Waiting

How many times do we sit out the weekend, waiting for the moment of truth on Monday? Well, Monday in England is Bank Day, a national holiday, which I assume is why I didn't hear from the marketing woman about my Miracle Ear ad.

I saw an amazing Marina Abramovich retrospective exhibit exhibit at MOMA in NYC last week. I was very curious to know about the role of meditation in Marina's pieces... and so I was so glad to be sent a link to this article. We've come a long way in a short time that such work can be exhibited. When I lived in Dallas for three years in the 70s I had five issues with censorship. A few were with my work, the others with exhibits I curated. At the Univ. of Illinois in the 60s the male models wore "jock straps." A graduate student, Myra Cantor, sent the school into a tizzy displaying male nudes in her thesis exhibit.

Tonight I heard Norman Fischer for the third time in three days. It was a meeting for the business community of Austin. He spoke about meditation practice (calling it mindfulness) in business. He's the meditation guru for Google. He handled questions from the audience so skillfully and honestly too. You can hear 100s of his lectures on the web. Super wonderful person.

This afternoon I heard on the web a talk he gave about God parting the seas to save the Jews. I thought that God was pretty mean to the Egyptians (killing them all).

Before the talk Norman came over to where I was standing, looking at this incredible transparent building being built. I told him that God wasn't nice to the Romans (killing them all after splitting the waters). He corrected me and said Egyptians. Next time I'm at a Passover dinner celebrating the event, I'm going to ask everyone to say a prayer for them, even if they did enslave the Jews.

Called my Sister

Here. Zen is about hereing (sic) now. Get a hereing (sic) aid. 

I want to be here,  he said.

So I called my sister and she said that I should keep the ad for the hearing aids because so many people need them. Judging from the sound of her voice, she felt there was a moral imperative here to take the blood money (we don't refund money, she said) and support the cause of hearing aids for the hard of hearing.

I do have another sister, though, in case I need another opinion. In the meantime, I'm waiting for the ad firm in England to open up shop in a few hours.

Next planet I live on is going to be easier. There will be one answer to all questions and that answer will be obvious, right from the start. I had an aunt who'd give me answers like that until she became wiser. Now she has moved on.

And everyone on this other planet will be compassionate, even the men.

Knife and Spoon

I would tell my photo students that Henri Cartier-Bresson was great at composing photos. Once, when I was teaching at SMU in the 70s, Dan Barsotti raised his hand and contradicted me, saying that he saw Bresson photographing in Paris and he just held the camera above his head and shot ("quick quick quick" (as Bresson would say with his French accent)). Anyway, I was talking to Stephanie at a brunch this am and talking about the magic of life. Then I brought my phone up to the table and turned it on... and this picture was on the screen. I just had to press the button.

Blood Money and Hearing Aids

My hearing aids are pretty small but some-times they feel very large.
[Buy "No Wax"]

A week or so ago I received an email from a English marketing firm that they wanted to give me either $150 or $100 if I would put an ad on my website. A gaming ad would be $150 and an ad in a number of other categories would be $100.

I'm trying to earn enough money for an ipad. Which doesn't justify blood money, does it?

So in the midst of taking these Buddhist precepts, I entered questionable territory here. Not advertising in itself... but ... read on.

They asked me to rewrite a paragraph on my website about my friend Joan Lipkin, who works with the disabled in theatre. They came up with this paragraph:

As the Artistic Director of That Uppity Theatre in St. Louis, Missouri, she specializes in creating work with marginalized populations including people with disabilities, from those with digital hearing aids to those who are wheelchair bound, LGBT youth and women with breast cancer that are accompanied by civic dialogue with the wider community.

They added "digital hearing aids" and made it a link to a vendor of such things.

Then they sent me $100.

So I sent them a letter (just now...):

Janet,

I'm wondering if we could try a different ad. This one is misleading since Joan Lipkin might not work with people with digital hearing aids. I took off this ad, feeling like it would not do justice to her or to Miracle Ear.

Thanks,

Kim

I used to pose this question to the advertising design students. "Suppose you were asked to do a campaign for something that hurt people (cigarettes, for example)... would you do so?" Most answered, "yes." And then I'd tried to persuade them that they shouldn't. Some would switch to fine arts... and others would go on and have successful (design) careers.

So I'll let you know what Janet sends me next. It should be interesting... and probably costly to me.

Who needs an ipad anyway?

I remember one of the early computer graphic pioneers the we invited to the college. He held up a pencil and said, "really, nothing will every be more sensitive than this."

More later, when Monday comes around in England.

Impermanence

(Pāli: अनिच्चा anicca; Sanskrit: अनित्य anitya; Tibetan: མི་​རྟག་​པ་ mi rtag pa; Chinese: 無常 wúcháng; Japanese: 無常 mujō; Thai: อนิจจัง anitchang, from Pali "aniccaŋ")

Except those who believe in a "soul" (most of the world), nobody denies impermanence as a rational concept. But even those who rationally see trees being chopped down and made into firewood know in their hearts that something didn't change. And impermanence says they are wrong.

My longtime friend said to "me" that other day... I know you're still stuck on "me." When you've known someone for 40+ years, you don't go denying their observations. You just know, like in this case, that more work needs to be done.

In NYC, years ago, a doctor weighed people before and after death. He could not account for 3/4 of an ounce. Was this the soul that had exited the body? Why did dogs (who have, according to some, "buddha-nature") have no weight loss at the moment of death?

Buddhists try to recognize that everything is changing. I suspect even the most seasoned veterans have to remind them "selves" continually that they too are changing. Always, continually, completely.

Race (not?)

After engaging in an online discussion on race and ethnicity, and entertaining the possibility of evil on my blog, my friend tried to explain why she won't even talk about race. I begged her to write about it, but she declined and said "do it yourself." She does write continually, but only on topics of her choosing. And actually writing about how we construct distinctions between people is one of her topics.

First off, some say that the only race is the human race, given that chimpanzees living in a remote area of Africa are more varied genetically than all humans... and penguins come in 15-20 species.

My friend is completely uninterested in this argument, saying that anyone who has any brains knows that race is just around to substantiate (or not) superiorities of one race over another, and that in truth there are no races anyway.

But then she talked of how we construct various groupings (my word) of peoples with the intent of stereotyping groups as having specific characteristics. What was most interesting to me is that, like evil and suffering and many other concepts, groupings have very real consequences once they are constructed. They may be artificial, but as long as we act on our preconceptions the result will be real. For example, I believe men less than 5'10" cannot be trusted (a construction with probably no basis of truth). Then I act on this construction, being careful not to associate with any "shorties" (including myself). What had no validity now becomes very important, especially to the "shorties" and actually to all. Society is cheated from dealing with a fine and honorable group.

Therefore denying race, in my friend's opinion, gives people a false sense that they've solved a problem, where really the problem, though constructed, is still here and there and everywhere.

P.S. I sent this to my friend, hoping that I represented her correctly (it was a very very noisy restaurant for someone who doesn't hear well). She said that I did, and added, "I don't think that "race" is only around to substantiate superiorities, though. There's this great show on now called Treme, a show about New Orleans post-Katrina. It's about race...for example, cultural movements of Jazz and neighborhood solidarity, structural racism (bad levees, looting, prison mishaps), within-"race" conflicts between middle class and working class/poor black people, etc. But it complicates it all-layers these different racial issues, and shows the interpersonal, structural, and societal impacts of race and racism on New Orleans. I think that race is one of the fundamental ways our society is organized, historically, and most societal issues are intertwined with race in some way."

Mythology and Truth

My walking neighbor (we walk together in the mornings) clarified for me the role of mythology in religion. He talked about mythology as a means to convey the truth. And, he said, those who take the mythology literally are stuck in a "logical quandry."

Like Aesop's fables, the events may not have actually happened (not many of us have heard animals "talk"), but they describe a truth about life through their stories. What is it then that we "believe"? It is the wisdom of the stories, because that wisdom aligns with our experience. Job, for example, lost everything except for his faith. By retaining his faith, his luck turned around. Was there really a man Job who was a pawn in a contest between God and the Devil (as portrayed in J.B. by Archibald Macleish)? No, probably not. And yet have them been men and woman who have been down on their luck and who still retained their faith? Absolutely. And did their lives turn around in time? Of course. Was it the faith that caused his life to turn around? We'll have to wait and see the metadata from a number of double-blind studies... or else...

Car[l] Jerome, in his comment yesterday, gave the following references:

 Kalama Sutta

 Simile of the Snake Sutta

"It is proper for you, Kalamas, to doubt, to be uncertain; uncertainty has arisen in you about what is doubtful. Come, Kalamas. Do not go upon what has been acquired by repeated hearing; nor upon tradition; nor upon rumor; nor upon what is in a scripture; nor upon surmise; nor upon an axiom; nor upon specious reasoning; nor upon a bias towards a notion that has been pondered over; nor upon another's seeming ability; nor upon the consideration, 'The monk is our teacher.' Kalamas, when you yourselves know: 'These things are bad; these things are blamable; these things are censured by the wise; undertaken and observed, these things lead to harm and ill,' abandon them." (Buddha, from the Kalama Sutta).