Latest Parries
April 2012
From Nokia N95 to iPhone 4S
Annoyances and upsets with the iPhone 4S have been more than offset by its screen, the silkiness of its surfaces, the camera, and the third-party market for both software and hardware.
February 2012
2001: A Space Odyssey: Dry, Juicy, Linear, Luminous
After they finished watching the Bond movies, I figured the next series John Gruber and Dan Benjamin would discuss on The Talk Show would be Stanley Kubrick’s oeuvre. But Gruber refused — too personal for podcasting, he said. Disappointed, I rewatched 2001.
January 2012
A Scheme of a Number of Friends
Instead of acknowledging the wisdom of leading from behind, the Right jumped on the Obama administration’s handling of Libya as yet another example of at best incompetence. They lost me there.
October 2011
The Mouse and the Cantilever
Steve Jobs we lost at the age of 56; when Frank Lloyd Wright reached that age it was still only 1923, the time of merely his second comeback with Tokyo’s Imperial Hotel.
March 2010
Friendship is for Weenies
It’s amazing, given the adulation he enjoyed elsewhere, that the Israeli public knew from the start not to trust this US President.
Before the Setup
Nobody from usesthis.com has asked me what my setup us, nor is likely to anytime soon. So I’m just going to mouth off here about it. But first, some background.
February 2010
Walter Russell Mead steps gingerly into the Wieseltier/Sullivan imbroglio
On the Leon Wieseltier/Andrew Sullivan spat, Walter Russell Mead seems to want to have his strudel and eat it too.
October 2009
My Hope: Obama’s Change
Defeat in the Olympics bid may focus the mind in the Oval Office where it should be: Afghanistan.
July 2009
At Modi’in Mall
There’s nothing else around here except empty desolate pretty hills. The Israel Trail passes by a bit to the west. It’s a hot July Wednesday morning. Things are reasonably busy. The shops are mostly franchises, almost all homegrown — Super-Pharm, Aroma, Tzomet Sfarim, Cup O’ Joe’s, LaMetayel, Mega, Fox, Castro, H&O.
Israel, the Bad So Far
I’m surprised at the general appearance of Tel Aviv folks. Yes, it’s hot, but people appear dressed as if they’re in, I don’t know, Be’er Sheva. And the people in Be’er Sheva, last time I was there, looked to me like they’re dressed for Gaza.
W hat does Dharma really mean? If I’m right, Tolstoy explained it nicely with his opening sentence to Anna Karenina: “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” That is, there is a proper role for every component of a whole, and Dharma refers to that proper-parts-of-the-whole concept in regards to all reality. Dharma also refers to the proper perception of and perspective on that whole, understanding which parts are important and which are not, which are branch and which are tree, which are head and which are limb.
Why bring this up? Well, I had a couple of brief joyful moods today, which I quickly squelched in remembering that my dog Maddie is no longer. If we accept the central idea of cognitive therapy, that emotions merely follow thoughts, then entering a joyful mood when circumstances have not changed means that one’s thoughts have perhaps temporarily slipped into perceiving at least one area of the Dharma properly, with each part of that area in its proper place and relationship to the others.
Before continuing with this, if indeed there’s anything or anywhere to continue, do I have my definitions correct? Ah. According to a URL that suggests it knows whereof it speaks, http://aboutdharma.org/what-is-dharma.php, Dharma means “protection”. Not at all what I’m saying, it seems. But on another page on the same site, http://aboutdharma.org/dharma-wheel.php Dharma is the name given to Buddha’s collected teachings.
Okay, according to http://www.thefreedictionary.com/dharma, I’m not wrong really, as it defines the term as follows (see definitions 1a, 1c and 3a):
1. Hinduism & Buddhism
a. The principle or law that orders the universe.
b. Individual conduct in conformity with this principle.
c. The essential function or nature of a thing.
2. Hinduism Individual obligation with respect to caste, social custom, civil law, and sacred law.
3. Buddhism
a. The body of teachings expounded by the Buddha.
b. Knowledge of or duty to undertake conduct set forth by the Buddha as a way to enlightenment.
c. One of the basic, minute elements from which all things are made.
Buddhism conflates the mechanics of reality with Buddha’s teachings of them; fair enough, that’s the leap of faith involved in anything worthy of calling itself a religion. Capitalized Dharma refers to Buddha’s teachings while lowercase dharma refers to reality; fair enough, kind of like the sacred and the profane in Western terms, which regarding these matters seem a little cruder. And similarly, Judaism gets close to conflating reality with its revealed mirror, the written Bible.
And cognitive therapy. Yes, according to its Wikipedia entry, founder Aaron T. Beck (still around) “introduced a focus on the underlying ‘schema’ – the fundamental underlying ways in which people process information – whether about the self, the world or the future.” Exactly. Beck’s schema is what I’m talking about regarding dharma — the proper way of viewing things. It’s like Jack Bauer infiltrating an office building to catch bad guys without Chloey uploading him the building schematic.
And here you go, I just found this after rabbit-holing down the Beck Foundation website: Buddhism and Cognitive Therapy}/InfoGroup/Main/InfoType/Article/PageVars/Library/InfoManage/Zoom.htm by Aaron T. Beck, M.D. Spring 2005 and then Reflections On My Public Dialog With The Dalai Lama}/InfoGroup/Main/InfoType/Article/PageVars/Library/InfoManage/Zoom.htm. (And they wonder why the web is more addictive than television — why, because if you look around it corroborates your own ideas!)
Here’s an example of where East and West both grasp the same part of the elephant but with their own different body parts. As Beck himself writes: “From my readings and discussions with His Holiness [the Dalai Lama] and other Buddhists, I am struck with the notion that Buddhism is the philosophy and psychology closest to cognitive therapy and vice versa.” I would think that cognitive therapy is a case-by-case removal of patients’ errors, with the correct way only relatively vaguely set out as a series of values, whereas Buddhism has a much richer and complete schema of the way things work and are.
Why all this all of a sudden? Yesterday I stepped into a bookstore in the adjacent Kensington Gardens. It shocks and disappoints me not to have been spending more time in heightened rambling through bookstore bookshelves now that they’re right next door. Really, what’s the matter with your host? In years past, whenever I came to the UK I’d get lost in bookshops. Actually, now that I think about it, that stopped being quite so true after university. I felt I had been shown a couple of handfuls of the very best books, and though of course there were many many more out there, these were my fated ones, and they all warranted returning to, and I didn’t need any more books, just needed to reread the ones I’d already read and understand them better.
Before that I’d used bookshops as other people use the I-Ching or tarot cards: whatever struck my fancy as I crossed the oceans of those shelves would set me on my next ideational trajectory. It felt fateful, as if my path of books was swinging me to my destiny, Tarzan-like. It would feel amazing that found just the book I was looking for but had been too asleep to ask. My unconscious mind was seeking books out that answered questions or interests and it’s much much easier to passively be excited about things when they are paraded in front of you than to actively articulate just what you’re interested in. Sometimes mush wins.
So yesterday I wandered into the bookstore, just taking a break from the computer screen, having an inkling that roaming bookshelves was the nourishment and refreshment I needed. I headed straight downstairs, looking for Nietzsche, I guess, and would have bought Human, All Too Human if they had it, because I’ve never read that one, and the guy is just so delightful, if it’s not blasphemy to speak about the man’s writings like a tray of cakes at teatime. But there was no philosophy section. I found myself seeking stuff on transcendental meditation. Found it! I didn’t know this was the guy the Beatles got disillusioned with. And that TM is a method they don’t explain to you unless you take a course, which costs $2,500 today! But I also know that meditation is a common and integral part of Buddhism in general, so I picked up the next book, Eight Steps to Happiness by Geshe Kelsang Gyatso. This already felt a lot less soggy than the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. It had an edge, a bite to the prose and ideas, giving me more faith in the guy.
Hmmm. Since arriving in Britain I’ve only been reading books I take out the library; haven’t bought any new ones. But while the library is free, it’s like cheating compared to the experience of buying books. I’m more choosy when I buy a book, and I’m invested in it more. There are so many used bookstores around that sell at reasonable prices, it’s a shame not to be continuing to create a personal library, as I’ve been doing since I was 16. Back then I paid overweight to bring back a big pile of books to Israel from Britain, where my bookseller uncle Paul had gotten me big discounts with friends in the trade. I’ve still got many of those books.
So meanwhile I’ve got some old good habits to rekindle — my own dharma to rediscover.
Previously
Without My Own Blog
Nextly
WWWRNUYTAI?