Spirituality and Self-Interest

Patriots say "God bless America." Sports players pray to God for victory. Many peoples worship spirits or divinities that embody or control aspects of nature that are crucial for human survival, and do their best to please such spirits or divinities. Christians similarly (as I understand it, which, admittedly, is not that well) worship the divinity that controls their fate in an "afterlife", and try to please that divinity by being a "moral" person in this life. Basically, people want the good stuff - food, possessions, happy feelings, good health, etc. - and they want to avoid the bad stuff, and most of spirituality and religion are just everyone's attempts to get what they want and avoid what they don't. As another example, I'd bet there are lots of meditators who just want to be peaceful, who want to relieve their emotional discomfort or be nicer to other people, and think that these ends are the main point of meditation.

Instead, the main point of meditation is to comprehend your existence directly - all the good stuff and all the bad stuff - and thus act in accord with it. Clinging to the good stuff and avoiding the bad stuff means that you don't examine the essential nature of all your existence. Without examining all your existence, you won't truly comprehend any of it. The Christian bargain above does get at this essential truth. What you want may get you condemned to Hell if God doesn't like it, i.e., if you do anything to get the good stuff, you may ultimately be worse off. But it strikes me as in the same vein as threatening a child with a spanking if he doesn't eat his vegetables. The point is to eat your vegetables without a struggle of wills, external or internal, because you know it's good for you, i.e., the point is to grow up.

My original goal in meditation was to develop more compassion for other people. Maybe this is indeed the level at which we all have to start, when we realize that we're doing the same things and still not getting what we want. However, my motivations have changed as I went along. Maybe the second paragraph does not actually describe the ultimate point of meditation, but just where I am now. Regardless, what I'm getting at is that most people seem to keep hitting their heads against the same walls in life without stopping to examine the wall, their head, and whether the are perhaps preferable alternatives. Is this just human nature or are the major non-Buddhist traditions partly to blame for not encouraging this kind of examination?

Coming up roses and ...

In my apartment in Oakland, there's no room for a garden, but I do have some plants out on the fire escape. The largest is a rose, a delicate pink, strongly scented, fluffy-petaled English rose, Sharifa Asma. The past two springs, when it has sent out shoots all over, I have knocked off a lot of them in an effort to channel its growth into a fuller shrub. This spring I just let it go. It has filled out nicely with fresh, red-green leaves, maybe even on the "frame" I built in previous years, and has young flower buds all over. The northern side is a little mildewy, but I'm ignoring that for now.

Nearby is a cactus that I have had for a few years. It, too, is blooming, now for the first time. I had wondered what the development of a fuzzy white patch on top meant, and now there are two bright pink buds poking up out of it.

I have admired the Masdevallias at the San Francisco Orchid Society show for many years, but my previous attempts to grow them resulted in the premature deaths of two plants. Anticipating my arrival on the first floor (chilly, not much light) of a North Beach flat, I bought another at this year's show in February, and put it on a ledge outside the bedroom window. When I checked up on it last weekend, I found that it has apparently been loving this cold, rainy weather. Its new leaves have grown well, and it's sending up what appear to be two flower shoots. This is quite exciting because it wasn't blooming when I bought it, and there was no photo of the flower. I bought it because it looked like such a happy, robust plant, and because I was told that both of its parents - it's a hybrid - had bright, large flowers.

I'm not sure what to make of how happy this all makes me. Saturday morning, I had been quite grouchy because I had woken up earlier than I would have liked. But when I checked the masdevallia and saw the two flower shoots, I became quite cheerful, because of something that has no "real" effect on me.

How to write a Craig's List personals ad

This is where I try to impart some probably useless information, a small speck of dust in the swirling blogosphere, in the hopes that someone somewhere will connect to it and use it.

The basics: You must say something about yourself, what you are looking for, and give your age, height and weight. I'm always amazed how many ads omit one or more of these things. Let's assume you're beyond that.

Most ads have a very basic format. "I like these things, have all these positive qualities, and I'm looking for someone who is similar." More or less. These come across as very much the same: long walks on the beach, partner in crime, good food and wine, athletic companion, blah blah blah. What you want to do instead is to just express what is on your mind at the moment, more offhand than crafted, and a little about why you're looking for someone. Be sure to include the basics, but they are not the main point. The main point is to write in a way which expresses who you are indirectly, so that your personality comes across between the lines, like body language. Of course you want to be on good behavior, but don't worry about appearing to be perfect.

Below is the post by which I figured this out. I wasn't trying to write a real ad; I was just blowing off some steam. To my surprise two attractive, interesting, educated women replied.

We all have our own requirements...

Reply to: anon-11377495@craigslist.org
Date: 2003-05-16, 10:28AM

If you're up for some self-indulgent rambling, read on...

So I think, well, I'm a pretty nifty guy - well-educated professional,
well-intentioned and kind, good cook, appreciative of the arts, politically
aware, a little edgy, reasonably emotionally / spiritually aware....
so what's the problem with finding someone? First, it seems,
I'm not the largest guy - 5' 9" and more skinny than not (aged nearly 35).
It pisses me off that many women who are shorter than I am want someone taller.

But, heck, I seem to have my own "stupid stumbling block" criteria:
you must be exceedingly smart - intelligence engaged with life. Of
course, the more traits / interests you share with me the better, but
that seems to be the most difficult to find.

Le Pichet

This is not the sort of thing I expect to usually post about, but here it is. Should you find yourself in downtown Seattle, and you are the sort to adore French bistro food, make your way to Le Pichet, 1933 1st Ave, near Pike Place Market. The food is robustly flavorful and very French, and the wine list (also very French) is a full page, single spaced, and you can get any wine you like in the amount of full bottle, pichet (pitcher, or half-bottle), demi-pichet, or glass. We got a pichet of nicely full-bodied Cairanne (Cotes-du-Rhone) to go with our meal of butter lettuce with vinaigrette and roasted hazelnuts, "ham and cheese on toast", chicken liver terrine, and fresh raw oysters. Their espresso's not bad, either, which, as I understand it, is more typical of Seattle than Paris.

Then we picked up our luggage at the hotel, said goodbye to Seattle for now, and caught the bus to the airport. The lunch at Le Pichet was exactly the sort of fortification I wish I could get for all my air travel.

Life as Illusion

One of the things you hear in an introduction to "Buddhist philosophy" - in my case, in high school - is that we and our lives are illusions, that we don't exist, that everything is nothingness. This view of reality doesn't easily square with our everyday notions, and made me wonder what ever made anyone propound it as true. Now, however, I've been meditating long enough to have some different ideas of what these things mean.

First off, let me say that they are not the points of dogma, like the divinity of Christ or something, that I had originally thought they were. They are simply efforts to describe in language "what is" as sensed by generations of practitioners. They are not things I can truly explain in the usual sense of "explanations"; they can only be "seen directly" via meditation. My parents are scientists, and I approach this stuff with that kind of skepticism, a sort of experimental experiential ontology. That said, let me add to those efforts at describing "what is", based on my limited awareness.

We all run around very sure that our immediate perceptions of our lives are the final word. But as I have meditated more, I have observed now and then (often not during meditation) that what we usually take as reality is sort of a surface reflection of something much different and more universal. My thoughts, sensations, feelings, and actions are not the units I had thought they were, but instead, all have the same fundamental character to them: Original Nature, Original Mind, Buddha Nature, whatever words you want to use. Don't get me wrong. Except for those moments of insight, I still live my life in the same mental space as everyone else. Seeing those sorts of things does, however, change the way I regard my life, even if "regarding" something is still relating to it on its surface level.

This all leaves my usual self feeling rather perplexed. "You mean I'm an illusion?," it says. "Then what else is out there?", it wants to know. The only answer it gets seems to be that it will get no answer it can understand and accept, that there is no way to look and understand, because those actions themselves are illusory. "How then to proceed?," it asks. I'm told there is no way to proceed, and no need to do so. There is only existence as it is at each moment. I'll let you know when I get there.

Movin' on... over.

Last night, I told the manager of my apartment building that I'm planning to move out by the end of April. There were a few things to talk over, such as the screw holes in the bathroom wall and the occasional visits by a very cute mouse, but for the most part, there wasn't much to the conversation. She and I have gotten along well, and it appears this will continue through the move-out process.

For myself, though, I'll miss this place. It's the only place I've lived alone, and I've appreciated the shelter it has offered me. After living in group houses throughout the many years of grad school, I immediately moved in with my girlfriend at the time. When we split up in September, 2002, I moved into this place, with it's new hardwood floor, antique tiled bathroom, gas stove, and quiet hallways with mostly friendly neighbors. Since then, the apartment has been my place to come back to for solitude, to cook for friends and lovers, and from which to venture forth for walks around Lake Merritt and shopping runs to the Berkeley Bowl.

Now, however, I'll be moving in with my new girlfriend (and fiancee) in North Beach, San Francisco, so while I'm already waxing nostalgic about living alone, I hope I don't live alone again for quite some time (maybe never). North Beach is densely populated, and a popular destination for tourists, who can often be heard yelling and generally whooping it up on weekends. You don't have to worry as much about the hours of stores and cafes there. In the past, this contrast has provoked a sigh of relief from me upon returning to this side of the bay, but I imagine I'll get used to it, and even like it. Just another phase of life, I suppose.

Hooray for Zinfandel

Last night, my sweetie, a couple friends and I drank a bottle of 1997 Turley Black-Sears Zinfandel over dinner at Jojo. It didn't really match most of the meal, since we all perversely ordered seafood, but it was fantastically yummy. (I'd also brought a 1998 Beringer Sbragia Chardonnay, but we wanted what we wanted, even if it didn't match the food.) The wine still had that edgy blackberry fruit that it did when I tasted the barrel sample in 1998, but it had softened, rounded, and evolved that caramel-like flavor of a nicely mature wine. I was very happy about it, both to drink the wine, and to share it with friends who had not tasted something like that before.

We discussed Jared Diamond's _Collapse_ in the midst of that gustatory delight. Where will we be in a few years when oil demand meets oil production capacity? What will come of our efforts to do good in the world when many things that are cheap become expensive? Where do luxury zinfandel and grilled halibut fit into such a life? How does that affect our enjoyment of them now?

It's in the mail

This afternoon, I finally submitted for publication the first paper to come out of my thesis work. (I graduated in May, 2000.) It's a milestone (or millstone) of sorts, one that has been very heavy and not moved much until the last year or so. It turned out that I had to sit down with my advisor and walk him through the work, with him writing the paper bit by bit in a way made sense to him. What still puzzles me is why it came to that. It's not that hard, and he's a much smarter man than I am. Anyway, at least now he does understand it and thinks its good, interesting work, and he's happy to start writing the next paper, to be published in a different journal with a different audience. And we still get along. I do wonder, though, if he had been involved and supportive while I was actually working on it, whether I'd be a professor now, and whether I'd be happy about it.

Springtime Amanitas

This last week I've found three species of Amanitas, two new to me. Last Saturday, on the Berkeley campus, I found what I think was a single A. velosa. Since there was only one, and it looked plausibly like the deadly A. phalloides, I didn't eat it. Then Sunday, around Lake Merritt, there was a cluster of A. novinupta coming up. Took one home to ID, and, since it's not rated highly, I didn't eat it either. Then, Wednesday, while I was walking in downtown Oakland, I was nearly overrun by a rather abundant fruiting of A. pantherina, some really beautiful mushrooms. Maybe I will eat those one day if I'm feeling overly curious and masochistic. Amanitas everywhere, but not a bite to eat.