Monthly Archives: July 2009
13 months
You can be a citizen. But you still have to prove it. Otherwise, you might be detained. Oh well.
By the way, I have a new policy for dealing with international adoptive parents who want to argue that their children don’t need proof of citizenship. Because you all are pissing me off.
Obamamania
Perhaps to become a regular feature.
Because there was something the press wasn’t telling: Cops suspended for Obama background check
‘I am not a racist!’: The term ‘banana-eating jungle monkey’ isn’t racist!
Birther wants her country back! (link to youtube video) (Note: We got our country back!)
Only 42 percent of Republicans believe Obama was born in the U.S.
Welcome to America
So you’re granted political asylum and come to the United States. You’ve suffered traumatic brain injury. And then you go missing and your sister calls the police. Friends and a refugee organization plaster the area with posters with your picture on it.
Meanwhile, you’re being held in jail. But people don’t make the connection between the missing person and the arrestee, since you’re booked under the name “Jackie Chan,” described as an “Oriental.”
Welcome to America.
This isn’t the first time I’ve heard of a “renaming” in this manner. And I’m sure it won’t be the last. Typically, many organizations use “John Doe” or “Jane Doe” when an unidentified person is involved. Separate post about that to follow.
New neighbors!
I have new neighbors. You can probably guess what I’m going to say.
Yeah, six in a row baby!
Across the street, both the end house and the house directly across from me are inhabited by my people. I suspected the house across from me when I saw the grand piano.
You know what’s really screwed up? I realize now how many of my neighbors greet me, smile at me, stop to talk, introduce themselves, etc. Where I lived before I had gotten used to most folks not saying jack.
Told ya
I posted this previously, but nobody seemed to believe I had the inside scoop:
(About the movie Orphan): She’s not really a sweet little girl adopted by a loving couple. She’s a murderous, psychopathic midget. Now you know. And you don’t have to see the movie in order to find out her secret.
From Outlandish Remarks:
As it happens, Esther is not really an orphaned child. She’s a thirty-something psycho-killer with proportional dwarfism which allows her to pose as a perpetual 9-year-old adoptee who tries to seduce her adoptive fathers, and when they refuse her, brutally kills them and burns down the house with the rest of the family in it. She’s done this like, twenty times, and apparently no one has noticed a pattern. Listen, I watch this stuff so you don’t have to.
Nothing I like better than a good I told ya so. Thanks to OR for watching so I didn’t have to.
On race and Buddhism
So how does it feel to come to Zen practice as a person of color? And they will come; they do come. My friend Sala Steinbach says an African-American woman at SFZC says, “If it is about liberation, people of color will be interested.” They are. The Dalai Lama draws stadiums full of people in Mexico. In South America there are Zen and Tibetan teachers with very strong lay sanghas. So I ask my Asian, and Latino, and African-American friends about how it feels to come here, to San Francisco Zen Center or Spirit Rock. And I ask myself what feelings come up. Dogen suggests we take a step back to turn one’s light inward and illuminate oneself. What I see there in myself is then reflected back into the world.
The answer to how it feels to anyone largely depends on two further inter-related questions. First, does one feel safe and seen in the community? Are the conditions of your life acknowedged, welcomed, explored in the sangha? I suspect that this is sometimes yes, sometimes no. Thoughtless words can turn people from the temple and from the practice. I have seen this happen here and elsewhere. An offhand comment is made about the white, middle class makeup of the community with people of color sitting right there. Again, through the unintended eye of white supremacy (hard words, I know) people are made to feel invisible and uncounted. Maybe I should say something about white supremacy. It is a building block of racism, part of my blindness to my own privilege as a white man. It is at once personal and systematic. If one wants to see it, the practice of individual mindfulness, of turning our light inward needs to be blended dialogue with friends and sangha members who don’t carry this very particular privilege.
The same kinds of painful things happen if you are homosexual, or if because of injury or fact of birth you can’t get up the steps of the temple. These blindnesses hurt and turn people away. That’s what it might feel like from one side.
On the other side, the Buddha’s understanding is “all beings have the wisdom and virtues of the enlightened ones, but because of misunderstandings and attachments they do not realize it.” This understanding is so precious that we are obligated to share it. I don’t mean proselytizing, but keep in mind, the Buddha never stopped preaching Dharma. But now we have centers and institutions. To make zazen and Dharma available, we need to tell people they are welcome and invite them to practice with us. Already we are taking practice to jails and hospitals, to people who might not be able to come to us.
The next obvious step is to find ways to open our doors to those who can come to us. I hear that some San Francisco churches have created a kind of covenant of “open congregation.” This means that in their literature and at their services, classes, and events they make it known that they welcome people of color, gays and lesbians, and so on. Being pro-active rather than passive on questions of diversity and inclusion.
This is necessary because in America, passivity means white supremacy. It’s subtle and pervasive, conditioned by and conditioning our magazines, movies, tv, our clothing, all the things we buy. It is a virus infecting my mind as a person with so-called privilieges, and the mind of someone who might not have such privileges. Last week I was invited to talk about Buddhism and race to a diverse group of teenagers doing an interfaith social action internship in San Francisco. Now maybe I did a good job talking to them, but I was the first Buddhist choice that came to mind for the organizers. There is some irony in that. Buddhism in America gets defined as and by people like me. I have to watch myself carefully not to buy into this.
Go here.
Digital camera
I need one. I want it to have little shutter lag. Any suggestions?
PS: My current camera is 8 years old. The motor is going bad.
