Peter Singer is still battering my heart (see yesterday's post) to such an extent that I wanted to look up John Donne's sonnet of that title. Yet, I cannot stop reading, am eager to finish the book so that I know how much money he thinks I should be able to give away. I am nervous about this. We live on pensions, most of which is taken up with living expenses. But it is feeling imperative to keep reading this and thinking about how I live, eating beef as I please, driving a second car.

Singer is one of those natural teachers, cutting through to clarity about a situation with a Zen-like blade. He describes many people who work to end extreme poverty. Just now I am reading about a doctor, Paul Farmer, cofounder of Partners in Health, who has devoted his life to serving the poor in Haiti for many years before the earthquake.

And just yesterday I also got the first letter of this year's pledge campaign from my church. They want a stunning 5% of my gross income. I will pledge, but I am thinking about how my church enhances lives in many ways, including my life, but does not do much to save them. In fact, I think my specific church has not contributed to the national church and its social justice programs for a several years.

Here is where I stopped reading to look up Partners in Health and write this post:

Flying from the peasant huts and their malnourished babies in Haiti to Miami, just 700 miles away, with its well-dressed people talking about their efforts to lose weight, Farmer gets angry over the contrast between developing countries and the developed world.

He seems to have taken the bodhissatva vow to heart.

On Becoming Engaged

[image - Peter Singer with a friend]
Spiritual practice has been creeping up on me and making me think about how I act. This is not really a Zen thing, or a Buddhist thing. Ethics can creep up on anyone. Right now my consciousness is being impacted by Peter Singer, a young guy (younger than me) who teaches Bioethics at Princeton and writes books about our relationship to the world. He is a philosopher, but aspires to be the kind whose thinking and scholarship reaches out to the real world outside academic circles. Years ago I read his manifesto Animal Liberation, and it led me to avoid meat for quite a while, until the kidney diet led me to put "high-biological-quality protein" in my diet. I was relieved to go back to something more like the diet of my childhood (though with numerous restrictions), an easier way for me to cook, and I have avoided Peter Singer ever since. I know you understand.

But this has been creeping up on me - this realization that though there are many ways I don't live lavishly, I am an American, and I do live well. It's been Haiti, of course, night after night on the news, in-your-face the realization that this country 500 miles from our border lived in abject poverty as it was. Then came the latest issue of Tricycle, the Buddhist magazine, which had a little piece about the need for a national Buddhist relief effort to address poverty. It mentioned a group called Buddhist Global Relief. I looked them up. I noticed that one of their advisors is David Loy, who teaches in a nearby city, and whose interest is "engaged Buddhism." An interesting term. Tom got to looking up Loy and found a video of him talking that we both want to watch.

Then I stopped in at the library yesterday and as usual scanned the new books shelves with keen interest. We have "the best public library in America," one of the 83 things I am often grateful for. There on the shelf sat an unpretentious book with a red cover: The Live You Can Save: Acting Now to End World Poverty. By Peter Singer. I picked it up, looked it over, sighed, and put it in my bag.

Undertaking a meditation practice seems simple at first. You want to de-stress. Or to heal. Some personal desire. But if that becomes a Zen practice, the goal begins to shift. You learn about this something called "enlightenment." Teachers talk about happiness, joy, peace of mind. "This very place is the Lotus Land," we chant together. Nirvana is out there if we keep practicing.

I think if the Buddha came back and gave a little talk, he might look out over the crowd and begin, "Nirvana is not La-la Land." No, becoming more aware means aware of everything. One of those things is the vast tragic inequality of wealth on this planet, and the extent of poverty. As I sat in an expensive, comfortable bed last night and read the first chapter of Singer's book, the facts began to sink into me. That's one thing. But where this book is headed is a direct confrontation with my lifestyle, and the luxuries I enjoy.

Already the book had me thinking. I thought, This is an important book. I want to own it. It is very easy to buy on Amazon with one click. I can get it used Like New for $10 plus $3.99 shipping. That's $14. Well, I thought, I do have this library copy.

I read on. Suddenly I thought how I was planning to go to the church auction this year, a fundraiser, $12 at the door, but you get a great dinner. I was planning to buy my friend Bob's Turkish Coffee breakfast there for $14 - but the money goes to the church. I already give money to the church, as I give to NPR, things that support my lifestyle. I don't have to do the auction. That $26 right there.

I read on, as Singer established with footnotes to my satisfaction that children die for want of a measles vaccine or medical care when they get measles. I had the two-week measles as a child. (As my mother once remarked thoughtfully, "Maybe that's what happened to you.") My daughter had the vaccine. I thought about how we'd feel if her son, my grandson died. One child. In the poorest nations one in five children dies before the age of five. One in five.

Although this was striking home, I kept reading. That led me to think about how Sheba is due this month for her shots, feline leukemia and rabies. She doesn't go out, no animals come in, contacting these diseases is very unlikely. The shots cost $60.

There is this figure Singer keeps referring to: $1.25 a day. That's what an individual needs to buy food, shelter, water, clothing, medical care, and education enough to lift them out of extreme poverty. That's very different from our idea of poverty here in the US, where

97 percent of those classified by the Census Bureau as poor own a color TV. Three quarters of them own a car. Three quarters of them have air-conditioning. Three quarters of them have a VCR or DVD player.

Extreme poverty is better defined by cases. It is where you die for lack of a mosquito net.

I don't know how to round this off. Talk about strict Zen, as some of us have been doing. I don't think Singer is a Zen master, but he seems to dealing me the hardest instructions I've had yet. Give up my DSL? I don't think so.

Grandma's absolutely perfect lovely morning

Wake up 8:23. A good nine hours of sleep. Everyone should have that in the winter. Make coffee, happy that there is nothing on the calendar. Move thoughts away from Things To Do as they pop up. I might stay in all day, I might not do a thing. The weather on my home page has a cute little graphic for freezing rain. I start checking e-mail. Then Tom's up.

Go into kitchen, a long discussion of whether to buy an extended warranty on the new TV. Tom has researched the consumer experience with this thing. We do an informal risk/benefit analysis and decide not to. At one time we would have been reactive and contentious about it, him always wanting insurance, me always arguing risk. It's good to get old with someone and get past those things.

While we talk I am knitting - finishing a Christmas present, in fact. I reaffirm the research that says there's no such thing as multi-tasking, that you can only think about one thing at a time. In this case, it is the knitting that suffers. However, I am used to that, and the beautiful textured yarn hides mistakes. There's a metaphor for you.

Tom is doing his initial scan of the New York Times. He tells me about the history of Haiti. Founded by escaped slaves, a French colony. All the trees cut down for hardwood by the French. We comment on how the French saw Haiti as some other world, took what they wanted with no imagination that it affected the planet they lived on. Utterly dualistic thinking: Us/them. Avatar.

I read aloud a bit about grasping and clinging from my current book, Zen Miracles. Brenda Shoshanna, who is a psychologist as well as a long-time Zen practitioner, invents major exercises. She isn't kidding. Here's the one I want to do next, which is titled "What We Cling To:"

Make a list of those things in your life you are greatly attached to. Stop and look it over, see what purpose they serve for you. What would happen if you let go of one of them? Each day this week, let go of one, just for the day. See how it feels. You may be surprised.

I'm going to meditate before I start it. It is 10:45, a good time of day for me to meditate or do other mental work. Some stretching first, adapted from yoga. Just remembered - health club today. Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday. We're trying to set a schedule. Should put it on the kitchen calendar.

Meditate. I am learning to count each breath mentally at the bottom of the exhale. Aitken recommends counting as a way to “tidy your desk.” Don’t evaluate your meditation Daniel once told me, so I won’t.

11:32. Go through box of things to do and pull out two fun things, a coupon from Banyan Botanicals and a free subscription to Bon Appetit, which I got for being foolish enough to buy their big cookbook about easy fresh food. Easy, ha. Still, I like getting a magazine like that, and sometimes it inspires me. I pass through some thought traps, as there are other To-do’s in that box. But I remind myself I am taking the morning off.

12:03. Time to get dressed and go to health club. Do a Shud. Will have to proof and post this later.
~~~~~~
The freezing rain never developed. We are supposed to get the January thaw this weekend, temperatures up near 50, and sunshine. That always feels like a blessing.

Morning coffee with good friends

Years ago I wrote a soul-searching fantasy of my life as I wished it could be. Much of it has come true, though I am not in Bali, but in Ohio. One thing I wanted was to be nested in a community of like-minded friends. I am now, and that community fans out to include the internet sangha. The world-wide web, which has given me this morning a talk about bare perception in meditation.

I love this connectedness. Still, I am sitting alone in my sudy with my morning coffee, not able to wander out to an outdoor cafe where people I know might stop by to say hello. I would take a sketch pad a sketchbook and charcoal if I were going out there today, not my little notebook, maybe draw some quick portraits, maybe a banana leaf. People would come by.

Hello. I am fine. How are you?

These would be intimate friends, so we might talk about our response to what's happened in Haiti, the sudden massive earthquake, all the death and suffering, and not just murmur cliches, but talk about its intimacy and immediacy. We are Buddhists, our practice leads us to respond to suffering in a certain way.

This way is with something like equanimity. I would share with my friend that I cry every night, watching the news. But I don't get carried away into despair. I come back to my normal, like one of those inflatable clowns with sand in its bottom.

This way is with something like detachment. That doesn't mean being without compassion. It means understanding the constant presence of death all over the planet, the rolling and turning over of organic life in the universe, the widespread suffering, even in our privileged little community, our inability to create perfect societies. It means accepting my place as a tiny little bodhissatva who can dispense a teaspoon of water here and there. I say I think it's Bernie Glassman who puts it that way. My friend nods Yes.

We would acknowledge that this has touched our own sense of vulnerability and disturbed our dreams. We are not friends in order to hide from the truth with small talk and partying. In this quiet morning coffee of my dreams, we are just real with one another. No need to talk a lot. It's nice to connect.

Anyway, how are you?