Fourteen Precepts in Fourteen Days: Day Three Third: Do not force others, including children, by any means whatsoever, to adopt your views, whether by authority, threat, money, propaganda, or even education. However, through compassionate dialogue, help others renounce fanaticism and narrowness. Being Peace, by Thich Nhat Hanh I suppose waging war against others in order to force them to adopt our views might fit under this heading, wouldn’t it? I don’t really know what to say here, it seems so obvious to me that forcing one’s beliefs on others is wrong, and goes against our core values as Americans as…
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Fourteen Precepts in Fourteen Days: Day Two Second: Do not think that the knowledge you presently possess is changeless, absolute truth. Avoid being narrow-minded and bound to present views. Learn and practice non-attachment from views in order to be open to recieve other’s viewpoints. Truth is found in life and not merely in conceptual knowledge. Be ready to learn throughout your entire life and to observe reality in yourself and the world at all times. Being Peace, by Thich Nhat Hanh Since I’m not actually a Buddhist, although I’ve read pretty widely in the tradition, and have started sporadically sitting…
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Gardening update It was a fruitful weekend here in the garden. I’m building a somewhat elaborate traditional kitchen garden with raised beds, and this weekend I got it all marked out with stakes and chalk line, and then today I dug six of the eight beds. The other two, which I suspect will be heavy with crabgrass roots, as well as with roots from the large virginia creeper I cut down, will have to wait until I can fit them in this week, because my back made it abundantly clear that it had had enough for the day (I hate…
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Fourteen Precepts in Fourteen Days Yesterday, while rereading Being Peace, I came across the fourteen precepts of Thich Nhat Hanh’s InterBeing order of Buddhists, and I thought that since it’s still Lent, and since we are at war, perhaps it might be a useful exercise to take a look at one of them each day. If nothing else, it’ll afford me the chance to keep working toward my goal of starting with peace in my own heart. Which I am finding difficult at the moment. First: Do not be idolatrous about or bound to any doctrine, theory, or ideology, even…
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Being Peace In the peace movement there is a lot of anger, frustration, and misunderstanding. The peace movement can write very good protest letters, but they are not yet able to write a love letter. We need to learn to write a letter to the Congress or to the President of the United States that they will want to read, and not just throw away. The way you speak, the kind of understanding, the kind of language you use should not turn people off. The President is a person like any of us. Can the peace movement talk in loving…
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Of course I support the troops. Please folks. Of course I support the troops. My meditation on violence and killing aside, these are people who volunteered to do a dirty job, and who are out there in unimaginable conditions. May they all be safe. May they behave with honor. May they be a beacon of hope to those ordinaray Iraquis they encounter. I have enormous faith in ordinary Americans. It’s our regime I distrust. It’s the civilian command I distrust. All that aside, today is a day for gardening. I have raised beds to dig out and build. I have…
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… what Steinbeck is arguing in his writing is that we have to be responsible for what he terms the whole thing, known and unknowable, in a very deep way: that if you step into a tide pool, you have to realize that that step has changed the entire universe, and that will fit neatly into what Silko’s arguing in Ceremony, the whole sense of having to be careful, to walk in balance, to be responsible for knowing that every single act of humanity changes the world. Steinbeck was arguing that sixty years ago, before anybody in white America really…
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Turn off the TV! Warning — Rant ahead. Here’s the LivingSmall call to action — turn off your TVs. Don’t give them the ratings push they think they’re going to get. Don’t buy into the propaganda, the hysteria, the doublespeak of it all. There they were last night, all those “anchors” and reporters and just look at them! The excitement in their eyes. The thrill of it all. It’s started! It’s finally started and they get to go off and play with their new toys, get to watch things explode, get to stand on the deck of the aircraft carrier…
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My arborist agrees. My local arborist came by to give me a quote on taking out an overgrown juniper that is way too close to the foundation (and shades the porch too much), and we got talking about the war. He said he’s really frustrated because he feels like there’s nothing he can do now but pray. And pruning helps, he said. Doesn’t change anything but a body sure does feel better after a couple of hours of pruning. He said I did a pretty good job on the apple trees, too.
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What is there to say? Be prepared for the focus here to get smaller, small to the count of my fifty-by-one-forty foot lot. I am going into nearly full news blackout mode, because I just can’t even begin to formulate a way to deal with this madman president and his end-time cronies who actually seem to want a war. I really thought we’d avoid this — perhaps it’s my tendency toward optimism, but somehow I though that millions of people marching in the streets all across the globe might make some impact on this president. But I’m now convinced that…