Air and Water
Standing in the air
We forget it is there.
That what touches us
Touches all.
The ocean is a lesson
We cannot ignore.
This water is
That water.
Float and sink
Wide and deep
Our reach
And their reach
Are boundless.
Back on dry land
What have we learned?
A conventional reason for promoting free speech, even if hateful, is that it brings the hate out in the open, where it can be exposed and counteracted.
Here is another benefit, found in a verse from The Song of Realizing the Way (Shodoka) by Zen Master Yongjia Xuanjue (665-713):
There is benefit to observing hateful speech;
it makes you a good guiding teacher.
If you don’t hold a grudge against those who slander,
you don’t need to express patience and compassion.
(Translated by Peter Levitt and the Kazuaki Tanahashi)
Another translation:
When I consider the virtue of abusive words,
I find the scandal-monger is my good teacher.
If we do not become angry at gossip,
We have no need for powerful endurance and compassion.
(Translated by Robert Aitken)
“This was the third true knowledge attained by me in the last watch of the night. Ignorance was banished and true knowledge arose, darkness was banished and light arose, as happens in one who dwells diligent, ardent, and resolute.”
“Suppose, monks, a man wandering through a forest would see an ancient path, an ancient road traveled upon by people in the past. He would follow it and would see an ancient city, an ancient capital that had been inhabited by people in the past, with parks, groves, ponds, and ramparts, a delightful place. Then the man would inform the king or a royal minister: ‘Sire, know that while wandering through the forest I saw an ancient path, an ancient road traveled upon by people in the past. I followed it and saw an ancient city, an ancient capital that had been inhabited by people in the past, with parks, groves, ponds, and ramparts, a delightful place. Renovate that city, sire!’ Then the king or the royal minister would renovate the city, and some time later that city would become successful and prosperous, well populated, filled with people, attained to growth and expansion.”
“So too, monks, I saw the ancient path, the ancient road traveled by the Perfectly Enlightened Ones of the past. And what is that ancient path, that ancient road? It is just this Noble Eightfold Path; that is, right view, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration. I followed that path and by doing so I have directly known aging-and-death, its origin, its cessation, and the way leading to its cessation. I have directly known birth … existence … clinging … craving … feeling … contact … the six sense bases … name-and-form … consciousness … volitional formations, their origin, their cessation, and the way leading to their cessation. Having directly known them, I have explained them to the monks, the nuns, the male lay followers, and the female lay followers. This spiritual life, monks, has become successful and prosperous, extended, popular, widespread, well proclaimed among devas and humans.”
Saṃyutta Nikāya 12:65; II 104–7
In the Buddha’s Words: An Anthology of Discourses from the Pali Canon
Just as you probably didn’t see any national coverage of the assault on a Muslim college student riding the New York subway, you also probably didn’t see stories about more attacks in the last few days—including one on a New York City cop.
Sunday
A suspect was arrested Sunday in the Brooklyn attack on an off-duty Muslim cop wearing a hijab.
“Go back to your country,” the man yelled at NYPD Officer Aml Elsokary during the incident Saturday.
He also targeted the cop’s 16-year-old son — shoving him and shouting a slur that referenced ISIS — before telling them both, “I will cut your throat! Go back to your country!” sources said.
The incident is being probed as a hate crime.
The suspect, whose name was not released, lives near the scene of the attack, on Ridge Boulevard and 67th Street in Bay Ridge.
Elsokary made headlines in 2014 when she helped rescue an old man and a baby from a burning building.
Monday
A Muslim New York City Transit employee who was wearing a hijab with her uniform was injured when she was pushed down the stairs at Grand Central Terminal Monday morning by a man who called her a “terrorist,” officials said.
The 45-year-old woman was on her way to work at 6:20 a.m. when the man confronted her on the 7 Train.
“You’re a terrorist and you shouldn’t be working for the city,” the hate-monger spewed at her while the two were on the train, as he jabbed at her MTA patch.
He followed her off the train and pushed her down the stairs. Her ankle and knee were injured and she was taken to NYU Langone Hospital.
We have to start facing a few realities, though strategies to deal with them are still to be determined. One is not just the presence of hate and intolerance—an age-old problem—but the growing aggressive expression of that hate, possibly in light of the current political climate. Another is a certain willingness to stand by while that happens—also long-standing—because we will always have such people and that’s just the way things are. A final reality is much of the news media, which, with all due respect, spent the presidential campaign focused on all kinds of nonsense and missing all kinds of truth, sometimes in the name of being “objective” and not judging or having opinions.
These latest examples of necessary truths are not matters of opinion. What’s wrong is wrong, and if the media is uncomfortable reporting or analyzing it, maybe they have outlived their usefulness and relevance.
December 8 is Bodhi Day, known in Japan as Rohatsu, the day of the Buddha’s enlightenment.
Right Trees (Bodhi Day)
Which tree
To sit under?
Study each one
Counting branches
Inspecting leaves.
Is the ground
Too soft or wet
The shade
Too dark?
Who can deny
The forest
Yet it shrinks
To dust
On a distant shore.
The moon and
The morning star
Are just enough light
To brighten the night
Waking to find
This tree
All trees
Are right.
I wondered how the Buddha knew which tree to sit under for that consequential meditation. An easy answer is that it didn’t matter, that any tree or all trees would do. Another answer is that it didn’t have to be a tree at all. Another of the infinite answers is that there was no tree, no moon or morning star, no sitting. Just waking up.
The Washington Post reports:
Two closely-watched Republican lawmakers are calling on their colleagues to maintain aggressive congressional oversight of the Trump administration next year even though the new president hails from the same party controlling Capitol Hill.
Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) and Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), who have large national followings and grander political ambitions, agreed that House and Senate committees must keep close tabs on Donald Trump’s new government starting next year — not because they want to stick it to a man that neither originally endorsed for president, but because doing so would help rebalance power between the three branches of government.
During the campaign, Trump was like a rich and wacky member of the Republican family—a crazy uncle you could distance yourself from, but who was after all a member of the family, and you did want to make sure that he left you something in his will. This led to many Republicans doing some fancy dancing.
But Trump is very much alive, and the Republican Party woke up to find itself married to him. So while Republican Senators like Cotton and Gowdy say they will “maintain aggressive oversight” because they want a proper balance of power, that isn’t it. Married to Trump, they know that if he screws up, come the next election—or sooner—they will get the blame and take the hit. Trump may now be head of the household, but his new family is going to try to make sure he doesn’t burn down the house. Because they know he just loves to play with fire.
“Badges, to god-damned hell with badges! We have no badges. In fact, we don’t need badges. I don’t have to show you any stinking badges.”
Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1927) by B. Traven, changed slightly for the movie.
The naming of Ben Carson to be Secretary of Housing and Urban Development brings this to mind.
Imagine that you are a really, really rich guy with a big ego and a big yacht. You pilot that yacht all around America and some locations around the world.
You conclude that based on this experience, you are able to captain the biggest destroyer in the U.S. Navy fleet (USS Zumwalt, 610-foot, 15,000-ton, $4.4 billion to build) or a Nimitz-Class nuclear-powered aircraft carrier (USS George Washington, 1092-foot, 100,000-ton, crew of 5,000).
You further conclude that in general, qualifications are overrated and unnecessary. You therefore feel free to ask anyone to do anything, no matter how big the job or small the experience or knowledge. After all, that’s how you got your job in the first place.
You’re hired!
This is from today’s New York Daily News.
I have mixed feelings about repeating such a negative story. But I am repeating it because Google News shows that at this point it has been covered by only 26 news outlets in America and the world.
Only twenty-six news outlets. Practically any story gets more coverage than that—let alone a story with major social implications, involving the next President of the United States, or at least his name as a rallying cry.
One more thing: Take the hateful actions of these attackers, and imagine their shouting the name of some other President. Imagine these men shouting “You look like a f—ing terrorist! Get the hell out of the country! You don’t belong here!” followed by “George Bush! George Bush!” or “Ronald Reagan! Ronald Reagan!”
Are we ready for this New World?
STRAPHANGERS STOOD BY AND WATCHED as three drunk white men repeatedly screamed “Donald Trump!” and hurled anti-Islam slurs Thursday at a Muslim Baruch College student before trying to rip her hijab off of her head on an East Side subway, the woman told the Daily News.
Yasmin Seweid said she was stunned by the assault — and the fact that no one in the subway car came to her aid.
“It made me really sad after when I thought about it,” she said. “People were looking at me and looking at what was happening and no one said a thing. They just looked away.”
The terrified 18-year-old recounted her harrowing encounter with the hate-spewing trio.
“I heard them say something very loudly, something about Donald Trump … I also heard them say the word terrorist and I sort of got a little scared,” Seweid told The News.
Seweid had left an event at Baruch and was on her way home on an uptown No. 6 platform at the 23rd St. and Park Ave. stop at about 10 p.m. Thursday when the men started taunting her, she said.
They hollered at the business major as she boarded a train.
They kept screaming Trump’s name at her, and then said, “Oh look, a (expletive) terrorist,” she said.
“Get the hell out of the country!” they yelled during the train ride. “You don’t belong here!”
Seweid, who was born in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, to Egyptian parents, was shocked.
“I born and raised in this country,” she told The News. “I’m an American, you know?”
When Seweid ignored them, they pulled on her bag to get her attention and the strap broke.
“That’s when I turned around and said ‘can you please leave me alone,’ and they started laughing,” she said.
She walked to the other end of the train, and they followed her and tried to pull off her hijab, a head covering worn by Muslim women.
“Take that thing off!” they hollered.
“I put my hand on top of my head to hold it,” Seweid said. “Then I turned around and screamed ‘what the (expletive).’ ”
Seweid got off the train at Grand Central Terminal on E. 42nd St. and reported the terrifying incident to police.
Her father, Sayeed Seweid, 55, of New Hyde Park, L.I., said he was also angry that no one else stepped in to defend his daughter.
“Nobody even offered to help an 18-year-old girl,” he said. “That means something. Her phone was dying. You offer help — it doesn’t matter the race, religion, or the country.”
After filing a police report, shaking and crying, Seweid made her way to Penn Station where she called her father after finding an electrical outlet to charge her phone, her father said. She was not injured.
He came and picked her up and they chatted with police into the early morning hours before driving home.
On Friday, Seweid sat with police officers and tried to help spot the men on surveillance video, her father said. No one has been arrested.
The incident is another in a growing list of bias crimes across the city since Trump’s election. Cops said that from Nov. 8 through Nov. 27, there were 34 reported incidents compared to 13 in the same period in 2015.
“American Muslims, and particularly men and women who wear religious attire, are being increasingly targeted by hate nationwide in the wake of the Nov. 8 election,” said Afaf Nasher, executive director of the New York chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
“I was very shaken up … I’m definitely traumatized,” Seweid said. “I’m really scared.”
Of the 34 incidents between Election Day and Nov. 27, 18 have been anti-Semitic in nature, compared to five in the same period last year. Five of the incidents have been anti-gay, and five others, anti-white. Two targeted Muslims and one was anti-black.
Bob Schwartz 