Divided, we're ruled. How about ruling instead?

I have something I passionately wish for. I am soon to enter my 76th year of life; I also have several preexisting conditions which will probably preclude living a very long life; I probably will not see this wish fulfilled in my lifetime. But I am optimistic that one day, my wish will become a reality.

I do not wish for any thing. Much less for vain things, since at my age, I realize that it is the fate of human beings to dissolve into the air like a wisp of smoke. To be somewhat vain at 40 is somewhat acceptable; to be vain in the eighth decade of life is, however, ridiculous. Old people know that entropy is paring them down, hopefully relatively slowly, like apples. Claiming to be a ruddy MacIntosh while turning into a sour crab is, however, ridiculous indeed. I'm not here to make entropy laugh.

What am I here for? Research has clearly proven that the most important aspect of life is relationships. Not fame, not fortune, but relationships. I've heard of a group of old Koreans who met daily at a local McDonald's. They ordered maybe a coffee and doughnut each and talked and talked and talked. Not like a typical American who takes a bun on the run. That the Koreans remained in their seats for an hour or so drove the management wild. Their primary interest is, of course, money. I like to think of the management as Time (time is money, after all,  as a proverb popular among the young goes)--I admire those Koreans for continuing to practice what's most important in life until Time has the audacity to throw them out.

This little essay will not stress the personal, but the political. (The personal is the political; this cliché has a point, but the personal and political are political in very different ways). My fervent political wish is this: I would like the working classes of all races to come together. I would like to see them initiate a "revolution of fairness." (Let the czars live, but not in palaces).  This would include increasing taxes, especially on the very rich and on corporations, and using the funds for infrastructure programs, universal health care, expanded social programs, etc. We need an era of vibrant unions again; workers need to participate on corporate boards and have some control over policy. This is not an exclusive list!

There are two major impediments to this view of the future: Racism and class division. We will discuss these in turn.

Racism

Let us imagine that Uncle Sam's mother breast-fed her soon-to-be powerful son. If she did, there is no doubt that there was racism in the milk. It has been characterized as our original sin. (Not very original, one must admit, since racism is and was widespread. But just as fascism was not limited to Nazi Germany, the Nazi example was so horrible that one could consider them the worst fascists ever. Similarly, America, the most powerful country of the world, was one of the last nations to repudiate slavery--it took a war to do it--and continued extreme racial injustice for decades after that, the legacy of which lasts to this this day; similarly, America may be considered one of the worst racist nations ever.

You know the history.

Recently, George Floyd became Rosa Parks. (If a Rosa Parks had refused to go to the back of the bus a decade or so earlier than the real Rosa Parks did, she would have been arrested and no one would have heard of her.  In 1955, when Parks refused to give up her seat to a white man, the times they were a changin'.)

The times they are a changin' once again. How many George Floyds died at the hands of the police before George Floyd was murdered? How many acts of brutality were never recorded on video? I shudder to think of the number,

The zietgeist is different now. First, many blacks are well educated and have positions of power; they cannot be cowed into silence. Second, just as during the Civil Rights Movement, many non-black Americans today have been protesting alongside their black brothers and sisters.

I imagine that blacks of all classes have felt Derek Chauvin's knee on their necks. It is a disgrace. It is also symbolic of the knee of opression in general. It has to stop.

It's not going to be easy.

In the nineteenth century, there thrived, for a while, the Know Nothing Party (an apt name), which opposed immigration, especially Irish, Italian and East European migration. If your name had a vowel at the end or a "Mc" at the beginning, you were in trouble. (The Protestant rulers thought that other religions would change the American character for the worse. Even in the 1960 presidential election, which I remember well, many had doubts about electing a Catholic president).

Now it doesn't matter if you're last name is Esposito, Cuddy or Smith.

Remember the fuss Trump made when he discovered that the judge presiding over a suit against him had an Hispanic surname? I think the day is coming when one will be as indifferent to names like Lopez and Rodriguez as they are now to Esposito, Cuddy, or Smith. But what if you happen to be named Jamal?

No other ethnic group in the United States--with the possible exception of Native Americans--have been the victims of such vicious, persistent racism as African Americans. It has to stop.


Class

Americans don't like to talk about class, but class says a lot about us.  Conservatives talk about class warfare against the rich, while the rich are the ones who have been waging class war against everyone else. Especially during the past forty years, which might be characterized as the age of neoliberalism. It began with Reagan, perhaps with his infamous dictum that government isn't part of the problem, government is the problem. Neoliberalism involves decreasing taxation of the rich, deregulation, cuts in social services, including transportation. Prior to Reagan, the working class might not have been doing well, but at least it kept up. According to neoliberalism, The great Market machine will supposedly drip down oil to keep its cogs in good shape. The opposite happened.

In Trump's only major legislation, the 2017 tax cut, 80% of the benefit went to the top 1%--Classic neoliberalism.

For those earning below the median income--and even considerbly higher--this is no longer a democracy.

The political scientist, Martin Gillens, has demonstrated that there is hardly a linear relationship between public sentiment and policy. The legislators more or less pass policies that the rich want, not what the public wants. This is not surprising, since we live in an oligarchy, the members of which lobby assiduosly, and usually  get what they want.

Since the 1980s, salaries and job aspects for the working poor have precipitously declined.

The working class, especially the white working class, is angry. They realize that the government has been unreponsive to working class needs. As Bernie Sanders pointed out, the working class has a right to be very angry. But they are angry for the wrong reasons. Their rage has driven working-class whites to support whites who are diametrically opposed to their interests.

A resident of Montana was asked why he and his neighbors support Trump. Because he is the only one who will look after us, was the reply.

The white working-class's alienation from the Democratic Party is partially the latter's fault. It is, of course, good to advocate for diversity, but a more frequent mention of how class warfare having produced white victims as well as black victims would help. Diversity, yes--but what about such things as the organization of labor?

Chris Hedges in his book America: A Farewell Tour eloquently addressed white working-class plight, as follows;

Princeton economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton blame the suicide rates among white males (which have skyrocketed) on what they term  "cumulative disadvantages," meaning a combination of unemployment or underemployment, the failure of marriages, the loss of social cohesion, and declining health. They argue that the "collapse of the white, high-school educated, working class after its heyday in the 1970s led to a variety of "pathologies" that fostered a potentially fatal despair.

It is not a stretch to attribute a large portion of this decline to an elite which controls legislation and who only care about themselves. What is a once proud bread-winner to do when he is left with a handful of crumbs?

Let them eat cake, say the elite. (Which they, alas! increasingly do).

The oligarchs, one of whose core principles is divide and rule, undountedly enjoy the partisan split plaguing our nation. Ever since poor, indentured whites were made overlords of poorer blacks, the elites have used the "race card" to maintain the  support of the working class.

What about my wish to see the white working class unite with the minority working class? It is not going to be easy.

I do, however, have a few suggestions.

The Democratic Party needs to address working class concerns. The party's tent must welcome working-class whites, without making any compromise to diversity. It needs to combat class supremacy as well.

Whites need to get used to black leadership. One day soon working-class whites must come to realize that an Ilhan Omar represents their interests better than does a Mitch McConnell. 

Workers must organize from the grass-roots to see to it that government is more responive to working class needs. The Citizens United ruling, for instance, must be rescinded.

We must combat voter suppression in all its forms.

We have a lot of work to do! It is my fervent wish that we join hands and work together. 

Better sooner than later!

A Spiritual Revisited

1.
My blogpost from 5/10/2017 entitled, "Music of Transformation: Analysis of a Spiritual," discussed what in my opinion was and is one of the most deeply moving, harrowing spirituals of all time, I Told Jesus.

The call-and-response text varies, but the words are basically as follows:

I told Jesus it would be all right if he changed my name (repeated 3 times)
Jesus said, the world would turn against me, if he changed my name (3x)
But I told Jesus it would be all right if he changed my name (3x)
Jesus said my father may not know me if I changed my name, etc

To the repeated calls, Jesus's responses are, in turn, my mother, my brother, my sister may not know me; it ends with a sadly triumphant singer telling Jesus that it's all right to proceed.

When I first heard this sung by The Harlem Spiritual Ensemble, I was deeply moved:

On the 2017 blog I wrote the following:

The meaning here is not something simple such as, "If I do the right thing, people are not going to like it;" it goes much deeper than that. 'Change my name' implies the complete surrendering of one's identity, so that one becomes, well, One. Individual comforts, individual greed, individual hates, individual delusions, individual sorrows--and even individual joys--all these must go. A thorough giving up of one's hold on oneself, is, as far as the individual is concerned, death.

Let us use Christian mythology here: it is the Cross.  It is imitatio Christi done with full attention, no matter what the consequences. It is not speaking truth to power; it is being truth to power. Unable and unwilling to tolerate an existential threat to its dominion, power will ignominiously toss this gem of truth which once had a name into the depths of the sea. Those that live by the sword die by the sword. Yes, said Simone Weil, but those who put it down die on the Cross.

How many people take the path which the song delineates seriously? Not many,  as we shall see.

2.
(Note: I haven't thought of this spiritual much, since I wrote the 2017 article. And there it was on my YouTube feed! One day Google and Facebook will know more about us than we do! Are we heading toward a new religion, Dataism, a huge cyber room into which we will all be subsumed, as Harari suggests? There is no privacy anymore--Get used to it, say the young. Maybe in my next life, say the old).

Although I do not share Ms. Gwynn's worldview, I respect her, find her sympathetic, and am glad  she has found a belief system that gives meaning to her life. I would characterize her faith using the Hindu term bhakti, often translated as 'devotion to a personal God.' God loves her and she loves Him; that's all she needs to know. Such devotion is a universal phenomenon, as exemplified in Bach's famous cantata, Ich habe genug (I have enough, or I am satisfied).
Jesus bears the Cross for her; she need only thank him for all the gifts of  her life. (She is recovering from a benign tumor. Why would another good person be plagued by a malignant one? That she can't answer).

The spiritual Ms. Gwynn sings is categorically different from the one sung by the Harlem choir. The way she changes the lyrics reflects her devotional worldview. At one point she sings, Jesus said it will be all right, etc. In the original version, there is no such comfort. The seeker wants to take up the Cross. Jesus answers, in effect, Are you sure? Because if you do, this and that will happen; it's going to be tougher than you think.

In Hinduism, bhakti is complemented by jnana, wisdom. Ramana Maharshi, a great Hindu sage of the last century, thought bhakti was a good path for most, since the path of jnana, as the Harlem choir well knew, is so very difficult. Maharshi said if people dedicate themselves to Jesus sincerely, eventually they will move up to jnana. Maybe, depending on the sincerity. I have seen in my lifetime, for instance, persons who claim that they are dedicated to Maharshi yet seem to be very ignorant of what he stood for. Putting a picture of him next to a picture of Sai Baba on an altar while talking nonsense doesn't cut it.

Irma Gwynn is a beautiful person who possesses a high degree of genuine bhakti. But it is not jnana.

If God asked her to obliterate her name for Jesus's sake; if God asked her to take up the Cross; if God demanded, as it were, that she throw her worldly self beneath a juggernaut, would she do it? Maybe; maybe not. The more important question is: would her God ever demand such a thing?

3.
The two major world religions that have been strongly influenced by ascetics and monks, and therefore advocate, among other things, examples of extreme personal behavior, as opposed to collective behavior, are Christianity and Buddhism.  Let us discuss Christianity first.

It is difficult to pinpoint Jesus of Nazareth, but he seems to me to have been more in the guru-mold,  rather than in the activist mold. He did not establish hospitals, places of learning, etc. He seems to have been more or less a wise man whom people consulted. A notable exception to this trend of personal salvation was his advocacy for the poor. (We moderns assume that the miracle stories are largely apocryphal; since time immemorial legends of miracles have been attributed to saintly characters of the past.)

Ascetics often demand extreme behavior. Would Christianity have lasted as long as it has if its adherents took Jesus's dictum, "Turn the other cheek" literally? We must note that it was an Aramaic trope to exaggerate in order to make a point. What exactly did Jesus mean with the assertion that is it easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven? Perhaps this was nothing more than a demand that the rich  be more generous. I think, however, he was being more severe than that. For instance, when a man asked Jesus what would he have to do to be better, since he has strictly followed the Torah since youth? Jesus advised him to give everything he has to the poor. (Mark 10: 17-31). You can almost hear the young man mumble to himself, "No way!" as he departs.)

The vast majority of Christians, like the rest of us, live in the world and have to come to terms with balancing their own needs with those of the spirit's. Nearly everyone needs to be less selfish and more other-directed, that at least is certain. But turn the other cheek while someone is about to mow you down? 

Nature demands a certain degree of attachment to self; should we ever give up our name, that is, our entire identity, and forgo self-protection completely for a cause? When this happens, it is both beautiful and deadly--and exceptionally rare.

4.
Buddhism has an even stronger ascetic tradition than Christianity. After Buddha wandered and meditated for six years, he became enlightened at the age of 35. The basis of his teaching is found in the Four Noble Truths. The first truth, that life entails suffering in the sense that craving will not satisfy even when the object of craving is obtained, is unassailable. The second truth states that suffering is caused by desire or craving, also an unassailable fact. The third truth recommends that the way to perfect peace is by giving up desire altogether, while the fourth discusses how that is to be accomplished. Perfect peace is nirvana; who has accomplished that? Whoever has, no doubt, would have no problem turning the other cheek.

Buddha was certainly on to something. A lot of our desires have an evolutionary origin; natural selection has no truck for enlightenment and serenity, only for the survival of the species. What if nature allowed orgasms that lasted days instead of moments? Those creatures would be so distracted that they would neglect the task of living, which often entails hard work; those creatures would die prematurely, albeit with smiles on their faces, having little time left over to raise families.What happens when survival is no longer a concern? You don't survive. Might as well turn the other cheek! 

What's worse is that modern capitalist culture creates desires for things we don't need, and fosters insecurity as we inevitably fail to get what we want when we want it, and if we ever do, we're still dissatisfied. Modern culture fosters competition as well. An endless parade of desires! Endless ways for paraders to come up short!

Yes, we must tamp down and eliminate excess desires. But get rid of them completely?

Perhaps Jesus in the spiritual discussed here should say, "Keep your name. Do the best you can with it."  Hard enough! A religion of balance, I think, combines contemplation and action. In other words, 'Love your neighbor, as yourself!' This involves thought and sacrifice, not suicide. 

I Told Jesus is music of transformation. It can help us approach the wisdom of Jesus and of Buddha while still remaining beings conditioned by evolutionary biology; that is very difficult to do, and that is good enough.

Desultory Diary, Episode 27: Juneteenth

Regarding the “No Justice, No Peace,” movement, Makia Green of Black Lives Matter DC, as reported in the June 13-19^th, 2020, edition of The Economist, said, “The political weather has shifted; we now have widespread multiracial, multi-generation support.”

Can it be true? I’m beginning to believe it.

I’m an old man. I’ve written that the political crisis, the political and cultural division in this country, has never been worse in my lifetime than it is now. Now I write that I’ve never been more hopeful about ending racism—or, at the very least, significantly diminishing it—than I am now.

I might be old, but  I am not nostalgic for the ‘good old days.’ I was raised in the era of segregation. Black people, (Indian, Chinese, Hispanics as well), didn’t exist for us as neighbors. I saw a few blacks on TV when I was a kid, in such shows as Amos ‘n’ Andy and The Beulah Show, in which the great Ethel Waters played a maid, (she quit the show in 1951, whereupon Hattie McDaniel took over the role). Not much progress since Butterfly McQueen’s Prissy in Gone with the Wind in 1939!

While I attended Dickinson High School in Jersey City from 1960-1963, the school was, technically, desegregated. But every black kid, without exception,  was in the “Vocational Arts” program. We in the college prep section had no contact with them.

My parents were surprisingly liberal regarding race. My father had long since passed away when I married my wife, a recent immigrant from India, in 1974. My mother welcomed her into the family without reservation, just as her family welcomed us.

Both my wife and I are pediatricians. We eventually settled down in the Roland Park area of Baltimore, a white neighborhood. No problems, right? Wrong.

In 1980 we adopted a black child, who is still the joy of our lives.

Roland Park is an upper-class neighborhood; rejection is more subtle here. (Did we ever learn that the the ‘n’ word was directed at our son? We did).

In a bitter mood, I wrote the following poem, hinting at the racism we encountered:

http://ghll.truman.edu/ghll30/Dorsett%20Forty%20Years%20in%20Roland%20Park.html

I am not going through a list of slights we received on Wickford Road. I must say that we didn’t always receive hostile reactions. Would the majority have been pleased if we had moved way, though? No doubt.

I will recount one incident, and only one. When my son was a teenager, he worked one evening on a friend’s car, parked across the street. A neighbor—Philip said he knew who she was and she knew him, but I never pressed him--called the police. According to her complaint, a black man was stealing a car on her block. The police—two white police officers—came. My son calmly identified himself. The officers were effusively apologetic. But they had guns. What if one had been a racist or in a bad mood? Remember Tamar Rice. Remember Philandro Castile. Remember George Floyd. 

There are many to remember, there are many we must not forget.

I recall this incident only, with a little bitterness. yes, but also with a sense of relief. Twenty or so years earlier, I thought at the time, they just might have killed him. And if this confrontation took place in, say, Ferguson, now—who knows what could have happened?

“This time it’s different,” said Congressman Hakeem Jeffries, in a moving, recent speech. I’m beginning to believe it! Our neighborhood has changed.

A welcome sign: neighbors have organized a celebration of Juneteenth, commemorating June 19, 1965 when General Granger form the U.S. occupational forces announced to the slaves of Galveston, Texas, that they were now free. If it becomes a holiday, and I hope it will, I trust the day will be used as a day to commemorate not only how far we’ve come—but  how far we have to go.

Will we participate? You bet. For the first time in forty years in Roland Park, we now feel almost welcome here.

Covid Meditation--Episode Three: A Way Out

Once a Canadian girl of Scottish origin told me a story that had bitten her and the telling bit me. She said that in the age of growing up when she felt that all eyes were on her and not favorably, so that she went from blushes to tears and back again, her Highland grandfather, observing her pain, said sharply, “Ye wouldna be sae werrit wi’ what folk think of ye if ye kenned how seldom they do.”

This is a quote from John Steinbeck’s last novel, The Winter of Our Discontent.

The quote bit me as well. I tried to recall that quote verbatim after I finished the novel, but couldn’t remember the exact words. I thumbed through the text, then thumbed through it again, but still couldn’t find it. (This happens to me often. I read and come across something I want to remember; if I don’t write it down, and I usually don’t, I am unable to find it, no matter how hard I look. I remember that the line in question was, say, in the middle of a left-sided page in the middle of a book. So I search the text accordingly; no luck. I call such lines minnows. I remember lines of them darting away from the boy I once was as sunlight flashed from them, as I waded towards them in a bay. Those little lines never return, at least while one wades through their habitat; the quote-minnows, however, with perseverance, almost always do).

While I still couldn’t find the Steinbeck quote, I searched the internet. I found it attributed to the author David Foster Wallace in the following translation: “ You wouldn’t be so worried about what people think of you if you realized how little they do”. The internet overwhelmingly is of the opinion, however, that the quote comes from Eleanor Roosevelt.

Did Steinbeck translate Roosevelt’s quote into Scottish as a little joke, the discovery of which lay waiting to be uncovered in an obscure article years hence? I don’t know.

I do imagine Foster Wallace coming across the quote and writing it down. He suffered from severe depression, ending his life at 46 by hanging himself. I imagine that the quote was especially poignant to him at times when he wanted to allay bitter self-doubts and feelings of failure by obtaining the approval of others. Whatever praise he did find in life--and it was considerable, since his talent was prodigious—it was probably never enough.

Why? Not because he didn’t receive enough attention from the outside world, but quite possibly because he received too much attention from his inner world. If he was like many successful depressives, he had impossibly high standards, which doomed him to the noose of failure despite what others would imagine to be a string of successes.  A sufficiently severe inner critic is able to grind even a Shakespeare down to an inarticulate glob of raw meat.

We symbolized this inner critic in the last blog of the Covid Meditation series (Episode Two) as a psychological manifestation of the Wizard of Oz. The angry Oz who appeared on the screen (of consciousness) proved to be an illusion, created by a man manipulating machinery. The hard work of meditation eventually causes one to realize that the severe inner critic is maintained by the bells and whistles of ignorance. This is a significant step on the path to enlightenment. The fifth step of the eightfold path is Right Effort. The first fetter to be overcome by Right Effort is “belief in the existence of a permanent self or soul.” (Science is in accord with the illusory nature of the ego, the specifics of which will be discussed in a later essay).

If one is especially beset by greed, hate, and delusion in its various forms, one can expect progress though hard work, but one should not expect an instant cure through meditation! It is like playing the piano. Most anyone can learn to play music in a way that delights the ear of the listener, but it takes commitment.

A severe inner critic is, I think, almost always present in depression. It is good to know that there is a way out, even though the light at the end of the tunnel is very far away. The great poet Hopkins was at times stricken by a severe depression which, while it lasted, destroyed the one potential “anodyne to suffering,” hope. In a so-called terrible sonnet, he wrote,

O the mind, mind has mountains, cliffs of fall

Frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed. Hold them cheep

May who ne’er hung there…

When one is in despair, it’s like hanging from a cliff without the possibility of getting help. Yet those cliffs are illusions, the heights of which are conjured up by chemicals, having no objective reality. Can meditation and mindfulness make “the rough places plain?” Without a doubt.

What about those who are, in general, content? Buddha said somewhere that those who are dissatisfied have an advantage, since they realize that there is a problem to be solved. It is doubtful that the culture we live in, infected by the diseases of greed, hate, and delusion, has left anybody unscathed. A person who is reasonably content will likely continue on a common path of reasonable ignorance to the very end.

There is a variation of despair in which the inner critic lavishes praise on the “individual” as if he were a god. The resultant neediness, that is, seeking, even demanding, praise from everyone, arises from a core of imagined inferiority.

We can adapt Steinbeck’s/Roosevelt’s dictum into the following: You wouldn’t worry so much about what you’re saying to yourself, once you realize what your real self says about you—namely, nothing.

Reaching that state of nothing is well, everything. We might not be able to get there, but we can sure come closer to where nothing troubles one again. As we approach that goal, we become more happy, more peaceful, and more content.

Desultory Dairy, Episode 26: Police Push an Old Man Down

In the midst of the Covid pandemic, we have been shocked by the brutal murder of George Floyd by Derek Chauvin, a white police officer. We--I'm not using the 'royal we' but the 'decency we'--have been encouraged, despite reports of looting, by the widespread demonstrations protesting his death. That 'decency we' has also become the 'majority we'--a good sign. We all hope that much-needed changes will result.

The police abuse did not stop with Floyd's murder. On Thursday, June 4, 2020, a week and a half after the black man's death, a protest demonstration took place in Buffalo, New York. Although there was no need for a show of massive force against peaceful protesters, the police were ready.

Martin Gugino, a 75-year-old activist, a member of the Catholic Workers Movement, a man with impeccable non-violent bona fides, approached the police, despite commands to back away. (He has what has been reported to have been a cell phone in his hands; he apparently had been trying to show the officers a screenshot of the First Amendment. He certainly had no weapon). Two officers brutally push him to the side; he falls and lies on the ground, bleeding from his head, apparently unconscious. They pushed him hard, with the compassion of inhumane drill sergeants, kicking a stray dog aside who got in the way of a small-town military parade. It was  shocking. (Gugino, a small countercurrent against waves of riot police, reminded me of the photo of the man defiantly standing before a tank in Tiananmen Square).

I felt that shove. I am the same age as the victim.

Pushing over  a 75-year-old is categorically different from pushing over a younger or middle-age individual.

Fear of falling is a recurring nightmare of old age. A person seventy years old has three times the chance of dying  from a 'low-ground fall' that is, a fall from level ground, than a younger person has. The chance of falling increases dramatically with age, since the older you are, after 60 or so, the chance of losing your balance rises. Injuries incurred during a fall tend to be more serious as well. Bones are more brittle and thinner, making them much easier to break; older people know that breaking your hip, for instance, can signal the loss of independence, the beginning of the end. Recovery from even a minor injury tends to be much longer once you are old. As an example, my wife had a minor fall in our house about two months ago. No bones were broken, but she was unable to exercise or take a walk with me for weeks. If the accident happened years ago, she would be incapacitated for only about a day, we estimate.

I still take a basket full of laundry down the dozen or so curving steps to the laundry room in the basement of our house, but I am extra careful. Watch out, Dorsett, a voice tells me, this could be it!

When an older person falls down and hits the back of his head, the chance of a serious, potentially fatal, cerebral hemorrhage increases greatly. Many older persons are on blood thinners, as I am, making that dreadful complication much more likely. I know of several cases of falls among the elderly which resulted in serious complications, including death. 

Most states define elder abuse as willful injury to a person 65 years old or older.  The police officers look three to four decades younger than the 75-year-old peaceful protester. It was a crime!

I heard and read many of those who commented on this incident. Not one mentioned that it is a breakdown of civilization when one shows no respect to elders. It's like pushing a modern-day Jesus off the Mount of Olives so one can rush to the top to take a selfie.

The next day after the abuse I read that 57 members of the riot squad resigned in protest. Maybe I'm getting senile, but I first thought that they had resigned in solidarity with the man who was brutally pushed to the ground. Yeah, right. (There is a ray of hope: the two officers who pushed Gugino, Aaron Torgalski and Robert McCabe, have been charged with second-degree assault).

You are supposed to respect the elderly, not strike them down. That this dictate of civilization was not even mentioned in the news, indicates to me how far we've declined.


2.

Trump will be 74 in less than a week. By the way he sways back and forth while attempting to stand  still, it seems to me that he has an old-age balance problem. (Despite all the crimes he has committed, pushing him over would still be a crime!)

Has he learned a little bit of compassion and empathy with old age? Here's a recent tweet of the president, regarding the incident:

Buffalo protester shoved by Police could be an ANTIFA provacateur. 75 year old Martin Gugino was pushed away after appearing to scan police communications in order to black out the equipment. @OANN, I watched, he fell harder than was pushed. Was aiming scanner. Could be a set up?

This is nuts. A ridiculous conspiracy theory supported by the President of the United States?! (His source, One America News Network, is much further right than is Fox News).

Between the scanner that wan't there and the scanned equipment  that also wasn't there, Trump has injected an icy image of hateful paranoia. A man who believes this could push down his grandma and claim that aliens--that is, his alien mind and his alien heart--made him do it.

I am shocked again. Yes, those with even a rudimentary analytical ability have known Trump's number for a long time. Yet Trump, like an asymptote on a graph, always manages to get closer to zero. 

It's worse than that:

Trump is a symbol of a general breakdown of civilized norms. The Republicans who still follow him--and there are many--have lost all moral authority in their pursuit of the gods of greed, hate, and delusion. Citizens who still support Trump--and there are many of them as well--follow their increasingly tarnished idol, and are unaware that their Pied Piper is leading them--and us--into a dead-end cave where all is lost. We must not let that happen.

Uncle Sam is over two hundred years old. Mr. Trump, stop pushing him down!

If We Vote for Trump, What Do We Have to Lose?

According to our dear leader, Trump has done more for blacks than any president in the past, "with the possible exception of Abraham Lincoln." A statement like this would have made Joseph Goebbels proud. Trump's singular accomplishment has been a trillion dollar giveaway to the richest Americans. The man who is supposedly fighting for underdogs, especially white underdogs, has been doing his very best to keep them leashed.

We are in difficult times--our nation and the world have been wracked by a plague at the very same time that our nation and the world are in the midst of a political crisis. Will democracy meet current challenges? For the first time in my life, and I'm not young, I have my doubts. This is not a time for despair, (yet?), however; it is a time to fight.

When Trump was campaigning, he tried to solicit black support by saying, "What do you have to lose?" If Goebbels were now the provost of the University of Hell, I'm sure he would have recommended giving Trump an honorary citation, dishonoris causa, for that one.

No matter what our ethnic background is, we do have a lot to lose.

Our nation has been reeling since the murder of an unarmed black man at the hands of a white police officer who showed as much concern for the sanctity of human life as a Nazi thug. The extensive and prolonged demonstrations against the atrocity of racism continue at the time of this writing, over a week since the murder. They have been overwhelmingly peaceful. There is a good possibility  that something is going to change this time--for the better. Enough of too much!

Our dear leader has no moral core, no ideology other than genuflecting before the golden idol of himself. Protests have been muted in cities and towns of rural America, Trump's base. With the savvy of a demagogue, Trump knows that the majority of those protesting the death of George Floyd are also protesting against him; they are, therefore, in his narcissistic Manichean worldview, evil--for the sole reason that they are likely to be 'never Trumpers.'

So what did our president do? Give a speech that attempted to bring the country together? Yeah, right.

Prompted by Ivanka and Jared, he decided to have a photo tableau taken of himself as the god of Law and Order. Peaceful protesters were cleared away by force from the vicinity of the church, near the White House, where the photo was to be taken.  The use of military force to disperse citizens exercising their First Amendment rights--what are we coming to?

You've all seen the photograph of Trump holding up a bible (upside down, it turned out)  in front of an iconic church. He's doing his very best to look Serious and Dominant--the latter being a favorite word of his; instead he looked Pitifully Ridiculous. He looks like a madman who thinks he's General Custer, sanctioned by God, preparing for Man's wackadoodle Last Stand.

2.

The misuse of religious symbols didn't start with Donald Trump. Holding up the Bible as a symbol of Law and Order reminded me of an even more egregious use of such symbolism, as demonstrated by the Archbishop of Paris on May 27, 1610. This was the date of the execution of François Ravaillac for murdering Good King Henri lV of France. While the bishop held a cross before the unfortunate man, who by all accounts was mentally unstable, he was subjected to despicable acts of torture. His flesh was torn by pincers; molten lead, sulfur and boiling oil were poured into the wounds. During all this, the cross was held up before the victim's gaze; I imagine the bishop had an expression on his face similar to Donald Trump's at the church: one that proclaimed domination for all to see; a visage completely lacking in empathy.

The onlookers, a large swath of the public, were on the bishop's side. After the initial tortures were over, Ravaillac was drawn and quartered by horses. When one of the horses at its macabre task faltered, a nobleman volunteered his steed. This torture lasted for about an hour. After Ravaillac died, children made a bonfire to burn the regicide's flesh. When the spectacle was over, nothing was left of the poor man but a piece of his shirt.

3.
Mr. Trump, you are wrong. Everyone, not only blacks, has a lot to lose by voting for someone like you.

The injunction against  cruel and unusual punishment is a precious part of the Constitution. When Trump appointed General Mattis as the Secretary of Defense, the president stated outright that he favored torture of terrorists. The Archbishop of Paris would have been proud.

On May 27, 1610, no opposition to the horrible ordeal Ravaillac suffered was recorded. In June, 2020, the opposition to Trump's misuse of religious symbolism was swift and articulate.

Society has indeed changed; certainly not enough, but it has changed. We have come a long way, but have much farther to go.

The murderer of George Floyd did not inflict the tortures that the good citizens of France witnessed  in 1610. Murder, however, is still murder. Even Trump, one assumes, would be horrified over the details of Ravaillac's execution. Yet his misuse of the bible has a definite parallel in the archbishop's misuse of the cross. The former is throwing the book at his opponents, the latter was crucifying them. Both served the same god: Law and Order. (My Law, My order).

During Hitler's rise to power, many laughed. It couldn't happen here, they thought. But it did.

We have a lot to lose. Protecting the Constitution and taking decisive steps on the road  to racial as well as economic equality are among the many tasks before us. First things first: voting that incompetent, mean-spirited, would-be tyrant from office has become a paramount civic duty. It's not too late!

Covid Meditation--Episode Two: Why Meditate?

As mentioned in the first covid meditation blog from May 29, 2020, I have decided to increase the amount of time spent in meditation, in order to blunt the effects of dissatisfaction in my life. Enough is enough! This is the seventh day of meditating an hour twice daily with study of this ancient practice in between. (Prior to that, I've meditated about once daily for decades.)What I am practicing, or trying to practice, is called vipassana (vi, 'special,' plus passana, 'seeing' meditation), also known as 'insight meditation'. The purpose is not happiness per se, but to see things as they really are, without ego-interference. 

What can one expect from meditation? Why meditate? That is the subject of this little essay. We shall discuss this important topic in three parts: Overcoming the Wizard; From Space to Infinity, and Who Am I?

Overcoming the Wizard

There are Buddhist lessons to be learned everywhere, including, perhaps especially, in the 1939 iconic film, The Wizard of Oz. In the film, Dorothy realizes she isn't in Kansas anymore, having been transported to  the magical, technicolor land of Oz. Yet something is wrong even in this fairy-tale land: all the main characters of the film are dissatisfied with their lives. Dorothy is unhappy because she is far from home and doesn't know how to get back. On the yellow-brick road, off to see the Wizard who supposedly will solve her problem, she encounters a scarecrow, who is dissatisfied because he has no brain. He joins her on the journey to Oz. After they walk along the road to Oz for some time, they encounter a tin man, who is dissatisfied because he has no heart. Next they encounter a lion who is dissatisfied because he lacks courage. They all journey to Oz together to obtain, they hope, what they need.  When they reach the Wizard's inner chamber, they encounter an angry head on a screen berating them with a god-like voice. How dare these mortals approach the great Wizard?

Dorothy and her companions are terrified while they are dressed down and severely criticized as presumptuous mortals pleading their case before an angry, omnipotent, immortal god. The Wizard gives them a near-impossible task; if they bring the broomstick of the Wicked Witch of the West, he just might grant their wish. They run out from the chamber in terror.

They actually do accomplish this task, and happily return to the Wizard, expecting their wishes to be granted. The Wizard, in a frightening display of fire and brimstone, hedges. At this point, Toto, Dorothy's dog, pulls back the curtain and reveals that the Wizard is a fake, a mountebank; the Wizard of Oz does not exist.

Next comes my favorite quote from the movie, spoken by the fierce wizard on the screen, actually the manifestation of a fake manipulating a system of roaring bells and piercing whistles: "Don't pay any attention to the man behind the screen!"
(Dorothy scolds the wizard, whereupon the wizard presents her companions with trinkets, convincing them that they actually possess what they imagined they lacked. Dorothy eventually returns home when she realizes that she has in a deep sense never left it.)

"Don't pay attention to the man behind the screen," i.e. "Don't pay attention to the critic inside your skull," because he is a fake; he doesn't exist. This is a good illustration of the Buddhist truth of anatta, namely, that there is no personhood underlying reality.  The Ego is an illusion! A powerful illusion, but an illusion nevertheless.

"Don't pay attention to the guy inside your skull, because he doesn't exist!," could be used as a mantra; once again, it is a perfect statement of the Buddhist truth of anatta, one of the three main characteristics of existence.

Science is in accord with this view, although, admittedly it contravenes common sense. No area of the brain has been found to be the source of the ego. There are visual areas, auditory areas, etc. but no area that says, "This is me!" The illusory concept of a separate self is produced when the symphony of nerves imagine they are being led by a conductor; or, to keep to the Wizard metaphor, the sense of the ego is produced on the screen of consciousness by all those billions of neurons acting in concert. The Wizard, however, isn't there!

Once the truth of anatta is realized, a sense of joy and liberation occurs.  The ego, however, is a necessary-for-survival byproduct of evolution; understanding reality as it is is part of wisdom, liberating one from petty behavior. If one is to live in the world,  which is produced by thought and is at its base an illusion as well, the illusion of ego has its place. Without this illusion, humans would not be able to survive. (This will become clearer in future essays).

Realizing the truth of anatta, not just accepting it abstractly, is one of the main purposes of insight meditation.

From Space to Infinity

In the first instance, we discussed meditation as overcoming a negative: the illusion of the ego, which in its most negative aspect consists of an inner critical voice, yelling at the meditator with the fury of the Wizard. Realizing that his "person" is non-existent is an important part of meditation; it is a difficult task that can take years to complete. In this section, however, we will discuss a positive aspect: the passage from duality to non-duality. We will dispense with the fairy tale of Oz and use as our metaphor Einstein's Theory of Special Relativity.

Einstein's theory, which has been proven scientifically, establishes the dynamic relationship between space and time. Everyone can visualize the three dimensions of space: length, width, and height:

It's much harder to imagine how time applies to this graph, but it does. (We often indicate time with an arrow.) Since the Big Bang, the interrelationship among these, as far as I know, have remained fixed. The time aspect asserts that everything changes; there is no permanence anywhere. (This is the Buddhist doctrine of anicca, impermanence, one of the three aspects of reality according to Buddhism, along with anatta and dukka).

We discover the dynamic relationship between space dimensions and the dimension of time (spacetime) when acceleration occurs. As the speed of light is approached, space elements contract while time dilates. In other words, space is converted into time. (The speed of light remains fixed).When the speed of light is attained, a singularity occurs: all space has been converted into time, which has dilated so much that it has stopped: infinity characterizes this state. (It is impossible for us to accelerate matter to the speed of light, since it would take infinite energy). It seems to me that travel at the speed of light should be an impossibility, yet light has accomplished it! The unit of light, the photon, has no mass, since mass cannot travel at the speed of light. For photons, reality has no space; everything is touching.

It is not surprising that culture has used light as a symbol of divine creation. In Genesis, God creates the world by proclaiming, Fiat Lux, Let There be Light. Milton addressed this creation with a wonderful passage that begins with "Hail, Holy Light." Infinity, absent from our world, is the Other, and, therefore, Holy. And yet these messengers of the infinite, photons, arrive at our retina innumerable times every day!

For the unenlightened, there is something frightening here. Precipitates of cold, snowflakes, are unique; everyone is different--yet every photon is absolutely alike. They seem to represent an anxiety-provoking depersonalization, anatta, one of the three characteristics of existence. A Buddhist would respond with joy: Precisely! The Wizard as we have seen, is a hindrance to happiness.

Applying this to meditation, we thus interpret Special Relativity metaphorically as the conversion of duality (spacetime) into non-duality (infinity). One can describe this transformation in many ways: the passage of bodily dimensions to pure spirit; the passage from the relative to the absolute; the passage from limitation to the limitless;  the passage from samsara to nirvana; the transformation from the "I" of the individual to the "I" of the cosmos.

In meditation, one coverts, as it were, units of length, width and height into units of expanding time; units of mundane consciousness into units of cosmic consciousness; units of duality into units of non-duality. Beginning meditators should not expect, should not demand, that these moments of cosmic consciousness last a long time. They might begin merely as occasional flashes; these flashes, however, illuminate the path.  Keep walking while doing your best to silence demands from the Wizard, and you cannot help but get closer to the goal, that is, seeing reality as it is.

Anyone who meditates seriously and familiarizes oneself with Buddhist principles becomes aware of the path one is on. If you are worried about losing individual identity, don't: reaching nirvana is just about as difficult as reaching the speed of light. As we accelerate toward that goal, however, increasing joy arises; hindrances are left behind like spent fuel from a rocket.

Nan Yar, Who Am I?

Ramana Maharshi, (1879-1950), was a great sage of the past century. He reached enlightenment, (the Hindu terminology for which is moksha), as a young man, and remained in that state for the rest of his life.  Another term for the limitless state he reached is called cosmic consciousness. Most of us have experienced this state whenever we completely forget ourselves--during a period of selfless work for instance; the difference between Maharshi and the rest of us is that he never left that state. 

The term for this state in Hinduism is advaita, non-duality. In Buddhism, the "I" in all its connotations is left behind when one experiences moksha or nirvana. Hinduism differentiates between two "I's," the cosmic "I" and the worldly "I"--both systems, using different terminology, indicate the same thing.

Viewing the material world from a cosmic-consciousness perspective is a bit like viewing the Earth from a great distance. Here is a view of Earth from Saturn:

Yes, all your concerns and obsessions occur on this little dot at the lower right of this Nasa photo.

At this distance, all worldly concerns and suffering are nothing to be concerned about; they are so small.

When Maharshi used the pronoun "I" he referred to the cosmic eye that sees everything. It is an ecstatic view, the nature of which is bliss. Maharshi used the "Nan Yar" ("Who am I") method to get to the nature of reality. We can adapt this method to meditation.

For instance, toward the end of this morning's meditation, I became restless. "Is that Who I am?, I asked myself. If I ever feel jealousy, I ask myself, "Who is jealous?" Similarly, who is angry, etc. The Wizard, who doesn't exist!

This is a gentle way to bring one's attention from an earthly outlook to a cosmic one. It keeps us on the path of converting the dimensions of space into infinity, as outlined in the second method. It is a variation of bringing one back from discursive thought to the impersonal awareness of breathing.

Summary

The task of meditation is to see things as they really are. (Wisdom obtained through meditation is worthless unless it spills over into one's daily life).The goal of meditation is extremely difficult to achieve; some progress on this path, however, is available to all who decide to walk upon it. Meditation has been successfully used for centuries to ease the burdens of the self and to experience the wonders of wisdom. 

You are welcome to join me on this quest. Comments welcome. To be continued.