Bob Schwartz

October 28, 2026

Lose

When someone out of envy does me wrong
By insulting me and the like,
May I accept defeat
And offer the victory to them.
–Eight Verses for Training the Mind, Langri Thangpa (1054–1123)

When I first saw this excellent ad, before it closed with a message about Jesus, I was sure it was a Buddhist ad campaign, even though I didn’t think that was a thing (it’s not).

The verse above is from Eight Verses for Training the Mind, a classic text of Tibetan Buddhism. The central aim of mind training (lojong) is to rid ourselves of self-importance. From that, all of our best will unfold.

Whether we are aware of it, all of our religious traditions promote this. For theistic traditions, it is that we are less important than God. For non-theistic traditions, it is that we are less important than other people.

If God gets you there, good. If the teachings of Jesus get you there, good. If the teachings of the Buddha get you there, good. If non-religious philosophy gets you there, good.

You may note that some who comment on this believe that God or Jesus or whoever want us to be warriors, so losing is not an option, in fact is blasphemy. How is that going?

By the way, Buddha gets us too.

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October 28, 2026

Covid and Trump

Remember Covid?

Did you know that the CDC (Center for Disease Control) has a museum and that the museum includes a COVID-19 Timeline?

It is a summary reminder of the calendar of the worst days of the pandemic. At some point that felt like it would never get better or end, even though the worst days took only two years. (“Worst” being relative, since the effects still linger and the disease is now endemic.)

Remember Trump?

When you cross-match Covid and Trump, you find some interesting things.

Trump was first in office during the early days, though even then he demonstrated a known tendency toward absurdity not grounded in reality. For example, his suggestion of injecting bleach as a treatment. We don’t know what would have happened if Trump had been in office during the later worst days, but based on what we know now, we might still be seeing federally-funded bleach injections for a range of diseases.

The big point is that the worst days of Covid are behind us, thanks to scientific advances and to to a large number of citizens willing to treat it as the public health disaster it was. We have used the very human ability to selectively forget and move on, which in proper proportion is a psychically good thing, as long as it doesn’t get in the way of handling the next potential pandemic.

There is no official museum with a Trump Timeline. If the disease of Covid peaked in late 2022, Trump has not peaked yet. He is still with us as a pandemic, though hopefully not endemic. We continue to promote public information and vaccines, which ultimately worked for Covid.

If we had not found a way through the pandemic, the devastation would have been staggering and still ongoing. We will get through this lingering and still uncontrolled disease, if we have the will and find a way.

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