the buddha is my dj

It’s nice day for a white… you know the rest.

So. The Olympics. They’re out there. Eating up all the news media’s attention. Causing a rash of bloggers to comment on things that they probably don’t know a whole helluva lot about. The Chinese are being secretive, lying, cheating, totalitarian bastards. The news media’s letting it slide. Beach volleyballers are asking Bush to smack their asses. The whole world’s coming apart.

Something arunlikhati wrote the other day on the Dharma Folk blog got me thinking. Commenting on this article that’s been circulating around the buddhoblogosphere on the decline of Buddhism in Japan, she notes that a lot of American people say, “It’s a shame that Japanese can’t see the true beauty in their Buddhist heritage.”

A friend is compiling short testimonials about coping with “isms” (racism, classism, heterosexism, religious prejudice) in higher education for college-bound kids from underrepresented populations. She asked me if I had anything to contribute because her wife mentioned that she thought I’d come from a working-class background. It got me thinking.

I know, I know. Dancing teddy bears. But at least Jedi has that element of redemption. At least its basic message is that there is an innate goodness in Annakin that can be pulled out from behind the silly plastic mask. And I would argue that the path away from suffering is the crux of the issue in Buddhism; not suffering. Not a self-righteous Jedi knight who ” calmly sits in a meditative posture in order to prepare to face the villain.”

It seems to me that the word “offended” is thrown around a lot nowadays, particularly in the current Presidential election. It seems to me that there are a good number of folks so quick to be offended by things — and a second group so quick to tell the first to get over it — that the word has lost all meaning. That people are routinely offended by things and getting over them so quick that none of us has the chance to really stop and think about why we’re offended in the first or if it’s something we need to get over or not.

Let’s not forget that no matter how powerful the Executive Branch makes itself, local politics still matter. And also let’s not forget that the ability for any real change to happen will be due in part to what happens in Congressional elections. And of course let’s not forget that in the state of California, we’re going to have to defend what the courts recently, and rightly, put into law.

I’ve posted a series of pictures from the sand mandala creation in Atlanta. All the pictures are over at my wife’s and my other website, PrecariousCat.