tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11752190920006279192024-02-18T21:12:11.699-08:00Southern BuddhistArlynda Lee Boyerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09591766207328476713noreply@blogger.comBlogger13125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1175219092000627919.post-10404364023301478972011-05-21T10:56:00.000-07:002011-05-21T13:09:19.878-07:00Some Thoughts on the Rapture That Wasn'tWhy is it that we seem so enthralled by the idea of total destruction? After all, aren't all the jokes and media coverage and Facebook comments about the so-called rapture today really hiding a half-wish that maybe it <i>will</i> really happen, that maybe after today life will be non-stop exciting, even if that excitement is also terrifying?<div><br /></div><div>I can't even count all the movies and television shows that get off on the imagined destruction of major American cities: there's the History Channel's <i>Life Without People</i>, movies like <i>The Day After Tomorrow</i> and<i> Independence Day</i> and <i>Battle L.A.</i> and so on. Even the Weather Channel gets into the genre with <i>It Could Happen Tomorrow</i>. </div><div><br /></div><div>I had thought after September 11 that we would have had enough of seeing landmarks leveled and the dead, burned bodies and grief that necessarily accompany such events. But apparently not -- the real carnage caused barely a temporary let-up in the imagined carnage.</div><div><br /></div><div>Some pundits say it's because we can't find much meaning in our time or even in ourselves: we don't seem capable of being the Greatest Generation; maybe all we can be good at is being the last. If that's the case, then this popular desire to witness our own destruction is linked to the modern epidemic of depression -- co-incidence becomes correlation.</div><div><br /></div><div>Is it Thanatos, the Freudian death drive? In that explanation, the death drive is the necessary opposite of Eros, the sex/survival instinct. Sex is so hyped and over-ripe in our culture that I suppose it makes sense that there would emerge an equally hyped, equally overblown desire for oblivion. Then all those glossy magazine ads of perfect boobs, using sex to sell everything, have found their fitting partner.</div><div><br /></div><div>Is it a desire to return to a pre-modern Eden, a world less choked by cheap plastic crap, and a sense that the only way to do that will have to be a catastrophic break with modernity? Say hello to the environmental movement.</div><div><br /></div><div>Hell, is it just boredom? Are we so jaded and bored with this entire amazing, beautiful world that we love to see it destroyed?</div><div><br /></div><div>I think it's all of these and more. Ideas become successful because they tap something deep within us, and this temporary obsession with the rapture draws on links with all of these ideas. I think it also draws on fear. We rehearse mentally the things that most scare us, so that if they ever happen, we'll know exactly how to react (at least that's what we tell ourselves). We're rehearsing this rapture mentally for the same reason we see horror movies and watch the TV shows and movies about destruction -- we're rehearsing our own deaths. We have so removed real, intimate, grief-filled death from our culture that we're terrified of one thing that will happen to all of us. What is Christianity about, ultimately, but finding a back door way to avoid death? We'll all live forever, raptured so as to avoid that whole messy dying business, and spend eternity -- it doesn't really matter how we spend eternity. The worship and communion with God part isn't the point, psychologically speaking. The point is that we'll exist, forever, without having to die.</div><div><br /></div><div>But, as a scholar studying the religions of India noted, death isn't the opposite of life. It's merely the opposite of birth. I don't literally believe in the Hindu/Buddhist idea of reincarnation, but the idea of it pleases me aesthetically. We die over and over and over -- no big deal. Death is merely the opening to another incarnation, another chance to get it right, another chance to get smarter and kinder.</div><div><br /></div><div>Our interest in today's bogus rapture, and in our conflicted but seemingly unquenchable thirst for annihilation, is linked to everything in our modern culture: sex, plastic crap, depression and a kind of generational low self-esteem, movies that feed and shape our obsessions even as they reflect them back to us, boredom, and ultimately death.</div><div><br /></div><div>Susan Sontag said, "The fear of becoming old" [and I would say that the fear of death is even truer here] "is born of the recognition that one is not living now the life that one wishes. It is equivalent to a sense of abusing the present." So stop worrying about (or hoping for) the rapture. Start living the life you wish, and maybe if we all do that then destruction will start to look a lot less attractive.</div>Arlynda Lee Boyerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09591766207328476713noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1175219092000627919.post-16505342777169951812010-07-05T14:26:00.000-07:002010-07-05T15:19:49.625-07:00Thinking About SuicideI have been thinking about suicide lately -- about despair, oblivion, self-blame, and about all the alternatives for those feelings.<br /><br />Without violating <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_0" class="blsp-spelling-error">anyone's</span> privacy but my own, I am one of the loved ones left behind after a suicide. In fact, that has been one of the two or three most pivotal events of my life, and one of the most important forces in shaping my destiny. And somehow, I seem to have known or known of several other suicides -- more, it seems to me, than the average person. I have known personally three other suicides, and known of at least three others. Is it common to know over half a dozen suicides before one is forty? I don't think so, but there it is.<br /><br />My husband has described the idea of heaven as "we're so important we couldn't <em>possibly</em> just disappear when we die!" My response to that was that the idea of my consciousness going on forever, eternally self-aware, has begun to sound to me somewhat horrifying. I can't imagine the sheer exhaustion of always having to exist in some form. That exhaustion is why people want out of the world, he said, particularly the illusory world.<br /><br />Buddhism, I should say, argues that this world is essentially an illusion. It is real, but also empty of ultimate reality. Ultimate reality, they teach, is beyond meaning, beyond words, beyond concepts. It is the limitless resting in the now, all <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_1" class="blsp-spelling-error">awarenesses</span> merged in contemplation of the limitless eternal moment. As I explained in my book, Buddhists call this world <em><span id="SPELLING_ERROR_2" class="blsp-spelling-error">samsara</span></em>, and I've already sort of addressed it in earlier posts. But the key element of <em><span id="SPELLING_ERROR_3" class="blsp-spelling-error">samsara</span></em> is that it is indeed an illusion. Fundamentally, it is the illusion that we are all separate beings, that what hurts you does not hurt me, and vice <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_4" class="blsp-spelling-error">versa</span>. As <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_5" class="blsp-spelling-error">Thich</span> <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_6" class="blsp-spelling-error">Nhat</span> <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_7" class="blsp-spelling-error">Hanh</span> says, "We are here to awaken from the illusion of our separateness."<br /><br />Tragically, this illusion of separateness is exactly what the suicide cannot overcome. They do not know that their pain is as wide as humanity, or that others, even strangers, would reach out compassionately to them in a heartbeat if only they knew of the suffering in the suicide's heart.<br /><br />At the same time, I suspect that exhaustion and wanting out of the illusory world are exactly what many suffering people see as a reason for suicide. In the West, certainly, if you go to a doctor and say that you want out of the illusory world, you will leave his office with a prescription for some strong anti-depressants. Would you be surprised that in the East, such a comment would be handled rather differently?<br /><br />In the East, Buddhist practitioners see this frustration, exhaustion, impatience, etc., as the very beginning of spiritual practice. As long as you are comfortable in the world, they say, you will have no strong impetus to practice. It is when you have struggled with the world's pain and its illusions and you have found no answer and simply want to rip down the curtain that keeps you from understanding, <em>that</em> is the moment you have begun the spiritual journey. That is when you should reach out to any spiritual tradition that speaks to your heart (absolutely any, no limitations) and begin to work your hardest with those texts and those messages. Because that is the moment that you are ready to see the truth in the great wisdom traditions.<br /><br />I wonder, sadly, if any of the suicides I know were aware that they might have been not in despair, but at the door of a great breakthrough. They would have had to marshal all their inner resources to hang on through the study, but they were there. The exhaustion with life, they were there. The desire to violently cut through all the illusions and bullshit, they were there. I write this because if anyone ever, in the evanescence of the web, stumbles across these words at the moment they need them, I want that person to know they have but to reach out to any compassionate person and to open the door to the breakthrough they have earned right down to their bones. They are not low, they are at the threshold of becoming a higher being, one who has struggled and earned the wisdom of survived pain.<br /><br />I especially suffer at the thought of suicides who were sexually abused. Again, not to violate <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_8" class="blsp-spelling-error">anyone's</span> privacy but my own, I have personal experience here too. Even when it doesn't rise to the level of self-murder, those who were sexually abused can practice a <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_9" class="blsp-spelling-error">living</span> suicide of the personality, drinking to addiction, being promiscuous but unfulfilled, cutting, and otherwise destroying themselves. I suffer with their pain because they continue abusing themselves after the abuser leaves off. They can go on for years abusing themselves, because it is the only familiar feeling they know. Somewhere inside them I want to believe is the same bit of righteous anger that was inside me, the same voice that says to their abuser -- and NOT to themselves, "This is wrong. YOU are wrong. Not me, you."<br /><br />To those women -- my sisters -- I want to say, the baggage that you carry is not yours. It is crushing you, but it is not yours. You are being made to carry it because the person who deserves it refuses to. Don't do his suffering for him. And don't adopt his cruelty toward yourself. If you can't find the righteous anger to defend yourself from your own behaviors (really just residue of his), find the righteous anger you would feel if you saw an animal being hurt, or some other wrong you can't abide. Never, ever take on someone <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_10" class="blsp-spelling-error">else's</span> pain for them. If they try to put their evil onto your body, know that once you're grown you can give it back. It never took root in you, it only rested on your skin. You have an inviolate, <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_11" class="blsp-spelling-error">unviolated</span> core. When one of these women dies, I suffer. She never had to take over the abuse. Her abuser's hands should never have hurt her, but above all, her own hands should no longer do so either.<br /><br />I know that for some people the despair is simply so great that all they seek is oblivion. I don't know if they can be helped, but if someone is still looking on the web, or still reading an extremely obscure blog, they are not yet ready for oblivion.<br /><br />So when I say that I too find the idea of existing forever exhausting, I take this not as depression or despair but as the doorway to practice. I take it as a sign that I am ready to stop the surface way of living and begin to look deeper (I'm ready to leave the Matrix). I'm tired of the shallows and ready for the depths, which are paradoxically also the heights of understanding.<br /><br />I often sign off with "<span id="SPELLING_ERROR_12" class="blsp-spelling-error">namaste</span>." I think this time I should write out the full meaning of that word. It means:<br /><br />The part of me that is divine sees the part of you that is divine, and I bow in honor and recognition of your divinity.Arlynda Lee Boyerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09591766207328476713noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1175219092000627919.post-76611289768270876122010-05-30T22:04:00.001-07:002010-05-31T22:40:27.462-07:00Another Mad Orgy of ReadingY'know, I should just admit that reading frenzies aren't something that happen to me; they're something I do to myself. I mean, once is an anomaly, twice is a coincidence, but three times is frankly a self-driven habit, right?<br /><br />I'm selling off a good bit of my personal library on Amazon -- books I've read, books I haven't gotten around to reading although I've owned them for fifteen years, etc. Those I've read and loved are not up for sale. They're moved into a permanent library of "keepers." But the rest can go, to make room -- and money -- for newer books and more recent interests.<br /><br />But, when a book I haven't read sells, I decide on the spot whether or not I want to read it after all. If I do, then I drop everything and read it, because Amazon requires books to be shipped out within a couple of days of selling. And it somehow seems that when I put a few boxes' worth of books up at a time, then there is always a sudden run on just those books, out of all my inventory. I imagine that's some hidden intricacy of Amazon software, but who knows?<br /><br />That confluence of circumstances -- the tendency to have a run of sales and my tendency to decide to read the book after it sells -- led to me engaging in another mad feat of reading, knocking off thirteen books (two of them upward of 500 pages!) in seven days. With just three weeks left before I move to Florida to start grad school, that brings me to forty books read this year.<br /><br />A couple of posts ago, I listed the dozen or so I'd read as of that date, and singled out a few. I really should also have singled out <em>Oryx and Crake</em>, by Margaret Atwood. Not only was it the only one of the group that I pushed on my husband to read, but it has stuck with both of us for a while now, always a mark of a good book. I slighted her because I hadn't really enjoyed <em>The Handmaid's Tale</em> as much. I found that too strident, even for me as a feminist. But in the twenty years between the two books, Atwood got much smoother and more subtle in working her themes into the story. I slighted <em>Oryx and Crake</em> because I had a bad taste in my mouth from <em>The Handmaid's Tale</em>, then, but <em>Oryx and Crake</em> is actually really engaging.<br /><br />That teeny-weeny insult to Margaret Atwood corrected (I'm sure her life was on hold waiting to see that), what I knocked off in one week and shipped out to hopefully happy new owners follows:<br /><br /><ul><li><em>The Happiness Trap, Russ Harris</em>: a self-help book about Acceptance and Commitment Therapy</li><li><em>Anger: Wisdom for Cooling the Flames</em>, Thich Nhat Hanh: always a wise, wonderful writer</li><li><em>Sally Hemings & Thomas Jefferson</em>, Jan Ellen Lewis and Peter Onuf, Editors: this book was outstanding. It is the only one I regretted letting go, and I immediately put another copy in my Amazon cart because I'm buying it again and this time it's going into my keeper library. This is a collection of essays by major historians on the event of the DNA tests that proved that Jefferson fathered at least the youngest, and probably all, of Sally Hemings' children.</li><li><em>Acedia & Me</em>, Kathleen Norris: a memoir of spiritual malaise, suffering, and seeking</li><li><em>Citizens</em>, Simon Schama: his 875-page history of the French Revolution. Da noiv of that buyer! Making me read my own book! An outrage, I tells ya. But three days for this was a push and then some. Sorry, Simon, it was good in the beginning and good in the end, but I admit to skimming in the middle 300 pages or so.</li><li><em>Mr. Jefferson's Women</em>, Jon Kukla: yes, there's a pattern here. I live forty miles from Monticello, and was once offered a job there.</li><li><em>Spook Country</em>, William Gibson: since I don't read much fiction, this was one of my husband's books he wanted to sell. Okay, but I liked <em>Snowcrash</em> better</li><li><em>Certain Trumpets</em>, Garry Wills: his book about the qualities of leaders and their anti-types. I'm not a fan of Wills, I think. I read every word of this book and of all the books on this list, I remember and care the least about this one.</li><li><em>The Burgermeister's Daughter</em>, Stephen Ozment: an incident from a dysfunctional family in medieval Germany. A bestseller when I bought it in the 1990s.</li><li><em>Coming to Our Senses</em>, Jon Kabat-Zinn: about his Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction program. Could have been shorter than its 600-page length.</li><li><em>A Distant Mirror</em>, Barbara Tuchman: another big one, a history of the 14th Century</li><li><em>Japanese Death Poems</em>, Yoel Hoffmann: about the practice of composing a short (by necessity!) poem in the waning moments of one's life. Monks practiced this the most, but samurai, poets, and many other members of the literate nobility did as well. There are some several wonderful poems in the book, but I copied those down and then sent the book off happily, glad to have them but also glad that someone else will have them.</li><li><em>The World without Us</em>, Alan Weisman: this book inspired the History Channel's <em>Life Without People</em> series. It's a great book that wears its astounding research and scholarship lightly. It makes you look at the world differently.</li></ul><br />I had shipped the previous load of orders out the previous Monday, and I shipped all of these books out on Monday, so I read them all in exactly seven days. After that, I took a week off from so much as looking at a book. But I've since read ten more, albeit at a much more leisurely pace. The best of that batch was <em>Hamlet without Hamlet</em>, by Margreta de Grazia. I checked that one out from the Mary Baldwin College library, and I absolutely must own it someday soon. It looks at how <em>Hamlet </em>criticism approached the play before the post-modern emo brooder view took over. Since that viewpoint has had a stranglehold on <em>Hamlet </em>criticism for a century, a book that's all about other ways to see the play is refreshing. Moreover, de Grazia seems incredibly brilliant -- there were so many sentences in the book that bore such astonishingly new insights that each one could have been unpacked into a chapter, and moreover each of these sentences scattered like diamonds on the ground sparked off new thoughts in my own mind.<br /><br />So that was my mad orgy of reading. I also wanted to mention an observation casually made by a friend about language.<br /><br />Like de Grazia, my friend Andrew is also brilliant. Every time we have dinner with him, he tosses off something wise and insightful that amazes me, and I'm always left with the sneaking suspicion that I've made a fool of myself in his presence. [Luckily, he likes me anyway, I think!]<br /><br />Andrew, like his brother, tutors teens for the SAT and such tests. Last time he observed that the tendency of "these kids today" to live their whole lives online, tweeting and Facebooking every thought (even such thoughts as "I'm about to throw up" and "I really like anal," as proven by the hilarious Failbook) has created a generation that may not value privacy much, but has got to be the most honest and least prejudiced generation he has ever seen. As he noted, when every thought is public and can be checked and pulled up from archives, there is no upside in lying. And when you are raised knowing that certain thoughts are racist or bigoted and are viewed with disgust by most people, <em>and</em> you are of the generation that has zero sense of privacy, you simply don't have those thoughts. Since they would open you to ridicule, and since you don't even know how to keep them to yourself, you simply can't create the kind of compartmentalization necessary to have them and not reveal them. So you just reject those thoughts.<br /><br />The most recent dinner we had with Andrew, we were discussing how the web is changing English. I don't like to be a grammar cop, so I overlook the tendency of people to confuse "there," "their," and "they're," or "its" and "it's." But then one day I realized, I can't even make those mistakes by accident. Even when I find myself starting to type the wrong word, my pinky is tapping the backspace key before my brain has even consciously registered the mistake. What I said to Andrew was this: the meaning of each word is so different that they are not the same word at all to me. They're three totally unrelated words. I could no more confuse them than I could type "ham sandwich" when what I meant was "hacksaw."<br /><br />Ah, said the wise Andrew G., that's because for you they are visual words. Your experience of language and grammar comes largely via the printed page. [Certainly true.] And <em>printed</em>, they are totally unrelated words, as well as by meaning. But most people now relate to language only as it's spoken, not as it's written. And <em>aurally</em>, they are the same word. And since rules of grammar are invisible aurally, the words, their meanings, and the rules for using them correctly get mashed together into one undifferentiated blob.<br /><br />Being such a reader by nature, I had never thought about it that way before, but of course he's right. So when you want to be a grammar cop, just remind yourself that the person who made the mistake knows the words aurally rather than visually. It doesn't make them any less wrong, but it does make the error slightly less annoying.<br /><br />I've already said that precision in language and thought are deeply important to me. I can bring this all around in a big circle by adding that this is not only a philosophy of language that I share with George Orwell, but one that I also share with the Buddha. Two of the greatest qualities in a practicing Buddhist are extreme honesty with oneself and others, and incisive precision in viewing oneself and the world. These are elements of Right View, Right Mindfulness, and Right Speech, three elements of the Eightfold Path that is the foundation of Buddhist practice. For me, good writing is inseparable from Buddhism. To lie, to make mistakes, and to be logically fuzzy are all obviously off that path. In making such mistakes, I betray not only my intellect, but my spirit as well. Maybe that's why I've found nearly all Buddhist writing to be above the average, because whether they articulate it or not, other Buddhist writers feel the same way.<br /><br />In that vein, and with credit given to Yoel Hoffmann's fine book <em>Japanese Death Poems</em>, I will leave you with several poems from that volume. Namaste!<br /><br /><br /><br />Those who are dead<br />increase from day to day --<br />in such a world<br />how could I think<br />that when it came to me ...<br /><br />---<br /><br />I thought to live<br />two centuries or even three --<br />Yet here comes death<br />to me, a child<br />just eighty-five years old!<br /><br />---<br /><br />Empty-handed I entered the world<br />barefoot I leave it.<br />My coming, my going --<br />two simple happenings<br />that got entangled.<br /><br />---<br /><br />No sign<br />in the cicada's song<br />that it will soon be gone.<br /><br />---<br /><br />Spitting blood<br />clears up reality<br />and dream alike.<br /><br />---<br /><br />Raizan has died<br />to pay for the mistake<br />of being born:<br />for this he blames no one<br />and bears no grudge.<br /><br />---<br /><br />Moon in a barrel:<br />You never know just when<br />the bottom will fall out.<br /><br />---<br /><br />I cast the brush aside --<br />from here on I'll speak to the moon<br />face to face.Arlynda Lee Boyerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09591766207328476713noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1175219092000627919.post-8421247170799131192010-05-11T14:56:00.000-07:002010-05-12T01:36:44.695-07:00Eek! I'm a "Professor!"No sooner did I post the last blog about writing than I discovered that I'm going to Florida State University for grad school. That's great, because I'll be working with Gary Taylor, who has a worldwide reputation in Shakespeare studies. Plus, I got a full scholarship and a stipend. Also great, right?<br /><br />Then they tell me that the financial deal is in exchange for me teaching two Freshman Comp writing courses and that I have to be in Tallahassee June 28 to learn how to teach.<br /><br />Yipes! I've guest-lectured before, but I thought I'd have years before actually having to teach a class of my own. After my initial panic, though, I'm excited about the idea. And I realized that I've got a lot to say on the subject of good writing, because for me good writing is inseparable from good thinking and good living.<br /><br />As I said last time, I am an ardent supporter of George Orwell's claim that precision in language is vital because precision in language is the outward sign of precision in thought, and precision in thought gives us our political freedoms, our morals, and all our higher thoughts. Vagueness, sloppiness, imprecision, or fuzziness in thought spills over into language, but worse, it spills over into life. Language is the primary means by which we negotiate our presence in the world. It matters, a lot.<br /><br />Besides precision, what I hope to teach the unfortunate souls who will be my first students are <em>breadth</em> and <em>depth</em> in language.<br /><br />Breadth in language, because the right nuance makes all the difference. Happiness is not the same as joy; joy is not the same as contentment; contentment is not the same as ecstasy. Striking the right nuance allows for insight, allows the writer to create finely shaded portraits of characters whose words and actions stay true to their fictitious selves. Miss three or four nuances in a row and instead the writing is just galumphing around without direction, or with three or four directions at once.<br /><br />I could offer a thousand examples here: "Let not the bloat king tempt you to bed" from <em>Hamlet</em>. What a word choice -- "bloat"! It's magnificent, a single syllable packed with a dozen notions of disgust, sleaze, sensuality, weakness, decay, hatred, even putrefaction. "Fat," though nominally a synonym, does virtually nothing here. Switch words and you go from an unforgettable line to an unmemorable one.<br /><br />The wall calendar a few feet away from me right now features Edward Gorey's poem <em>The Doubtful Guest</em>, and the couplet for May is "It betrayed a great liking for peering up flues, / And for peeling the soles of its white canvas shoes." Even in a comic poem about an imaginary creature, look at the difference in character between "betrayed" (revealed in spite of itself) and possible alternatives "revealed," "displayed" or simply "showed" (if one ignores meter). Gorey's word choice supports all the rest of the poem about this enigmatic, moody, vaguely disturbing -- but still child-like and innocent -- creature, as opposed to one that is ostentatious or transparent. I hope to encourage my students to develop as broad and rich a vocabulary as they can so that they can command the full breadth of language.<br /><br /><br />But my favorite thing about language has to be its depth. I am transported with delight when I see an author use a word in such a way that it is the only possible word in all of English that could have been used in that spot. Here are three of my favorite examples:<br /><br /><br />A Sappho fragment translated by Anne Carson (a poet in her own right) runs like this:<br /><br /><blockquote>Evening<br />You gather back<br />All that dazzling dawn put asunder:<br />You gather<br />a lamb<br />Gather a kid<br />Gather a child to its mother</blockquote><br /><br />A beautiful, peaceful image, but Carson's choice of the word "kid" could not have been any other word. By meaning both juvenile goat and human child, she links the agricultural image of lamb to the familial image of mother in the two surrounding lines. "Kid" is the fulcrum on which the line pivots. "Piglet," "duckling," "chick" "toddler," "teenager," -- none of those would have worked with such symmetry. Only "kid" could have worked there to smoothly transition from daytime farm work to evenings around the hearth, from generic generational to personally loving and familial. "Kid" is a what I would call a depth word, one that has two meanings equally important to the poem.<br /><br /><br />My second example is from pop culture. One of my favorite '80s bands is Pet Shop Boys. Their bouncy synthesized music formed a catchy, ironic contrast to their usually downbeat lyrics (example: the infinitely danceable, hummable ditty called "What Have I Done to Deserve This?")<br /><br /><br />Their early song "Rent" is about a poor lover kept by a rich one (genders seem unimportant to Pet Shop Boys -- I've listened to the song for years and couldn't begin to guess at which partner is supposed to be which gender). The song is endlessly ambiguous, aggressively ambiguous, and ambiguous in layers that keep folding over one another. While a background chorus coos enticingly, "It's so easy," the singer narrates all the expensive goodies the relationship provides -- dinner off Broadway, caviar, shopping, a bill-free existence -- yet the refrain goes,<br /><br /><blockquote>Look at my hopes, look at my dreams,<br />The currency we've spent<br />I love you<br />You pay my rent.<br /></blockquote><br /><br />Again, "currency" is the only word that can carry the meanings of both cash and more intangible things of value. Cowrie shells are a form of currency because they are valued, but they are not the coinage and paper that "cash" suggests. Because it carries both meanings, it refers both to the expensive toys and to the hopes and dreams. In the penumbra of related words, it even has a triple meaning -- current as in time. The singer's youth is yet another item that has been spent. A great depth word. "Money" there would have lost more than half the meanings in the line, even though it's the most obvious surface synonym.<br /><br /><br />My last favorite example of depth in writing, of course, has to come from Shakespeare. Sonnet 87 is not an easy sonnet for novices to read. It uses the language of finance to talk about love, and not only finance but 17<span id="SPELLING_ERROR_0" class="blsp-spelling-error">th</span>-Century Elizabethan finance. Many terms are now hard for casual readers to understand. But just let the general sense of the sonnet's meaning wash over you. Only clarification/reminder: "dear" is British for "expensive," as it still is today.<br /><br /><blockquote><p>Farewell! thou are too dear for my possessing,<br />And like enough thou <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_1" class="blsp-spelling-error">know'st</span> thy estimate,<br />The charter of thy worth gives thee releasing;<br />My bonds in thee are all determinate.<br />For how do I hold thee but by thy granting?<br />And for that riches where is my deserving?<br />The cause of this fair gift in me is wanting,<br />And so my patent back again in swerving.<br />Thy self thou <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_2" class="blsp-spelling-error">gavest</span>, thy own worth then not knowing,<br />Or me to whom thou <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_3" class="blsp-spelling-error">gav'st</span> it else mistaking;<br />So thy great gift, upon misprision growing,<br />Comes home again, on better judgment making.<br />Thus have I had thee, as a dream doth flatter,<br />In sleep a king, but waking no such matter.</p><p><br /></p></blockquote><br />First, <em>oh!</em>, how much of a heart-breaker is that final couplet? It gets me every time; sometimes it brings tears to my eyes. Rue, chagrin, and ever so slight bitterness, all subsumed under such lost, utter hopelessness.<br /><br /><br />But the depth word for me is "wanting." <em>Only</em> "wanting" can mean both "lacking," its surface meaning here, and "desiring," the depth meaning. "The cause of this fair gift in me is wanting": I lack the qualities that would allow me to deserve the gift of your love. But also: my desire, my passion, drove this relationship, but now you've realized that you deserve better and the relationship is over. My wanting couldn't overcome my wanting.<br /><br /><br />The usual gloss on this sonnet is that it concludes a cycle in which the poet loves a Fair Youth who is stolen from him by the Dark Lady. Of all the words at his disposal and all of his facility -- and felicity -- with words, only one word here works both themes of desire and loss, and Shakespeare unerringly nails it. It's exhilarating to come across such a fine use of language, no matter the author or the context.<br /><br /><br />As usual, I'm running on long with my usual <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_4" class="blsp-spelling-error">logorrhea</span>. I meant to talk about how the Web is changing language, but I'll save that until next time. <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_5" class="blsp-spelling-error">Namaste</span>!Arlynda Lee Boyerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09591766207328476713noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1175219092000627919.post-67835957631678988092010-04-12T16:16:00.000-07:002010-04-12T17:16:43.837-07:00And Now It's Time For ... A Bit About Writing!If you've read my book, you saw that coming, since two early chapters were "A Bit About NASCAR" and "A Bit About Buddhism." Anyway, doing book publicity seems to have revealed a nation full of aspiring writers. Even though this is my one and only book, on a weird topic, and not selling well, I still get asked for writing and publishing tips every time.<br /><br /><br />I don't have any publishing tips, I tell people, because the publishers came to me and asked me to write a book. That's certainly not going to be a common occurrence for most people. However, if your writing is (or could be) in the form of an essay, you definitely should take a tip from me.<br /><br /><br />As it happens, I knew a staffer at my local NPR station, but local radio people are <em>not</em> hard to meet. On the contrary, they're friendly, bright, and dying to find something new, wonderful, and compelling to put on the air. I gave my essay to my friend and asked if she thought it was good enough to record for NPR. She thought it was, and the rest is history. If your writing is good enough, your local station almost certainly has a program where local people talk for a few minutes about something that interests them. Ours is called "Civic Soapbox," but it can be about any topic you like. Make it compelling, and it will air, simple as that. My essay got uploaded to the national NPR chain and aired nationwide, but even if yours airs locally you can still go around saying that you have been a guest commentator on NPR, and that's pretty cool in itself.<br /><br /><br />I have three good pieces of advice about writing. Not a bit of it is originally mine. I blatantly stole it and now I'm fencing it to you. I have found virtually nothing in the whole industry of writing advice books that was useful, compared to these two essays and one simple quote. Follow these rules and you will probably never need any other advice at all.<br /><br /><br />The first is from George Orwell. My history professor, mentor, and friend Justus Doenecke handed this essay out the first day of class to all his students. It taught us not only how we were expected to write, but how we were expected to <em>think</em> -- with rigor and clarity.<br /><br />Orwell lists only six succinct rules:<br /><br /><ol><li>Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech you are used to seeing in print.</li><li>Never use a long word where a short one will do.</li><li>If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.</li><li>Never use the passive where you can use the active.</li><li>Never use a foreign word or jargon phrase where you can use an everyday English equivalent.</li><li>Break any of these rules short of saying something outright barbarous.</li></ol><br />This is great writing advice, but the real beauty of Orwell's essay is in his philosophy of language. I believe with him that as much as our thoughts shape our language, our language also shapes our thoughts. I agree with this unreservedly. If our language is habitually filled with "I can't," we come to think of ourselves as helpless. If it's filled with "I hate," then our thoughts turn to hate habitually even in new situations, and we think of the world as full of enemies and hateful things.<br /><br /><br />But for Orwell this extended most importantly to politics. If we use sloppy, lazy speech, our thoughts become sloppy and lazy. We become less able to cut through rhetoric to smell the bullshit underneath. And if our political thinking becomes sloppy and lazy, then our freedom is vulnerable. We risk becoming confused and seeking a way out of the confusion of jargon, rhetoric, and convoluted speech by flocking to a strongman with simple, violent slogans and simple, violent actions.<br /><br /><br />Here's the full Orwell essay, a magnificent piece of writing in itself and some of the best writing advice you will ever get: <a href="http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm">http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm</a> If there is nothing else you take away from the essay, at least take the idea that there is nothing so important as precision in language and thought. Language and thought are how we define the world, so precision matters.<br /><br /><br />The second piece of writing advice comes from my former employer (and another mentor and friend) Ralph Cohen, an English professor of over thirty years. Much of his advice follows Orwell, but as a guide to writing college papers especially, Ralph's advice can't be beat. He adds:<br /><br /><ol><li>Care about the paper you write. Imagine it in a book entitled <em>The Works of [Your Name]</em>.</li><li>Make the transitions between your sentences and your paragraphs clear and logical. This task is the most difficult in writing, but out of difficulty we find invention.</li><li>Do not hedge. Words like "maybe," "perhaps," and "might" do not keep you from being wrong; they merely alert the reader to the fact that you are worried about it.</li><li>Write about works of art in the present tense, since Hamlet will be stabbing Polonius and the asp will be nibbling on Cleopatra's breast long after your grandchildren have forgotten your name.</li><li>Lose the word "very" from your written vocabulary, do not use "transition" or "impact" as verbs, and only use an exclamation mark after the happy face you scrawl on the bill you give diners.</li><li>Never write more than required. Remember what Donne can say in a 14-line sonnet.</li></ol><br />The full collection of Ralph's Rules is here. If you know him personally, the examples he gives about arrogant professors are all the funnier: <a href="http://www.americanshakespearecenter.com/v.php?pg=184">http://www.americanshakespearecenter.com/v.php?pg=184</a><br /><br /><br />And the last, best piece of writing advice I've ever seen comes from W.H. Auden: have something to say. Perhaps this is ultimately the underlying idea of my comments on "small" fiction. The best technique in the world doesn't matter if you really don't have much to say, if you're writing just to be a writer, just to be famous or rich. The "large" fiction I like came from writers who had ideas burning their way out of the writers' pens. Keats wrote knowing that he was dying of tuberculosis. What he said had to matter, or he would have wasted his very limited time in saying it. NASCAR and Buddhism may not matter to many people, but they matter to me. So Auden's advice, which came as a comment to the students who packed his famous lectures on Shakespeare, is this:<br /><br /><blockquote>People say, for example, "I want to write," though nothing ever gets<br />written. Why? First, they're mistaken about writing. They<br />aren't specific: they say they want to "be a writer," not that they want to<br />"write such and such." The eye is on the result, not on the process, and<br />behind that is a lack of passion and of the willingness to go through the hard<br />stages of training and study. You must be in love with your work, not your<br />self.<br /></blockquote>Arlynda Lee Boyerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09591766207328476713noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1175219092000627919.post-91227896015892066072010-04-02T17:16:00.000-07:002010-04-02T18:36:48.453-07:00A Bit About ReadingOMG, a new blog post! I know, I'm terribly inconsistent about updating this thing. I'll try to improve.<br /><br /><br />First, an update on <em>Buddha on the Backstretch</em>. Since my lecture in California at the end of January, I've done a couple of radio interviews about it and two public readings, one for a local writers' group and one for the Virginia Festival of the Book. The festival is a pretty big event, featuring nearly 150 public events, 200 authors, 33 publishers, and 20,000 total attendance. I read the essay at the back of the book, the one that became an NPR commentary, which the publisher heard, which led to him e-mailing me, which led to the book itself. It's called "How Dale Earnhardt Made Me a Better Buddhist," and I wrote it just after Earnhardt's 2001 death.<br /><br /><br />I was paired with two other sports writers, both far more veteran than I, including one who has authored or co-authored over sixty(!) books. After I read the essay, he said quietly, "I can see why an editor thought that needed to be a book -- that's something really special." That was deeply gratifying. I was also gratified (and surprised) that the bookstore where the event was held promptly sold all of the copies it had, and ever since, my Amazon sales have been plugging steadily along. It's still not exactly selling like hotcakes -- in fact, during the Q&A someone in the audience asked me, "Who's buying it, Buddhists or NASCAR fans?" and I said, "Honestly? Neither," which got a nice chuckle. But it looks like it does have good word of mouth -- the people who have read it are recommending it to others.<br /><br /><br />So that's where that stands. What was this blog about? Oh yeah, reading. The book's editor is a professor. When I spoke to his class, he emphasized that I had read over eighty books in six months for research -- and that while I was working full-time. Admittedly, that was kind of insane. I did nothing but work, eat, bathe, sleep, and read. I skipped weekend plans, stayed home from family events, stopped watching nearly all television (I saved three shows I knew I would actually miss, but cut everything else out), didn't go out to dinner ... nothing. I was a madwoman about reading three books a week, every week, nonstop, no exceptions.<br /><br /><br />That's over with now, but it let me know just how much I was capable of doing if I chose to buckle down and do it. So ever since then, I've held it in my mind that I'm capable of reading no less than a book a week, preferably two, and I'm aiming to do that consistently this year.<br /><br /><br />This all started a few years ago with a quote from Arthur Schopenhauer:<br /><br /><blockquote>"Buying books would be a good thing if one could also buy the time to read them<br />in; but as a rule the purchase of books is mistaken for the appropriation of<br />their contents."</blockquote><br /><br />Reading that stung me a little. I'd managed to build up a library of around 500 books, but an embarrassingly tiny number of them had actually been read. I determined the moment I read that quote to stop buying so many books and to start reading them. At the time, I had read about ten books in the previous year. At that rate, I realized, it would take fifty years to read just what I already owned, even if I purchased nothing for the next half-century!<br /><br /><br />Well, that was untenable, unsupportable, and outrageous, all the way around. Since my madwoman's peak would be 160 books a year, and even I'll admit that was a little crazy and exhausting, I decided that 50-100 books a year was quite achievable, and that starting this year, I would achieve it. [Obviously, I also achieved it two years ago, researching the book, and I knocked off quite a bit in 2009 -- more on that in a moment -- but I didn't count up last year's reading precisely.]<br /><br /><br />Last year, I decided to apply to grad school, and wound up doing another madwoman's feat. I planned to take the GRE Subject Test in English Literature. One problem: I never majored in English, or Literature, or any combination thereof. In fact, I took exactly <em>one</em> lit course in college. I was a history major instead.<br /><br /><br />No problem. I would simply read, in two months, four <em>Norton Anthologies</em> back to back. [To quote one lovely writer, I shall pause here to allow for reeling around and fainting.] If you remember your Norton from college, it was the 3,000-page brick in your backpack printed in teeny-weeny Eyestrain-o-Vision on onionskin paper. Undeterred in my apparent fit of temporary(?) insanity, I checked out the two-volume <em>Norton Anthology of British Literature</em>, the <em>Anthology of World Masterpieces</em>, and the <em>Anthology of American Literature, Vol. 2</em>. A grand total of over 11,000 pages of reading. Once again, I dropped all other projects, buckled down, and got it done. Two to three hundred pages a night, every night.<br /><br /><br />The upshot of this is that I think I might be pretty well qualified to make a few observations about reading. One, please do read the classics. My bout with the Nortons was quite often the first chance I'd had to read them (being a non-lit major after all). Once a book becomes a classic, we tend to think of it as "good for us," our "Vitamin L (as in literature)." We don't expect to <em>like</em> it.<br /><br /><br />But classics don't become classics because they're good for us. They become classics because they're a delight to read, the kind of book you finish and either start again or rush off to press it into the hands of your friends. I was swept away by so many of the classics. I never expected to <em>love</em> Milton's <em>Paradise Lost</em>, but I did. I loved Jonathan Swift's absurd but biting satire and Virginia Woolf's quietly fierce sisterhood. I loved everyone from Homer and Aeschylus to Hemingway and Margaret Atwood. I copied down whole chunks of Thomas Carlyle because I never wanted to forget it, along with Simone de Beauvoir and D.H. Lawrence.<br /><br /><br />Secondly, when you do read the classics, you realize how many allusions to them surround us. You might have vaguely known that something was a classical allusion, but it's a distinct pleasure to not only recognize it immediately but to savor the additional meaning that it gives to the work that alludes to it. <em>The Simpsons</em> is full of such allusions -- it's still a great show if you don't get them, but it's richer and deeper and often more poignant when you do. I'm currently reading <em>Tristram Shandy</em>, and it is a virtual encyclopedia of learning, so much so that it requires extensive footnotes to capture all of the references, allusions, jokes, and glances.<br /><br /><br />It's an observation only about my own reading that of my five hundred books, fewer than 20 of them (excluding Shakespeare, who is a category of his own with me) were fiction. I know I'm strange that way. I'm strange in many ways, but let's not digress...<br /><br /><br />Fiction usually makes me impatient. Somewhere in the course of the book, I'll say to myself, "These people don't exist! Why am I wasting hours on them?" It's the history training, but I find understanding more about the <em>Titanic</em> or the Holocaust or Reconstruction much more interesting than fiction. Histories are about how people reacted when pushed to the extremes of their lives -- what they did when war or death came to their doorstep or when they had lost everything. How they not only survived, but thrived. How they built the world I'm lucky enough to live in today. To me, that's compelling.<br /><br /><br />And I suppose that's a related issue of mine about fiction. I know I'm not alone here, because I've seen other critics say the same thing: fiction these days is so <em>small</em>. Mark Twain wrote to battle racism and stupidity, a David-versus-Goliath battle if there ever was one. Virginia Woolf wrote to be the "female Shakespeare." No setting small goals for herself there! Now, novels seem to all be essentially dressed-up romances -- dramas of the household, the tale of one family and its various problems. Well, I think Tolstoy is wrong when he says, "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." Too often, one modern novel about an unhappy family (or person) is exactly like another -- tiresome and self-indulgent. Or rather, Tolstoy may be right, but the books about them are not unique. And what do 5,000 novels about dysfunctional families give us? Virtually nothing of worth, nothing you can't get out of a self-help book, and nothing you probably can't observe on your own street. History, by definition, is large. Classics are always large. And I guess I like my fiction to be large.<br /><br /><br />That said, since tearing my way through the <em>Norton Anthologies</em>, which were mostly fiction that I loved, I have been reading more of it this year, although it's usually with an eye toward something I'm thinking about writing or an eye toward reading some classics that I missed. [By the way, the result of Mad Reading Scheme 2.0 was that despite being a non-lit major, I scored in the top ten percent on the Test of Literature in English, so I outscored 90% of presumed majors. Thanks, Norton!]<br /><br /><br />So far this year, I've read:<br /><br /><em>The Handmaid's Tale</em>, Margaret Atwood<br /><em>Oryx and Crake</em>, Margaret Atwood<br /><em>Snowcrash</em>, Neal Stephenson<br /><em>Curse of the Narrows</em>, Laura MacDonald (history)<br /><em>The Other Side of the Night</em>, Donald Butler (history)<br /><em>A Fellow of Infinite Jest</em>, Thomas Yoseloff (a biography of Laurence Sterne)<br /><em>Tristram Shandy</em>, Laurence Sterne<br /><em>The Bible</em>, Karen Armstrong<br /><em>The Gnostic Gospels</em>, Elaine Pagels<br /><em>God's Problem</em>, Bart Ehrman<br /><em>Too Many to Mourn</em>, James Mahar (history)<br /><em>Hooked</em>, Kaza (ed.) (Buddhism)<br /><em>Awake, </em>Dyia (ed.) (Buddhism)<br /><em>No Time to Lose</em>, Pema Chodron (Buddhism)<br /><br /><br />So far that's keeping me on track with my goal of reading 50-100 books this year. We'll see how grad school interferes with that plan. If I have the 50 knocked out by August, when school starts, maybe I'll just declare victory and dive into scholarly reading. Standouts on that list, by the way, are <em>Curse of the Narrows</em>, <em>The Other Side of the Night, </em>and <em>No Time to Lose</em>. I love reading Pema Chodron -- she's such a wise, warm, wonderful writer. The other two are both histories. The first is of the Halifax Explosion, which occurred when a munitions ship exploded in Halifax Harbor during World War I, and the other is about the night the <em>Titanic </em>sank and the two ships that were nearest to her and what they did -- and didn't -- do. All three are fantastic books that will stay with me for a long time. And that's really all I ask out of a good book.Arlynda Lee Boyerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09591766207328476713noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1175219092000627919.post-7526026647338257552010-01-24T13:58:00.000-08:002010-01-24T15:06:13.855-08:00More Mentions of Buddha on the BackstretchAs of tomorrow, I'm off to Los Angeles to lecture before a college class about <em>Buddha on the Backstretch</em>. It's a class taught by the book's editor, so it doesn't exactly mean that I'm suddenly a hot commodity on the lecture circuit. But it will be fun, and a lovely break from the East Coast winter.<br /><br />In the meantime, the book has earned a few more mentions. It's really gratifying to see them pop up now and again -- just today I found a blog entry and a tweet by another writer saying he was currently reading it and finding it "very interesting." His is a Buddhist blog, so I'll try to figure out how to link them.<br /><br />One of my favorite bits of press comes from Monte Dutton. Monte's covered NASCAR for many, many years and is a great guy who has become a friend. He said,<br /><br /><blockquote>Has there ever been a more off-beat topic for a book on NASCAR than <em>Buddha<br />on the Backstretch: The Spiritual Wisdom of Driving 200 MPH</em> (Macon, GA:<br />Mercer University Press, $27)? Honest to gosh, Arlynda Lee Boyer is both<br />"a race fan for most of her life" and "a practicing Buddhist for more than ten<br />years." The book offers "personal improvement via popular culture." <br />Perhaps a few championship contenders should read this book; perhaps it would<br />give them an edge Jimmie Johnson hasn't ever even thought about."</blockquote><br /><br /><em>Tricycle: The Buddhist Review</em> is, along with <em>Shambhala Sun</em>, one of the two largest Buddhism-related magazines in the world. They let their readers know where enlightenment comes along with the roar of engines:<br /><br /><blockquote>You don't normally think of Buddhists as NASCAR fans, but why not? <br />Arlynda Lee Boyer, a lifelong NASCAR aficionado, has been practicing Buddhism<br />for the past fifteen years. She tells <em>Auto Racing Daily</em> ("Where<br />you get your auto racing news") that she sees plenty of similarities between the<br />Buddha's teachings and the NASCAR lifestyle -- both NASCAR drivers and<br />Buddhists, she says, "have to live in the moment." She's even written a<br />book about it: <em>Buddha on the Backstretch: The Spiritual Wisdom of Driving<br />200 MPH.</em><br /></blockquote><br />Finally, <a href="http://www.jayski.com/">www.jayski.com</a>, the legendary and beloved NASCAR site, took quotes from the blurbs above to let still more fans know about the book.<br /><br />I'm considering whether or not to write a NASCAR-related follow-up book. I'm planning to start grad school in August, so timing is a big question. From NASCAR and Buddhism, I plan to plunge into a lengthy and intense study of Shakespeare.<br /><br />Ever since working at the American Shakespeare Center as a grantwriter, Shakespeare has been an interest of mine, particularly Shakespeare scholarship. Within the past 20 years, ASC's Blackfriars Playhouse has opened, Shakespeare's Globe in London has opened, and scholarship has emerged into Shakespeare's religious beliefs and how Elizabethan culture influenced his work. One could easily argue that this is the most exciting time in at least a century for Shakespeare scholarship.<br /><br />I hope to add to that by working on the source materials, the books, pamphlets, plays, etc., that provided sources for Shakespeare's plays. Much of that source material survives in the form of priceless antique books housed in museums and archives. I want to work on re-publishing it, so that scholars can have on their bookshelves some of the same books that Shakespeare would have had on his.<br /><br />This way, scholars can see not only what he used in his plays, but also what he read but did not use. They can compare the sources to see if there are patterns to Shakespeare's use of the material: did he consistently not use some things, or consistently change others, or consistently use some without change? Right now, this kind of research is not available. I hope to make some of these books available for the first time in 400 years, so that this research can be done.<br /><br />Now I've mentioned, at least in passing, some of the great passions of my life: NASCAR, Buddhism, Shakespeare, history, and I managed to work in a quote from my all-time favorite TV show, <em>Futurama</em>. Someday I'll manage to work in one of my favorite quotes from the show:<br /><br /><blockquote>"Listen, this is going to be one hell of a bowel movement. Afterward,<br />he'll be lucky if he has any <em>bones</em> left."<br /></blockquote><br />Hey, I did it!<br /><br />Until next time, live in the moment and don't believe everything you think.Arlynda Lee Boyerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09591766207328476713noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1175219092000627919.post-46280376120143389602009-12-23T14:51:00.000-08:002009-12-24T11:55:51.091-08:00SNOWPOCALYPSE!!!To quote Professor Hubert T. Farnsworth of <em>Futurama</em>, "Oh my, yes, it's the apocalypse all right. I always thought I'd have a hand in it." <br /><br />The Shenandoah Valley got its biggest snowstorm in the ten years I've lived here last weekend. Here are a few photos:<br /><div><div><div></div><div><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUV-6X6-iC2xC3Qwm81vzmC6YY87KcXm0tmhqe844-YUkwSf9cuwbdRxxRwHr59FIgPXI3kiiwifHeLY58x-Q009aMuxZmO7F3AMUaj7cCI24zx_ivOBFRjIP3l7WLrI4rmzLuH8wVMOLe/s1600-h/Snow+at+Night.JPG"><img style="MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 320px; FLOAT: left; HEIGHT: 240px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5418568722563951826" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUV-6X6-iC2xC3Qwm81vzmC6YY87KcXm0tmhqe844-YUkwSf9cuwbdRxxRwHr59FIgPXI3kiiwifHeLY58x-Q009aMuxZmO7F3AMUaj7cCI24zx_ivOBFRjIP3l7WLrI4rmzLuH8wVMOLe/s320/Snow+at+Night.JPG" /></a><br /></div><div>First, this is during the storm. It came down well over an inch an hour for the first several hours, so it piled up fast. In the front you can see the wrought-iron fence around our front yard. The gate section, the highest two points, hit me mid-thigh, and you can see how close they are to being buried. In the back you can barely make out my pickup truck, which I only finally got dug out today (Wednesday the 23rd).</div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWsyYh8a0N82olGwldxrmknyU0m2EmrPdYHIRoyVw0VG-dOha8sfxzv5FQUQOYie6uAeu3otbqaznwM5VrLmGEE5ehmBhkkIzGGGo8a4or-RQBcdUomYl_zyDPk_5nXiCdqtiBHDqXWhmL/s1600-h/Looking+Down+Stafford+in+Snow.JPG"></a></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiG931L4IAWmSRuNsqAX5fVkzdCKhwYp_gX-ivbGYlgy1_rdGTo7xDcsNLubXJh5bfLMxNe3Gned51SSk7MDT03u3zVUPWdMe5m33P1UZgtnM4w4nKcQjsX6PluIrAy5rEPo4dFn6NE1QYJ/s1600-h/Fence+Buried+in+Snow.JPG"><img style="MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 320px; FLOAT: left; HEIGHT: 240px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5418568717924862962" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiG931L4IAWmSRuNsqAX5fVkzdCKhwYp_gX-ivbGYlgy1_rdGTo7xDcsNLubXJh5bfLMxNe3Gned51SSk7MDT03u3zVUPWdMe5m33P1UZgtnM4w4nKcQjsX6PluIrAy5rEPo4dFn6NE1QYJ/s320/Fence+Buried+in+Snow.JPG" /></a><br /></div><div></div><div>This is the next day. That's the same high point of the fence, and behind it the enormous pile that built up from our shoveling the sidewalk.<br /><br /><br /></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div><br /></div><div></div><div></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWsyYh8a0N82olGwldxrmknyU0m2EmrPdYHIRoyVw0VG-dOha8sfxzv5FQUQOYie6uAeu3otbqaznwM5VrLmGEE5ehmBhkkIzGGGo8a4or-RQBcdUomYl_zyDPk_5nXiCdqtiBHDqXWhmL/s1600-h/Looking+Down+Stafford+in+Snow.JPG"></a></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyVd9l5emNw5IEYgkFzWWqEmGF-fDzB9arYIVdHvgjj3-3BVTFjuHdRPKB6AGPFIffAiEEAxVMEpFwIN-nCl0g2c_0VBcGEq2zc8VPVimbmyQA7XAd6Rxt7aov-MOGXbx7WlipuFJeuDq7/s1600-h/Snow+on+Toyota+Close+Up.JPG"><img style="MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 320px; FLOAT: left; HEIGHT: 240px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5418568730033000498" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyVd9l5emNw5IEYgkFzWWqEmGF-fDzB9arYIVdHvgjj3-3BVTFjuHdRPKB6AGPFIffAiEEAxVMEpFwIN-nCl0g2c_0VBcGEq2zc8VPVimbmyQA7XAd6Rxt7aov-MOGXbx7WlipuFJeuDq7/s320/Snow+on+Toyota+Close+Up.JPG" /></a></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div>My husband's Toyota, with 22 inches of snow on the roof. When the snow finally stopped, there were 22-24", depending on where you stuck the tape measure. His car was completely buried, not a single bit of metal visible at all.</div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMwkAD_UjkkdixH99cJW2x9IPvWM66aL-12lxFGGifMGKJVZ6f1z2GYRGeJm-ru1wnIykLpRr6EUxcfsjNpgqUnBI1kTu7lE_KJlgmEp-DXFiHR9sg2vT7KlUikbUpD_aMjqXTNpTykxis/s1600-h/Peanut+and+Indy+on+Radiator.JPG"></a></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWsyYh8a0N82olGwldxrmknyU0m2EmrPdYHIRoyVw0VG-dOha8sfxzv5FQUQOYie6uAeu3otbqaznwM5VrLmGEE5ehmBhkkIzGGGo8a4or-RQBcdUomYl_zyDPk_5nXiCdqtiBHDqXWhmL/s1600-h/Looking+Down+Stafford+in+Snow.JPG"><img style="MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 320px; FLOAT: left; HEIGHT: 240px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5418568717393597218" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWsyYh8a0N82olGwldxrmknyU0m2EmrPdYHIRoyVw0VG-dOha8sfxzv5FQUQOYie6uAeu3otbqaznwM5VrLmGEE5ehmBhkkIzGGGo8a4or-RQBcdUomYl_zyDPk_5nXiCdqtiBHDqXWhmL/s320/Looking+Down+Stafford+in+Snow.JPG" /></a></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div>This is looking down the side street. Being in two dimensions really flattens out just how steep this hill is. This block of the street is basically a U shape, with a stop sign at each high point of the U. When it ices over, it is virtually useless. We've heard people spinning their tires for minutes trying to get out of either end of the street (record tire-spinning time: 45 minutes -- no kidding!), only to finally give up and go home.</div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMwkAD_UjkkdixH99cJW2x9IPvWM66aL-12lxFGGifMGKJVZ6f1z2GYRGeJm-ru1wnIykLpRr6EUxcfsjNpgqUnBI1kTu7lE_KJlgmEp-DXFiHR9sg2vT7KlUikbUpD_aMjqXTNpTykxis/s1600-h/Peanut+and+Indy+on+Radiator.JPG"></a></div><div></div><div></div><div>We're lucky; we can park on the major street (I took this picture standing in the middle of it) and take other routes to get where we need to go, so when this street is icy or snowy, we just don't use it for a couple weeks. Other people aren't so lucky. You can't quite see them, but there are <em>two</em> dead-end streets located virtually at the very bottom of the U. They have no other option but to try to get out this way. About the only thing to do is get a running start, have someone watch for traffic, and blast right through the stop sign; alternately, if you can keep some traction, creep through using barely any throttle.</div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMwkAD_UjkkdixH99cJW2x9IPvWM66aL-12lxFGGifMGKJVZ6f1z2GYRGeJm-ru1wnIykLpRr6EUxcfsjNpgqUnBI1kTu7lE_KJlgmEp-DXFiHR9sg2vT7KlUikbUpD_aMjqXTNpTykxis/s1600-h/Peanut+and+Indy+on+Radiator.JPG"></a></div><div>Staunton is an incredibly hilly town -- on the street behind us (the one this U-shaped street intersects in the picture), the sidewalk gives up and turns into stairs at a couple of points. </div><div></div><div>Mary Baldwin College is located here. Frederick Street forms the lower base of the college, and a set of professors' offices called Rose Terrace is near the very top. I counted the steps once walking from Frederick to Rose Terrace. One hundred and fifty stairs -- I think the rule of thumb is ten steps to a story, so that's the equivalent of walking up fifteen flights of stairs.</div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMwkAD_UjkkdixH99cJW2x9IPvWM66aL-12lxFGGifMGKJVZ6f1z2GYRGeJm-ru1wnIykLpRr6EUxcfsjNpgqUnBI1kTu7lE_KJlgmEp-DXFiHR9sg2vT7KlUikbUpD_aMjqXTNpTykxis/s1600-h/Peanut+and+Indy+on+Radiator.JPG"><img style="MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 320px; FLOAT: left; HEIGHT: 240px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5418568735964990082" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMwkAD_UjkkdixH99cJW2x9IPvWM66aL-12lxFGGifMGKJVZ6f1z2GYRGeJm-ru1wnIykLpRr6EUxcfsjNpgqUnBI1kTu7lE_KJlgmEp-DXFiHR9sg2vT7KlUikbUpD_aMjqXTNpTykxis/s320/Peanut+and+Indy+on+Radiator.JPG" /></a></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div>Finally, the two most comfortable creatures in Staunton that night -- our cats, Peanut (the grey one) and Indy (the black one) curled up on the radiator. The camera woke Indy up and she's starting to stir. The moment before this, she was sprawled out asleep. It's only a hot water radiator, so it doesn't get nearly as hot as a steam one would. In fact, it stays pretty much perfect cat-warming temperature all winter, although when it gets really hot, they favor the piece of drywall that Peanut is lying on.</div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div>I wanted to add one little Buddhist thought, and then we're off to visit family in Pennsylvania and New Jersey for the holidays. I tried in my book to emphasize that Buddhism is not a philosophy but a practice. I said "actions speak louder than words," "you have to <em>do</em> it, not think it," and so on. Although the intentions behind your actions is important in terms of karma (i.e., seemingly good actions, done with bad intentions, generate bad karma), it is the actions you undertake that make you the person you are. No matter what we say to one another about ourselves, others see our actions and whether or not they say it out loud they judge those actions against what you've said. If your actions and your words match, you're seen as a person with integrity; if not, you're seen as a hypocrite or a liar.</div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div>Buddhism is the same way. It asks you to look at yourself as others do and see whether or not your words (or your goals) line up with your actions. If not, it asks you to be honest about recognizing that and to make the change so that they do. It also asks you to be honest -- brutally honest -- about your intentions. Are they not-so-great intentions? Then expect not-so-great karma -- and don't complain about it when it arrives, because you are the one who set it in motion.</div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div>Is it okay to do good actions with a good intention because you want good karma? Sure. Wanting good karma is pretty karma-neutral. It's a little more selfish than doing good things with good intentions just because they are good in and of themselves. But it's not nearly so bad as having bad intentions, such as doing something to put someone else in a position of owing you, or doing something because you want to be to be admired for it. Those would be karma-negative intentions. Doing something because it's inherently good, with zero expectations, is karma-positive. Doing the right thing because you want to keep your karma in the good zone is karma-neutral. It's not a negative, at least.</div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div>Really, Buddhism is remarkably simple, and one very old Buddhist story reflects this.</div><div></div><div></div><div><blockquote>A monk renowned for his wisdom was sitting in deep meditation when someone<br />approached him and asked, "O venerable teacher, what is the essence of<br />Buddhism?"<br /><br />The monk replied,<br /><br /><blockquote><p><em>Not to commit wrong actions,<br />But to do all good ones<br />And to keep the heart pure --<br />This is the teaching of all the buddhas past, present, and future.</em></p><p><em></em><br />His questioner was annoyed and exclaimed, "Why, even a five-year-old child knows that!"<br /><br />The monk (and this is why he is called wise) replied, "Yes, but how many fifty-year-old men can easily practice it?"<br /></p></blockquote></blockquote></div><div></div><div></div><div>This is indeed the essence of Buddhism. It's simple to grasp and can be explained in a sentence, but to practice it, every hour every day for a lifetime, is remarkably difficult, something that requires teachers, retreats, books, and communities of fellow practitioners to pull off.</div><div></div><div></div><div></div><div>Whatever December 25 means to you, have a merry and safe one, and a happy and prosperous 2010!</div><div></div></div></div>Arlynda Lee Boyerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09591766207328476713noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1175219092000627919.post-73693927568439578412009-12-11T19:52:00.000-08:002009-12-11T20:12:58.551-08:00Praise for Buddha on the Backstretch!!I've done a few interviews for <em>Buddha on the Backstretch</em> now, and begun to see some interest in it from both racing and Buddhist sources. Here is some of the latest press for the book:<br /><br />My local paper did a brief profile of me.<br /><br /><blockquote>Local author compares Buddhism, NASCAR<br />When Staunton author Arlynda Boyer was a little girl, her father took her to Bristol for her first NASCAR race. As soon as she saw Dale Earnhardt's yellow and blue Wrangler Thunderbird tearing up the track, she was hooked.<br />"When he drove a car, he had a good way of giving his body language to the car," said Boyer, remembering her fascination. "You could tell (when) he was driving angry and when he was driving all out."<br />In October, Boyer published "Buddha and the Backstretch," a book that compares the Buddhist mentality with that of her favorite NASCAR driver.<br />Fifteen years ago, Boyer began practicing Buddhism. She was drawn to the faith in part because it encourages people to live in the present and not cling to possessions, anger or regret.<br />"These people are kind of like NASCAR drivers," Boyer said. "They talk about living in the moment and they talk about giving everything our all and letting go."<br />A year after Earnhardt's death, Boyer wrote a commentary for National Public Radio about how he and other great drivers served as examples of how to be a better Buddhist.<br />"You won't find a driver replaying a race five years after its done," Boyer said. "They give it 100 percent, but the minute they walk off, it's done."<br />The essay became a premise for her book, "Buddha and the Backstretch," which is available at Bookworks on West Beverley Street in Staunton.<br />Name: Arlynda Boyer<br />Town: Staunton<br />Occupation: Author, prospective grad student<br />Family: Husband, James Roguskas; cats, Peanut and Indy<br />Hobby: Poker. "Nowhere else in life do math and luck and psychology crash together like that," Boyer said.<br />Favorite food: Asian<br />Books: Non-fiction and anything by Shakespeare<br />Best advice: "Everything you're choosing to learn is choosing the shape of your own mind," Boyer said. "So choose carefully."<br />— Rebecca Martinez</blockquote><br /><br /><br />Foreword Magazine profiled several new religious books, including mine:<br /><br /><blockquote>Religions Merge Into One: And a Meditation Runs Through It<br />Submitted by foreword on Tue, 09/01/2009 - 15:56<br /><br />We move from “walking the path of kindness” to driving like a bat out of hell as an effective way to investigate the Buddhist mindset. Buddha on the Backstretch: The Spiritual Wisdom of Driving 200 MPH (Mercer University Press, 978-0-88146-174-9) deserves the pole position for portraying Buddhism as no more or no less exotic than a super-hyped stock car plastered with beer decals. Arlynda Lee Boyer is superlative with colorful commentary and insightful explanations of how a firm grasp of flow, mindfulness, patience, endurance, discipline, concentration, equanimity, and finally acceptance (as in death), benefit both racers and meditators. Her book will broaden appreciation of Buddhism’s unparalleled coping skills. It might even create a few unlikely gear heads.</blockquote><br /><br />Finally, a NASCAR blog by Art Weinstein reflected the befuddled but interested reaction I've been getting a lot!<br /><br /><blockquote>Buddhism, Dale Earnhardt and NASCAR<br />A NASCAR BLOG BY Art Weinstein<br /><br />I thought I’d seen everything in this sport until the other day when a new book arrived in the mail here at NASCAR Scene. The cover featured an illustration of a bobblehead Buddha on the dashboard of a race car, and if that wasn’t enough to hint at what the book was about, the title made it clear: “Buddha on the Backstretch: The Spiritual Wisdom of Driving 200 MPH.”<br /><br />I’d bet if you went to a typical Sprint Cup race, you’d be able to count the number of Buddhists in the crowd on one hand, even if you had lost several fingers in an industrial accident. But the book’s author, Arlynda Lee Boyer, has been a practicing Buddhist for more than 10 years. Long before she embraced the religion, however, she was a devoted NASCAR fan, and more specifically, a big Dale Earnhardt fan.<br /><br />She says that after her conversion to Buddhism, she couldn’t help but notice the similarities between the ancient Eastern religion and NASCAR, the Southeastern religion.<br /><br />“Gradually, it dawned on me that the practice’s dedicated teachers, its monks and nuns deep in intense training, with their laser focus on enlightenment, their serene acceptance of death, and their infectious joy, reminded me of someone: race-car drivers.”<br /><br />Boyer admits that NASCAR drivers are mostly Protestants, yet again and again, she kept seeing Buddhist principles at work in the sport: “To drive as Earnhardt did, [drivers] must stay on the ragged edge of control, barely hanging on to a car … for three to four solid hours, and they must never once panic.”<br /><br />Opening this book, my expectations were low, simply because of the whacky premise suggested in the title. But Boyer did a nice job of researching her subject matter and makes some interesting observations comparing the sport and religion. She returns again and again to the subject of Earnhardt, even recounting heartfelt conversations he’d had with Darrell Waltrip and others through the years. She admits Earnhardt himself probably would have “rolled his eyes” at the mention of karma but that, “he would have appreciated the qualities at the heart of Buddhism – self-awareness, presence, compassion and joy.”<br /><br />If you’re interested, the book is published by Mercer University Press.</blockquote>I'm delighted by the coverage. <em>Buddha on the Backstretch</em> may not have what it takes to be a bestseller, but I'm happy to have accomplished it nonetheless -- and I hope people appreciate what it has to say, even if they're a little confused at first!Arlynda Lee Boyerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09591766207328476713noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1175219092000627919.post-1931910132693228402009-12-05T12:33:00.000-08:002009-12-05T20:50:41.196-08:00Meanings, Media, and TherapyOne last comment about meanings, and I'm done on that score.<br /><br />It occurred to me that one thing I could have added to my comments on meanings is this: I think that even people who cannot articulate deep meanings are nevertheless aware of them unconsciously. Things (actions, statements, etc.) that are in harmony with the deep meanings are simply perceived as "feeling right" on a gut level, while things that violate those deep meanings arouse a vague sense of unease, resistance, suspicion, or discomfort -- some sense of "something just doesn't feel right." Our ability to detect lies is probably connected to this gut-level sense that something doesn't quite resonate the way it should.<br /><br />The same idea works in most forms of media. Some news stories capture the imagination and others, nearly identical in details, don't. Some people capture our imagination and others don't. I think it's because the ones that do are tapping a deeper meaning, either in us or within our culture, and we instinctively respond without always being able to explain why.<br /><br />Myths have always articulated deep meanings (in fact, that's arguably their only real function). And if one thinks about it, contemporary compelling stories often echo the storylines of myths or fairy tales or the characters in them. That's because the myths and the news stories are both touching the same fundamental idea in us. It's why the myth has survived thousands of years and it's why the news story captures us.<br /><br />To take just one example: Natalee Holloway certainly wasn't the only teen to disappear in 2005. But she was the one who became a media sensation. Why? Partly "missing white woman syndrome," a habit of television news to focus disproportionately on white and female victims to the exclusion of minority crime victims. And that in itself reveals deeper meanings: that "white woman" and "victim" are still deeply connected in people's minds, and that we are all too prone to believe that young white women are helpless in the face of dark-skinned predators.<br /><br />More than that, though, the case captured imaginations because it featured a pretty young woman endangered in a place that was supposed to be safe and beautiful -- think Snow White in her castle, Rapunzel in hers. There was a frantic mother searching for her -- think Demeter and Persephone. It pushed the "damsel in distress" button of all fairy tales and medieval stories of knights. When a black teen vanished from her housing project the same summer, though, America yawned and looked the other way. Because we knew, unconsciously, that if we followed that story, we would have to face questions about poverty, substandard housing, racism, and a lot of other questions we've spent decades avoiding. We didn't do it consciously, but news organizations and news viewers together opted for the satisfyingly mythic over the uncomfortably real.<br /><br />Great literature also works by tapping deep meanings. A lot of books may be well-written, even brilliantly written, but not stand the test of time because, whether even astute critics can articulate it or not, the books are devoid of the deeper meanings that resonate with us and make us want to read the book over and over again or urge it on others. Literature that becomes timeless <em>does</em> tap into those themes. Shakespeare's genius was in creating plays that, however flawed (and critics do recognize all kinds of flaws in every one of his plays), always touched on something very deep about humanity. That's the secret of his deathlessness, an innate ability to draw from the deepest wellsprings, and people recognize it, consciously or not, and respond to it.<br /><br />I commented in <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Buddha-Backstretch-Spiritual-Driving-Religion/dp/0881461741/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1254593985&sr=8-1"><em>Buddha on the Backstretch</em> </a>that only a few of our personal experiences resonate enough for us to become the stories that we tell about ourselves. All of the big experiences in our lives shape us, yet we do not usually use all of them to define our character. Even within our own lives, we have our own deep meanings (and I would venture to say, our idiosyncratic meanings have a shared resonance with larger cultural meanings in most cases). When the events of our lives touch on those deep themes, then those events become our key stories. We use them to tell ourselves and others who we are.<br /><br />Where therapy comes into this is in the form of cognitive behavioral therapy. If you've ever had counseling or talk therapy, odds are it was cognitive behavioral therapy, or CBT. The three key assumptions of CBT are:<br /><ol><li>Individuals are active agents with the power to bring about change in their own lives;</li><li>People actively engage in the emotional and intellectual ordering of their experiences, which can be called "creating a personal narrative"; and</li><li>The ways this ordering is carried out underlie a person's sense of identity.</li></ol><p>According to CBT's theory of depression, some people create overly negative narratives in which they depict themselves as ugly, unlovable, worthless, incompetent, and so on. The job of the therapist is to get the patient to verbalize those images so that the patient and the therapist together can challenge them and alter the narrative to be more realistic, nurturing, and compassionate. One psych writer says, "Changes that occur in narrative metaphors are at least as important as changes that occur in specific behaviors."</p><p>It's no accident that therapy is aware of both personal and cultural myths and the way deep meanings affect us. The founder of CBT, Albert Ellis, wrote that the system "particularly stresses philosophy. Why? -- because I borrowed so much of its theory and practice from ancient and modern philosophers rather than from professional therapists. Its main theories are therefore philosophic and include profound religious and spiritual elements."</p><p>Is this sounding like Buddhism yet? It should be. Buddhism looks beyond surface meanings to find the deeper ones, and it focuses on becoming a better person by paying close attention to the state of our minds in any given moment. Moreover, it asks us not to blindly believe everything we think, but to question whether each thought is as kind and helpful as it can be. Buddhism encourages us to accept the occurrences of life without adding a great deal of personal narrative to them, to respond from our highest selves, and then to move on cleanly, without clinging or regret.</p><p>The Dalai Lama sums up this link between narrative, metaphor, meaning, and therapy, and I'll leave him with the final word: "If we can reorient our thoughts and emotions, and reorder our behavior, not only can we learn to cope with suffering more easily, but we can prevent a great deal of it from arising in the first place."</p>Arlynda Lee Boyerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09591766207328476713noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1175219092000627919.post-11298153700398093382009-12-02T18:00:00.000-08:002009-12-03T06:41:42.129-08:00Meanings, Meanings, and More MeaningsI said last time that I would go a little deeper into how I see things as having surface meanings, mid-level meanings, and deep meanings. Well, I'm back from Thanksgiving and ready to tackle it.<br /><br />I think many things have multiple levels of meaning, but I'll use a couple of examples from religion. The first is reincarnation, from Buddhism via Hinduism.<br /><br />The first, surface-level meaning of reincarnation is this: be a good person in order to get a better rebirth; be bad, get reborn in miserable circumstances or as an animal. Round and round you go, and ideally you keep working to be better and better until you are at last reborn as one who is capable of achieving enlightenment (to achieve enlightenment is to enter nirvana and stop the cycle of rebirths into the <em>samsaric</em> world).<br /><br />That's the surface level -- it's simple, it's straightforward, and it encourages us to be good and not to be bad. The mid-level meaning is the one that many Buddhist teachers use to introduce Western students to the idea of reincarnation. At the surface level, reincarnation seems literal. At the mid-level, it's a metaphor for how we relate to one another.<br /><br />Because we've been reborn countless times into countless lives, we've all been born to one another. We've all been parents to one another. We've all raped one another. We've all been raped. We've all murdered one another, and we've all been murder victims. We've all fallen in love with one another, and we've all felt ourselves to be the beloved.<br /><br />Thus, the mid-level meaning of reincarnation is this: we are all deeply, intimately connected to one another. Like the surface meaning, however, this level of meaning has the same ultimate effect: to encourage us to be kind to one another, as kind as we would be if we were still in intimate connection, and not to be evil.<br /><br />Lastly, the deep meaning of reincarnation is that because we cannot know whether our overall arc is headed up or down, and because we cannot know how many times we or anyone else has cycled through the whole up-and-down-and-up-and-around arc, we should always look on one another with compassion and without judgment. Any interaction between you and another person is merely one tiny vector point in a whole tapestry of relationships you share without knowing any of it. The person who is mean to you today might be struggling upward, and you might be plummeting downward unbeknownst to you. So treat everyone with compassion and non-judging.<br /><br />And, as you can see, that meaning has the same ultimate end as both of the others: do good and do not do harm. The question is how deeply you can see such meanings. If a person is only capable of wanting a materially better life next time around, they may only be capable of grasping the first meaning. A Westerner who is skeptical about reincarnation but suffering from modern alienation might be best served by the mid-level meaning. The deepest meaning is for those who are spiritual students, who want to understand the fullness of the spiritual tradition.<br /><br />The concept of being compassionate and non-judging doesn't depend on reincarnation. It can stand on its own without any ideas about rebirth attached to it. But having all three levels provides three entry points for people to arrive at the same idea, making it more accessible to a wider range of people. However, this is why I can say as a Buddhist that I believe in the idea of reincarnation, but I do not believe in reincarnation literally. The idea I believe in is the deepest one: how we are to behave, in this life and in any others that may (or may not) come.<br /><br />A Christian example might be the rules of various sects. I see a lot of people arguing quite strenuously over whether women should speak in church (and by extension lead services and be ordained), whether worshippers should dress up formally or wear jeans to church, whether they should follow this doctrine or that doctrine, etc. If I were a Christian, I'd obey whatever rules my particular sect happened to lay down. That's not necessarily because I think that God wants me to do it, though.<br /><br />The surface meaning of the rules are what they are -- don't wear jeans, etc. Again, straightforward, and the point is to obey. The mid-level meaning is that God is an authority over us, and we should behave not as though we are in the presence of our "homies," but as though we are in the presence of our better, one we respect. Maybe it's the native Southerner in me, but when I see someone enter a church in ripped jeans, munching on the last half of a sandwich, I think, "Show your deity a little respect!"<br /><br />The deepest meaning, though, is about ego, will, and surrender: our insistence on doing things our way and according to our convenience is a manifestation of our ego (not in the sense of vainness, but in the sense of asserting our selfhood and individuality). Throughout the Bible, submission to God's will and giving up our small egos in service to God is urged and held up as the greatest good. Even Jesus struggles to do this: he spends his whole last night in the Garden of Gethsemane struggling with the total surrender of his will to God's. He begs, "take this cup from me" (Matt. 26:39), but ultimately he knows that God's will must be done and he reconciles himself to surrendering his ego.<br /><br />So the deep meaning of what some sects call "silly men's rules" is that every silly rule is a chance for us to erase a little bit more of our egotism and pride, and to learn to submit our wills, not to men and their rules, but directly to God. He couldn't care less about what we're wearing, but that's only the surface point. He does care whether or not we are willing to make the effort to surrender our willfulness and desire to have things our way to him, and anything that encourages us to do something we'd rather not is something that encourages us to give up a little self-centered stubbornness. Note: I'm not saying that obeying little manmade rules is the same as obeying God's will. Not at all. I'm saying that (if I were a Christian) I can see manmade rules as a metaphor for a deeper message about will.<br /><br />A last note on me and my personal belief: on the whole, I admire the deep meanings of the Bible. I've read the whole thing cover-to-cover and have a shelf of scholarly books on it as well. But for me, admiring the deep meanings requires no kind of literal belief, not even in God or Jesus. I can see them as metaphors just as I can see reincarnation (a tenet of my chosen practice of Buddhism) as a metaphor. What drew me to Buddhism is that to me, some Christians -- though by no means all -- seem hung up on arguing about surface meanings and whose sect has it right and whose sect has it wrong and why you must join the right sect or you are doomed. Buddhist teachers, on the other hand, seem profoundly attuned to the deepest meanings in a text. They look for the metaphor in everything, and thus they also seek the true meaning beneath the metaphor. And then they work very hard to embody that true meaning in their words, actions, and lives.<br /><br />So whatever path you follow (even if it's no path at all), look beyond the surface. Find the deepest meanings, and then embody those meanings in everything you do. Peace out, y'all.Arlynda Lee Boyerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09591766207328476713noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1175219092000627919.post-65886750532323228912009-11-19T20:27:00.000-08:002009-11-19T22:45:52.017-08:00Things I Wish I'd SaidAs I said, with every book there's always something you think about after it's too late to add it. Your head is in the "space" of the book for so long that thoughts continue to occur to you long after the writing is done. Perhaps that's even more true for <em>Buddha on the Backstretch</em>, because it's really a book about my philosophy toward life, and that will continue evolving and expanding.<br /><br />In the next post, I want to talk about surface meanings, mid-level meanings, and deep meanings, but if I included it this time, the blog would be too long. So I'll just say that I see many things as having at least three levels of meaning, and I want to explain one quote in the book through that lens.<br /><br />In <em>Buddha on the Backstretch</em>, I explained the concepts of nirvana and <em>samsara</em> this way:<br /><br /><blockquote>Nirvana is enlightenment, sometimes thought of as a place that enlightened beings go. <em>Samsara</em> is its opposite, the world of striving and suffering, greed and envy. However, for Buddhists, such sets of opposites are examples of "dualistic thinking." By freezing concepts into "either/or," we fail to see the possibilities of "both/and." We do not realize that what we think about the concepts, such as "these are opposites," can never be as big or as all-encompassing as the concepts themselves (in turn, the concepts are never as big as reality itself). Instead, Buddhists think in terms of interpenetration, the idea that one concept goes through and into another. To put it as the Buddha did, <em>samsara</em> IS nirvana -- because without the reasons to practice that <em>samsara</em> offers us, we would never find nirvana. Moreover, once we gain some level of realization, we understand that although the world might be <em>samsara</em>, we can hold nirvana in our minds and embody it in our actions and words, thus filling the world (<em>samsara</em>) with nirvana. Or, in Elizabeth Barrett Browning's charming phrasing, "Earth is crammed with heaven."</blockquote><br /><br />When my friend John read the manuscript, he said he didn't completely get this passage and asked if I was trying to repeat the adage that we can't truly know joy until we've known pain. That's not exactly what I wanted to say, but at the time I couldn't think of a better way to describe it.<br /><br />What I meant (and what the teaching "<em>samsara</em> IS nirvana" means, at least as I understand it) is akin to taking a glass of fresh water and adding salt to it grain by grain. When does the glass become a glass of what we would call salt water? Not with the first grain, which would be imperceptible. At some point, you have ceased to have fresh water and begun to have salt water, but no one knows exactly when that happened.<br /><br />Along the same lines, one Buddhist teacher took his students outside and placed a grain of sand on the ground in front of him, asking "Is this a hill?" He kept adding grains and asking the question. Every pure, unselfish act is a grain of salt or sand, a grain of nirvana. We add grain after grain, and eventually, this suffering world of <em>samsara</em> has a hill, or a salty taste. At some point that we may not recognize, the suffering world has nirvana in it. You won't know when the change occurs, but you will realize suddenly that, hey, nirvana is here, in this world. You can point to it, taste it, let it run through your fingers. Nirvana has interpenetrated <em>samsara</em>.<br /><br />So when it comes to the teaching "samsara is nirvana," the surface meaning is a paradox. The two seem to be opposites, so saying that they are the same is a paradox. That is the case with a lot of Buddhist teachings. Because they are paradoxical on the surface, you must look deeper to find a meaning. What I just described is the mid-level meaning, the idea that our actions can bring nirvana into the <em>samsaric</em> world.<br /><br />The deepest meaning is that once you are enlightened, then anywhere you are is a manifestation of nirvana, because you will see the inherent enlightenment (the nirvana) in everything. To an enlightened being, then, nirvana and <em>samsara</em> are exactly the same thing. They are both an ocean. The hill is always there.Arlynda Lee Boyerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09591766207328476713noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1175219092000627919.post-37933941959078808152009-11-18T14:12:00.000-08:002009-12-03T16:23:26.276-08:00Welcome!Welcome to my inaugural blog post! The Southern Buddhist blog exists primarily in support of my book <em>Buddha on the Backstretch</em>. You can order <em>Buddha on the Backstretch</em> <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Buddha-Backstretch-Spiritual-Driving-Religion/dp/0881461741/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1254593985&sr=8-1">here</a>, or ask your local bookstore to order it.<br /><br /><em>Buddha on the Backstretch</em> is my first book, and it was published in October 2009 by Mercer University Press in Georgia. This is how the publisher describes the book:<br /><br /><blockquote>By using Buddhism as a lens to examine NASCAR racing -- and NASCAR as a means to illustrate Buddhist teachings -- <em>Buddha on the Backstretch</em> provides a unique new perspective on the field of sports and spirituality. Not aimed solely at either Buddhists or race fans, the work's message of self-improvement via popular culture serves as a <em>Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance</em> for a new generation. <em>Buddha on the Backstretch</em> considers mindfulness, handling setbacks, patience, discipline, heightened awareness, impermanence, equanimity, and how we face death. The work looks at why we need heroes and how we can take a hero's story and use it for our own growth. Like an anthropologist, the author can take a story about loose radiator bolts and red North Carolina clay and tease out of it three different Buddhist elements of mindfulness. The aim is to show readers how to examine all facets of culture and all the people around them, and be able to find, in seemingly unlikely places, profound lessons on how to live. If the student is truly ready, then a NASCAR driver can be as profound a teacher as a guru in robes, and a serene Buddhist teaching as lively and colorful as a weekend at the track. The first work by an imaginative and quirky new author, <em>Buddha on the Backstretch</em> will alter the way you see the world, help you see wisdom everywhere and find the joy in the daily spiritual practice that is Life.</blockquote><br /><br />Of course I'm thrilled to be a first-time author, and Mercer was a delight -- everyone there is dedicated, helpful, bright, and genuinely kind. They did a great job with the book, but the process of writing, editing, designing, proofing, and printing stretches out over roughly a full year. In that time, I naturally thought of a couple more things I wish I'd said.<br /><br />That will be the subject of the first couple of posts. After that, anything goes. I plan to write about whatever has become my interest of the moment. You can expect to hear about NASCAR and Buddhism, of course, but also Futurama, poker, Shakespeare, grad school, history, my favorite quotes, and various random brain storms, drizzles, and farts.<br /><br />Thank you for reading. Onward and upward!Arlynda Lee Boyerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09591766207328476713noreply@blogger.com0