Ok. You've noticed that we're not interactive here. You tried to click on
SEE STORY in the Ithaca Sucks Sunday edition and you went nowhere? Ok. Actually it's part of the IS Online Metaphysics Tutorial lesson plan. Nothing is as it seems. (Take notes if you feel you must.) The underlining was a test to see how quickly you picked up on the central concept underlying non-Western metaphysics. It was also a test on how well Ezra could figure out HTML code.
Nothing is as it seems. Everything is Maya, illusion, false consciousness. We are really on a beach in the south of France. It's not 0 minus degrees outside, this is not Ithaca, New York on March 10, 2003; the US is not about to unleash the new Dark Ages by invading a sovereign Islamic state in the Middle East at a time when millions of Muslims around the globe hate our blanking guts in the first place. Tell me it's not so.
You're all Buddhists, aren't you? Isn't everybody in Ithaca a Buddhist?
Buddhists pour kerosene over themselves and light a match. Muslims strap plastic explosives around their waists and blow themselves up. It's interesting to note how members of the different world religions react to repression. One group is inclined to destroy the self, the other feels the need to go out with 15 other people. What's similiar is this instinct for self-immolation.
Paradise awaits the martyr who sloughs off the comfortable coil and strikes a blow for freedom.
It comes down to how you view the Self. You can't get around the fact that Buddhists, Baptists and Muslims view the idea of the Self differently. To a Westerner, the self is that which consumes, competes for power, defines and defends boundaries in relation to other selves, plans a trip to Disney World. To a Buddhist, the self is an illusion which must be overcome. Buddhists plan trips to Nirvana.
Muslims, on the other hand, see the self in relation to the tribe, the faithful followers of the Prophet Mohammed. They plan trips to Mecca and, for the martyrs of Islam, a Paradise replete with nubile virgins. Nobody plans a trip to Ithaca.
Somebody ought to have a serious talk with George Bush. Bring him up to code on how other cultures feel about things. Isn't that part of the problem? He spouts this pseudo-rhetoric about democracy. Thinks that folks in Iraq really want the same things that we do -an SUV that doesn't roll over, more bandwidth, faster Internet access, stock prices to go up again, more taste and fewer calories.
No offense to the Baptists around you, George, but you really ought to add a few advisors in your inner circle that can tell the difference between a Jihad and a Diehard Battery.
No, this is not Kurt Nimmo's blog. But everything is not always what it seems. The notion that I might wake up and find myself in the south of France is tantalizing. No ice-covered sidewalks on the Commons, no decision to make whether to read the Ithaca Journal or
Book Press, no vapid chitchat in the morning on the local radio stations, no pickups trying to run me off the road, no Cornell students trying to run me off the street either for that matter. (How similiar are the cultures of the so-called 'redneck' and the bourgeoise? Might makes right vs Money makes right. Two sides of the same coin. The arrogance of power.)
Now Ezra has contended for a long time that you can't be a Buddhist and embrace capitalism at the same time. But he's been bucking the trend. More and more books are being published on the zen of making money. Islam may be the fastest growing religion in the world but Buddhism is the most seductive by far as Westerners go. Why is that? Probably for a lot of reasons we won't go into here. Suffice it to say a lot of Buddha wannabes are lining up at the bookstores to pay for a Dalai Lama tract with their Visa card.
Ithaca is full of Buddhists. It's home to a leading publisher of Buddhist literature as well as a Tibetan Buddhist monastary. You see
Buddhist monks with cell phones all the time. The problem is that, for a typical American Buddhist, the internal contradictions are stretched so tightly - almost to the breaking point. People who try to balance dharma and an online trading account at the same time end up in a state of constant denial that blocks out any other reality. It's easy for them to gloss over issues in the world. Like other people's suffering.
Never work for a guy who drives to work with Mahayana Buddhist meditation tapes in the cassette player. He's likely to have grown up on Long Island , spent two months in India when he was 23. He's apt to be juggling two business startups and tends to treat his employees like shit. He confuses the time he spends on the cell phone yapping to business colleagues with the menial, mind-emulsifying work his staff does.
"What's the problem? I work a twelve hour day every day of the week!" That's likely to his rejoinder when someone asks to leave work early.
This is the guy you're likely to run into at Simeon's or Maxi's. (Reason #501 to drink at the Chanticleer instead.)
Nothing is at it seems. Enough metaphysics for the middle of the night. Well, it seems like the middle of the night. People have already started to get up to make other people's donuts and brew other people's coffee. The trucks are out on the road delivering all the illusion that we'll need to consume today. More later. .
Comments invited at: ezrakidder@gmail.com - Peace, Ezra at 5:04 AM
