Statistics?

I wrote on Facebook  “when you have 30 people in a room, two will probably share a birthdate.” Andy, a friend from the 60s, replied, “Inevitable. Statistics.”

“Bah humbug,” said Ebinizer Scrooge.

Deepak Chopra asked the question of why is it that some people with a propensity to get a disease get the disease. I suspect that Andy would say “statistics” to that too. Deepak was not so convinced. Though we have a precondition for a disease, it is not just “chance” that
 causes the disease.

Living in a city is a precondition for being mugged. Is it then just a matter of Russian Roulette?

I used to marvel at the bell curves that are produced by the random distribution of balls falling through an obstruction.

One could take the bell curve as an expression of determinism. With enough coin flips, half will be heads and half will be tails. But each individual coin could be either, even if the ten flips previous were heads. Does the coin has free will?

Statistics is weird that way. It doesn’t tell how one person, or even one subgroup will behave. Belonging to a college club will improve your grades and your persistence at college. But if you are African-American, at least at the college I was at, it would have the opposite effect. Statistics doesn’t tell us about the behavior of the individual, only about the behavior of the conglomerate. So does the individual mistakenly believe that they are free, when really they are part of a grand plan?

Or is he able to buck the system?

Is religion (prayer, for example) a waste of time given that the master plan produces a bell curve? What do you think?

Facebook Friends

I commented on Facebook that I wanted to have 2000 friends. So I’ve been befriending all those numerous and wondrous beings that have at least 100 friends in common with me.

Joan wrote Xox and I replied XOX (I’m lucky that my wife, having talked to me for almost 50 years, won’t read much of my daily blabber.) Joan asked me to do a set design for her play. As I read the script, I realized that we had both had the same PE teacher in high school (Sanford Patlak), and we didn’t even know that we had gone to the same school.

Then Pam wrote: We do not share 100 mutual friends, but of those we do share, they are among the most talented in STL. I'd love to get them all in the same room.

These new friends are from all over the world. They are such interesting people. Maybe I’ll get to meet some of them in person someday. Like the female Kim Mosley in Hawaii. She is such a fine artist, who now seems to be involved with acting for films.

My neighbor doesn’t want a lot of friends because every year he gives a $1 for each friend he has on Facebook, and he says that many friends would cost him too much money.

I’ve never worked well within a vacuum. I love to get feedback on my work. Sometimes people comment. Sometimes they just press the like button. One person told me he hated my work.

Donna said the other night that her painting isn’t complete until someone looked at it. I’ve heard actors say this, but not a painter. In fact, I went every night to the play with my set. It was amazing how it was a different play each night, depending on the audience.

I have one plea: please don’t assume that people can read your mind. They are interested in what you think, especially if it is positive or at least useful. So speak up. Silence is only golden if you have nothing to say. But you do, so please speak up. Tell your friends you love them, or whatever. When people post idiotic stuff, tell them it is idiotic… and why. What an opportunity we have for the exchange of ideas and feelings.

Thanks!

The Art of Opportuning

In a sense I have no right to say “poor me” or to even say anything to others who say, “poor me.” I’ve had so many privileges. I can’t start to imagine what my life would have been like if things had been different. Some of the privileges were a birthright, some were earned, and others were a gift of the stars. I’ve had challenges too, but minuscule compared to some.

This is a free country (we are told)…so here I go:

When things weren’t going well there was an exercise we did at the college where I taught. It was a reframing operation—we took the threats and morphed them into opportunities.

For example, because of climate change, one might not be able to grow figs any more. Some would be “down” calling the glass half empty, and lament about the “good old days.” Others would see this as an opportunity for change. They could grow something else, move to a different climate, stop growing altogether or go back to school and learn to acquire a new vocation.

This is what we call “fresh air.” Complaining just gets us deeper in quick sand. Opportuning (just made up that word) does the opposite. The glass is now half full.

Here’s another example: my car won’t start so I can’t drive to the grocery store. Opportuning, I realize I can walk to the store and on the way, say hi to the neighbors who are out on their sidewalk. Different framing.

I think sometimes about people I’ve known who have taken their lives. Their lives had challenges to be sure, but by no means (as seen from the outside) as dire as many others. Some will say that they were clinically depressed. I suspect they were right in some cases. But I wonder what might have been different if they had learned the art of opportuning.

In my search for what should be included in our education, opportuning certainly should be included. It takes us from being victims to being survivors.

No, you aren’t an orphan!

Silas, my friend in Kenya, wrote that he's now an orphan. I've written him a couple of times telling him that he is not.

I think, probably incorrectly, of an orphan as one who is alone in the world, without the memories of parents. This is probably wrong according the dictionary definition. But what did Webster know?

I had imagined that when my parents died that I’d be an orphan. I would finally be free of their bonds. They would stop telling me what to do. No such luck. Their voices are even stronger because I can not say no. Or at least they pretend not to hear me. In fact, I read that Baby Boomers can't grow up until their parents die. “Do parents really die?” this Baby Boomer asks.

Why are their voices so strong? First, there is the issue that you don’t want to “kick someone when they are down.” And then there is the power of someone who doesn’t defend themselves. My father tells me to do this or that. I can’t argue with him, because, in my mind, he keeps repeating his plea.
In John 14:18 we read “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.” Essentially this says that there are no orphans. As a friend in college once said to me, “No matter what, God will always love you.” You aren’t alone. You not only have the memories of your parents, but you have reminders of their love in other humans, animals, plants, and even in inorganic matter.

Superman was shot from a distant planet as a baby. He was an orphan, perhaps? But when? Was it when the rocket took off? Was it when the rocket left the atmosphere of Krypton? Was it when the rocket landed on Earth? Or was it when Krypton disintegrated, moments after lift off? He was an orphan, perhaps, until he found the icicle that contained his history. Then he was no longer alone.

I’m finding, in reading the Torah, much about my parents and how they thought. But even more so, about their parents and their parents, ad infinitum. Roots was an effort to find out who you really were. We learned the words “nature vs. nurture” in school. What we might not have learned was that “nurture” wasn’t just the people who played a role in our upbringing, but those who played a role in their upbringing…back to the beginning (if there was such a thing).

Silas has a rich legacy. Though his parents aren’t with him as they once were, they are still every bit a part of him.

P.S. As is often the case, my wife tells me at dinner how I'm all wet with my thinking. In this case, she told me that the idea of orphans is just for children. Adults don't become orphans when their parents die. Wikipedia says the same, that “...orphans are children whose parents have died.” Sometimes kids are counted as orphans now if one of their parents have died.

Cheerleader for Hire?

Last night I completed my Torah Drawing (http://kenshinsbarmitzvah.blogspot.com/2014/10/parshat-bamidbar-4th-portion-numbers-31.html) and I showed it to my wife of 45 years.

I thought it was a good one. She said, “Looks like all your other drawings.”

“Oh crap,” I thought to myself. “I wanted a cheerleader and I got a wife.”

So this morning I told her that I couldn’t sleep because she didn’t like my drawing. “No,” she said, “It wasn’t that I didn’t like it, but only that it was like your others.”

As I heated up my second cup of coffee (I get 16 oz a day so I don’t OD), I was laughing about something I read Monday night: that in ancient Japan, people would buy fake enlightenment certificates. Maybe I should Google “fake certificate that this is the best drawing of your life.”

Or, “Cheerleader for Hire.”

I just wrote to my son-in-law that I took off my complaint bracelet last night and now am writing this complaint about my wife. Given enough time, we’ll complain about everything.

When people start meditating, they worry that they aren’t doing it right. And, of course, that worry becomes a great object for meditation. It is an opportunity how we take a perfectly peaceful and non-harmful act, and convert it into a painful experience.

When we say something, we don’t worry whether it is the best thing we ever said. We know that sometimes we’ll hit the mark, and sometimes we don’t.

Is our goal really just to hit the mark? And would we quit if we really did hit the mark? Did Duchamp quit art and only play chess because he had no more to say as an artist? (Actually I think it was recently discovered that he did continue, but stopped showing.)

Art students complain when they graduate that they have no audience for their art. I feel blessed to be living in an age when I have so many outlets. And I get a sense sometimes that I’m touching someone. What more could someone ask for?

In the meantime, I feel like I’m a greyhound running after a hare that is just a few inches from my nose. That is the game. Catching the hare would be a grave disappointment. It probably is the same hare that’s been used all season and is full of maggots.

Envisioning a Complaint Free World

Dirt on a Stairway

Will Bowen has been envisioning a “Complaint Free World.” I’ve been wearing his bracelet for a few years now, and have never stopped complaining. But I see the point. Rather that bitching that the world is not how you’d like it to be, it is a matter of smelling the roses. Enjoy the world for how it is.

I buy a new toaster and it breaks in less than a year. I return it, only to be told by the manager at K-Mart, “You don’t expect a toaster to last more than a year, do you?” I asked to speak to his superior and quickly get a new toaster.

“One should speak only pleasant words, words which are acceptable (to others). What one speaks without bringing evils to others is pleasant.”—Buddha, That 21

“Abandoning divisive speech he abstains from divisive speech. What he has heard here he does not tell there to break those people apart from these people here. What he has heard there he does not tell here to break these people apart from those people there. Thus reconciling those who have broken apart or cementing those who are united, he loves concord, delights in concord, enjoys concord, speaks things that create concord.” —Buddha, An 10.176

A Buddhist temple may throw you out if you speak against the temple. So what do you do when you disagree? Or when you see injustice?

In Japan, you don’t express your views until you know what the others believe. And you always vote as your parents vote. In Burma, the kids bow every day to their teachers, to their parents, and to monks.

We face an interesting dilemma when we see an injustice and we feel compelled to make waves. As a nation, we are complainers. We didn’t like the rules in England, so we came to America. And when the rules followed, we had a tea party. More complaining.

That’s who we are. When we see rules that hurt people, we want to complain. When we buy a lemon, we want to complain.

Yet Bodhidharma said that suffering injustice is one of the four important Buddhist practices. Are we between a rock and a hard place?

Look at all the freedom that has been created through complaining. Especially now, with the advent of the Internet. Look at the power of bad reviews on Amazon.

We have the expression “go with the flow” and we relish the idea of flow in positive psychology ”flow is characterized by complete absorption in what one does.” This sounds like mindfulness. Is this the antithesis to complaining?

Or is complaining actually part of the flow? This article, The Mind is like a Hammer, beautifully describes how in Zen, the point is not to change the mind, but rather to discover who is holding the hammer…who is complaining. When injustices appear to be about us, we reinforce a false dualism of ourself and the other. When we look at the problem from everywhere, we aren’t saying anymore, “I was wronged” but rather ”We were wronged” where there is no distinction between us and them, where “we” is the whole. Love has now replaced hate and anger. Change as growth can now occur.

Is inheriting good or bad karma similar to the idea of original sin?

Painting by Donna Birdwell

I'm not a believer in either original sin or karma...I don't think. But I'll give this a try. Like a bad scientist who decides what he'd like to prove before he does the experiment, I will look at this.

But first there is a difference in how Buddhists and Judeo-Christians see birth. I'm looking at a painting by Donna Birdwell that shows a woman floating in the water in an almost embryonic position. There is a path of petals on the surface of the water, and more petals rising from the woman as she breathes.

Dark petals are coming from her feet and hands. These petals tell me where she came from, while the light petals show where she is going.

The distinction of how birth is seen in Buddhism and Judeo-Christian belief is critical here.

In Buddhism there is no birth and death, nor any beginning or end. Our lives, though they appear to many as linear, are more like a circle or a spiral where “what goes around comes around. Though with each “rebirth” we get a fresh start, we inherit much. Call this karma if you want.

I read some years ago that someone taught planarian to avoid light (see: http://community.dur.ac.uk/robert.kentridge/bpp2mem1.html) and then ground up the planarian and fed it to little ones and then the fed planarian could learn faster to respond to the light. So it is with karma. Like height needed for basketballs or big brains needed in physics, we inherit karma. It is with what we start. If we were bad in the past we'd have a lot of stale stick stuff in us and we'd have to work hard to clean it up.

Original sin seems to differ from karma. Because Eve disobeyed God and ate the fruit humans will forever have to pay. In the original sin scenario, no matter what is done in this life, the next time around you are born as a sinner. (Note: I don’t accept this view of Genesis.)

In the karma model, you could start as one in previous lives had done much harm. This is different existentially from one who is a sinner. In the Judeo-Christian baby, the kid is off on the wrong track from the get go, while the Buddhist Babe is born with Buddha nature, and yet may need to work through a karmic legacy to retrieve that innocence.

The baby in the painting floats in the water. There is a circle formed with her arm and head. She will wake up and see what challenges arise for her. She is naked with only the inheritance of who she really is—her Buddha nature. Her karmic legacy is what she carried from her previous life. It is not who she is, but rather that the opportunities and challenges she will meet.