Peter Clothier's Blog, page 9

OBAMA

President Barak Obama's speech last night was a full-throated, deeply emotional, intellectually inarguable and richly deserved indictment of the Tr*mp presidency. As usual, he gave expression to the troubled social conscience of America's better angels. I never thought to beat witness to such incompetence and corruption in the American White House. A sad "Bravo!" from me.

SECOND NIGHT...

I strolled around the news media on my computer this morning, checking out the response to last night's Democratic convention, and was struck by the pettiness of some of the carping from even Democratic-friendly sources. I suppose they have to find something to say; and that the requirement for "balanced" reporting demands criticism as well as commendation. But it does seem petty to offer such generally faint praise for what I myself saw to be an imaginative and excellently-produced alternative to the usual rowdy celebration that is the political convention.

The roll-call of the states was a great improvement, with representatives speaking from the location of many different landscapes rather than the convention floor. And the speeches were greatly improved by the brevity and concision required by advance planning and the requirements of production. I found Dr. Jill Biden's speech to be gratifyingly human in its evocation of the family she and her husband overcame a double tragedy to create. It speaks well of them both as caring human beings, respectful of the needs and dignity of others.

I wonder what the Republicans can come up with to match the quality of individual and social care and responsibility that pervades this Democratic event. Who will stand up and credibly affirm the decency and compassion of the man they incomprehensibly seek to re-elect? What great achievements can they claim, from the Tr*mp years to date? A huge tax cut that benefits the wealthiest among us? The elevation to the Supreme Court of a man of at best dubious qualifications and character? The ejection or imprisonment of immigrants and their children? The (partial) erection of a ridiculous border wall? Endless (thankfully failed) attempts to deprive millions of their fellow Americans of health care? An impeached president, and a mockery of Senate trial that failed to remove him from office in time to prevent the disaster of his incompetence and neglect in face of the coronavirus pandemic? An America weakened in its position toward those hostile to its interests and distrusted by its friends? A nation riven by ancient, recently exposed hatreds and political divide? 

There will be those on the left who disagree with me when I suggest that Democrats have found acceptable common ground, a platform more progressive than any in recent memory--perhaps in the history of the country. There are those for whom nothing falling short of their ideals can possibly suffice. They fail, in my view, to take into account the need to persuade a vast majority of American voters of the wisdom and viability of the path that they propose. There will be those on the left who will surely take me to task for my approval of the Democratic party, its platform, and its presidential and vice-presidential candidates. My main concern--I'm tempted to say my exclusive concern--is victory in November, and a rededication to the true human values for which this country has stood, and must stand again.

THE COMING STRUGGLE

I watched the first night of the national Democratic convention last night, and was much impressed both with the quality of the speakers and the unity of their message--the urgent necessity to bring about a massive, radical change in this November's election. The vaunted democracy of this already grievously wounded country is unlikely to survive another four years of Tr*mp and Tr*mpism. Every institution that undergirds our national stability has been under attack for now nearly four years. Many of our once respected institutions have succumbed. The Justice Department itself has been co-opted, rendering us seemingly powerless to protect ourselves from further, continuing attacks. Most recently, of course, the attack is on the postal service and the electoral process itself.

Born in England before the Second World War, I was attracted to the United States by what I believed to be its democracy with a small "d"--its rejection of the tired old oppressive structures of class and privilege in favor of a still-expanding embrace of universal rights. I was not naive enough to believe, even then, that the dream of freedom and equality for all had been achieved; far from it. But I did believe it to be a goal that most Americans agreed was of nationally defining importance to pursue. 

I have watched the erosion of that promise with increasing dismay in the course of the past half century, and yet I still find it hard to believe what I have been witnessing with my own eyes in the past three and a half years. Tr*mpism has been on its way for longer than most of us are ready to admit, but it is nothing less than astounding to see how quickly our accepted norms and institutions have crumbled under this president's transparently corrupt, malignant exercise of power. Concerned only with its own political advantage, the long-ascendant conservatism of the far right-wing has willingly stepped aside and acquiesced to the autocratic impulses of a leader who has effortlessly harnessed the power of outright falsehood and deception.

Former Vice President Biden and his Democratic supporters offer the alternative of decency, reason, and compassion. Their guiding light, if their rhetoric is to be believed, is the values that informed the origins of this democracy: the rights of individuals (the "pluribus") tempered by a sense of enlightened responsibility for the whole (the "unum")--including, importantly, those of one's fellow citizens. All of them, no matter color, creed, and so on... We have now reached a pitch where we must expect the next few months to be a period of painful, distressing, sometimes angry struggle. The outcome will show which vision of America will prevail.

NOT FOR ME?

I've heard it many times from friends when I mention that I have a meditation practice. It sounds good, but it's not for me. Heck, it's what I told myself for a couple of decades,at least, since other friends tried to encourage my interest as early as the 1970s. So I have no difficulty sympathizing with the sentiment.

For myself, I had no end of excellent reasons--reasons I know I share with many of those who express both tentative interest and reticence. Family was a great one: there were always people around me at home, and I needed to pay attention to their needs as well as my own. There was too much noise, too many distractions. Time was another alibi. There were always too many things to do. I had to get to work. I was busy all day, and came home tired in the evening...

But the most persuasive and persistent of all reasons was my head. I had learned from years of first-class education that this was the place for a serious person to be. My brain was always preoccupied with important thoughts, problems, memories, reminders. Each one of them called for my urgent attention; I'd never be able to slow this endless stream down enough to, um... meditate. Which meant an empty head. And silence. And a block of available time. Right?

I began to find it otherwise when I eventually sat down, at first for just a few minutes at a time. And I slowly came to understand that the purpose of meditation was not to switch off the brain but rather to train it to do what I wanted it to do rather than allow it to operate on autopilot and follow its own devices. There was work involved. There was a skill to be developed and honed. The point was not to shut the mind's activity down but to improve its ability to focus and concentrate; to make it function better.

So then of course I realized that meditation was, after all, for me. I have a resistance to saying it's for everyone, which feels/sounds too much like evangelizing for a religion. But once I work my way past that reservation I do, in fact, believe that the world would be a better place if meditation were a skill taught to and shared by far greater numbers of our species. Quite apart from--and in addition to--the benefits of a well-trained mind, it opens the door to the kind of breadth of vision, tolerance and serenity we could use more of in our endless quest for peace.

WOUNDED HEART

 I'm working on a meditation around the wounded heart.

We all have one. No exceptions. Most of us have sustained a good deal more than wound, over the years. Some wounds to the heart are old and deep, some new and relatively trivial--a casual comment overheard, perhaps, or a momentary glance. The old ones are often toughened up with scar tissue and are buried deep in the unconscious mind; others still feel fresh after many years. The new wounds can feel especially raw and painful

The purpose of the meditation is simply to become aware of the wounded heart. It's not necessary to identify the wounds, though one or more might arise in the form of an insight or a memory released from some hidden place in the mind. If that happens, best not to dwell on it, but rather take a quick mental note and let it slip away. Better to mull it over later, not to allow it to become a distraction.

So the meditation is not about uncovering and contemplating specific wounds, whether old or new. Instead, it's more about observing the wounded heart itself, with compassionate awareness. It's more about using the breath to bring comfort and solace, understanding, and forgiveness where it's needed; more about massage than surgery, more about recognition and acceptance than removal. It may involve a patient acceptance of wounds that are so deep and have persisted so long that they are no longer susceptible to healing, and are better merely observed with a compassionate eye. 

I have been trying to refine this meditation in my morning practice. It may take some time before I'm clear about it. No matter. I have the time...

A BRAG

Well, it's not mine, really, to brag about, its my grandchildren who should be doing the bragging. But I'm happy to shine in their reflected glory. I've known for a while that my older granddaughter, Alice, graduated this year from the University of Nottingham with a degree in Philosophy. So proud of her!  With so many looking for utilitarian degrees, these days, I'm happy and proud that she chose a field that simply broadens the mind. It will stand her in good stead throughout her life--particularly, perhaps, in her later years. I have been known to wax a but philosophical myself...

Then, just this morning, more good news. I have eighteen-year-old grand-twins, Georgia and Joseph. They were offered places at universities earlier this year, conditional on getting the required grades at the end of their secondary school year. Then, as we all know, the coronavirus arrived to throw everything off course, including the school-leaving exams that would have qualified them to accept their places. So they have been sitting, these past, um, four? five months? awaiting some kind of clarity about their further education. Not a pleasant place to be, on the cusp of that big move from school to university.

Today we heard this news, based I think on teacher assessment of what their exam results would have been, had they been able to take them. (I think I have that right...) Anyway, Joseph has earned his place at the University of Kent, where he'll be studying Ancient History. Wow! And Georgia, bless her, has been offered a real and undisputed place at my old Cambridge College, Gonville & Caius! 

The heart swells! I was there in the 1950s. My father was at the same college in the 1920s. My uncle was a don there, a professor of, wait for it... Syriac and Aramaic! I'm sure that my admission was in part thanks to family tradition. That was a factor in the 1950s. But now, in these enlightened days, that does NOT get mentioned, even in a whisper. It's considered, even, a negative factor. So Georgia did this entirely on her own merits--NO thanks to Grandpa or great-Grandpa. 

Caius, by the way, was the college featured (not entirely favorably! anti-Semitism was rife there in the bad old days) in that great movie, "Chariots of Fire." Georgia plans to read--an Oxbridge colloquialism: we don't say "study", we "read"--Linguistics.

So there's my brag. Thanks for bearing with me. Today is a good day to have a full heart, and I'm happy to share it with you.

COMMENTS

 One of the results of my neglect of The Buddha Diaries has been that comments have been difficult, if not impossible to post. If my fumbling efforts to familiarize myself with all the recent (and some not so recent) changes on Blogger are successful, then it should be possible to post a comment now. And I would certainly welcome any and all response to my posts. Please let me know if you have problems, and I'll try to get back to the arcane inner workings of this system and find a fix. Best to all!

A NEW RESOLVE

It has been a while since I did very much of anything in the blogosphere, aside from posting my own thoughts on The Buddha Diaries once in a while. Was a time when I posted almost daily and enjoyed exchanges with a network of fellow bloggers, but I have allowed much of that to lapse in these past three, now going on four difficult years. Just lately, I have been posting here no more than a couple of times a week... if that.

I have a history in the territory. I stumbled into the blogosphere, all ignorance, the day after the re-election of George W. Bush in 2004. Following up on America's disastrous invasion of Iraq in 2003, his success stunned me. It was clear already that the war had not only been a terrible mistake, it was a mistake we had committed based on what were by that time widely discredited lies. Those "weapons of mass destruction" had only ever existed in the minds of the warmongers (Cheney, Rumsfeld...) in the Bush administration. Their motivation was not to preserve the security of America and the world, but to secure the nation's oil supply. 

Thanks largely to more recent events, Bush the younger has morphed magically into a benign patriarch, painting surprisingly creditable pictures quietly on his Texas ranch. Back then, at the time of his re-election, he seemed to many of us to be evil personified. Appalled by his re-election, I started to ask myself: what can I do? I have to do something, but what can I possibly do? 

The only thing I do know how to do is write, and I was wandering around somewhat aimlessly on the Internet on my computer with all this in mind when something--I no longer remember what it was--sucked me down the digital rabbit hole and, fortuitously, onto something called a "blog." There was even a button right there in front of me inviting me to start one and informing me, alluringly, of the first step: to find a title. With scarcely a second thought, I typed in: The Bush Diaries.

That's how it started. The Bush Diaries soon turned into a near-daily, slightly irreverent letter to our then president. I called him, impertinently, "Bush." No "Mr.", no "President", and certainly no "Mr. President." Just Bush. I had a lot of fun writing those entries, over 800 of them between 2004 and 2009. By 2009, though, I had had enough and, thankfully we had a new president. I was tired, I wrote, of waking up with Bush in bed with me each morning. The last entry, The Last Chapter, was written on January 16, 2009, a few days before the inauguration of Barak Obama. 

The Buddha Diaries was the successor to The Bush Diaries. Checking out the archive, I note that the first entry was A Commitment, dating from January 29, 2007, two years before I finally abandoned The Bush Diaries, so I must obviously have been working on the two of them simultaneously for a while. If my stats have it right, this current post will be the 2,717th entry in the blog to which I have devoted much of my writing time in the past decade. Importantly, too, with The Buddha Diaries, I began to develop online friendships and associations, and to be active in a network of like-minded bloggers.

Years passed. Obama was re-elected in 2012. The 2016 presidential election brought us Donald J. Trump... As one who had found the politics of George W. to be objectionable, I was incredulous. Reason led me to believe--correctly, as it turned out--that what lay ahead was a hundred times worse. Yet I recoiled with utter distaste from the notion of a "Trump Diaries." And I had The Buddha Diaries for my (now less frequent) posts.

Still, brought up with a nagging social conscience, I have always felt it important to make my voice heard in political as well as other matters (contemporary ethics and religion, books and movies, art...) and many of my early entries were, as I remember, devoted to social and political matters. Once I became aware of the social media though, and particularly of Facebook, I began to place those observations where they were likely to reach a larger audience; and once Tr*mp came along, it seemed to me all the more important to devote my writing energies in that direction. 

Meanwhile, my entries in The Buddha Diaries became less frequent, and I'm thinking now is a good time, if any, to return to a saner and healthier world than Facebook. It will take some work to renew old contacts and make new ones, but that is my intention. Please let me know if you'd like to exchange blog links, and how to contact you. And I'll keep hunting and pecking around...

See you in the blogosphere!

FUNK

 I woke this Monday morning in a horrible blue funk, dreaming of fire lines approaching a city with a mayor who could or would do nothing, and images of a patio covered with fresh dog shit that no one had picked up. Sound familiar? The profound depression in my mind was matched by a body in pain everywhere, mostly (age-related!) aches in every joint, and muscles that felt depleted of all physical strength. 

Not a good way to wake up!

Meditation was a challenge, with words darting everywhere in my head--words trying to describe what it was I was feeling as I sat. Well, "writing." It's my mind's way of dealing with what's troubling it. Namely...

... a country in chaos, with one political party mindlessly obstructing every effort of the other to reach out and help the millions of Americans who are out of work, hungry and, too many of them, sick and dying; with a leader coming in from the golf course to issue senseless and unhelpful executive orders in an attempt to project the impression of powerful action; a leader who so badly needs adulation that he calls in dozens of his hundreds-of-dollar annual fee golf club members to applaud him loudly at a "press conference..."

... a country riven by discord, mutual hatred and mistrust, one-third of them fed on a day-by-day, hour-by-hour diet of misinformation and outright lies, and driven by a hateful fear of the invented specter of "liberals" and "socialism..."

... and a personal sense of dislocation and disorientation: what am I even doing here, in this, my adopted country, that now feels so alien? Where do I belong...? 

I breathe in, I breathe out. That's one saving grace. The other is more mundane: it is that I have enough "English" left in me to get up from my chair and head off to the kitchen to brew up the solace of a morning cup of tea.

WHAT IT IS

 "It is what it is." Spoken with a shrug of powerlessness. It is appalling that an American president could exhibit such callousness and claim such powerlessness in the face of the death of now more than 160,000 of the people he was elected to serve. One of his other go-to pronouncements, also uttered with a shrug, is this: "We'll see." 

The office of the President of the United States is often cited as the most powerful in the world. The current occupant of the office has a distorted understanding of his power. He uses it as a bully does, to offend others and torture those less powerful than himself. He uses it to surround himself with sycophants prepared to enact his slightest whim. He uses it to puff himself up, to boast and glorify his own ego.

But when it comes to the significant use of power to act in the interest of his fellow-Americans, he shrugs as though he were powerless. He seems incapable of action. Even when he decides to dismiss a person who has earned his displeasure, he typically leaves it to others to sort out the problem for him. He appears to have no policy, but allows himself to be used by corporate heads, lobbyists, and Republican Senators to enact their will. He submits to strong men throughout the world, and his country submits with him. Believing himself to be stronger than them, he treats even powerful women with contempt.

This man has consistently claimed powerlessness when confronted with the relentless pandemic that afflicts us all. Where other leaders throughout the world have shown that it not an invincible enemy, he has simply capitulated and allowed--even contributed to its spread. He is a man entrusted with a vast amount of power that he has no idea how to use, an idle, supine Colossus, a Gulliver disempowered by Lilliputians, the last man this country needs as it faces one of the direst crises in its history.