Bob Schwartz

July 11, 2025

Multi-state hurricanes and FEMA: Hard realities make politicians and officials sound stupid

Hurricanes and other storms don’t recognize American state borders. That’s a fact. Some states may be harder hit than others, but a number of states can be severely affected at once.

Which is just one of the reasons federal involvement is essential and mandated by Congress. Yet up to this moment, the demand from the administration is that the states take care when disaster strikes, to the point of eliminating the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

It isn’t necessary to list all the states that each of our worst hurricanes have devastated. We can hope against hope that future hurricanes, including this season, limit any damage to just one state, if there is damage at all.

Hard realities make ideologically-driven politicians and officials sound stupid. If sounding stupid is all it is.

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July 10, 2025

Humility and inferiority

Our theistic religions promote humility, mostly in relation to a supreme God. Before God all are inferior. That is humbling.

What if we are inferior to everyone else, not just God?

Whenever I am in the company of others,
May I regard myself as inferior to all
And from the depths of my heart
Cherish others as supreme.
Geshe Langri Thangpa (1054–1123), Eight Verses for Training the Mind

This does not fit easily into our lives. If we look around our congregations, we may struggle, thinking, “Am I really inferior to him or her? I don’t think so.” And then if we look around at others in our community or the world, the comparison is even harder.

Regarding our inferiority, as hard as it is on our self-importance, is an essential step to humility and compassion. You can make a list of the ways that you are evidently and certifiably superior to others. But to what purpose?

We should think of ourselves as the lowest of all beings. This is not an attitude of low self-esteem. In fact, it is the opposite. If we put ourselves in the lowest, humblest seat, we remove any chance of feeling insecure. From the lowest seat, there is no place to fall down. Such humility naturally comes with a sense of nobility, which enables us to focus on other beings and bring them great benefit.
Dzigar Kongtrul, The Intelligent Heart

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July 9, 2025

Flowers awake

Flowers awake

At six a.m. the flowers coyly closed
Soon the sun is high, hot and bright
The flowers open petals spread
In colored invitation
To eye and heart, bee and hummingbird
Awake

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July 9, 2025

Tyranny of total transactionalism

Let’s make a deal.

Transactions are part of life.

Commerce and trade, individual and institutional, depend on it. It is the same for personal, social and even religious dynamics. This for that. Do this to get that.

Transactions can become a dominant ideology and style. Let’s call it total transactionalism. Everything becomes a transaction.

We don’t have to look far to see this on display. We may have to look a little harder to see it in ourselves.

We can’t stop all transacting and can’t ask others to stop all transacting. We might investigate how much of what goes on and what we do is a transaction. We can determine whether that transactionalism is for the best.

It probably isn’t.

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July 8, 2025

Money by Pink Floyd

Money, get back
I’m alright, Jack, keep your hands off of my stack
Money, it’s a hit
Don’t give me that do goody-good bullshit

When Pink Floyd released the album Dark Side of the Moon in 1973, they were already successful creatively and commercially. But not nearly as successful and rich as they would become in the decades ahead.

So was the track Money on Dark Side observational, critical, ironic, aspirational or all those? Anyway, it is uncannily right on the moment…and the money.

Money, get away
Get a good job with more pay, and you’re okay
Money, it’s a gas
Grab that cash with both hands and make a stash

New car, caviar, four-star daydream
Think I’ll buy me a football team

Money, get back
I’m alright, Jack, keep your hands off of my stack
Money, it’s a hit
Don’t give me that do goody-good bullshit

I’m in the hi-fidelity first class travelling set
And I think I need a Learjet

Money, it’s a crime
Share it fairly, but don’t take a slice of my pie
Money, so they say
Is the root of all evil today

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July 8, 2025

Moon + Clouds @ Sunset

Are these photos “real”?

Sometimes our discussions these days sound less like analysis by scientists and philosophers and more like a bunch of people sitting around stoned and asking “What is reality, man?”

In this case, that is the moon and those are clouds and the sun was setting (though the moon was not rising and the sun was not setting; the earth was turning). The light fell on a camera sensor and the data was recorded on a memory card. I know all this because I was there and experienced it.

And yet if you or I asked an AI image generator to create this exact picture, or something close, it could. In fact, if you thought the cloud formations were not quite right or if you wanted more and different colors than the sunset created, you could get that.

So what is reality, man?

A great question. And an amazing sky.

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July 7, 2025

Meditation is floating but not swimming

Floating can be joyful and necessary.

Swimming is more.

Learning how to swim you first learn how to float.

Floating peacefully in a pool, lake or ocean, floating can be enough. Drifting down a river, floating can be enough. Dropped in deep and distressed water, floating can be enough, more than enough, as it keeps you from sinking.

But floating is not swimming. Swimming can take you places that floating won’t.

Learn to float. Train to swim.

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July 6, 2025

We are passersby (says Jesus) and tourists (says the Dalai Lama)

Whenever we can connect the Dalai Lama and Jesus, we know we are in the right place.

The Gospel of Thomas, sometimes called the Fifth Gospel, is a collection of sayings of Jesus that parallel and supplement the canonical gospels.

It contains this short and simple direction:

Be passersby

This enigmatic saying for me has the depth of any words in scripture.

Today I came across related wisdom from the Dalai Lama, who makes the same point. Just as Jesus is not offering a limited Christian perspective, the Dalai Lama is not offering a limited Buddhist perspective. It is a fact of human life.

Here the Dalai Lama comments on verses from Shantideva’s The Way of the Bodhisattva.

We are all here on this planet, as it were, as tourists. None of us can live here forever. The longest we might live is a hundred years. So while we are here we should try to have a good heart and to make something positive and useful of our lives. Whether we live just a few years or a whole century, it would be truly regrettable and sad if we were to spend that time aggravating the problems that afflict other people, animals, and the environment. The most important thing is to be a good human being.

Dalai Lama, For the Benefit of All Beings: A Commentary on The Way of the Bodhisattva

Passersby. Tourists. Together.

Note: By coincidence—or is it?—this was created spontaneously today on the 90th birthday of the Dalai Lama.

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July 2, 2025

Knowing it

Some will know it in silence
Some with a word
Some with ten thousand words
Some with a color
Some with a rainbow
Some with a note
Some with a symphony
Some with a picture
Some with a scene
Some here
Some there
Some now
Some later
No word
Or color
Or note
Or picture
Or here
Or there
Or now
Or later
Not know

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June 30, 2025

Cushion

Cushion

I look at the cushion
The cushion looks back
It has no clock
But I do
Come it says
Early I say
Come it says
And I do

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