A couple of weeks ago, while I was out taking a walk through the neighborhood, I saw a red tail fox. It excited me and reassured me to know that a wild animal like a fox could still be living here in the city of Atlanta.
Well, today, when I got home, there was a memo in my mailbox from the local civic association regarding security. There were the usual crime stats (this is, after all, the third most dangerous city in America) - someone stole lawnmowers from two houses a block or so away, and right here on my street, someone took a computer after breaking out a front window. A neighbor had her purse stolen from her shopping cart at the Publix Supermarket on Peachtree Road. But the big news was that there have been coyote sightings in Buckhead! Here's some pics of the coyote:
The coyote has been sighted frequently in Buckhead during the past few days. It has mostly been seen in the southern part of the neighborhood, often near the fire station at Phipps Plaza and along the southern part of North Stratford Road. It has even been seen as far south as West Wesley Road, a short walk from here. There are no reports of any hostile behavior.
I find this very exciting. Foxes and coyotes running free in the city! This is healthy, and adds some biodiversity to the squirrels and chipmunks that I see on my property every day.
When I got in the house, I had an email from my friend Bob, who forwarded the following message from Thich Nhat Hanh, the Vietnamese Zen Master:
From Thich Nhat Hahn, November 7th, 2004 -
For those of you that voted for Kerry, we must look deeply to see the Kerry elements in Bush. In this long and difficult campaign, Bush has learned many things from Kerry and those who voted for him. We have to see that they inter-are. If there had been no election, Bush wouldn't have questioned his positions or his approach. He would have been able to assume that his way is best. But he almost lost the election, and he is aware that at least half of the American people don't believe in him. Now, because he almost lost, he is more humble and must realize that if he doesn't listen to the other half of the American people, there will be a big disturbance in the country. So we have to see that now all of us are in him. Those of you who didn't vote for him are in him, are a part of him after this very close presidential race.
We have to help our government so that a president elected by 51% of the population will not serve just that 51% but the whole country. We need to keep speaking out, daily, letting our government know what we want, expressing our insight and understanding. We need to be very present, very firm and constantly let the government know we are here. We can support them in our own way, through being present, calm, lucid and compassionate. Being compassionate doesn't mean we surrender and give up. It means we see clearly that our country, our government is us and it needs our help. Compassion means acting with courage and deep love to help manifest what we know our country is capable of.
Historically it has happened that the agenda of the left has been realized by the right. We have to speak out and keep speaking out, and it is possible that the Republicans will accomplish what the Democrats, what the left, had hoped to realize had they won. We also need to remember that even if Kerry had been elected, he would also have had to partly realize the wish of those who voted for Bush, and it is not sure that he would have been able to stop the war in Iraq.
Nothing is lost because we are in President Bush. There is a loss only if we respond with anger and despair. We have to continue on, to continue our practice, and remain strong in our role as bodhisattvas helping the other half of our country by our firm, clear and compassionate action for peace - the kind of peace in which both sides win because it is based on mutual understanding.
Interesting words, and somewhat reassuring, although I'm not sure that Bush was necessarily "humbled" by winning only 51% of the vote. Last time, he didn't really win at all, and that didn't keep him from marching troops into Iraq. But anyway, nice try by Thich Nhat Hahn.
And speaking of war, earlier today, I received the following email from Kipperkipp:
From: Kipperkipp
To: Shokai
Sent: Tuesday, December 7, 2004
Subject: Poor Shokai, Kipper's Bored
Happy Pearl Harbor Day! I forgot to send cards.
And I had forgotten until then that it was Pearl Harbor Day. But once I was reminded, I got to thinking about the shady, often unmentioned relationship between Zen and the Japanese aggression before and after the attack. If there were Zen Masters present in Japan in the 1940s, as surely there were, why is there no record of them discouraging or protesting the war? Did they not find the militant attitude objectionable? Did they approve of the war, or even encourage the actions?
The German philosophy professor Eugen Herrigel (1884-1955) studied archery in Japan from 1923 to 1929 under a Zen Master, as documented in the classic "Zen in the Art of Archery." However, when he returned to Germany he became an enthusiastic Nazi. Is there anything in "Zen and the Art of Archery" that might provide some moral principle prejudicial to things like Nazism? Apparently not; his Zen training in Japan did nothing to steer him away from fascism.
I found a very long, but at times quite interesting (but at other times tedious) discussion of the role of Zen in the Pearl Harbor atrocity at Zen and the Art of Divebombing, or The Dark Side of the Tao. It's not quite apparent who the author is, but since the root URL is www.friesian.com, I initially thought it might be the Hut-like Maryland football coach Ralph Friedgen, but apparently it's a collaborative effort by the Philosophy Department of Los Angeles Valley College.
The article begins way back before the origins of Zen, or even of Buddhism, by discussing the Vedic attitudes toward warriors as expressed in the Bhagavad Gita:
Arjuna is taught by Krishna that it is his dharma as a warrior to fight the righteous battle with his cousins and kill them, and that if he kills them without passion or expectation, practicing karmayoga, he can achieve salvation even while he does this. A similar mix of purposes, religious and martial, though with major differences, can be found centuries later with the samurai warrior class of Japan, and with the militaristic ideology that later developed in modern Japan.
It goes on and on, through the entire history of Taoism and Buddhism in China, the development of Zen in Japan, the rise of the samurai class and so on. The author seems almost morbidly inclined to digress, to go off onto all sorts of tangents - an occupational hazard, I suppose, of too much research.
But that's also the problem on another level. The scholarly approach to the topic has prevented the author from experiencing Zen in his or her own life, and frankly, the author misses the point. The conclusion that is made is that Zen, with its emphasis on non-verbal experience, has no moral or ethical teachings, which allowed first the samurai class, then later the military, to go off the ethical deep end, and commit the atrocities of Pearl Harbor, and elsewhere through the Second World War.
No moral or ethical teachings in Zen? Nothing could be further from the truth. The author needs to spend less time in a library and more time in a zendo before attempting to identify the problem with Zen and its relation to the militaristic mind set of Japan in the first half of the 20th Century.
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