Fourteen Precepts in Fourteen Days: Day Five Fifth: Do not accumulate weath while millions are hungry. Do not take as the aim of your life fame, profit, wealth, or sensual pleasure. Live simply and share time, energy, and material resources with those who are in need. Being Peace, by Thich Nhat Hanh Again, where to start? It seems that as a culture, our instatiable desire for wealth, fame and sensual pleasure is what’s gotten us into this mess in the first place. And there seem to be two camps, those who think that perhaps we could dial it back a…
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Snow! There’s nearly a foot of heavy spring snow out there this morning. The kind that outlines every tree branch, link on my chain link fence, and completely buries all the new beds I dug out in a blanket of heavy wet lovely spring snow. A beautiful sight.
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Garden Update I have sprouts! Two of the five tomatoes have sprouted, and the thyme seems to be coming up as well. The grow lights are on and as always, I’m weirdly surprised that seeds actually sprout. While avoiding war coverage last night, I stumbled across a rerun of my new favorite show, Ground Force, on BBC America.The conceit of Ground Force is that loved ones write in requesting a surprise garden makeover for someone, the show gets the recipient out of town for a weekend, and makes over their garden. So imagine my surprise when flipping channels to discover…
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Faith, Peace, Pacificsm on other blogs I’m in the shallow end of pacifism here, folks, and my little blog entries are just the beginning of exploring these ideas. Here are some links to other people out there who have though about this stuff longer and harder than I have, and who have some interesting and related things to say. Le Pretre Noir has an interesting account of his trepidation at having to preach about war last Sunday, and some particularly interesting things to say about the divisive nature of evil. Eve and Jeanne have been asking good questions about whether…
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Fourteen Precepts in Fourteen Days: Day Four Fourth: Do not avoid contact with suffering or close your eyes before suffering. Do not lose awareness of the existence of suffering in the life of the world. Find ways to be with those who are suffering by all means, including personal contact and visits, images, sound. By such means, awaken yourself and others to the reality of suffering in the world. Being Peace, by Thich Nhat Hanh That there is a global struggle for peace being waged simultaneously with this war seems to me a new phenomena, as though the world has…
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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…