After today I have sixteen Saturdays left before I retire. Or maybe fifteen, if you don't count the last one, since I'm not working that day.
All week I've been getting up earlier and earlier to make sure I get some writing done before school. And I've been telling people that when I retired I was going to get up even earlier.
And then the crash came. I slept until eight, and then laid in bed and watched a movie about Caesar and Rome and Paul. Paul was an advocate for peace and Caesar was an advocate for war. Caesar fell in love with a woman and, rather than winning her over with kind words and flowers, wanted to "own" her as a slave.
Yesterday a supervisor was lamenting that so many of his employees were at war. Another was lamenting that we have a "them and us" mentality. Even with the Gideons putting a book about peace in every hotel room, and even with some of the worst offenders going to church each Sunday, we still fight to the death to main our territories and our prides.
My college has twice the number of students in Criminal Justice than we do in Teacher Education. Yet most of us know that education is the means to keep people out of the criminal justice system (i.e. jail). As in Caesar's time, more choose to fight than to be an agents of peace like Paul.
Why?
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Reflections on Talks on Buddha's Lists
During a recent Appamada Intensive our students gave talks on Buddha's lists. Here are my reflections on their talks.
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Rhinoceros Fan (an infamous koan) One day Yanguan called to his attendant, "Bring me the rhinoceros fan." The attendant said, ...
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