bodhi tree swaying

Delivered 28 August 1963, at the Lincoln Memorial, Washington D.C.

I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.

Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.

But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely …

I recently received this email from the Rev. Danny Fisher, Coordinator of the Buddhist Chaplaincy Program at University of the West in Rosemead, CA.

I just recorded a video post for my blog in which I read the Metta Sutta as a show of solidarity with the monks and nuns of Burma, who were recently forbidden from reciting the text at one large monastery and allegedly elsewhere throughout the country. (This is presumably because the text was chanted by monks and nuns participating in 2007’s “Saffron Revolution.”)

http://chaplaindanny.blogspot.com/2009/08/reading-and-call-to-action.html

As I say in the video and the post, it occurred to me that this might be a great, easy way for lots of people (especially Buddhist/religious/spiritual bloggers) to show support for the monastics and people of Burma. So, I guess what I’m saying is that I’m hoping to start a little video campaign of people reciting the Metta Sutta as a

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There’s an interesting article today in the Boston Globe about the Malleus Maleficarum – "The Hammer of Witches."

"The lengthy tome was medieval Europe’s definitive guide to recognizing and prosecuting witchcraft, the justification for a wave of burnings-at-the-stake — largely of peasant women — that took place from the late 1400s to about 1520. And it helped spread the paranoid notion of a vast satanic conspiracy: a world where demons roamed freely, enticing women to cast spells, kill babies, interfere with procreation, and try to delay the fast-approaching End Times. (At the time, many thought the Earth’s sell-by date was 1535.)

"Written largely by a Dominican friar from Germany named Henricus Institoris, republished broadly in its day, the Malleus was last translated from Latin to English in the 1920s. This month Cambridge University Press published a modern translation in a one-volume

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I got this message from Kathy Rowe on Facebook recently and thought I’d share it more widely. Jarvis is a Buddhist inmate on death row, and a talented writer.

I spoke to Jarvis again recently and we talked about this facebook group. He was excited to know of all the people here showing support and taking an interest in him. I also read out the personal messages people have sent and he was moved by them and told me he felt blessed.

He wanted to offer something to you all and asked me to send you this piece of writing he did, called ‘No Bars to Love‘ 

We were also talking about his new book being published by Harper Collins in September and he told me that it’s possible to order it on Amazon.com now and it’s about $9 cheaper to

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Charles M. Blow has this interesting graphic on his NYT blog today, showing the change in the religious composition of the US Supreme Court.

Thirty years ago all but one justice were protestant. Now protestants are in a minority. I’d imagine it’ll be a while before we have a Buddhist, Hindu, or Muslim justice on the Supreme Court.

• I have to confess I sometimes feel a bit despondent about where we’re going as a society, but then I see a video like this and I feel very hopeful. These kids just seem to love the physical act of singing, and of hearing themselves singing.

• A Fake Buddha Quote courtesy of Jnanagarbha, who received it in his twitter feed:

• "An idea that is developed and put into action is more important than an idea that exists only as an idea. Buddha."

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I put this image together to show the relative volumes of the Earth, the Earth’s total water reserves (salt, fresh, vapor), and the accessible fresh water reserves. If you look at about five o’clock on the water sphere, you’ll see a smaller. That’s all the fresh water available for human use on our planet. It doesn’t look like much!

This is an adaptation of the image shown here, showing the relative volumes of the Earth’s total water reserves and atmosphere. The image of the Earth is from NASA.

I calculated the sphere representing the fresh water reserves based on the claim at globalchange.umich.edu that

“…of the world’s fresh water … ~0.007% … is accessible for direct human uses. This is the water found in lakes, rivers, reservoirs and those underground sources that are shallow enough to be tapped at an affordable cost.

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Sounds like a joke: A Priest, a rabbi, and imam, and a Buddhist monk were on a game show…

A new game show on Turkish television will pit a Greek Orthodox priest, a rabbi, an imam and a Buddhist monk against one another in attempt to convert atheists to their respective religions.

In each episode of Penitents Compete, to be broadcast by Turkey’s Kanal T television station in September, the four faith guides will try to persuade 10 atheists of the merits and truth of their creeds.

The show’s producers say there is a good chance none of the atheists will be converted, Turkey’s Hurriyet Daily News and Economic Review reports.

But those who are will be sent on a pilgrimage. New Muslims will head to Mecca, Buddhists to Tibet and Jews and Christians to Jerusalem – with television cameras following them.

“They can’t see this trip as a getaway but as a religious experience,”

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We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

(Abridged)

Frederick Douglass July 5, 1852

1 Mr. President, Friends and Fellow Citizens: The task before me is one which requires much previous thought and study for its proper performance. The papers and placards say, that I am to deliver a 4th [of] July oration. This certainly sounds large, and out of the common way, for it is true that I have often had the privilege to speak in this beautiful Hall, and to address many who now honor me with their presence, the fact is, ladies and gentlemen, the distance between this platform and the slave plantation, from which I escaped, is considerable-and the difficulties to be overcome in getting from the latter to the former, are by no means slight. That I am here to-day is, to me, a matter of astonishment as well as of gratitude.

2 This, for the purpose …

If I hadn’t seen this Microsoft ad on PC Magazine’s website I would have assumed it was a spoof. How could any respectable company produce such an obnoxious advertisement?

c4chaos on Twitter mentioned a post on Daily Kos on Buddhism and healthcare in the US — very apropos given my post of earlier today. It’s a bit "wouldn’t it be great if everyone would just think of the common good" but I think it’s a good start at framing a discussion in Buddhist terms.

You might even want to skip the long intro that covers the four noble truths to get to the section on the eightfold path, which starts:

Right view: bi-partisanship, triggers, co-ops, public options, market competition, socialism, single-payer, profit margins, trillion dollar price tags. In what way do any of these describe a working health care system?Right view would be to start by looking at the problem. What is, are, the problems with health care? Primarily, that some 45 million or more don’t have access to affordable coverage; that the

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The NYT has a sobering — even shocking — article on the perils of health insurance in the US. Makes me long for the good old National Health Service. And yes, I do worry that my health insurance company will leave me in the lurch if anyone in my family incurs major medical expenses.

…an estimated three-quarters of people who are pushed into personal bankruptcy by medical problems actually had insurance when they got sick or were injured.

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Mr. Yurdin learned the hard way.At St. David’s Medical Center in Austin, where he went for two separate heart procedures last year, the hospital’s admitting office looked at Mr. Yurdin’s coverage and talked to Aetna. St. David’s estimated that his share of the payments would be only a few thousand dollars per procedure.He and the hospital say

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From the BBC:

Vegetarians are generally less likely than meat eaters to develop cancer but this does not apply to all forms of the disease, a major study has found.

The study involving 60,000 people found those who followed a vegetarian diet developed notably fewer cancers of the blood, bladder and stomach.

But the apparently protective effect of vegetarian did not seem to stretch to bowel cancer, a major killer.

The study is published in the British Journal of Cancer.

Researchers from universities in the UK and New Zealand followed 61,566 British men and women. They included meat-eaters, those who ate fish but not meat, and those who ate neither meat nor fish.

Overall, their results suggested that while in the general population about 33 people in 100 will develop cancer during their lifetime, for those who do not eat meat that risk is reduced to about 29 in 100.

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I just stumbled across a fascinating article (Oddly, Hypocrisy Rooted in High Morals) from LiveScience, reporting on research showing that when people have

a) a sense of themselves as being “moral people” and
b) a flexible sense of what constitutes right and wrong

they are more likely to cheat. Here’s an extract, but it’s worth reading the whole thing.

Morally upstanding people are the do-gooders of society, right? Actually, a new study finds that a sense of moral superiority can lead to unethical acts, such as cheating. In fact, some of the best do-gooders can become the worst cheats.

Stop us if this sounds familiar.

When asked to describe themselves, most people typically will rattle off a list of physical features and activities (for example, “I do yoga” or “I’m a paralegal”). But some people have what scientists call a moral identity, in which the answer to the question

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MSNBC.com’s science section has an interesting although brief report on some thinking by Jonathan Haidt, whose work I’ve mentioned before:

Dark moralityUniversity of Virginia psychologist Jonathan Haidt blows my mind with his theory of dark morality – which is a social-science parallel to dark energy and dark matter. When it comes to morals, everyone agrees that we should whenever possible avoid harming people and provide care for the needy. The same goes for issues of fairness and reciprocity (“Do unto others…”) Haidt calls these “visible morals,” analogous to the 4 percent of the universe that we can see.

But those represent just the tip of the iceberg: Most of the mechanics of morality have to do with three “dark morals”: in-group loyalty, respect for authority, and issues of purity and sanctity. This is what accounts for qualities such as patriotism, conformism and taboos about food and sex. (Haidt drew

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Salon has the best thing I’ve read in a long time — transcriptions of Glenn Beck, the Fox News Commentator, presented as poetry.

The example below could be said to be satirical, except that Beck’s not intelligent enough to be a satirist.

TIME TO BELIEVE

It’s time to stop playing
Games in this country.
It is time to actually believe
In something. I do.
I know you do as well.
Believe in something.
Even if it’s wrong.

(“Glenn Beck,” Fox News, March 11, 2009)

This excerpt from “Friday’s Show” is genuinely beautiful:

We’ve got time to write tickets, we’ve got time to write tickets,
Have the police officers write tickets, you know why…

The man is clearly an idiot, but he does have a talent for using the rhythm of words very effectively.

Salon promises more tomorrow…

(Thanks to bitpakkit on Twitter for pointing me towards this gem).

From today’s Boston Globe comes this interesting snippet about an experiment or experiments (it’s not clear) showing that thinking about one’s own death reinforces faith in the notion of progress. And denying the idea of progress prompts people to think more about their own death. As I mentioned in a comment to Bob the other day, “when people are reminded of their mortality they become emotionally invested in institutions, like religion or nation, that could be thought of as providing a kind of immortality.” The idea of progress would seem to provide a similar function, in that the individual can see his or her life as being part of a larger pattern involving an onward march to a better world.

For many people, faith in a higher power gets them through dark times. But for those

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So it’s possible that your cat could become a vegetarian, but here are some good reasons why you might want to think about doing that. (And although cats live a long time, you might want to consider a less carni-centric companion animal next time). This article’s from the New York Times.

Cat Got Your Fish?
By PAUL GREENBERG
Published: March 21, 2009

My cat Coco died recently. Actually we euthanized him to alleviate his suffering from cancer. And while this was a sad moment, it was made less sad because Coco’s death also alleviated ever so slightly the suffering of the sea.

Coco, like most American cats, ate fish. And a great deal of them — more in a year than the average African human, according to Jason Clay at the World Wildlife Fund. And unlike the chicken or beef Coco also gobbled up, …