History Lesson

Growing up as I did during the Cold War, I had assumed for the first 35 years of my life that, if other things didn't get me first, I would most likely burn to death in a seemingly inevitable thermonuclear war, along with most of the rest of humanity. The world political situation at the time seemed like the climax of a Quentin Tarantino film, with the world superpowers all pointing their guns at each other and loudly barking increasingly harsh rhetoric. It seemed obvious that sooner or later someone was going to blink and the shooting would begin, and when the smoke cleared there would be no one left standing.

So I followed the events of 1989 with great interest, and when I saw a bunch of protesters on CNN taking sledge hammers to the Berlin Wall, I realized that we might not all be doomed to a nuclear death after all (although we're all still going to eventually die, to be sure). Many have given credit to various world leaders, some citing Mikhail Gorbachev and others Ronald Reagan, but the credit might go to a now-obscure East German party official, Egon Krenz, who almost singlehandedly averted the firing of that dreaded first shot.

Gorbachev had set loose yearnings for change throughout Eastern Europe, resulting a series of rapid drives by Poland and Hungary toward Western styles of democracy, and by May of 1989, Hungary decided to dismantle the barbed wire from its border with Austria. But in East Germany, the old loyalists sat entrenched in their isolated villas on Lake Wandlitz, refusing to see any reason for change.

The East German citizens responded by increasing their flight to the West. East Germans were soon seeking asylum at West German embassies in Prague, in Budapest, and in East Berlin, and what was once a trickle - a few random citizens sneaking across the border - grew exponentially and with every week, more and more East Germans fled westward, especially through the now-open borders in Hungary. The flow grew to a flood and finally into a frenzied exodus.

By late August of 1989, thousands of East Germans were camped in Budapest seeking asylum. The Hungarians refused to send them home. On September 10, Budapest announced that it would allow the East Germans to go to the West, defying a 1967 agreement with East Berlin to prevent East Germans from doing so without East Berlin's authorization. Hungary's momentous decision marked the first time a Communist government determined that international covenants on human rights were more important than treaties with other Warsaw Pact nations. Eventually, more than 30,000 emigres swept out of East Germany through Hungary. All told, hundreds of thousands left after the exodus had begun.

Back in East Berlin, Communist Party leader Erich Honecker was struggling to maintain at least the appearance of control, especially with an upcoming visit to East Berlin by Soviet President Gorbachev to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the German Democratic Republic. Desperate for a solution, he granted permission on October 1 for the crowd of refugees to leave the West German Embassy in Prague before Gorbachev was to arrive. But that solution backfired because as soon as the first group left, more East Germans flooded the embassy forcing Honecker to authorize a second release, and finally to shut his southern border altogether.

Worse, the trains leaving for the West drew thousands of East Germans desperate to join their compatriots in their exodus to West Germany. Violent clashes erupted on October 4 between the police trying to clear the station in Dresden and East Germans trying to storm the trains.

When Gorbachev's visit finally occurred on October 6, crowds of East Germans took the streets of the capital, chanting "Gorby! Gorby!" and seeking any indication of his support for their situation. Although he tried not to inflame the situation, when he said that East Germany had to decide its own future for itself, it was perceived as a signal to many that Soviet troops would not interfere, and when he said that those who did not change with the times would see life punishing them, it was seen as a direct indictment of Honecker himself.

On Saturday night, October 7, 1989, as Gorbachev was heading back to Moscow, there were clashes in the streets between the police and protesters. Hundreds were beaten and jailed. The protests increased on Sunday night, spreading from East Berlin to Leipzig and Dresden.

By Monday, the tension was palpable. A weekly peace service at a church in Leipzig, which had become a launching point for broader protests, was expected to draw huge crowds that night. The government, with Gorbachev now out of the way, assembled a large force of soldiers, policemen and secret police agents in Leipzig, and issued them live ammunition with orders to shoot if necessary - a "Chinese solution" to the rising tide of discontent and protests. The order allowing open fire had reportedly been signed by Honecker himself.

But according to news accounts from that time, violence and killing were avoided at the last minute when Egon Krenz, the Politburo member in charge of security, personally flew to Leipzig and cancelled Honecker's order. Tens of thousands took to the streets of Leipzig that night and marched unmolested, without interference from the police. Due to Krenz's lone intervention, defying Party orders, what could have been a bloodbath as terrible as China's Tienanmen Square crackdown in June instead became a peaceful protest.

The "revolution from below" had begun. Within 10 days, Honecker was forced to resign and Krenz himself became the new Party chief, the head of state, and Chairman of the Defense Council. Within a month of the averted bloodbath, the Berlin Wall came down. In the following years, the U.S. and Russia began sincere negotiations on nuclear disarmament. Had Honecker succeeded with his plans for a bloody crackdown, there is no predicting how the world powers would have reacted and what the consequences might have been.

For his role in previous crimes of the East German regime, Krenz was sentenced to a six-and-a-half-year sentence for manslaughter after the German reunification. He served his time in the Berlin-Spandau Prison and was released in December 2003.

Friday Night Video

Thoughts On Virtue

"Virtue," is sometimes equated with chastity in western morality, but it can also be defined as a beneficial quality or power, a commendable quality or trait (merit), or the capacity to act (potency). I've been told that virtue is one of the most important concepts of Confucianism, where it can be understood as benevolence, kindheartedness, and generosity. In Buddhism, benevolence (helpful conduct), kind speech, generosity (selfless giving) and cooperation (sympathy) are known as the Four Exemplary Acts of a Bodhisattva. So merging Mahayana Buddhism with Confucianism, it can be said that the Bodhisattva manifests virtue.

I've also heard it said that an enlightened person is one who practices selflessness. Generosity and benevolence can certainly be thought of as selfless acts, as can cooperation and kind speech, so we can more of less equate virtue and selflessness.

Zen Master Dogen said that there are three steps to the manifestation of what I'm calling selfless virtue. First, a person practices the Way. If this practice is sincere and whole-hearted, without expectation or desire for fame, selfless virtue is naturally manifested.

When selfless virtue is naturally manifested, people perceive its outward appearance (the Four Exemplary Acts) and are drawn to the person practicing the Way.

Lastly, people who come to that person learn the Way and practice in the same sincere and whole-hearted manner. That, Dogen says, completes the manifestation of selfless virtue.

George Carlin

George Carlin has been posthumously awarded something called the 11th Mark Twain Prize for American Humor. He gets my prize for telling the truth.

This is for those of you who couldn't be bothered with reading:

Atlanta

Greetings from the most toxic city in America!

According to the wise folks who publish Forbes Magazine, Atlanta is the Number One most toxic city in America.

"In Atlanta, Ga., you'll find southern gentility, a world-class music scene--and 21,000 tons of environmental waste. In spite of its charms, the city's combination of air pollution, contaminated land and atmospheric chemicals makes it the most toxic city in the country."

Atlanta doesn't have the most Superfund sites (that would be Chicago) or the number of facilities releasing toxic chemicals (Chicago again). We're not Number One in terms of the total pounds of toxic chemicals released to the environment (that would be Houston) nor did we have the worst air quality (way to go, Miami!). But we ranked high enough in each of the four categories (6th, 10th, 5th and 13th, respectively) to garner Forbes Number One overall ranking. For the record, Las Vegas came in as the least toxic out of 40 cities.

As an environmental consultant working in this area for most of the past three decades, I can tell you that the analysts over at Forbes misinterpreted the data, primarily the Superfund data and the toxic release inventory. Their conclusion, that Atlanta and its surrounding communities are choked with "chemical plants, metal coaters and concrete factories," is just plain wrong. While we clearly do have significant problems with urban sprawl, traffic and auto emissions, an overabundance of industry is not among our problems.

Meanwhile, we had our mayoral election here in Atlanta and . . . no one won. Georgia has a law that an election has to be decided by a greater than 50% majority, and with four major candidates in the race for mayor, plus several dark-horse candidates, no one won a 50% majority. So there will be a run-off election on December 1 among the top two finishers, Kasim Reed and Mary Norwood.

The leader in the contest for City Council President finished with fewer than 400 votes short of a 50% majority, and will also now have to head toward a run-off, along with the candidates for two other City Council seats.

The local press is making much of the fact that Norwood is the first non-African-American to be a serious contender for the Mayor's office since the 1980s. The press is crunching the numbers to report on the support she got in mainly black precincts versus the support her opponent got in predominantly white precincts.

The campaign was refreshingly issue oriented and did not revolve around race. Earlier this year, a controversial memo was released from two Morehouse College professors saying that the African American community needed to unite behind one of the three leading black candidates or risk losing the Mayor's office to the white candidate. The memo was largely renounced by all the candidates, and the one whom the memo had endorsed wound up finishing a distant third in the contest.

Except for that one anomaly, the four-way contest did not revolve around the issue of race, but the press seems determined to make the two-way run-off a racial issue.

And that is the real toxicity in Atlanta.

Monday Night Zazen

One day Dogen instructed,

Once, while in China, I was reading a collection of sayings by an ancient master. At the time, a monk from Shisen, a sincere practitioner of the Way, asked me, “What is the use of reading recorded sayings?”

I replied, “I want to learn about the deeds of the ancient masters.”

The monk asked, “What is the use of that?”

I said, “I wish to teach people after I return home.”

The monk asked, “What is the use of that?”

I replied, “It is for the sake of benefiting living beings.”

The monk queried further, “Yes, but ultimately, what is the use?”

Later, I pondered his remarks. Learning the deeds of the ancient masters by reading the recorded sayings or koans in order to explain them to deluded people is ultimately of no use to my own practice and for teaching others. Even if I don’t know a single letter, I will be able to show it to others in inexhaustible ways if I devote myself to just sitting and clarifying the great matter. It was for this reason that the monk pressed me as to the ultimate use of reading and studying. I thought what he said was true. Thereupon, I gave up reading the recorded sayings and other texts, concentrated wholeheartedly on sitting, and was able to clarify the great matter (Zuimonki, 2-9).

Dogen also said,

People who study the Way should not read the scriptures of the teaching-schools, nor study non-Buddhist texts. If you wish to study, read the collections of sayings of the ancient Zen masters. Put aside all other books for the time being. These days, Zen monks are fond of reading literature, composing poetry and writing dharma-discourses. This is wrong. Write down what you think in your mind, even though you cannot compose poetry. Write down the teachings of the dharma-gate, even though your style is unpolished. People without bodhi-mind will not read it if it is not polished. Such people would only play with words without grasping the reality behind them, even if the style were embellished and there were excellent phrases in it.

I have been fond of studying literature since childhood, and even now I have a tendency to contemplate the beauty in the words of non-Buddhist texts. Sometimes I even refer to Monzen or other texts; still, I think it is meaningless and should be completely abandoned (Zuimonki, 2-8).

Monzen is an anthology of classical Chinese literature compiled around 530 A.D. It was popular in Japan as a text for students of literature.

An Eliot Post

Those recent posts detailing intense self-examination were somewhat therapeutic to write in a cathartic kind of way, but also draining and exhausting. So on a much lighter note, I can report that Eliot, my live-in male companion, has recently taken over the flower box by the kitchen window, where he can enjoy the outdoors while keeping an eye on things going on inside of the house. He even matted down the sphagnum moss into a little nest. It's under the eaves of the roof so he can keep dry from the rain while resting there. I must admit that it took me a little by surprise the first time I went for some morning coffee and saw him looking in the window at me.

You can tell by the leaves on the patio that autumn has come to Atlanta.

Meanwhile, over at the White House, I see that on Halloween yesterday Michelle Obama wore almost the exact outfit I had dreamt the truant mother wore to pick up her son. Interesting . . .

I didn't know the Obamas read my blog.