The latest Economist just arrived & on page 50 is an article
about "Bolivia's First Che Guevara Week," the village
of La Higuera were he was captured, its Che Guevara foundation,
celebrations of "Che Day" (Oct 8th, when he was captured),
the "Che Route," and lots of tourism plans.
Capitalism makes use of even its sworn enemies to make a buck.
I am not sure if this is a Malaysian thing (road bully), I
hear it happens everywhere but it seems more frequent here as
we progress into an advanced industrialized country. People who
drives Mercedes, BMWs, Volvos are letting their frustration go
on the road and endangering other people in the process. The
incident with my colleague was that at a traffic light she was
deemed to be travelling too slow and that provoked the driver
behind her (in a brand new Volvo 920). After the traffic light,
this driver in the Volvo drove to the side and tried to drive
her off the road, when he did not succeed, he pulled up ahead
of her and and drove very slowly and did not allow her to drive
past him trying to force my colleague to stop. Fortunately she
did not stop and she drove all the way to the police station
and lodged a report there - shaking and trembling with fear.
Just two weeks ago, it happened to a daughter of a friend of
mine. She was harrased by a road bully, forced to stop, he walked
up to her car and just smashed her windscreen and when she got
out of the car this bully hit her and broke her arm and leg!
This driver was well dressed and drove an expensive car. This
had been more and frequent in the past couple of weeks. I wonder
if this a price we have to pay for our development - the expense
of mental health and calm and peacefulness.
The pretas, or hungry ghosts, are probably the most vividly
drawn metaphors in the Buddhist Wheel of Life. They are phantom-like
creatures with withered limbs, grossly bloated bellies, >
and long, narrow needle-like necks. They demand impossible satisfactions
so they have stretched necks---hungry and demanding the impossible.
They are searching for gratification for old unfulfilled needs
whose time has passed. Their ghost like state is representative
of their attachment to the past. They live in past wants and
desires.
The modern word for preta is "consumer."
I was on the train in Tokyo a few months ago and saw a man
with a jacket with English lettering. On one area, it said,"To
err human, to forgive divine". I thought, "Wow, this
a pretty progressive jacket. Usually it just read something like
'Fashion Club U.S.A.'. But on another part, it said "A Nigger
in the Woodpatch." Obviously, the man wearing the jacket
didn't know the meaning of perhaps both of the phrases. But did
it matter? The words had no meaning for the 99% of the people
who would see that jacket that day. The importance was simply
the image of English, which in Japan is an image of internationalism,
education and other positive qualities. Does it matter that the
1% who could understand it felt like they were slapped in the
face, like me? Perhaps, we should ask the same question about
that small 1% of the world population who are marginalized indigenous
people trying to survive on "traditional" goods sold
to industrialized world consumers. The mixing of images and meanings
are indeed a very powerful form of delusion as well as being
a very powerful tool of domination by those at the top of the
competitive pyramid.
The Dhamma has arranged everything quite well already, in
its natural ecology, but we don稚 appreciate this wonderful fact
at all. Instead, we disparage nature, we look down on it, we
have no respect for it. We have tried to re-do everything in
our own way, according to our own ignorance, craving, and selfishness,
thus ruining the natural ecology. In this we find neither the
correctness nor the fitness needed to conserve the natural order
of nature.
Allow me to take a little time to tell you a story which illustrates
this point. In Chumporn, the neighboring province to the north,
one of my cousins used to raise a kind of monkey which is ideal
for collecting coconuts from the palm trees. They are black with
red faces and rumps, short tails, and a white patch on the throat.
My cousin trained them to sleep on little platforms attached
to the palm trees. These platforms, however, had no roofs, exposing
the monkeys to the elements. So I asked him, "why are you
so cruel to the monkeys, just giving them these platforms to
sleep on without roofs to protect them from the rain and wind?"
My cousin laughing at me for not knowing any better and replied,
"I once made roofs for them, but they just climbed up and
slept on those roofs whether it was raining or not." This
story expresses the fitness of nature. We needn稚 interfere by
dragging in our positive feelings and attachments, messing up
the natural correctness. Learn to observe the natural ways of
things.
We find more stories of this kind in our Buddhist Jataka
tales. In one story, the Bodhissatva, who represents everyone
on the path of Buddhahood, was a tree spirit. A monkey and a
bird lived in this particular tree. One day the bird laughed
at the monkey for not having a house, saying "why don稚 you
build a nest like I do? We birds have such nice, comfortable
nests to live in." The monkey replied, "you池e crazy,
we monkeys don稚 need such ridiculous things." The bird laughed
at the monkey who got angry and ripped the bird痴 nest to bits.
So the bird lost its nest because of its foolish tongue. It tried
to teach technology to the monkey, but the monkey would have
none of it. The Bodhissatva as tree spirit had a good laugh at
this episode of the sassy bird teaching technology to a monkey.
A wiser being would consider what is correct for the monkey and
what is appropriate in this situation. Finally, we may be able
to discover what is correct for human beings. For example, is
it right that we have filled the world with concrete and steel
buildings?
--Buddhadasa Bhikkhu from Conserving the Inner Ecology
ｩ by Evolution/Liberation
No longer will the moon be wasted on young lovers if advertisers Gary
Betts and Malcolm Green have their way. The two London ad execs have announced plans to turn the moon into a giant billboard. After consulting with NASA scientists, the two believe they have a feasible plan for projecting corporate logos onto the moon's surface using reflected sunlight from two large umbrella shaped mirrors. In the scientific community, the major debate seems to be over how and not whether to project brand names onto the moon. French scientists have reportedly come up with a cheaper way to get corporate logos into space using reflecting satellites. Meanwhile, the news agency Reuters treats this as a promotion for the moon, adding that now "the moon could be more than just a part of the solar system." (Reuters, 10/27)
From NEWSPEAK, written and distributed by Wayne Grytting