Thoughts while Meditating

A prisoner wrote yesterday asking me what went through my mind when I meditated. I'm glad I wrote a day or two ago about the precept “do not lie” because that makes this more of a challenge. My answer is somewhat different than what I've said doing meditation instruction, but I think it will encourage me to be more honest in the future.

I've heard some objections in the Zen community to the word meditation. What we do is very different than some other kinds of meditation where one leaves their consciousness, or repeats a mantra over and over again.

In Zen, we practice what is called Shikantaza (只管打坐?)

Dogen, our 13th century patriarch, said: “In this moment of sitting look into what sitting in itself is. Is it turning a somersault? Is it a state of vigorous activity? Is it thinking? Is it not thinking? Is it doing something? Is it not doing anything? Is there sitting inside of sitting? Is sitting inside of the bodymind? Is sitting free of 'sitting inside' and 'inside of the bodymind'? And so on. You should investigate thousands, tens of thousands, of points such as these.”

A contemporary translator of Dogen, Okamura, tells his students, “sit, don't move, don't think.” Are these men saying the same thing?

Here's what I do:

I drive to the zendo to sit. A car goes through a stop sign without stopping and I slam on the breaks. My heart is racing. I'm tired and frazzled. I walk to my cushion, only to realize that I forgot my cushion in my car. So I go back to the shoe rack, get my shoes, my keys, my red stocking cap and look for my cushion in my car. No, I remember, it is in the closet in the temple with the extra zabutons (mats). So I get my zafu (cushion) and two little cushions that I put under my knees that are gradually (after six years) making their way to the mat.

Remember, I'm borderline ADD, easily distracted. I make my way to my place. It might be a day when I'm the doan (time keeper/bell ringer). I make sure I can see the clock, position the chant so I can see it when the time comes, and arrange the chant cards all going the same direction (is that a little OCD, I don't know?).

I might read the chant as the fukudo (person who strikes the han to tell us when sitting will begin) does her job. I try to get comfortable, knowing that I will try not to move for 35 or 40 minutes. I look around the room to see if anything is not the way it should be. Then I place my hands together under my rakusu (small robe hanging from my neck), almost close my eyes, looking down at approximately 45°.

Sitting has begun. Now for the question ... “what goes on in my mind.” A tsunami has occurred in my head. I survived a near death experience, I rushed to get to sitting, I am lamenting that I should attend something after sitting that I really am not interested in attending (luckily my friend asked me to go to dinner). These thoughts are going through my head. Quickly they become fodder for observation. I'm on the shore, watching the waves. They are what they are. I notice that they don't hang around. They aren't getting anything to eat. It isn't that I'm ignoring them, but I'm not feeding them either. Gradually they get bored.

Then I realize I'm tired. I suspect that I drift off a little, but soon feel revived. Then I might start to count my breaths. I try to count to ten. This informs me whether the tsunami has quieted down. I check my posture. I think about by shoulders. I look at the time and wonder what happened to the last ten minutes.

A thought crosses my mind. And another thought. And another thought. Each time, I try to let them go. At first I thought that "my thoughts" were those pegs at a county fair that you'd hit with a mallet as they popped up to win a prize. But now they are much different. It isn't me against them. They aren't my enemies. They aren't my friends. They are just my mind doing what it does, breathing, so to speak. Just that!

Gradually I slow down. Gradually I am sitting, not just physically but mentally.

I remind myself that this is not an athletic event. I'm like the photographer who has taken 1000 pictures. I'm a 1000 picture photographer—no better, no worse. Some day I'll be a ten or twenty or thirty year sitter. I'll sit differently. Maybe I can quiet the tsunami faster. Maybe I won't come to the zendo with a racing mind. In any case, this is what I am now.

And that's what I do when I sit.

Kim Mosley

Do Not Lie

One of my prisoner BuddhaPals wrote me, complaining that some of his fellow prisoners lie to their penpals. Here is my response.

L,

You started me thinking about “do not lie.” When we go through lay ordination, we think about each of the precepts. But later, we realize there are some (if not all) of the precepts we have not been considering whole-heartedly and that we need to revisit.

The first thing that comes to mind is “do not judge.” There is that great line from the Bible “And why behold you the speck that is in your brother's eye, but consider not the beam that is in your own eye.” I think that is humbling. And it reminds me of the considerable job it is to get that beam out of my own eye.

There are so many levels of telling the truth. It is not just our words, but our actions. Do we know ourselves? Are we pretending to be someone we are not?

The idea of karma is that we are the result of our actions. Creating good karma is a full-time job. One response to those that are generating bad karma is compassion. The Buddha, in a previous life, killed a pirate who was going to kill everyone on a boat. Did he do it to save all but the pirate? No. He did it, out of compassion, to save to pirate from accumulating bad karma.

It is easier to be compassionate toward those that we like. When they are having a hard time, it hurts us. But how about those that we detest? Can we have compassion for them too? That's a good challenge for all of us.

Mr. Kim

Here's Buddha's Metta Sutta on kindness:

This is what should be done
By one who is skilled in goodness,
And who knows the path of peace:
Let them be able and upright,
Straightforward and gentle in speech.
Humble and not conceited,
Contented and easily satisfied.
Unburdened with duties and frugal in their ways.
Peaceful and calm, and wise and skillful,
Not proud and demanding in nature.
Let them not do the slightest thing
That the wise would later reprove.
Wishing: In gladness and in saftey,
May all beings be at ease.
Whatever living beings there may be;
Whether they are weak or strong, omitting none,
The great or the mighty, medium, short or small,
The seen and the unseen,
Those living near and far away,
Those born and to-be-born,
May all beings be at ease!

Let none deceive another,
Or despise any being in any state.
Let none through anger or ill-will
Wish harm upon another.
Even as a mother protects with her life
Her child, her only child,
So with a boundless heart
Should one cherish all living beings:
Radiating kindness over the entire world
Spreading upwards to the skies,
And downwards to the depths;
Outwards and unbounded,
Freed from hatred and ill-will.
Whether standing or walking, seated or lying down
Free from drowsiness,
One should sustain this recollection.
This is said to be the sublime abiding.
By not holding to fixed views,
The pure-hearted one, having clarity of vision,
Being freed from all sense desires,
Is not born again into this world.

Conversation with a relative on Willpower, Zen, Jews, and Guilt

This is my workspace. It is the most organized that it has ever been.

B:

Thanks for the very interesting article link on Susan Nolen-Hoeksema. I had missed the article and am interested in checking out the book. It does sound as if worry and rumination are two sides of the same coin, or maybe the same coin altogether. And yes, I "worry" that they are ways of avoiding the present. Clearly, willpower (i.e. telling myself to focus on the here and now) doesn't work. Have your zen practices been more helpful?

Regarding your Torah study and the notion of worry as a Jewish trait—I have many times thought that worry (and guilt) may be particularly prevalent among Jews of eastern European ancestry, a cultural trait developed over centuries of hard times. I, too, was in a Torah study group but never felt the connection so strongly there. Still, as Jews with eastern European ancestry (you through your mother's side and I through my mother's side), we may be wired ...

K:

Willpower: I agree that willpower isn't the way. I've heard teachers say that they pull rather than push. I think when we push ourselves we burn out quickly. I couldn't sit at my desk unless a movie or music was playing. I had to check my email all the time. So I tried various willpower techniques, including using a pomodoro timer (neat project management system) but it still was an incredible effort. I think willpower is exhausting, though maybe (sometimes) useful in developing habits. My sister Gail (a psychoanalyst) urged me to try some ADD medicine (generic Ritalin) ... so I went through some testing and since I was “borderline,” they gave it to me. I've been taking it for about six weeks now and feel pretty much like a different person. Supposedly the pills stimulate the front part of the brain that controls willpower. In any case I felt like I was a car out of alignment, using “willpower” (over and over again) to go straight, where now I feel I'm in alignment. I have no interest in having video or audio on when I'm working, though if someone interrupts me, that's ok too. It has made me question the perception that many others just don't “try” hard enough. Perhaps they have some part of their brain that isn't functioning properly. I saw so many students struggle, and no matter how hard they tried, barely improve. I wondered why. In fact, I worked to try to get our campus disabilities office to consider learning disabilities as a disability (sounds so obvious). The disability folks were much more into the deaf and those using wheelchairs and never pursued it. On the other hand, I know that some people think that many kids are over-medicated. I'm sure that some ADD/ADHD drugs are used for the convenience of the teachers rather than for the growth of the student.

Zen: There are so many Buddhisms, and even more than one school of Zen, and they don't agree. Buddha's #1 goal is to relieve people of their suffering, which he feels is a result of their attachment to things. (I think of Buddha as ever present, and existing in all things.) Greed, hate, and delusion are the three poisons that come from attachment. Perhaps rumination is an attachment to the past, and worry is a fear that things won't be as they are. I realize now that I was fixated on certain things that had happened to me in the past. Now (with the meds) I remember the incidents and see that I was fixated (obsessed) about them, but realize that I'm not concerned about them any more.

In Soto Zen, (which is what I practice), we say the "Zen is good for nothing." People come to us because they want relief from this or that. And most say that they have benefited from their practice. But those who just do it for the end goal often don't stick with it. It is like wanting to be a famous artist. There is no better formula for failure.

The prisoners with whom I communicate want to meditate as a means of numbing their suffering and suppressing their anger. I try to shift their thinking a little so they'll observe their anger rather than trying to get rid of it. I believe that someone who says "I am so angry" really isn't so angry at the moment when they are observing their anger. They are a guy/gal observing themselves being an angry person. Did I send you the poem, The Guest House, by Rumi? It is the best description of Zen meditation.

So a question, are you worrying when you are aware that you are worrying? I suspect that both can't occur simultaneously.

Jews: My grandma Rebecca was certainly the modicum of worry, wasn't she? And my mother worried a lot. She wrote in her notes that she was depressed a lot. In the Torah study group it was mentioned the other day that Jews suffer from their persecution. This seems very non-productive to me because it is making the world the cause of our thoughts. I like better the Buddhist idea that pain is like a dart thrown at us, which hurts, but suffering comes from a second dart that we create in our mind. (But back to the brain ... how much emotion and how many thoughts are the result of too many or too few chemicals being released by the brain?)

Guilt: I haven't thought a lot about guilt. I do remember how bad I used to feel when I messed up in the Zen temple, doing something that was “wrong.” like moving a cushion with my foot. And now, when I see newcomers do such things I just think “they are a newcomer and they don't know any better.” Buddhists do have a concept of repentance, but it is simply acknowledging that they messed up and then move on. There is no sin, nor commandments that they should do this and not that (though precepts are taken to inform one's path).

Negativity: Letter to a BuddhaPal

Nice to get your letter. I read how you felt you were surrounded by negativity all day long and that you were trying to clear your mind of it.

I think you should congratulate yourself that you are able to see what is surrounding you. At the same time, we talk in Zen about obstacles being “opportunities for practice.” The fact that you are able to see the negativity is a first step. Think about the reasons for the negativity. Think how many of the prisoners got a bad roll of the dice from the day that they are born. Realize that if you don't put wood in the fire you are taking a step at putting out the fire. Talk about positive things that are going on either with you or with the prison.

I'm sending you some of the Buddha's words on right speech. It is quite a practice to only say something that is affectionate. It is disarming to say the least.

Keep writing, and let me know how this goes.

Mr. Kim

P.S. I have the three monkeys on a little altar on my desk. Above them is Suzuki Roshi, who is our link to the Buddha. When someone complained about the people they were working with, he replied, “If you want to see virtue, you have to have a calm mind.”

We don't have a calm mind to numb our anguish, but rather to see the Buddha (or beauty) in everything (my words).

Here's some Buddhist text that I sent my BuddhaPal: http://www.accesstoinsight.org/ptf/dhamma/sacca/sacca4/samma-vaca/index.html

Wheat-free, Egg-free and Dairy-free Nut Bread

From Facebook

On bus back to Austin. Didn't get mugged. Was it because of inherited karma or earned karma or just didn't?

Mark Manders, painted bronze figure

Waiting for trains to museums

Inside Bank

There was a big copper building and I thought that was the bank. But no, it is a nice neighborhood bank with lots of wood.

Coppermart Bank

Dart train to Lovers Lane

Progress in Big D.

30 minutes to Big D

No photos

Cop just told me I can't take pictures. Said it had to do with terrorist activities.

Austin Greyhound Station

Going on the bus today to big D to see art. Actually just to have a mid-life adventure.

May the Lord smile on you and be gracious to you. (Numbers 6:25)

First I made this sketch in 2009:

I made this drawing in 2009.

Then I decided that a line drawing wouldn't work well in the book. So I colored it.

Kingdom of God is within you.

Once, having been asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, Jesus replied, "The kingdom of God does not come with your careful observation, nor will people say, 'Here it is,' or 'There it is,' because the kingdom of God is within you."—Luke 17:20-2

There is nothing either good or bad ...

There is nothing either good or bad, thinking makes it so. 

(Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act II, Scene II)

My former student, Jeff, wrote that he disagreed with William, saying that harming another is bad, especially when there is murder (my words). At the same time, another former student, from my days teaching in Dallas, wrote about virtuous capitalism. He imagines a bunch of business men who forego profits to give more to their employees and public than need be. Of course, the net result might actually not be so good for some. The shareholders might need to tell their kids that they can't go to college, and their competitors might go out of business because they can't compete with a company that gives away bread. Is this really virtue? (For a much more articulate expression of the social responsibility of business see: http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/005373.html).

I like to think about what morality would be like if there are no humans on Earth. Most people would agree that there would be no good and bad. There is only be ecosystems. One animal eats another, who then eats another and so on. They are usually wired to protect their own and to survive by taking advantage of those smaller or weaker than themselves.

Enter humans onto Earth who make judgments galore. And then they make judgments on others making judgments. Hitler decides that "X" could make his country better. Then someone else decides that Hitler is evil. A cycle is started that produces strife and war. Even two people who love each other have a tough time at getting along.

Buddha wrote (though not with Shakespeare's conciseness),

Do not form views in the world through either knowledge, virtuous conduct, or religious observances; likewise, avoid thinking of oneself as being either superior, inferior, or equal to others. The wise let go of the “self” and being free of attachments they depend not on knowledge. Nor do they dispute opinions or settle into any view. For those who have no wishes for either extremes of becoming or non-becoming, here or in another existence, there is no settling into the views held by others. Nor do they form the least notion in regard to views seen, heard, or thought out. How could one influence those wise ones who do not grasp at any views. —from the Sutta nipata

Jasper's Excusion

Jasper and I, on his last day in Austin this year, went on a excursion to the Bullock museum to see the Flying Monsters Imax movie. Excursions with me always end up more elaborate, and the plans change by the moment. We went to the art museum first, but it was closed. Then to the Ramson Center to see the Bibles and the first photo, but it was closed except for the Gutenberg Bible. Then to Bullock, where I refused to buy him $4.75 junk popcorn (he took it like a cool dude, but later his mom thought it was abuse). Anyway, it was a great trip, reminding me of the trips with my kids when they were that age. Click on the pictures to see them enlarged.

Scale

Flight jacket at gift store.

Gutenberg Bible, 2012

Don't Mess with Texas!

Big football, little boy.

Before Abraham was I am (John 8:58)

My favorite Zen riddle is "who were you before you were born?" This question stumped a star student who thought he knew everything. He went and faced the wall of a cave for a number of years to find the answer. When he returned to give the answer to his teacher, he asked why the teacher had not just given him the answer. "You would have hated me if I did," the teacher answered.

Nothing is permanent. And everything is eternal. That to me is what the mystic John is saying.

The shadow of death

Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.

— 23rd Psalm

Food is a necessity.

Friend raised a lot of questions on my recent blog. I'll just deal with one at a time.

She wrote: Food is not a right. . .  It’s a necessity. Housing is a necessity. Education has to happen if you want to survive. It doesn’t matter if the constitution or the delectation of human rights considers them ‘rights’. . . Without food, you die. Without water, you die. Without housing, you are exposed to the elements and have no real security . . .  and you will probably not live long. So there is what do people deserve and what people need in order to live.

No doubt that food is a necessity. Even Buddha discovered as much when he almost died on his diet of 1/2 of a grain of rice a day.

Some people have too little food to eat. Some of this is unnecessary. We have stockpiles of food that are being kept off the market to prevent prices from falling. Distribution of this food to the peoples of the world should be an important initiative.

Going back to the fact that some people have too little, we have a number of alternatives. One is do nothing, another is to have the government give them food (or teach them to fish), and a third is rely on charity to feed (or teach) those unable to feed themselves.

Doing nothing is not a good option. Just from a selfish standpoint, I or my children could be without food at some point in our lives. I would not want to live in a society where help was not available. The libertarian asks whether this is a role of government or whether private citizens (most charity comes from individuals, not businesses) could take care of the hungry.

1 in 3 Americans helped charities in 2005, giving 260.3 billion dollars. I understand that when we had less welfare than we do now, an even greater percentage of our income went to charity. A good way to wean the government off the feeding of the hungry is to have an option on our taxes to get a tax credit (not a deduction) when we give to charity. That way the charities could compete for dollars. Those with the best record for giving (most of their money goes to the hungry, not to administration) could get the most dollars to give.

This is not a simple or easy problem. Sometimes not giving is the best gift. But sometimes it is not. What I don't think we need is coercive taxing to feed the hungry. Through voluntary giving we not only solve the problem but we create a world village.

Charlie at 10 days old.

Short time with Charlie in the car while my daughter went into the drug store. But we got lots done. Took about 30 pictures. We worked on the vowels. I associated each vowel with a finger, as if we were counting with sounds. He tried to say some of them and was really interested (it made him stop crying (he was hungry)). We also counted and went to 5 instead of 4. I'm fascinated with the fact that we can count different elements in the same group and form a relationship that didn't exist (like 4 fingers and 4 apples). Oh, we also talked about fingers being part of the hand and the hand being part of the body and the body being part of the world. He's not quite ready for that, but it will be old hat by the time he is. Oh, I introduced up and down, a totally confusing concept that can't be explained unless you already understand it (like most concepts). Not bad for ten minutes in the back seat of a car!

What do we deserve?

One of the seemingly disagreements between the political parties seem to be about this question. I hope to point out that it may not be so much about what we deserve but rather how we might achieve that which we deserve.

The Declaration of Independence stated that we have the unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The latter was

"...one of the "unalienable rights" of people enumerated in the Declaration of Independence, along with "life" and "liberty." "The right to pursue any lawful business or vocation, in any manner not inconsistent with the equal rights of others, which may increase their prosperity or develop their faculties, so as to give them their highest enjoyment." Butchers' Co. v. Crescent City Co., 111 U.S. 746, 757, (1884.)"

Some say that we have the right to education, to food, to healthcare, and to housing. Though these are not specifically guaranteed by the constitution, one could argue that they are necessities for the pursuit of happiness and therefore also unalienable rights mentioned in the declaration of independence.

One means to achieve these "rights" is to redistribute wealth. This will work to the extent that there is enough to go around and that the powers-to-be have sufficient strength to make such a distribution.

There may be some consequences to redistribution. The "haves" might lose their incentive to accumulate. The "income" of the wealthy is a small part of their wealth. So in addition to high taxes, we would have to distribute their investments. Which may mean that companies that produce goods and services might become impoverished. The "have nots" might lost their incentive as well, having all that they need for their good life.

I love the saying, "give a man a fish and he has food for a day. Teach him to fish and he has food for life." It suggests a libertarian view of providing a better life for all. The ultimate outcome of a prosperous society will be happiness. That happiness will mean that more have the quality of life that they wish.

I believe both of the presidential contenders want the best for their citizens. The question is how that might be achieved.

Dialogue with friend on vouchers

Kim: A friend wrote a response to my posting the article about Romney supporting vouchers (though not calling them that). The local governments does three things with k-12 education: they make it mandatory up to a certain age, they tax people to pay for it, and they run the schools. Some have said that the schools could be run privately. The voucher system is a means to jump-start that process, taking some of the money generally given to public schools and giving it, through the parents, to private schools.

Friend: My thoughts about that school voucher issue. . . Not that you actually asked for them.

I once heard Bob Moses argue that we (the US) run a system of failing schools and we rescue the students that we can. We rescue them through ABC programs, charter schools, affirmative action, vouchers, ect. He argued that the reason the system doesn’t blow up is because the steam is allowed to escape in the form of these programs. He suggested there needed to be a national discussion about the SAT and/or ETS.

Kim: I think mandatory city-run schools are like the draft. If it was required that everyone must send their kids to public schools then we'd really see an explosion. Parents who can afford it send their kids to private schools because the kids get a better education there, and also are not subjects to the dangers of public schools.

Friend: I have also heard the argument that the voucher program is not a viable or desirable because you get a voucher for x amount of dollars (too lazy to look up the figure at this point) and this is not money enough to go to any private school. Moreover only fools would take there child out of a school system where their child is worth greater than x dollars to get a voucher for x dollars to try to get that kid into a school that requires greater than x dollars. The voucher program (at least as it runs currently) devalues a child’s worth in many peoples’ minds. (I have no child and am therefore uncertain if this is true.)

Kim: It is true that in practice vouchers are not equal to the amount spent per student. This should pacify the teacher unions who claim that vouchers deplete the resources of the public schools. Public schools profit when students choose to use a voucher for a private school, because they still get some money for that student. I've never heard that the voucher program devalues a child's worth, so I can't respond to that except to say the if any devaluing is done, it is in the minds of those doing the devaluing. 1/2 of the money given to public schools per student is a welcome tuition for some schools.

Having said that, economists talk about two ways of talking about costs. If you have a widget company, you can divide your investment by the number of widgets you produce to find the cost per widget. But if you decide to make one more widget, then you might spend a minimal amount ... nothing close to the cost per widget from the first calculation. If you reduce the number of students by 10% you don't reduce your cost of operation by 10%. Adding a few students to the classroom might not cost additional monies, thought it may negatively impact the learning.

Friend: I personally find it odd that the article you posted is using the words, ‘voting with their feet’ and that Mr. Romney talks about giving poor students the freedom to choose a public school outside their district. I think if Mr. Romney spent any time in the school I went to he would completely understand why I have to laugh about this. I do believe that Romney has never heard the argument that the school system went to hell when they started bussing in students. I have heard this argument many times and I am more than confident that you have heard this as well. I would argue that this is the number two reason people who participated in that white flight event playing out in the 90s give for having to move out (the number one reason being all the crime coming into the area). The bussing program was meant to give some poor students the (I don’t know that I would say freedom) ability to attend a public school outside their district. And this is the reason the schools got bad and forced many people to move away from their communities according to many. I really want to know how this voucher program is different than the bussing program in the minds of people who might be willing to pack up and leave (or vote with their feet) once those ‘poor students’ show up in their district. Also much of the opposition to the bussing program involves the idea that it is too expensive to bus students in and that it would be better to use that money to lift up the district the poor students are trying to escape. I think the very some argument would be applied to a voucher program in only a short matter of time.

Kim: I agree that bussing didn't work. The students were treated like stepchildren and never fully integrated into the school. There are many variables for success in school. One is the school, another the parents, another the upbringing and parental support for education. Vouchers put the responsibility of education back into the hands of the parents and for that reason should make more of a difference.

Friend: If one is willing to give students enough money to go anywhere they want for school, why not just start discussing how schools are funded. If it is the case (and I don’t know that it is) that the underfunded schools (those with a smaller influx of money) are also the schools that do not perform to standard, then maybe instead of sending the kids else where, the funding mechanism could simply be redesigned to redistribute funds more evenly. School funding is based on the property values of an area. Schools in neighborhoods with high property values have more money. In most cases around me, these are not the schools that are having academic performance issues. If the education money were distributed more evenly, I really think students wouldn’t need vouchers to travel across town to try to educate themselves in places that might be hostile to their presence. I realize that some districts have a money management problem (or that they are just controlled by thieves) but if the money was being redistributed than even those outside of an underperforming district would have a stake in how that money was being spent.

Kim: This article from 2008 in the Washington Post says that the cost per student in the Washington DC is $25000 per student. These are failing schools. I don't believe it has been shown that throwing more money at a school will necessarily improve it.

Friend: People already ‘vote with their feet’ when it comes to education. People are willing to pay more for less house and community services in order to ensure they are in a decent school district. This has been the case for my entire life. This (as I have already argued) is the number two reason mass migration occurs in my city. Vouchers and charter schools are not going to fix this issue.

Kim: I agree that people who can afford it will choose to live in neighborhoods with better schools. Hopefully vouchers will encourage new schools to form in neighborhoods with failing schools to give students a choice. This is the hope.

Friend: Don’t get me wrong. If given a voucher back in the day, I would have high tailed it right out of the unaccredited school I graduated from. But my education at a poor school allows me to recognize the absurdity in the idea that letting some kids go to schools outside their district is a solution. That shit was done before under a different name. And nobody. . . not the kids on the bus; not the kids in the good district, not the parents of any of these children seem really happy about how all that turned out.

Kim: That you'd choose a voucher is indicative to me that it is a good program. You want to choose your school. You might want to go to a school for kids interested in art or science or cooking. This will be more apt to increase your passion for learning, which, for me, is the key to getting an education.

A Mountain is a Mountain

Edward Weston, in his Daybooks, wrote about the zen saying that a man who knows nothing thinks that a mountain is just a mountain. With some knowledge, he sees that a mountain is not a mountain. And then, when he understands, a mountain is once again a mountain. This painting is the mountain of the man who knows nothing. A tree blocks his full view of the mountain and he labels the mountain, "M," thinking he gets what it is. There are no details because it is just a mountain. I did the other mountains in 2009 but forgot to do this one.

Be still ...

"Be still and know that I am God"—Psalm 46:10

Hello Darkness my old friend ...

Hello Darkness my old friend,
I’ve come to talk with you again,
Because a vision softly creeping,
Left its seeds while I was sleeping
And the vision that was planted in my brain,
Still remains, within the sounds of silence.
—Simon and Garfunkel

I Object ...

One person told me that Robin Hood is just one lens through which to see the world. Another lens would be to do what is necessary to do to support a community.

Another said that one type of fairness would be to distribute wealth evenly. The other would be to provide better education so everyone could create wealth for themselves.

There seems to be two issues here: coercion and what works.

To what extent do we want to be coerced to pay taxes, invest for the future through Uncle Sam (Social Security/Medicare), and all the other sundries that are required to live in the United States?

What really works to create community? Is it a matter of distribution? Is it a matter of equal access to good resources (quality education, housing, healthcare).

Can community be created with the free-market? Can the government create community? If so, at what cost to our freedom?

Is there one solution?

Leica M9 Photos

I recently took a Leica workshop. The highlight was having a M9 for the day. This is way beyond the finest camera I have ever used. The sharpness is terrific. You can click on the images to see them a little larger.

Unfair advantages

I heard recently about a few instances which people claimed gave "unfair advantages" to some. We expend a lot of effort to make things fair ... or to complain when they aren't fair.

There is a runner who had his legs amputated to the knees. He uses some springy devices that enable him to compete favorably with full-bodied runners. It is claimed he has an unfair advantage because he doesn't have any feet. The runners commission recently ruled that he could compete. I'm not sure that they used the argument that anyone could have their feet cut off if they wanted to run faster.

Then there are the complaints that corporations shouldn't be able to contribute to political candidates. But efforts to make it fairer might cause more problems than they solve. And it is an easy law to bypass. Corporations simply have to increase salaries with the expectation that their employees contribute.

And it isn't fair that Romney paid only 18 million in income tax, a mere 15% of his income, where someone who makes far less pays a higher percentage.

Some say insider trading should be allowed. It actually could benefit everyone, because we'd see what the insiders were doing and could trade based on that information. Others, of course, say it ain't fair.

We love to demonize. One way of doing that is to complain about what we don't have. "Fair" seems to be one means to get what we want. We deserve it, we say, because we don't have it. When my kids would pull the fairness argument I would just say that life is not fair. They didn't think of coming up with the retort, "well, it should be, and so let's take the first step."

What do you think? Should life be fair? At what cost to our freedom?