Democracy or party, where is your allegance?

As the Bush white house slowly and methodically dismantles the checks and balances of our Democracy the time has come for Americans to choose, should you vote for your party at the expense of your Democracy or should you vote for your Democracy if it might be at the expense of your part.

You decide.

Fortune Cookie

“Society prepares the crime; the criminal commits it.”

Since when did fortune cookies promote overthrowing the government?

Mealtime Meditation

“I take this food in gratitude to all beings. May it nourish me so that I may nourish others.”

I pieced this together from a few different buddhist meal time prayers. I quite like it.

Jewish Meditation

I’ve been listening to a podcast on the topic as of late and the host pointed out that Kavanah literally means concentration or focus.  I had always thought it meant something more like sprit or energy in the sense that you were really into the davening.  I enjoy the conclusion he draws from it that Kavanah parallels with insight meditation and it brought me back to my previous interest of trying to merge forms of, and ideas from, Buddhist meditation with Judaism.  I’m trying to remember to say Modeah Ani and blessings before meals though I very forgetful of the latter. It has made me realize that I don’t take enough time out for eating though, and or I rush it even if I do have time.  I’d like to remedy that.

Somewhere along the line I went from working to live to more like living to work.  Its not that work is overwhelming, in fact I’m pretty good at keeping it between 10-6, but I’ve lost the bigger picture and the easy fall back was to focus on work.  I started up running and lifting again and I’ll hopefully be joining a choir in September, not to mention moving which I think will help a lot.  I love my room in this house in the way it is laid but it gets little to no natural light. And, while I enjoy the company of my housemates we seem to have very different interests and I can’t get people to go to what I find entertaining.  I still haven’t made time for a sitting practice, between getting up early for running and the longish commute its hard to find time.  I’ve been trying to get into work earlier so I can come home earlier and find time in the evening.  I’ll have to get better at that.  This is also something that could change when I move, as I won’t feel like as much of a hermit if I go to my room.  Its much harder to leave a room of 4 guys hanging out than it is when you live with only one.

Thinking vs Being

Whenever I read buddhist or daoist writings I am always inspired on the one hand and unconvinced on the other. The points I push back on most often are those dealing with being in the moment to the detriment of using our critical faculties. I have spent most of my life focused on learning, being good at it, and having that folded back into my self image. However, I’m starting to realize that thinking constricts one from being. When you think you are necessarily focused inwards. There is a barrier, a separation from the world that arises keeping you at arms length. I see this most directly on my drive to work.

On most days I listen to podcasts which I find amazingly interesting and content filled. I learn about science, business, technology, news, even spirituality. However, I have been trying to whittle down my subscriptions and I got to the point yesterday where I had nothing left to listen to and instead picked some of the music off of my iPod. I saw the sky and the trees lining the road, enjoyed the sun and the beautiful weather and my mind pleasantly wandered aimlessly.

The question then becomes what to do about this? I am still hesitant to drop my podcats. It was tough enough to whittle my subscriptions down to where I am now, all of them are worthwhile in their own right. However, I believe this is just a symptom of the bigger issue. What needs to happen is to appreciate the being more than the thinking and then the action will follow. I’m not there yet but thats what life is for, growing.

I heard an interesting take on this recently on a book on tape (more thinking) which proposed a spectrum of human interaction which ran from dependance to independence to interdependence. I have focused much of my life on being independent which I think also includes the thinking and rationalizing of experience and in that paradigm it is the first step and a huge one at that, one that many do not achieve. However, the journey is not over, the next step is towards being and interdependence. Now for my podcast filled ride to work.

Twitter

I’ve been playing around with Twitter recently and its much more addictive than I suspected. Basically you just IM, SMS, or otherwise type in little status updates and they get sent out to everyone via IM or SMS or whatever. There are plugins for just about everything so I have my IM client set my away status to my latest tweet (yes thats what its called) and I have facebook update whenever I send one. And since I do this all via IM it takes about 5 seconds to update everyone and everything to whats going on. Its quite fun but, its even more fun when you have a whole group of friends with everyone getting updates from everyone else, so, everyone should join. Add me on Twitter and let the fun begin.

Thoughts on the minds of others

I had a small epiphany the other day which I have been playing with and it seems to make a lot of sense. I don’t pay enough attention to others with respect to their individual stream of consciousness and I see this come across in two ways.

The first way I have been aware of for a while but hadn’t really thought about the root cause. Here, I’m talking about assuming that a majority of people generally know what I know or understand what I understand. To a lesser extent there is the assumption that they think like I think though after delving into MBIT for a while this one has been easier to see as false. This unfortunately leads to some amount of disregard for my own thoughts as they are not seen as unique and also leaves me less likely to point out my thoughts in conversation unless someone is obviously holding a different opinion.

The second way, and this was really the start of the epiphany, was that I don’t imagine a stream of though for others when walking down the street or hall or what not. Basically, when casually encountering others. This might even expand to when encountering those close to me though once you have an emotional connection to a person this becomes less apparent. This leads to a level of distance from others since you can’t really connect to someone if they are appear to be a mindless physical being. Additionally, its harder to make an maintain eye contact when all you see is a blank face staring back with nothing going on behind the mask.

I’ve realized I’m quite good at intuiting peoples emotional states by their facial expressions (even very minor ones) and body language and I think this makes up for the above issue to a large extent. However, this only works once you are talking face to face and even then there is still a distance to be bridged.

The annoying flip side of this is that we can never really know what others are thinking so its kinda a crap shoot to imagine someone’s thoughts. However, between the Buddhist meditation class I’ve been taking where we have practiced the metta (loving kindness) meditation and a blog entry that I came across last week relating some teachings of the Dali Llama I have a potential solution. There are common thoughts that all people share and we can attribute those to everyone without concern that we might be off base. To couch it in Buddhist terms, since that is how it has come to me, everyone is trying to find happiness in and remove suffering from their lives. Just something as simple as that thought can bring you (or at least me) into someone else’s head. To attribute that to them is enough to feel a compassion towards them that can then be a launching pad for a deeper relationship.

Interestingly enough, I realized at grassroots a few years ago that if I saw someone doing something embarrassing I could simply say “they are just doing what makes the happy” I could switch my mind set from annoyance and mild condemnation to one of compassion. I have since tried to work that into my life but it was limited since it only worked for peoples actions and I didn’t always feel like people are really acting in a way that makes them happy. However, now that I have a new mantra of sorts that really can be said of all people there is much more potential for this process.

This I Believe

Ever since I heard the first revival of “This I Believe” on NPR I’ve been meaning to write something of my own in that vein. Yesterday, I finally got inspired to brainstorm a bit so here is what I came up with. Its not exactly in an essay form, more in like a list of affirmations.

I believe that one’s your financial situation should not dictate their access to proper education, nourishment, clothing, housing, security and medical care.

I believe this world doesn’t need to be excessively polluted to maintain my quality of life.

I believe animals don’t need to be abused and killed to maintain my body.

I believe my religion’s decrees pertain only to its adherents.

I believe humanity does not need to artificially segregate itself nor discriminate against itself.

I believe in both the fallibility and the potential of humanity.

When it rains it pours

I got this photo featured!

My First Gig

This pic is going to be used by Ithaca Festival publicity.