Hillary's Speaking Fees and the Talmud

People are objecting to Hillary's speaking fees because of the amount and the source. I think the amount is a product of supply and demand (there aren't many Hillarys). 

Here is a Talmudic reading about conflict of interest: http://forward.com/opinion/333919/would-talmudic-rabbis-approve-of-hillary-clintons-wall-street-money/

I think the application of the Talmud is wrong in her situation because it is impossible to worry about who is giving you money, esp. for speaking. If it did matter, political figures could not speak anywhere, and that would be worse than the potential conflict of interest. BTW, there is another suggestion in Judaism that you are never to withhold knowledge (or even not give a book away if someone wants it).

Milton Friedman had no objection to lobbying, saying that people would lobby from both sides. The alternative (outlawing lobbying) would be far worse. We know there will always be an imbalance, but is it the role of government to try to make it even (which is next to impossible)?

Every organization has agendas. We hope that the money for the speeches were not bribery. And then there is a moral question of whether Hillary is being dishonest to Wall Street by speaking to them without any intent to cow to their wishes... but letting them believe that she will. That would seem to be against the Buddhist precept of not taking what is not given (it is my intent to bring Buddhism and Judaism into every argument I try to make.)

...you are arriving.

You are not leaving
you are arriving. —David Whyte

What a twist! As I see the seconds of my life fly out my window, and as I realize that each breath I take is a gift, especially as I am getting over pneumonia, I am floored by that line. I’ve been feeling that I’m just a disappearing act—hoping that I leave something worthwhile behind. So where might I be arriving?

If the Israelites made a 40-year journey in the desert to the promised land, and if they didn’t even get there, were they arriving? And none of us will complete the work, so did we arrive?

Is this Pollyanna talking? I heard that an old man is 100% authentic. Is that arriving?

Is arriving coming into a wisdom? Is it finally understanding why life operates as she does? Or is it understanding that some things can’t be understood?

Arriving? Some say that we shouldn’t focus on the destination but rather on the journey. So what is this arriving business?

Ah ha. Whyte said you are arriving. Not you have arrived. So it is still a journey, but is it just a reframing? Is that it?

Arriving where? I reread my mom’s autopsy an hour ago. It told the weight of her body parts, and described a mysterious scar 27 centimeters long from a Cesarian section. None of me or my siblings were born that way. What don’t we know? Where had she arrived? She never wanted to be sick. So she went from health to death. She left a cool family behind, and a husband who would live and thrive for another five years. But where did she arrive? We saw her leaving, that’s for sure. Did she come home? Did she return from where she came.

Yesterday I was thinking about the Zen riddle—when the me that I imagine to be me actually came into my body. Was it at conception? Was it at birth? Where was it before it came around to me? Where had it been lurking? Did it arrive when we joined forces? And did my mom’s “me” jump ship right before she died. Now is her “me” waiting for a new host? We still have some of her ashes—or do we?

Arriving? Getting there? In Buddhism we talk about crossing the stream... and dispensing the raft that we don’t need anymore. Is that arriving? Some say you shouldn’t put your foot on the opposite shore until all beings are saved. So, in that case, you have not arrived. You are just arriving. I’ve never liked that word just… “Are you an artist,” she asked, “or are you just a photographer?”

So I like that word, arriving. I feel a breath of fresh air. I feel a new lease on life—a new view of an old journey.

The Gardener

We imagine that the “simple man” has it figured out. Or at least, doesn't need to figure it out. I don't think I've had that advantage of being a gardener. But I like the idea that one can just take care of their children, even if they are roses.

My wife's grandpa, Grandpa Burgin, was a simple man. He had been a tenant farmer and worked on the railroad. As he became older, he sat in an easy chair and chewed tobacco, spitting it into a repurposed coffee can. And he'd play solitaire, one game after another. His wife, Grandma Stella, would cook and clean. They lived in a little house in a little town. I don't know what they knew of the bigger world.

Once we moved a few hours away and we had them come to our house and visit. Grandpa Burgin would only come if he could work. He spent the day weeding. He worked at a steady pace from dawn to dusk, seemingly never coming up for air.

His son was pretty much the same. Whenever he came to our house, he'd fix something. We raised the stakes for him, though. First it was to add an addition to our house. And then it was to build a large studio, which ended up becoming a second house.

And my grandpa was much the same. When he came to my sister's wedding, he was very antsy. Finally we put him to work painting the outside of our house and he was happy.

The gardener is busy. She works hard. I don't know what she thinks about, but I do know that it takes a lot of focus to garden. My wife does quite a bit of gardening, and she's always focused on the job at hand. Sometimes when I ask her questions about what I'm thinking about, she wisely says, “Does it matter?”

Yesterday we read about Buddhist philosophical meditation, where one examines Buddhist concepts. I'm not quite sure if this varies from philosophical thinking. I do know that Zen people sit more to quiet the stream. The glorification of the simple gardener probably belongs more to Zen than to other branches of Buddhism.

Going back to grandpas and grandmas, if you work hard maybe you don't have time to think cosmic thoughts. The job at hand is so critical. The roses depend upon your attention.

The Present Moment

“Throw caution to the wind.” Is that what we are hearing when the Zen warrior remembers what his teacher told him: that his fears will go away when he just attends to the present moment?

Would you drive 100 miles an hour when you just attend to the present moment?

I think being in the present moment is the opposite of “throwing caution to the wind.” We’d be acutely aware of inherent dangers if we were awake. We’d see that driving so fast might endanger others. We’d hear the vibrations of our car and know that, in this moment, we were driving too fast.

Supposedly the frontal part of the brain that tells us about consequences doesn’t get developed until our late 20s. Does that mean that we are living in the moment until then, and as we get to be old fogies, we start looking at the future and past?

No. I think that might be a misinterpretation of “living in the moment.” It is not the reckless abandon of the “happy go lucky” teenager. We’d see the consequences of our actions. We’d do the right thing. We’d make good judgments.

We’d notice that the horse we were riding was ready to collapse. We see that the person with which we were interacting was bored stiff. We’d see it all. There would be enough caution implicit in our moment to moment observations that we wouldn’t kill the horse nor would we bore our friend to sleep.

But, you might say, the warrior who faces a dreadful tomorrow might have been ill-advised from his Zen master to be in the moment. Perhaps he could prepare to avoid his possible execution tomorrow. I think the answer is that fear is about the future. If there is a problem in the present, then that is what should be addressed. This moment is not always about fulfilling sensual needs. It is about appropriately responding to the needs of an infant, or oneself, or the field we are tilling or the plant we are watering.

Penis Envy No More

Fourteen century Japanese story: The monk said that his member was three feet long. The nun said that her vagina was infinite, the container of all, and from where all Buddhas were born.

I think about Freud’s penis envy. Certainly the nun ended it once and for all. There is no doubt that every situation is a teachable moment. Did she act as a bodhisattva (one who saves all beings rather than crossing the stream to Nirvana)?

When I’ve been reading about Buddhist tolerance I read that sometimes it is best to be intolerant as the nun was. Perpetuating the monk’s delusion that his worth could be measured by a ruler would not have been kind. If delusions cause suffering, his suffering would just continue.

We talked last week about why these Zen stories about women aren’t more known. Would Freud have changed his view upon learning of the inadequacy of a man’s member compared to a woman’s vagina?

My wife has taken on quite a different role lately. When I was ill she did things that I always do, like run errands for me. Now she is with our kids, guiding them in their mourning of their grandma. It has been liberating for me to see how I don’t need to be the one “doing things.” Sometimes when we can’t function well we see how others are so able to do so. Both my wife and the nun reframed my views.

How Much Profit Is Too Much?

Today at lunch with two friends I heard the comment that insurance companies want too great of a profit. The other person nodded her head in agreement, adding that no one needs to earn 25 million dollars.

Actually there is a law limiting such profits: http://thehealthcareblog.com/blog/2012/02/04/does-obamacare-limit-profits-for-health-insurance-companies-in-your-state/

And, actually, I’m suspicious that this law actually benefits the consumer.

Suppose one wants to go into the insurance business. Would they be more apt to choose a business where the profits were unlimited, or limited?

Competition drives down prices. Companies are drawn to sectors where they can have higher profits. But to get those profits, they need to be efficient and good.

One of my friends said that her insurance company wouldn’t let her go to MD Anderson, where her specialist worked. If this were a profitable industry, another company would hear of this disservice and jump into the field.

Do we care more about the profits, or do we care about the service and the price?

Subsidizing Self-Driving Cars and Sinking Stocks

Supposedly self-driving cars will save lives, save the environment, and save time. Someday we’ll call for a cab… and actually get a cab and no driver to take us where we want to go. It is a brave new world.

Let’s assume that it is all good. I have no way of knowing that, nor do I trust the worthiness of predictions. But that’s another point.

The question is whether the government should be spending 4 billion on this endeavor. Actually, calling a spade a spade, should they be taking $12.40 cents from every man, woman, and child in the US and giving it to the car manufactures to invest in a hot technology with a lucrative potential?

Does the fact that this car will benefit mankind mean that the government should subsidize it? What else should they subsidize? Is there not already sufficient momentum that these cars will be built without the subsidy? What effect will this have on the current cars? Won’t they become more expensive to produce and to buy because they aren’t being subsidized… and many people will therefore choose the driverless cars that maybe be artificially cheaper?

On another front, a friend wrote that she had lost a lot of money in the market slump. Another friend (probably more than one) decided to pull their money out of the market during one slump or another. I tried to explain that you don’t lose money, per se, until you sell a stock at a lower value that what you paid for it. Companies and countries have growing pains. They don’t always do well. That’s a given. Sometimes you should take a loss. But often, you can just repeat the mantra, “the market goes up and down.”

Here is a graph of the Dow for the last 115 years. It goes up and down… but over time goes up. Another mantra, “It is going down so it can go up again.”

Unfortunately, sometimes this up and down might be inconvenient. One might need it to be up on a day that it is down. There comes the Zen teaching that most, if not all, of our suffering comes from the fact that life is different that how we'd like it to be. The givens are: your computer will crash and you’ll lose your data (especially if you don’t back-up), you’ll die, sometimes your friends will unfriend you, etc. etc. Love it or hate it. That is the way things work.