May 25, 2002
saka dawa
Getting ready for tomorrow. It is Saka Dawa, the most important festival for Tibetan Buddhism, commemorating Shakyamuni’s Buddhahood and the death of his mortal body. I will be practicing the Eight Mahayana Precepts. This will be the first time I’ve made any sort of committment like this so I’m a little nervous about it. They don’t seem too difficult and it is only for one day. Pretty sure I’ll survive. I’m looking at it like it will be a new beginning, almost like a new year celebration. Hopefully my expectations don’t disappoint me.
posted @ 8:19 AM
May 22, 2002
wait five minutes
It was 85% on Sunday. We went to the lake, went wading, got Blizzards from Dairy Queen. Now mother nature is providing us with a real blizzard. It’s 32% and we’ve accumulated a half an inch of snow—and it shows no sign of letting up. I’m sure it will be 90% and beautiful tomorrow. They say if you don’t like the weather in Montana, wait five minutes.
posted @ 10:30 AM
rediscovery
Punk and Buddhism share so many of the same ideals. I think maybe some lamas who were pretty good practitioners, but maybe not quite to the point where they could completely control future birth thought about coming back to the Western world when the Chinese invaded tibet. Then when they got here they had some carry over from the previous life, but nothing to support that previous life in our culture.
Punk is often thought to be completely violent, but I didn’t find this to be true. It has it’s moments, but if you go off of the premise of non-harming then you find that a circle pit (mosh pit) is violent, but non-harming. You catch a few elbows now and then but if you fall down somebody is there to pick you up so you don’t get trampled. If someone sees you are being pushed around a little too much by the same person then somebody does something about that other person. You agree to collectively aim your tension at the world on each other to get it all out. This way you don’t have to fight with the school bully when he’s mean. You can hold the anger in until the weekend show.
Their are even ’peace punks’. A small, but noticeable movement within the punk subculture that generally wears dreadlocks, listens to Crass and believes in nonviolence. Concerned social beings who just want anarchy and peace. As if the two are compatible. Ultra-idealistic, they often are the motivators for the rest of the punk rock scene.
Loud music and mosh pits aside, you tend to find some very caring people in the scene. People who question what goes on around them and wonder if all this focus on materialism is worth it. If our parents with the big house, 2.5 kids and new car are unhappy, then what makes us think that we’ll be happy in that situation? Television is considered the vacuum attached to your head. Music, art and literature are held with high regard. Community is very important, both local and global community. Fairness in the treatment of others is a major punk rock value. This includes women, ethic people as well as people with blue hair. The straight edge scene is the monastic portion of the culture. No drugs (of any flavor - cigarettes to speed), drink or sex. Renunciation is king in the punk rock world. The first step of the Three Principal Buddhist paths.
The other day I listened to Minor Threat’s Complete Discography while building my new altar.
*****
I want to tell you a little story
’Cause it makes me warm inside
It’s about some friends growing up
And all the things they tried
I’m not talking about staple shit
They went for something more
I guess it was too much dreaming
Too much to hope for
One day something funny happened
But it scared the shit out me
Their heads went in different directions
And their friendship ceased to be
*****
What happened to you?
You’re not the same
Something in your head
Made a violent change
It’s in your head
Filler
*****
You built that wall up around you
And now you can’t see out
And you can’t hear my words
No matter how loud I shout
It’s like screaming at a wall
Someday it’s gonna fall
*****
How could things
Get any worse for you?
You’re so f-cking alone
How could things
Get any worse for you?
I don’t blame you
When you piss and moan
*****
Get your bravery from a six pack
Get your bravery from a half-pint
Drink your whiskey, drink your grain
Bottoms up and you don’t feel pain
Go out and fight, fight
Bottled violence
*****
You tell me you like the taste
You just need an excuse
You tell me it calms your nerves
You just think it looks cool
You tell me you want to be different
You just change for the same
You tell me it’s only natural
You just need the proof
Did you f-cking get it?
It’s in my eyes
And it doesn’t look that way to me
In my eyes
*****
I’m a person just like you
But I’ve got better things to do
Than sit around and smoke dope
’Cause I know I can cope
Laugh at the thought of eating ludes
Laugh at the thought of sniffing glue
Always gonna keep in touch
Never want to use a crutch
I’ve got the straight edge
*****
Make do with what you have
Take what you can get
Pay no mind to us
We’re just a Minor Threat
posted @ 10:13 AM
May 15, 2002
the emptiness of terrorism
A senior Rinpoche in Tibet is being detained on “bombing” charges. An article on the Tibet Information Network website tells his story and how two previous charges against him have been dropped because local people, both Tibetan and Chinese, have signed petitions to have him released. The petitions stated that the Rinpoche has always advocated staying within the policies set by the “Party”. However, this time:
Local people are known to be deeply concerned about Tenzin Deleg Rinpoche’s latest detention. The same Tibetan source told TIN: “The authorities have tried to arrest the Rinpoche before, but this time local people know it is more serious. (…) I’ve heard that now people are too frightened to protest about his recent arrest, given the current political situation.” Since the terrorist attack on the World Trade Centre in New York on 11 September 2001, the Chinese government has branded many presumed “ethnic separatist” as “terrorist”.
posted @ 6:56 AM
May 14, 2002
windows 3.11
Yes, we are still alive. The bike wreck wasn’t that bad.
We must have been out of our mind when we recently decided to take an old 486 computer and then buy a laser printer that we knew was only Windows compatible, thereby forcing us to spend the last week reinstating Windows 3.11 (because every little adjustment would then freeze the computer, drop us back into DOS and we didn’t have the first clue how to update the AUTOEXEC.BAT or CONFIG.SYS files getting us back to an operable system). Funny that they call it an “operating” system at all. We tried to put the free copy of Personal MacLAN on it so that we could do a little file sharing between the Performa, iMac and 486. I’m sure it’s a great program and I’m sure Linksys makes great ethernet cards, but on Win3x they won’t talk to each other.
“Hey, dude, what about Linux?” Yeah, maybe if we had about six months of life that we didn’t mind spending in front of a monitor. We do that already. It’s our job. We just want to check our email, print out Dharma books, listen to mp3 files and surf the web. This is why we choose Mac. It can do anything and do it well. We’ll let you know how it turns out, but PowerPrint and a USB-to-Parallel adapter should be the solution. Plug the laser printer directly into the iMac and put the 486 back in the closet where it belongs.
In an unrelated note, how do you feel about this first person plural “thing”. It started a little over a month ago and “we’re” not sure how “we” feel about it. It’s a nice concept. Works great for Zeldman. It’s hard to write with real emotion and feeling this way though. Feels like a corporate mission statement or something. “I” think that “we’ll” switch back to first person singular for awhile. It may be fun to try some third person sometime. (“He” will think about this and let you know of any changes.)
posted @ 7:57 AM
May 3, 2002
falling down
Feeling like we fell off a bike. Probably because we fell off a bike, head first over the handle bars.posted @ 11:39 PM