eiheiji and been away for some time, coming back was different. I heard the various sounds of practice - the bells and the monks reciting the sutra - and I had a deep feeling. There were tears flowing out of my eyes.

It is the people who are outside of the monastery who feel its atmosphere. Those who are practicing actually do not feel anything. I think this is true for everything. When we hear the sound of the pine trees on a windy day, perhaps the wind is just blowing, and the pine tree is just standing in the wind. That is all that they are doing. But the people who listen to the wind in the tree will write a poem, or will feel something unusual. That is, I think, the way everything is."

A Little Bit of Fury and a Lot of Friendliness

I’m really not sure what’s going on, but I have the sense that things are moving. The question, “who am I? What am I to do?” is so insistent that its intensity colors everything. I walk down the street asking this of everything, and the air and the flowers seem to be straining to reply; like a person’s mouth moving soundlessly under water, I can almost make out the words.

I took myself into downtown Corvallis with the intention of posting flyers for an upcoming workshop at Great Vow. Although I didn’t really need an excuse, this errand provided me with a much-needed opportunity to interact with others, which is equivalent to seeing myself.

I was surprised at most people’s friendliness and willingness to help and just chat a bit in the middle of a Monday. And I was also quite taken aback by the hostility and suspicion of the local internet service provider.

In some ways, he taught me the most, though I’m not sure what the lesson is. Perhaps that it’s all too easy to fall into a confrontational mindset? I mean, this guy was hearing things I wasn’t saying, and drawing conclusions that just weren’t true, all as a result of a really devastated picture of self in the world. I had some sense of what to expect as I waited to talk to him: the friendly guy who told me to come back to talk to the boss was now cowed and tentative.

So watch out what you become? Is that it?

Part of me wants to go check in with this guy again, to hear what he’s all about, and to suggest that being as asshole isn’t the way to get things done. How successful can his business ever be if he terrifies his employees? I was hoping his company could host web pages I produce, but now having any sort of professional relationship seems really aversive.

Or maybe I can just see him as a wrathful deity, a pinball bumper kicking the rolling ball back on track.

Don’t go fucking around in something you’re not willing to do well, or persist at?

And then maybe it’s nothing, just the world flowing and hurting and going onwards.

My heart is so open, and I know that the upcoming sesshin will continue to cook me and show me unavoidable truths.

I’m thinking of life path as being about That Which Cannot Be Avoided. You’re going along, not really very inspired, and then something happens, and you’re in the Peace Corps, or starting a Worm composting business, or recruiting a martial arts instructor to give local kids an alternative to Fight Clubs.
It doesn’t matter if your hearing is sensitive, and you allow yourself to be led by the dance, or if you require forcing and pushing: the truth will get you, whether you serve it willingly or reluctantly. The only question is how much it’s going to hurt to get you on track. I suppose you could ignore the call altogether…but that kills you.

So in this world, with so many enticing paths within leaping distance, yet none assuredly certain, what do I do?

I’m interested in teaching a class at LBCC, and in publicizing worm composting and self-massage via classes and articles.

I’m interested in talking to Mark Unno about how to pursue a scholarly approach to a religion one loves.

I’m interested in how organizations can be healthy, psychological, financially, and structurally.

I dream of other countries and things to do there, but I’m not really on the path of doing Peace Corps in Poland, importing handicrafts from Indonesia, making miso in B.C., or teaching at Catlin Gabel. I’m becoming more satisfied to let others follow those wonderful other paths. Other people can be bodyworkers, and I can support them. Other people can be millionaire importers and manufacturers—how wonderful that I can meet them and share inspiration!

There’s this interesting impulse to put oneself in the heart of suffering; when I hear about natural disasters, or invasions of troubled countries by my own, I want to go to that spot.

Maybe that’s what I was learning today from Sam the computer man: I can sit there and face extreme bitterness, and hold on, maintain eye contact, and come to some understanding with the person. In this case, a theme was that we were coming from different assumptions about the collaborative nature of the world. Which is not to say that meeting Sam didn’t send my nerves tingling. But I also didn’t quail or lose sight of my goal in being there, and I remained quite willing to get up and leave. I wasn’t invested in the conflict, and I wasn’t consumed by it.

Young Men with Guns: Bodhisattvas in a Hell Realm?

Fourth-hand, but worth reading, from my friend Gail Jihiken Ruff:

Dear Friends,

This message was forwarded to me by my friend Bridget. A woman she works with wrote it. It's one woman's personal account of what it was like in the Convention Center in New Orleans.

I also heard a story on National Public Radio the other day about the same thing. It's heard to hear, but I think its very important to listen to it (or read it). Reporter John Burnett put the story together from interviews with 30 different people. Some of the views are slightly different, especially about the young men with guns, but the overall picture is the same. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4849469

Take care,
Gail

---------------
i heard from my aunt last night that my cousin Denise
made it out of New Orleans; she's at her brother's in
Baton Rouge. from what she told me:

her mother, a licensed practical nurse, was called in
to work on Sunday night at Memorial Hospital
(historically known as Baptist Hospital to those of us
from N.O.). Denise decided to stay with her mother,
her niece and grandniece (who is 2 years old); she
figured they'd be safe at the hospital. they went to
Baptist, and had to wait hours to be assigned a room
to sleep in; after they were finally assigned a room,
two white nurses suddenly arrived after the cut-off
time (time to be assigned a room), and Denise and her
family were booted out; their room was given up to the
new nurses. Denise was furious, and rather than stay
at Baptist, decided to walk home (several blocks away)
to ride out the storm at her mother's apartment. her
mother stayed at the hospital.

she described it as the scariest time in her life. 3
of the rooms in the apartment (there are only 4) caved
in. ceilings caved in, walls caved in. she huddled
under a mattress in the hall. she thought she would
die from either the storm or a heart attack. after the
storm passed, she went back to Baptist to seek shelter
(this was Monday). it was also scary at Baptist; the
electricity was out, they were running on generators, there was no air
conditioning.

Tuesday the levees broke, and water began rising. they
moved patients upstairs, saw boats pass by on what used to be
streets. they were told that they would be evacuated, that buses were coming.
then they were told they would have to walk to the nearest
intersection, Napoleon and S. Claiborne, to await the buses. they waded out in
hip-deep water, only to stand at the intersection, on
the neutral ground (what y'all call the median) for 3
1/2 hours. the buses came and took them to the Ernest
Memorial Convention Center. (yes, the convention
center you've all seen on TV.)

Denise said she thought she was in hell. they were
there for 2 days, with no water, no food. no shelter.
it was Denise, her mother (63 years old), her niece
(21 years
old), and 2-year-old grandniece. when they arrived,
there were already thousands of people there. they
were told that buses were coming. police drove by,
windows rolled up, thumbs up signs. national guard
trucks rolled by, completely empty, soldiers with guns
cocked and aimed at them. nobody stopped to drop off
water. a helicopter dropped a load of water, but all
the bottles exploded on impact due to the height of
the helicopter.

the first day (Wednesday) 4 people died next to her.
the second day (Thursday) 6 people died next to her.
Denise told me the people around her all thought they
had been sent there to die. again, nobody stopped. the
only buses that came were full; they dropped off more
and more people, but nobody was being picked up and
taken away. they found out that those being dropped
off had been rescued from rooftops and attics; they
got off the buses delirious from lack of water and
food. completely dehydrated. the crowd tried to keep
them all in one area; Denise said the new arrivals had
mostly lost their minds. they had gone crazy.

inside the convention center, the place was one huge
bathroom. in order to shit, you had to stand in other
people's shit. the floors w ere black and slick with
shit. most people stayed outside because the smell was
so bad. but outside wasn't much better: between the
heat, the humidity, the lack of water, the old and
very young dying from dehydration... and there was no
place to lay down, not even room on the sidewalk. they
slept outside Wednesday night, under an overpass.

Denise said yes, there were young men with guns there.
but they organized the crowd. they went to Canal
Street and "looted," and brought back food and water
for the old people and the babies, because nobody had
eaten in days. when the police rolled down windows and
yelled out "the buses are coming," the young men with
guns organized the crowd in order: old people in
front, women and children next, men in the back. just
so that when the buses came, there would be priorities
of who got out first.

Denise said the fights she saw between the young men
with guns were fist fights. she saw them put their
guns down and fight rather than shoot up the crowd.
but she said that there were a handful of people shot
in the convention center; their bodies were left
inside, along with other dead babies and old people.

Denise said the people thought they were being sent
there to die. lots of people being dropped off, nobody
being picked up. cops passing by, speeding off.
national guard rolling by with guns aimed at them. and
yes, a few men shot at the police, because at a
certain point all the people thought the cops were
coming to hurt them, to kill them all. she saw a young
man who had stolen a car speed past, cops in pursuit;
he crashed the car, got out and ran, and the cops shot
him in the back. in front of the whole crowd. she saw
many groups of people decide that they were going to
walk across the bridge to the west bank, and those
same groups would return, saying that they were met at
the top of the bridge by armed police ordering them to
turn around, that they weren't allowed to leave.

so they all believed they were sent there to die.

Denise's niece found a pay phone, and kept trying to
call her mother's boyfriend in Baton Rouge, and
finally got through and told him where they were. the
boyfriend, and Denise's brother, drove down from Baton Rouge and came
and got them. they had to bribe a few cops, and talk a few into
letting them into the city ("come on, man, my 2-year-old niece is at the
Convention Center!"), then they took back roads to get to them.

after arriving at my other cousin's apartment in Baton
Rouge, they saw the images on TV, and couldn't believe
how the media was portraying the people of New
Orleans. she kept repeating to me on the phone last
night: make sure you tell everybody that they left us
there to die. nobody came. those young men with guns
were protecting us. if it wasn't for them, we wouldn't
have had the little water and food they had found.

that's Denise Moore's story.

Lisa C. Moore

Words of Wisdom from Ajahn Sumedho & Father Joe

"The Way It Is," is my favorite book of the past several months. It's directed towards expeienced meditators, and the lectures transcribed there are brilliantly simple and insightful. Go Ajahn Sumedho!


"Now how many of you feel you have a mission in life to perform? It’s something that you’ve got to do and some kind of important task that’s been assigned to you by God or fate or something. People frequently get caught up in that view of being somebody who has a mission.

Who can be just with the way things are, so that it is just the body that grows up, gets old and dies, breathes and is conscious? We can practise, live within the moral precepts, do good, respond to the needs and experiences of life with mindfulness and with wisdom-- but there’s nobody that has to do anything. There’s nobody with a mission, nobody special; we’re not making a person or a saint or an avatar or a tulku or a messiah or Maitreya."
*
"I remember my own experience. I always had the view that I was somebody special in some way. I used to think, ‘Well, I must be a special person. Way back when I was a child I was fascinated by Asian and as soon as I could, I studied Chinese at the university, so surely I must be a reincarnation of somebody who was connected to the Orient.’

But consider this as a reflection: no matter how many signs of being special or previous lives you can remember or voices from God or messages from the Cosmos, whatever-- not to deny or say that these things aren’t real-- but they’re impermanent. They’re anicca, dukkha, anatta. We’re reflecting on them as the really are-- what arises, ceases: a message from God is something that comes and ceases in your mind, doesn’t it? God isn’t always talking to you continuously...."
*
"Then the missions we have are responses, not to experiences that we have in our lives-- they’re not personal anymore, it’s no longer me, Sumedho Bhikku, with a mission as if I’m specially chosen from above, more so than any of you. It’s not that any more. That whole manner of thinking and perceiving is relinquished. And whether or not I do save the world and thousands of beings...it’s not from the delusion of being a person; it’s a natural resonse from wisdom.

This I trust; this is what saddha is-- it is a faith in the Buddha’s word. Saddha: it’s a real trust and confidence in Dhamma, in just waiting and being nobody and not becoming anything, but being able to wait and just respond.

...And there is the response because when we have vigour and intelligence and talent, then life always comes to us asking us to respond to it in some skilful and compassionate way, which we are willing and very able to do."

Ajahn Sumedho, “Being Nobody,” from The Way It Is, 1991.
-------------------------

I just discovered "Father Joe," a recent bestselling spiritual memoir. I'm planning to pass it along to Ryushin. It's almost impossible to put this book down.

From the Prologue:

A saint is a person who practices the keystone human virtue of humility. Humility in the face of wealth and plenty, humility in the face of hatred and violence...humility in the face of love and beauty, humility in the face of pain and death. Saints are driven to humbling themselves before all the splendor and horror of the world because they perceive something divine in it, something pulsing and alive beneath the hard dead surface of material things, something inconceivably greater and purer than they. (p.4)

(On needing attention, also known as “extending ourselves out into other people’s awareness”:)

“Without God, people find it very hard to know who they are or why they exist. But if others pay attention to them, praise them, write about them, discuss them, they think they’ve found the answer to both questions.

...If the result is that you only have a personality other people shape. If you really exist only in other people’s minds... I’ve just described pride, dear.” (p. 194)

"Father Joe", by Tony Hendra, Random House, 2004.

Thoughts of Marcus Aurelius

Don’t act as if you’ll live to be a thousand. Your days are numbered like everyone else’s. In what remains of your allotted time, while you still can, become good.

No matter what anyone says or does, my task is to be good. Like gold or emerald or purple repeating to itself, “No matter what anyone says or does, my task is to be emerald, my color undiminished.”

Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius, from The Emperor’s Handbook, 2002. [Book 5, 23 & Book 7,15]