We read a lot. Really. I used to give away my finished books or sold them on eBay, but now Laura and I are using BookMooch to trade books online. It’s simple, so I won’t go into how it works, the point is that it works. We’ve already gotten quite a few books, including some hard to find titles.

It’s easiest to get really odd books (Using the Enneagram for Self-Discovery) or really popular books (there are over 200 copies of The Da Vinci code available, yuck). The community is great about sending the books promptly. It’s been a wonderful experience for us so far.

We highly recommend BookMooch to all of our readers.

While we’re at it, I would like to remind our RSS readers to check out the site occasionally as we have added a feature that shows what books Laura and I are  reading currently. That widget comes courtesy of another site we love: LibraryThing.

Wow, there are so many fascinating stories in the world. Did you know that before he died, Vladimir Nabokov had his final manuscript locked up in a Swiss bank and instructed his son, Dimitri, to have it destroyed? Here is a Slate article on the subject. The writer asks:

Does it matter what V.N. would feel, since he’s long dead? Do we owe no respect to his last wishes because we greedily want some “key” to his work, or just more of it for our own selfish reasons? Does the lust for aesthetic beauty always allow us to rationalize trampling on the artist’s grave? Does the greatness of an artist diminish his right to dispose of his own unfinished work?

At first I thought, too bad for Nabokov, he’s dead so we should read it. Then I put myself in Dimitri’s shoes. If one of my parents had a dying wish, I would absolutely want to fulfill no matter how loudly the literati howled. Not only that, I can understand Nabokov’s position; the work is unfinished, not ready for publication. Would you want a work in progress to be the culmination of your legacy as an artist? No way.

Burn it, Dimitri!

“The Fates lead those who will; those who won’t, they drag.”

Scott H Young posted a pretty comprehensive review of Ayn Rand’s Objectivism as presented in The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. Laura and I have read both books and we highly encourage everyone to start with The Fountainhead, rather than Atlas Shrugged which neither of us liked.

Rand’s philosophy is outlined in Scott’s post, so I will not go into it. I will add that Ayn Rand grew up in Soviet Russia, an environment which could drive anyone to extreme individualism. The Fountainhead will also give you a new perspective on architecture. Laura and I cite it often in our wanderings in San Francisco.

Laura also recommends We the Living.

Soviet statues remind us of Ayn Rand as well.

In my work with juvenile delinquents, I’m learning a lot about the criminal justice system among other things. This weekend I was waiting to pick up one of my little ones from a class required by his parole officer at Juvenile Hall, when I got a strange message from the Universe.

An middle aged man came up to me and started telling me the story of his sons, how he made many mistakes as a father and how his youngest had ended up on probation. He told me that the devil is at work in people’s hearts and minds and that sometimes they can’t break free. Then he referred me to Timothy:

We know that the law is good if one uses it properly. We also know that law is made not for the righteous but for lawbreakers and rebels, the ungodly and sinful, the unholy and irreligious; for those who kill their fathers or mothers, for murderers, for adulterers and perverts, for slave traders and liars and perjurers—and for whatever else is contrary to the sound doctrine that conforms to the glorious gospel of the blessed God, which he entrusted to me. (1 Timothy 1:8-11)

I found this so interesting. Righteous people don’t need the law because they are already doing right. The law is for the unholy, to keep them in line, to give them guidance and structure. This is so applicable to my work. I constantly argue with the kids about the rules. It’s hard for them to understand that the rules are there to help herd them towards a better life. As a libertarian, I’m no fan of laws, but I have no intention of breaking any but the most minor. I have no urge to steal or kill, but some people genuinely do. The concept of sin or the threat of jail may seem cruel to those who are not tempted, but they are often effective deterrents for people who need help staying on the straight and narrow.

Similarly, I have a friend who moved back home with her mom in recent months. She said that although it can be a pain to live with your parents, sometimes their rules keep you from doing things you probably shouldn’t, namely bringing a stranger home from a bar. As I relayed this story to another friend, she grew uncomfortable at its implications: that traditional familial oppression might be for a girl’s own good. Perhaps not surprisingly, this friend is not prone to such behavior in the first place. Here again, we see the rules benefiting the sinner and not the saint.

Maybe I’m just on a traditional values kick lately, but I think that these Bible verses are very important. They bring a new perspective on law, that instead of protecting the innocent from criminals, they may protect would-be criminals from themselves. I don’t mean give my stamp of approval to our current criminal justice system or backwards patriarchy, but the encounter at Juvenile Hall was just so strange and the Bible verse so relevant to my work, I had to share it with you. Rules can certainly help keep us out of trouble; the trick is finding a balance between authoritarianism and anarchy.

(I think I would do very well in anarchy, but I am beginning to see that not everyone is as self-regulating as I am. Some people need structure imposed on them to stay out of trouble.)

Last week you got to read about my visit to JFKU in search of the perfect grad program. On Friday I went to visit the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) to check out their East/West Psychology program. Here’s how it went.

CIIS is located near downtown San Francisco in an late 70’s style office building (that’s how it felt anyway). As soon and I walked in, I could tell that many of my assumptions were correct. Earth tones, dread locks, tribal masks adorning the walls: groovy. The whole vibe was completely different than JFK. I felt out of place at CIIS, too modern maybe, like I was wearing too much black.

The admissions rep I met with was very nice. A little too nice. She could give me no really useful information on why I should choose CIIS over JFK. She suggested I look at their course offerings. Helpful. The one thing she mentioned was that CIIS was more academic while JFK was more experiential. As I suspected, CIIS is the yin to JFK’s yang. CIIS is probably great for some people, but their vibe just isn’t for me.

I will begin the application process for JFK soon. I’m very excited and I feel totally at ease with my choice, an indication it was the right one.

Yesterday I spent some time with an old friend who just got back from an 11 day meditation retreat in Thailand. She learned about the Three Poisons and was explaining them to me. I found the metaphors of the three poisons an effective way to look at my behavior.

The three poisons are:

Greed (represented by the rooster)

Anger or Hatred (represented by the snake)

Ignorance or Delusion (represented by the pig)

These three concepts are thought of as the roots of unwholesome karma.

“In Buddhist teachings, greed, hatred, and delusion are known, for good reason, as the three poisons, the three unwholesome roots, and the three fires. These metaphors suggest how dangerous afflictive thoughts and emotions can be if they are not understood and transformed… The poisons of greed, hatred, and delusion are a byproduct of ignorance—ignorance of our true nature, the awakened heart of wisdom and compassion. Arising out of our ignorance, these poisonous states of mind then motivate nonvirtuous and unskillful thoughts, speech, and actions, which cause all manner of suffering and unhappiness for ourselves and others.” Naljor Dharma Service

1. Greed: Refers to selfishness, misplaced desire, attachment, and grasping for happiness and satisfaction outside of yourself. Greed is a burning desire, an unquenchable thirst, craving, and lust; you want the objects of our desire to provide you with lasting satisfaction in order to feel fulfilled, whole, and complete. The poison of greed creates an inner hunger so that you are always striving towards an unattainable goal. You mistakenly believe happiness is dependent upon that goal, but once you attain it, you get no lasting satisfaction.
2. Anger or Hatred: Refers to aversion and repulsion toward unpleasant people, circumstances, and even toward your own uncomfortable feelings. With aversion, you habitually resist, deny, and avoid unpleasant feelings, circumstances, and people you do not like. You want everything to be pleasant, comfortable, and satisfying all the time. This behavior simply reinforces the perception of duality and separation. Hatred or anger thrusts you into a vicious cycle of always finding conflict and enemies everywhere around you. You can also create conflict within yourself when you have an aversion to your own uncomfortable feelings. With hatred and aversion, you deny, resist, and push away your own inner feelings of fear, hurt, loneliness, and so forth, treating these feelings like an internal enemy.
3. Ignorance or Delusion: Refers to dullness, bewilderment, and misperception; your wrong views of reality.Delusion is the misperception of the way the world works; your inability to understand the nature of things exactly as they are, free of perceptual distortions. Influenced by delusion, you are not in harmony with yourself, others, or with life; you are not living in accordance with Dharma. Affected by the poison of delusion, which arises from ignorance of your true nature, you do not understand the interdependent and impermanent nature of life. Thus, you are constantly looking outside of ourselves for happiness, satisfaction, and solutions to our problems. This outward searching creates even more frustration, anger, and delusion. Naljor Dharma Service

It is generally understood that each of us has a tendency to practice one of the poisons more often than the others. Spend a minute to contemplate which of the poisions you have a tendency towards. It was relatively clear to me that I have a tendency towards anger or hatred. I have a rather inward directed version of this particular poison. I aver my uncomfortable feelings and direct my discontent inwards.

There are specific practices that are geared towards combating each of these poisons.

The practice to overcome greed: Learn to practice selflessness, generosity and detachment. If you are strongly experiencing the greed poison, contemplate the impermanence of the object you desire. Practice charitable giving; give your time and material possessions. You can practice giving away those things you would most like to hold onto. You can also practice acts of selfless service and charity, offering care and assistance to others in any way you can, free of all desire for recognition or compensation. The problems associated with greed and attachment only arise when you mistakenly believe and act as if the source of our happiness is outside of yourself.
The practice to overcome anger: Learn to cultivate loving-kindness, compassion, patience, and forgiveness. Here you learn to openly embrace the entire spectrum of your experiences without hatred or aversion. Practice meeting unpleasant both experiences in the outer world with patience, kindness, forgiveness, and compassion and your own unpleasant feelings in the same way. Your feelings of loneliness, hurt, doubt, fear, insecurity, inadequacy, depression all require your openness and loving-kindness. Soften your defenses, open your heart, and let go of hatred, aversion, and denial.
Practice to overcome ignorance: Cultivate wisdom, insight, and right understanding. Learning to experience reality exactly as it is, without the distortions of your self-centered desires, fears, and expectations, you free yourself from delusion. Deeply sensing and acting in harmony with the ever-changing nature of this world—realizing that all living beings are inseparably related and that lasting happiness does not come from anything external—you free yourself from delusion. As you develop a clear understanding that positive, wholesome actions that bring happiness and the negative, unwholesome actions that bring suffering, you cultivate the wisdom that counteracts delusion and ignorance.

I have been practicing loving-kindness regularly and am absolutely amazed at how well it works for me. I encourage you to contemplate the three poisons to see what insights you can personally glean from them.

Much of what I wrote was paraphrased from Naljor Dharma Service

Yikes. I felt a little nauseous just writing the title of this post, but since this issue has been coming up for me lately, it seems like I should write about it. To preface: I’m white.

For the first time in my life, I am having extensive contact with black people on a consistent basis in my work (I’m a counselor at a group home for foster youth). It has raised a lot of interesting issues for me:

1. I have an aversion to noticing that we are of different races. My brain seems to try to block it out.
2. I watch what I say and dread any race related conversation.
3. I feel the tension in rooms when white people don’t speak openly even about issues that are unrelated to race because they are afraid they could be turned into racial issues.
4. There are certain issues I don’t want to bring up because I don’t feel like it is my place to comment. For example, I don’t know how to raise my concerns about the kids calling each other “nigga”.
5. I get extremely annoyed listening to recurring diatribes about white privilege and patriarchy.

These are just a few issues that have been coming up in the last couple of weeks. What I think is most interesting is that I don’t say anything about my concerns for fear of offending one of my black coworkers. Generally, I prefer to remove myself from the situation, rather than have to express any thought or concern that relates to race in even the smallest way. This reaction has me wondering if the same forces are at work in society at large. Despite the advancements of civil rights, most people live fairly racially segregated lives. It seems easy to proclaim tolerance and understanding from afar.

Furthermore, I have never felt this uncomfortable when I’ve spent time with people of other races one-on-one or in more racially mixed settings. In those instances I have always felt that I could raise questions and have an open dialog about race. I think one of the reasons I feel differently now is that I am working in the foster care system with people (black and white) who buy into a “Progressive” agenda in which racial oppression is a primary issue. It feels like many people in this field of work are hypersensitive to issues of race which has a chilling effect on dialog in general. I constantly worry that I will use an incorrect term or ask unintentionally offensive question and be accused of racism. By keeping my concerns to myself, I find myself getting angry and resentful. Not exactly ideal conditions for increased understanding.

So what to do? I’m working on my own sensitivity as well as working up the courage to bring up my concerns at work. When uncomfortable incidents happen, I want to use them as opportunities for dialog, to get my questions answered, rather than just run away to avoid discomfort. I truly believe that an open, candid approach to these issues will be beneficial to all parties involved and will bring us closer together. I hope that we can have an open conversation about race, in which everyone feels safe to speak up and have questions answered.

In early December I went on a five day mindfulness- meditation retreat. It was a silent retreat at an idyllic retreat center. Because I was far way from from the noise and bustle of everyday life, I was able to relax deeply, confront anxiety and fear and reach some profound levels of awareness, bliss and peace. While I still plan to blog about this retreat, I don’t think it’s an experience that many people can relate to. “It’s great you got to sit on a cushion for 14 hours a day, I won’t be doing that any time soon,” is a common reaction. However, my recent trip from New Hampshire back home to San Francisco is just the kind of hassle-y nightmarish day we’ve all had and a perfect example of how to use mindfulness in your everyday life.

The day started off badly, I woke up on the wrong side of the bed. Then I had complications getting to the airport (that New Hampshire primary traffic really caused a back-up) and car sickness from all the windy roads and stop-and-go movement. Reeeealy late, I ran into the airport, filled with anxiety. Well my flight was three hours delayed (when are flights to O’Hare not delayed?) and I certainly would miss my connection. Luckily I got booked through Dulles and on to SF. I was scheduled to get back home at midnight (only an hour and half later than expected). Not surprisingly the six hour Dulles to SF flight was also delayed (they didn’t seem to have a reason). We finally boarded, but all was not well. Little “Caroline” sitting next to me was not amused with the delays. She started screeching, not in that baby-ish scared/sad way, but in the “I’m hella pissed and am going to shriek until my vocal cords are destroyed” way. It was loud. She has a promising career in the extreme metal scene. She also has stamina. I had several options at this point:

1. Try to ignore it and focus intensely on something else (which includes ignoring the frustration that accompanies the sound)
2. Feel frustrated, annoyed and angry. Feel (with the surging emotions, coursing through the body) why this has not been a good day and how airplanes are horrible.
3. Focus on thinking, try to forget about the negative feelings that accompany the sound. Remember why babies are horrible. Wonder why people have them. Go on a thought-tirade
4. Pay attention to the noise.

Option four is what I eventually chose and is simply another way of saying “practice mindfulness of sound.” The way this works is:

1. Stop what you are doing
2. Notice the sound.
3. Be interested in the sound
4. Listen fully to the sound.
5. Notice all the intricacies of the sound

After you have spent some time with the sound, then move on to noticing what reactions the sound is creating in you. Do you feel annoyed? Angry? Upset? Are you creating stories around the sound? Have your thoughts spun in a million directions? Perhaps you’ve decided that Caroline has a bad mother. The mother doesn’t know what she is doing. Maybe you have condemned her for bringing a child on board at all. (She should have known better!). Maybe you’re now thinking about your own parents and their foibles. Try to locate a spot or spots in your body where you feel the reaction to the sound. Are you clenching your jaw? Do you feel an overall tightness? Keep returning to the sound itself when you feel yourself distracted or overwhelmed. Caroline’s screeching is your home base (like the breath in meditation). Keep returning to that sound and noticing your reactions.

This worked quite well for me and the flight itself turned out to be fine. I was amazed at how much my annoyance at Caroline diminished when I practiced mindfulness of sound. However, you might not have that experience when practicing mindfulness of sound. It could happen where you actually feel more or worse when you pay attention– but this is part of the practice. What ever you pay attention to could feel stronger, weaker or stay the same. Try not to be attached to the outcome, but merely interested in what’s happening.

Just as a note, I didn’t merely get to go home after this… When I tried to get a shuttle home, a guy decided he didn’t like how the driver was handling his luggage and called the cops. Dealing with three cop cars and a lot of yelling took a while. Then I got stuck on a different shuttle and the folks didn’t know which hotel they were going to. So we drove all the way to San Francisco and then had to drive all the way back to the airport until we finally found their hotel. It was late, could even be called morning, when I crawled into bed. So, apologies if this post is a bit rambly.

I visited JFK University today to check out their Integral Psychology program. The campus is in an unremarkable suburban corporate park and although JFK is primarily a school for working adults, there were many students going about their business when I arrived at 3:30 in the afternoon.

My appointment was with a professor in the Holistic Studies Department. I immediately felt at ease with him and he was able to answer all of my questions. He confirmed that there had been a feud of sorts between Ken Wilber and CIIS, though the details were a bit over my head. It sounds like CIIS is a bit more “touchy-feely” than JFK, more hippie-ish, perhaps best seen in the difference of locations: suburban corporate park vs. San Francisco. If that impression proves accurate, I will probably lean towards JFK. I like structure.

Another big plus for JFK is the new Global Action emphasis that I learned about. Apparently each semester there is a trip abroad; the last trip was to Peru, the next will be to Istanbul(!). I wasn’t entirely clear on what they do on these trips, but frankly, that’s kind of a secondary concern. I will be emailing the professor in charge soon.

Overall, I’m very excited about JFK. I already knew I was interested in the course offerings, so this visit was for getting a feel for the school and the faculty. I got a really good feeling about the professor I met with. He was very candid and seemed like a generally cool guy. I felt like we really connected. I even got a parting gift: Disc 1 of Ken Wilber’s Kosmic Consciousness series. My main reservation about JFK is that I will be indoctrinated with Wilberism so I plan to study up and see if that might not be so bad after all.

My appointment at CIIS is on Friday, but the experience at JFK will be hard to top.