Congress has long mandated that after the death of U.S. presidents, official flags at the Capitol fly at half-staff for thirty days.
Jimmy Carter died on December 29 at the age of 100. So during the Inauguration on January 20, flags would be flown at half-staff. But Trump objected crudely, saying that Democrats were “giddy” at the possibility. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson thus ordered that during the Inauguration the flags would be fully flown.
Trump was Time magazine’s Person of the Year for 2024. But for their magazine cover on Inauguration week, we appreciate that it is this particular former president who is featured. We don’t know how Trump feels about this, though we might yet hear.
If America needs role models for moral leadership and exemplary living, we have had few presidents, maybe none, who fit the role better than Jimmy Carter.
The great American film-maker died this week, leaving behind a body of work unmatched in its seductive strangeness and transcendent mystery. We put it in order.
While these kinds of rankings can be controversial, there is little doubt—for me at least—that Twin Peaks is at the top. Hoad wrote:
1. Twin Peaks S1 & 2 (1990-91)
A damn fine cup of coffee. A girl wrapped in plastic. A log-carrying oracle. Grief expressed through novelty song. Thumbs up from Dale Cooper. Canada as the source of all corruption. Backwards talk from dwarves and dames. Traffic lights in the night. The leering demon behind the sofa. Like a fish in a percolator, the original Twin Peaks was where the Lynchian sensibility filtered irreversibly into the zeitgeist.
Audiences had never seen anything like it: an ostensible homage to the comforts of daytime soap opera, none of it facile or ironic, but cut with Lynch’s habitual 1950s pop-culture references, dadaist skits and appalling sexual brutality. Not only did it expand the parameters of television but it amounted to the fullest and most seductive statement of the director’s worldview; his great American cosmology, in which the forces of good and evil warred for the souls of small-town prom queens and FBI agents alike.
Yes, the second season dips badly after Laura Palmer’s killer is revealed, and Lynch was occupied with Wild at Heart and other things. But his collaborators’ flailing attempts to replicate Lynchian weirdness in his absence only served to highlight his inimitable talent for finding the offbeat route to overwhelming emotion. Every time the series called for revelatory violence or charged metaphysics (“It is happening again!”), he returned to the director’s chair and unfailingly delivered. Thanks for warning us about the Black Lodge, Mr Lynch – and see you in the White one.
By 1990, some of us had already watched thousands of hours of TV, and had already seen the dazzling strangeness of Lynch films like Blue Velvet. We had also seen some interesting and inspiring experiments in television programs. But as Hoad wrote, and is worth repeating, “Audiences had never seen anything like it.”
(On a personal note, in the midst of Season 1, I organized a viewing party for friends and printed up a little Twin Peaks booklet to follow along.)
Before Lynch’s death, I was already in the process of rewatching Twin Peaks. The moment Episode 1 began, when I heard the unforgettable theme music, and watched the opening credits, I was reminded of a central message that the experience of Twin Peaks, and other Lynch creations, reflects: Things are strange, everything is strange, and that is wonderful.
The original Twin Peaks series is streaming on Paramount+ and available on other services.
“I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.” ― Albert Einstein
“If in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following one it should be fired. Otherwise don’t put it there.” —attributed to Anton Chekhov (a dramatic principle known as Chekhov’s Gun)
Nine nations have an estimated 13,000 nuclear weapons. According to the principle of Chekhov’s Gun, if you have hung 13,000 guns on stage, in the ensuing global drama, one of those weapons will be used. As one expert notes in the series, that we haven’t experienced nuclear Armageddon is not because we are smart, but because we are lucky.
We are either living in a new Cold War or never left the first one. Either way, as dark as it may be, we need to learn and contemplate exactly what a Cold War equipped with so many available nuclear weapons means.
That is the theme of the series. It covers the histories, up to the present, of the Cold War and The Bomb, which are inextricably linked. The world after World War II cleaved into two mighty factions, both convinced the other was an existential threat and must be defeated or removed. The difference from every other fight before in history is that those powers posed a literal existential threat—and still do.
Daniel Ellsberg is famous for his Vietnam War-era whistle-blowing, with his leaking of the so-called Pentagon Papers, revealing that the war was a costly and unwinnable lost cause. But years before that, Ellsberg was one of the brains at the Rand think tank, which was asked in the 1950s to evaluate the possible outcome of a thermonuclear war. Ellsberg relates his shock then and now. The estimate was that 600 million people might be killed—20% of the world’s population at the time.
In any area, when learning, I seek teachers over time. Eventually, I may narrow that down, not ignoring the value of the others, but recognizing that as we progress, as we change, as everything changes, some are more fitting for immediate study, some less.
This has been the case with my religious life. I am neither a practitioner nor advocate for flitting from one beautiful sweet flower to another or to staying with one tradition or teacher for a lifetime. It should be a matter, as I repeat regularly, for pursuing and testing what works. One should never be reluctant to follow a single narrow road or to follow different paths that may look to others like mindless wandering. If we clearly see, not easy, that the single narrow road and the multiple paths are all one beneficial way.
Study all, study some, study one, study none.
This can apply to any area of learning. You can follow this in any direction. Start with one, expand to some or many, come back to a few or just one. Nothing will be lost or wasted, provided you keep them all carefully in mind.
But what about “study none”? Is there a point at which, whatever the path or paths, you can or should stop studying? This is subtle, so subtle that I am challenged beyond my reach. All along, wherever you are on the path, you are always studying none. One of my earliest influences, Sri Ramana Maharshi, had a nice way of dealing with this, a way consistent with many other traditions.
When asked a question about practice or philosophy by a student, he directed the student to ask “Who is asking the question?” That is, any investigation begins, and ends, with investigation of the mind asking the question. Whatever the subject, not just the spiritual but in all areas, the study is that. Of course there is much to learn in any area. That is why we have teachers, schools, and vast bodies of knowledge. But our relation to all that knowledge, to all others and to ourselves, is beyond and beneath all those studies. Which, in a crude way, is what I mean by study none.
Commerce has been part of human life from the beginning. Acquiring, trading, buying, selling.
Commercial means more than that. It includes messages about acquiring, trading, buying, selling.
The difference over time has been the balance of these commercial elements with other parts of our lives and culture. One vision of a dystopian future has been one in which commercial messages are ubiquitous and constant. The more we want to acquire, trade, buy, sell, the more the messages are about doing that, and the more those messages encourage and tempt us to do that.
We may not have reached that predicted dystopia, but it is fair to say that we are living in a commercial culture, with both the commerce and the messages.
Which is why we should not be surprised that a leader emerged whose entire life has been devoted not just to commerce, but to commercial messaging. In fact, since stretching the truth, or outright lying and deception, is considered a part of commercial messaging, we should also not be surprised that the leadership involves lots of truth stretching, lying and deception. If a commercial spokesman ends up as leader, what else would we expect?
It might be good for us to back off a little—or a lot—from the commercial culture we find ourselves in. Unfortunately, it won’t result in a quick change in current leadership. But it can put us on the path to better balance between the commercial and the non-commercial. And in time, maybe find ourselves with lives and leadership involving less acquiring, trading, buying, selling, less messaging about those, and more messaging about other things of value.
It is not my way to recommend religious and spiritual practices for anyone. I report my own practices, experiences and observations, leaving it to others to choose or ignore.
I am not making an exception for the Tibetan Buddhist practice of mind training, known as lojong. It took me a while—a long while, decades—to discover this. Given the wide range of Buddhist practices, the Tibetan varieties have not been a major part of my life. It is not that I haven’t studied and appreciated traditions outside of Zen Buddhism, my lifelong practice, but there are simply too many worthy paths to follow them all without getting nowhere.
But I have now discovered lojong. I can report that it is unlike any practice I have experienced in Buddhism, and more, quite unlike any practice in other religious and spiritual traditions.
Lojong is roughly a thousand years old, with refinements and commentaries over the centuries, right up to the present. Lojong consists of 59 instructional slogans, divided into seven points, aimed at training the mind. Training to do what and be what? Simply, oversimply, to live and learn wisdom and compassion. Lojong manages to encompass all of Buddhism in a series of actionable tasks.
If one does not have a live teacher, as I do not, there are a number of excellent books about lojong, along with videos by some of these excellent teachers. Some, like Pema Chodron and her teacher Chogyam Trungpa, are well-known. Others are known in the Tibetan Buddhist communities, but unfamiliar to many others. Evey one is worthy of knowing.
It is my way to try to be comprehensively grounded in areas new to me, as this is, and then to narrow my focus. Below is a list of those books and teachers I have found helpful in early days. I wish I could say “this is the one for me” or “this is the one for you”. I can’t. Each one offers a view that may well explain a point or that may be an expression that resonates. If I say that the order listed below is best-first, there may be a little truth in that—for me—but even that is a stretch.
Tens of millions of Americans have seen the vision of Trump America and don’t like it. It is a vision reflected in four years of Trump as president, four years as former president, four years coming as president again. It is also based on Trump serving with a majority in both houses of Congress and a majority sympathetic to him on the Supreme Court.
The first principle: The vision for those who don’t like the Trump vision is not simply a vision without Trump. The past election veered between no-Trump and assorted other pitches. It didn’t work.
The second principle: The Democratic Party—the only alternative in an immutable two-party system—is a valuable asset but does not seem capable of providing an actionable, effective and attractive vision. America would be far worse off without Democrats as a counterbalance. But being not-Republicans and not-Trump is not enough.
Effective and attractive leaders offering actionable strategies and vision will emerge. Eventually, sooner or later. But it cannot be stressed enough: not-this is not enough, and neither is retreading visions that will not work in these times, in this nation, for and with these people. Some principles are so basic—rule of law, for example—that they should be a part of any vision. But it is not enough.
As noted, Democrats are an essential element in a two-party system now dominated by Republicans. But the thought that if Democrats can just win a slim majority here or there, or at least reduce a Republican majority here or there, is not enough. It is not a vision.
If you discover some visionary leaders, or better yet if you are a visionary leader, come forward. Proverbs 29:18 says “Where there is no vision, the people perish.” Or the wrong vision prevails.
Whatever your area of study and learning—not just religion, but science, business, arts, etc.—there are those who you want to learn from and those who want to teach you. Sometimes individually, sometimes institutionally.
You may keep in mind two Buddhist principles that apply universally: skillful means and testing teachings.
Skillful or expedient means—known in Sanskrit as upaya—suggests that at any point in a life, under any particular circumstances, one method of learning may be appropriate for an individual, but at another point under different circumstances, another method may be more appropriate.
Buddha was also very specific about how an individual can choose methods and teachings. In a sutra attributed to Buddha, he recommended testing teachings, and not simply accepting teachings from any teacher—not even himself:
Don’t accept what you hear by report, and don’t accept mere tradition. Don’t jump to conclusions based on assumptions. Don’t accept a statement just because it is found in scriptures, or on the basis of general acceptance, or because it is what your teacher says. After examination, only believe and act upon what you yourself have tested and found reasonable. —Kalama Sutta
The year 2024 presented challenges. The new year will too.
Some of the challenges were and will be individual and personal, some shared and public.
In the past year, I thought more and more about compassion. For a while I bemoaned what I perceived to be a lack of compassion on the part of other people, lots of other people. But late in the year, I began to see that cultivating compassion could only begin with me. Fortunately, I discovered a thousand-year-old Buddhist practice known as lojong, aimed at doing just that.
One of the many points of the practice concerns how to deal with adversity, including enemies. Many are familiar with the suggestion of Jesus to “love your enemies.” This goes one stop further, with the suggestion “Be grateful to everyone.” Everyone, including those who do harm.
“Be grateful to everyone.”
This is a very profound statement. One of our primary tasks in this training is to get rid of anger and hatred. If we disperse these emotions, a great deal of suffering will vanish along with them. When we feel grateful, it breaks down anger and we cannot continue to feel hate. That is why this slogan is so effective. It is not difficult to be relaxed and forgiving when conditions are harmonious. However when things go wrong and we feel abused or under stress, we tend to be hostile. Dwelling on our hurt stirs up our aversion and the whole experience becomes totally negative. This can be avoided if we remember the positive potential in the situation.
The adversities that other people bring us are gifts, not betrayals. Disappointments try our patience and compassion. If our lives are completely sheltered and blessed, we have no friction to use as raw material in our practice. We will never conquer our ego if we are spared from every single upset and provocation. Atisha was known to travel with an attendant who was terribly bad-tempered. The man was irritable and very rude to everyone. People could not understand why a kind and wise teacher like Atisha permitted this nasty man to accompany him on his travels and they asked him how he put up with it. Atisha answered that the man was his “patience tester” and very precious to him.
Our efforts to generate compassion are always in connection with other people and our progress depends on these relationships. The people we live and work with and who share our lives are the sentient beings for whom we seek enlightenment. They are also the means of acquiring wisdom and patience on the way to enlightenment. Rather than feeling insulted or victimized by those who have been unkind to us, we bear the discomfort and feel thankful towards it.
Suffering so often comes from not being able to find the good in things and being critical. If we can be positive about whatever comes, we cling less to the world and are less wounded by bad experiences.
Aside from whatever personal situations arise, it is certain that in 2025 many people will be affected, frustrated, angry or outraged by developments in public life. It will be difficult to treat the people responsible for those policies with kindness or gratitude.
In the case of those who suffer because of those policies, we can do what we can to help relieve that suffering.
In the case of those who cause that suffering, being grateful to them is the last thing on our minds. But when we treat it as an opportunity to develop our wisdom and patience, that is something to be thankful for.
At this moment, the mountains, sun and clouds are related. Soon after, the sun rises higher and lightens the whole mountains, the clouds dissipate, and the mountains stand there.
