Yes, that cute little tyke is me in an earlier incarnation, circa 1958. No particular reason, other than narcissism, for posting it.

I mentioned a local crime wave the other day. I first became aware of this on Tuesday when I received the following, rather ominous, message from a neighbor:

"I do not have an abundance of details, but can tell you a car was vandalized (windows broken, laptop stolen) around 1 A.M. this morning (Tuesday, March 15), and another car was stolen from the car port. Be alert. Watch out for each other."

That was followed by this email from a resident from around the block:

"My car had money taken out of a briefcase either Monday or Tuesday night. I just discovered it today. Perhaps it happened at the same time as the other break-ins. The car was not locked and was parked in my driveway at the back of the house."

Greetings from the third most dangerous city in America. But who leaves money in a briefcase overnight in an unlocked car?

The day that I got these messages, I had to go to the state environmental offices in the morning to review some files and then I had a meeting at the law offices of a client, but I finished these tasks early enough to do some clothes shopping, and since Bloomingdale's was having a 25% off sale on Calvin Klein underwear, I bought about $100 worth of boxers, briefs and t-shirts even though underwear wasn't at the top of my list, and while I was at it, I went up to Women's Intimates on the Third Floor and got L. a surprise gift of C.K. lingerie (although who the gift was really for is open to debate), then I swung over to the new Barney's store in Atlanta, which was a big disappointment because it's a Barney's Co-op, not a department store, and it basically just sells jeans and t-shirts like some sort of a Gap for Teens, so I went to Parisian and bought three pairs of pants, and then headed home and L. stopped by and was delighted by the surprise lingerie and we went out to dinner at Chops, which, along with Bones, is among the best steakhouses in Atlanta, and we had a lovely time and when I got home I got the first of the messages about the break-ins but I wasn't able to blog about it or about the day because Blogger wasn't working and all I could post was a picture of a woman pointing a handgun so I had to address all of this by trying to squeeze it in to today's post.

Meanwhile, here's more from Julie's email:

Is there an omnipotent existence in the universe? Is it active in the universe?

Well, if you're looking for universal laws within the context of Buddhist teachings, a good place to start is with the law of karma, which teaches that "All beings are the owners of their action, companions to their action, and its results will be their home. All action with intention, be it skillful or harmful, of such acts they will be the heirs. "

We are subject to the consequences of our actions, on an individual level, a family level, a national level, and so on. There's no free lunch and there's no Wrathful God. Karma is neutral, and operates universally. Bo Lozoff, founder of the Prison Ashram Foundation, says that from the standpoint of a practitioner, karma acts as a spiritual Help Wanted ad. If there's something we're blind to in ourselves, then the results of our actions help us to see what we are not seeing. Why do I keep getting irritated at this person? Is it possible I'm actually more like them than I'm willing to admit?

Are there causes of huge catastrophies, such as the december tsunami? Are the reasons of such events simply natural, unavoidable and unfortunate? Or is there something else behind these kinds of events?

To me one of the most pernicious aspects of so-called New Age thinking, and one of the clearest reasons why it shouldn't ever be lumped in with Buddhism, is the vague idea that we create our own reality, and thus, if we suffer at all, it is because we've failed to visualize a suffering-free reality.

The Buddha's teaching is based on the Four Noble Truths, the first of which is "there is suffering." Suffering comes in two flavors: that which is inevitable, and that which can be let go of through practice. The first category includes the tsunami as a natural phenomenon. Conditioned upon birth, we are subject to aging, sickness and death, to separation from what we love, and to contact with what we dislike. This is bad enough! Yet we choose to compound this situation through our misunderstandings of the nature of things and the causes of suffering. If a person mopes around for example thinking, "my suffering is the fault of my parents, for being so horrible to me when I was a small child," then that person is very unlikely to ever accept responsibility for themselves, or to become free of their emotional distortions. The path of practice is essentially a path of learning to let go of the unnecessary suffering we add onto existence through our ignorance, so that we can respond better to things we can't change, like the tsunami.