WT Plurk!

Class, I recently joined Plurk, the new micro-blogging kid on the block who is becoming competitive with Twitter. I don't know if this rivalry is gonna be like Coke and Pepsi, but I figured what the heck--it can't hurt, right?

However, I've been wondering what I'm accomplishing by Twittering or Plurking. Are these micro-blogging services benefiting me in any way whatsoever, or are they just massive time wasters like blogs? You've probably asked yourself the same thing gadzillion tradjillion times a second, right?!

Are these services merely toe-curling ego strokes for us? Does anyone care if I ate mangoes for breakfast or howled at the moon? Will faeries loose their wings if I don't twitter or plurk? (I stole this idea from Rich Minx by the way. So I should give her credit I suppose) Should I not be doing something more worthwhile like serving soup to the homeless at the local church? Or romping around in bed in my sexy lingerie with an randy partner?

Nevertheless, I offer you my Plurk Id should you wish to follow or friend me.

Then I'll be able to read every superficial, silly, trivial, meaningless detail of my naughty student's lives, and I will have even more reason to thwack with an elder branch--freshly picked of course for a delicious ceremonial spanking.

Of course, if you do friend or follow me, I'll receive Karma points, and perhaps I can redeem these when I finally meet St. Peter at the famous gate in the sky.

Don't all rush to comment at once.. I don't think my cat can take it!

I'm submitting this to "Humor-blogs.com".

WT Plurk!

Class, I recently joined Plurk, the new micro-blogging kid on the block who is becoming competitive with Twitter. I don't know if this rivalry is gonna be like Coke and Pepsi, but I figured what the heck--it can't hurt, right?

However, I've been wondering what I'm accomplishing by Twittering or Plurking. Are these micro-blogging services benefiting me in any way whatsoever, or are they just massive time wasters like blogs? You've probably asked yourself the same thing gadzillion tradjillion times a second, right?!

Are these services merely toe-curling ego strokes for us? Does anyone care if I ate mangoes for breakfast or howled at the moon? Will faeries loose their wings if I don't twitter or plurk? (I stole this idea from Rich Minx by the way. So I should give her credit I suppose) Should I not be doing something more worthwhile like serving soup to the homeless at the local church? Or romping around in bed in my sexy lingerie with an randy partner?

Nevertheless, I offer you my Plurk Id should you wish to follow or friend me.

Then I'll be able to read every superficial, silly, trivial, meaningless detail of my naughty student's lives, and I will have even more reason to thwack with an elder branch--freshly picked of course for a delicious ceremonial spanking.

Of course, if you do friend or follow me, I'll receive Karma points, and perhaps I can redeem these when I finally meet St. Peter at the famous gate in the sky.

Don't all rush to comment at once.. I don't think my cat can take it!

I'm submitting this to "Humor-blogs.com".

Sunday Sermon (Sex, God & Ego)

¡Hola! Everybody,
I took some time to visit my sister, who is getting better day by day, but is still experiencing a lot pain. When I hear my sister groan late at night, my heart goes out to her. It was good to see her and just spend time talking – doing something mundane together. When we are dying, we will remember those priceless simple moments.

On another note, I’ve ignored my real-life intimate relationships. It’s been a conscious decision, there’s much transition going on in my life right about now, but I’ve noticed a re-awakening lately. That urge to be intimate with someone, to sleep entwined, to share intimacy, to listen to the “symphonic pulsing” of two hearts beating as one.

Perhaps it’s the change in the weather, I’m not sure, but whatever the case, today I will follow that urge and see where it takes me…

* * *

-=[ Sex, God & Ego ]=-

We moan, we grin, and we roll apart
for some small talk
after our little piece of dying.

It is a feeble reach
for the rational,
some tiny piece of evidence
that proves we are

still alive,

once again in possession of our

separate selves,
once again intact.

-- Edward-Yemíl Rosario ©

God is love.

When we are relating to the things and people around us with care, compassion, and consideration, we radiate that Love and joy. When we are not handling things in that manner, our consciousness of our Higher Power – of the ever present energy of the Universal Principle – will be blocked by such a lack of caring. I'm here to bear witness today: there are times when I do not embody such caring, but I am trying.

To get off tangent for a moment, I know of at least one woman who probably doesn’t like me too much these days and most likely would rather not hear from me – ever. I said at least one, but there are most likely more. The irony is this: until we can undo the karmic entanglement we have created, we will be forever linked. Therefore, the point is that if you want to be rid of me, then you’ll have to love me first. LOL

I laugh, but I’m serious -- but I digress…

By not caring or being inconsiderate, we create an environment equal to that of a psychological pig sty. In that sty of negativity, not caring often means casting judgments on others. Anyone who’s ever been in a committed relationship will agree that this can be clearly evident as an expression we have taken to bed.

Part of intimacy in bed, aside from sexual intercourse, is sleeping together, something both men and women often take for granted. In actuality, sleeping together is an extremely intimate, trusting experience, although we have all at one time or another abused that intimate comfort.

How many times have you been in bed, irate because you knew the person next to you was “wrong” but wouldn’t admit it? What did that get you except righteous indignation, as you kept this intimacy with a bad taste in your mouth, or a tense stomach? The fact is you could have bypassed that righteous indignation.

Oh, I know what your response might be: “I tried. I mean, if he would only admit she was wrong, everything would be fine.” To that, I will only say that I’m not talking about trying in that way. That’s just making things – perpetuating – the argument.

Or, another response you might have is, “If only he’d stop being such an arrogant asshole, I might let him in.” To that I would say that’s not in; that’s merely allowing him out of the judgment jail you out him in the first place.

There are other ways, if you’re willing to put down the ego.

When you’re lying there with your lover in bed, you might opt to give them a light massage and as you’re doing that saying, “I don’t like being separate from you. I don’t acre anymore about right and wrong. All I know is that I want to be with you and to care for you, and for you to forgive me.”

You might say to this that why you should be the one to forgive, if you were the wronged or injured party. Another person might say, “Give Eddie a massage?!! After what that psycho ma’fucca said to me?” My response to you and people like that is that the best thing you can probably do is send the ego packing.

I will say this: be careful about sticking to your guns because you might then find yourself locked into playing the role of gunslinger for the rest of your life. And believe me, once you get with the way of the gun, there will always be another relationship around the corner for you to gun down or to gun you down at the not-so-OK Corral.

I’m sayin’!

If you desire to be with someone in warm, loving, caring, caressing support, I suggest you get rid of ego-centered way of the Mini Me, and opt instead for that tender moment.

Love,

Eddie

Sunday Sermon (Karma and Evolution)

¡Hola! Everybody,
I went to see Vantage Point yesterday and was disappointed. I might post a more detailed review on multiply, but suffice it to say that the film is an example of great actors (!), and a good idea, gone to waste. The sad part is that I’m sitting there going this could be so much better...

* * *

-=[ Karma, Reincarnation, and Evolution ]=-

When the historical Buddha asked us to examine our relationship to the elements as a path to the realization to the awareness that our body has no separate, independent existence, he was encouraging us to become scientists of the self. His instructions were based in part on one of his era’s principles known as the law of karma.

In Sanskrit, the word karma means “to do” or “to make,” and refers to the fact that every action is followed by consequences. As I have written before, in common modern usage karma has been corrupted to mean “payback” and has become synonymous with retribution. This is a faulty and misinformed concept of karma.

The Hindu law of karma, which was current when the Buddha lived, was concerned mostly with an individual’s actions in the world, and how the consequences of those actions would affect that person’s destiny, even in future lives. For example, if one person hurts another, that sets up whole series of events that ends in the first person experiencing pain. People today like to say, “Everything that goes around, comes around.” ::sigh::

The Buddha added a completely new dimension to this law by emphasizing that karma is also a psychological conditioning process that operates in this very life. He recognized that our thoughts as well as our actions have consequences and that those consequences take place in our own mind.

The Buddha advised us not to try to tease out all the specifics of the entanglement of our karma, saying it was imponderable. We could never isolate or measure all of the events and processes that have produced this particular here and now. What is important is to see the fact that nothing arises independent of causes and conditions. Equally important is that we become aware how unwholesome states such as hatred and greed create suffering. What happens when we do this is that we begin to see ourselves and each moment as embedded within all of creation.

It has nothing to do with other people getting their "payback."

All of this got me thinking (always a dangerous thing) yesterday and I came upon a series of photographs of the development of the human fetus. I was taken immediately at how it seems as if the development is a reflection of our evolutionary history.

Note: for the religious quacks that refuse to be convinced of evolution, please tell me you don’t believe the next time a vaccine created through the science of evolution saves your whacked out ass.

Looking at these photos, I came away thinking that the scientific story of evolution can offer a new angle on the idea of reincarnation. Life itself seems to reincarnate in form after form, with new forms of locomotion, perception, or types of consciousness. In fact, the human condition can be seen as our shared incarnation, part of common “evolutionary karma.”

Evolutionary science is even showing us some of the faces of our previous shared past. You can see, twitching away on a Petri dish, a living example of past life as a single-celled organism. In a water-breathing fish, you can imagine a version of yourself in a previous life, swimming through the single ocean that once covered the earth. You can perhaps more easily recognize yourself as a great ape, or as a Homo Habilis in the Stone Age.

But what struck me was that our shared lives could be even more easily recognized by looking at individual development in the womb. Think about it: within a nine-month period we develop from a single cell to a complex mammal, keeping the adaptations we might need and discarding those that are unnecessary, such as gills, and downsizing others, such as the acute olfactory region of the brain, since smell is no longer as essential to our survival as humans.

In the book, What Is Life? Dorion Sagan and Lynn Margulis put forward the depth of our inheritance: “We share more than 98 percent of our genes with chimpanzees, sweat fluids reminiscent of seawater, and crave sugar that provided our ancestors with energy three billion years before the first space station had evolved. We carry our past with us”

The notion that we have previous lives in the evolutionary past can extend beyond biology, into the realm of elemental forces and cycles. After all, the entire earth was once a cloud of gas, and later cooling into a molten mass. Were we not part of those too? The Vietnamese Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hanh wrote in The Heart of Understanding, “As I look more deeply, I can see that in a former life I was a cloud. And I was a rock. This is not poetry; it is science. This is not a question of a belief in reincarnation. This is the history of life on earth.”

The concept of life evolving is not foreign to Buddhism, whether it be told in legends of reincarnation, or as the interconnection of all things in the universe. And perhaps most importantly it is expressed through the core belief in the possibility of transformation in this very life.

Love,

Eddie

Sunday Sermon (Karma)

¡Hola! Everybody,
I had quite an eventful day yesterday. My first driver flaked out and the second took forever. In the end, I was able to get only the things I had in storage into my room.

I still have some boxes in a friend’s basement and most of my clothes divided between two places (my sister’s and a “friend's”). At least I have most of all my books in one place. One of the ladies (two sisters are my roommates) asked me if I was a professor. LOL

I gave away furniture, an antique bedroom set made of solid mahogany.

I’m hoping to get a friend to help me today so I can move the rest of my things

I hate moving!

* * *

-=[ Karma ]=-
“Contrary to popular misconception, karma has nothing to do with punishment and reward. It exists as part of our holographic universe’s binary or dualistic operating system only to teach us responsibility for our creations -- and all things we experience are our creations.”
-- Sol Luckman

In the allegorical novella, The Mountain, a man climbing a mountain kills a diseased old rat thinking he’s done something beneficial. What he didn’t realize was that the old rat, because it was too old and toothless, fed exclusively on certain insects. Once the rat was gone, these insects, who borrowed into the soil, multiplied causing soil erosion which eventually led to landslides and the destruction of an ecology.

Take a spiritual concept developed in one culture and transplant it to another and it will often be mangled beyond recognition. Nowhere is this truer than in Eastern spiritual practices adopted by Westerners raised mostly in Old Testament ideology. And nowhere is this more true than the law of karma.

Karma, in its simplest form, means action. But karma is more than cause and effect. It’s not merely “reaping what you sow.” In fact, as I mentioned yesterday, The Buddha called the workings of karma one of the “four unconjecturables.” We could drive ourselves crazy speculating on how it will play out, he said (Anguttara Nikaya 4.77).

Most questions and difficulties about karma and rebirth come from an understanding of karma in which people who suffer in this life probably caused some wrong in a previous life. Yet I can't imagine that the millions of victims of slavery, for example, that occurred throughout history suffer because of karmic law. Or, for another example, recently here in NYC a little girl was brutalized by her stepfather. She suffered in ways most adults will never understand and died sitting in cat litter, punishment for daring to eat some yogurt. I have a huge problem justifying that as “karma.”

In the earliest Buddhist writings, including the Pali Canon, it is clear that while karma has a significant bearing on the course of one’s life, other factors also influence one’s situation (see, for instance, Samyutta Nikaya, 36.21); not least of these is the karma of other people, which we cannot control. However, traditions such as Tibetan Buddhism emphasize individual karma as the sole cause of one’s happiness/sorrow. The implication of this, as stated by some Tibetan lamas, is troubling: that those in Rwanda etc., are reaping the consequences of karma sown in previous lives.

I view this understanding of karma as flawed and not very convincing nor helpful. It’s ridiculous to look at the suffering of others and speculate that these must result from their karma in former lives, especially when we cannot know the connections between their present condition and their former conduct. The factors that create the circumstances of an individual’s life are many and complex. Viewing the misfortunes of others purely in terms of their previous karma may encourage us to think that they must deserve them, which is not a skilful attitude.

On the other hand, it may be helpful for us to reflect that when misfortune befalls us we may have contributed to the situation; not so that we will feel self-loathing and blame, but because it may encourage us to be more vigilant on our patterns of behavior. I can tell you without qualification that in terms of Buddhism, the appropriate response to the sufferings of others is compassion.

Finally, there is the seemingly widespread belief (or, more correctly, desire) that those who put us down or gloat over our misfortunes, or do things to us that hurt and are unjustified receive some form of karmic payback. I see the blasts here on 360 and it’s usually framed as “negative people” who we need to get rid of and who will suffer because of karma.

Frankly put, this is immaturity. To me this is a childish notion, grounded in negative feelings that do not come from other so-called “negative” people, but from our own hurt and insecurity. This has nothing to do with karma. Believe me, I understand that these painful experiences and that maybe you would feel justified knowing that they will suffer as a consequence. But isn’t this hypocritical at best? After all, which is worse: gloating over the misfortunes of others or enjoying the later humiliation of the one who gloats? Wishing suffering on others is not a virtue. Perhaps rather than thinking of what punishment those who harm us will receive, you could consider how unsatisfying their life must be for them to act in such a petty way. In terms of “punishment” for their conduct, well, at the very least, they would seem to have lost the benefit of your friendship.

Wishing or desiring suffering for others, even those who have harmed us, is bad karma.

Love,

Eddie

Life and Fairness

¡Hola! Everybody,
I’m heading out hopefully to move the bulk of my stuff today. My driver flaked out on me at the last minute yesterday because he had to work, so I’m counting on someone I don’t know that well. Wish me luck…

It’s cold again today, but we really can’t complain, it’s been a mild winter here with very little, if any snow. Two-three weeks and I’ll be whistling my way to work, watching the leaves make a comeback, my dick getting hard at yet another promise of spring.

Now watch us get a record snowstorm two weeks from now! LOL

* * *

-=[ Life Ain’t Always Fair ]=-

I’m working with a young woman who just got out of a ten-year prison sentence. Her crime? She beat her husband to within an inch of his life. Actually, she thought he was dead and that’s the only reason she stopped beating on him. Her husband had systematically abused her for about fifteen years, almost from the time she had known him. Throughout those years, she suffered broken bones, bruises, humiliation, and emotional and psychological abuse. Through it all, she managed to get a college degree and several good jobs in the financial sector.

Then one day she couldn’t take it anymore and she snapped. She’s thirty years of age, but she looks like she’s fourteen. She’s very pretty, petite, soft-spoken, articulate. I wonder how all that rage could’ve been contained in such a small form. She’s been having a tough go at it, because she can’t find a job. We call it the “collateral consequences” of incarceration: having to pay for your crime even after having served your sentence. Millions of people will never be able to vote, for example. We call that disenfranchisement.

She was crying the other day in my office, telling me that life isn’t fair. She can’t get a job because she has a criminal record. Sometimes I sit with her and I think to myself that she’s right. As far as I’m concerned, she shouldn’t have gone to jail in the first place.

People, mostly people ignorant of the term, like to use the word karma as if it meant retribution. It doesn’t. The Buddha called the workings of karma one of the “four unconjecturables.” We could drive ourselves crazy speculating on how it will play out, he said (Anguttara Nikaya 4.77). But I won’t get into karma today; I’ll leave that for tomorrow.

The fact remains that life is not always fair. Neither are people, ourselves included. Sometimes we are taken advantage of. Sometimes we do all the right things and still wind up on the short end of the proverbial stick. Sometimes we’re hurt though we may have acted cautiously. Others may be generous to us and yet we take advantage of their kindness. Or we act with good intentions toward others and our efforts go unappreciated or misrepresented.

That life is unfair is a given. It’s a fact of life that challenges us to do the psychological work to grieve for the losses associated with unfairness. It also challenges us to do the spiritual work necessary so as not to become vindictive. Both of these together equal the unconditional acceptance to the unalterable fact that things aren’t always fair: you win some, you lose some.

It’s easy to be “spiritual” and forgiving, wise when things are going right or when you’re dealing with easy-going, caring people. Anyone, even an asshole, can do that. The real challenge is to meet our losses with an open heart, with a commitment to act and think compassionately toward others, especially when they test our patience or willfully hurt us. Some people, lacking self-love mistake what I’m saying. Being open and cultivating compassion when faced with cruelty does not mean we allow ourselves to become victims of abuse. It means we simply allow ourselves to be what we are when we are most loving – vulnerable. Any relationship can have deeply painful moments in it. A mature person knows that closing off and building false walls is dangerous to their sensitivity and that remaining too open is dangerous to their boundaries. A psycho-spiritual maturity allows us to walk the middle path where a willingness to be open is tempered by a healthy maintenance of boundaries. We can seek amends when others treat us unfairly, ask for redress, and if that doesn’t work, we let go and our hearts do not close. Letting go has the effect of opening the heart.

It is also a given that human beings live on the default setting of retaliation. It takes a conscious effort to override this default setting. We have to customize our factory settings. Our ego’s favorite sport is retaliation, but if I accept you as you are without protest or blame, I am then not driven to get back at you as your judge and executioner. My client is one of the more powerful teachers of this given of life’s unfairness. Though she has been abused by individuals and society, her heart remains open. Just recently, I have been able to take her out of a dangerous city shelter, living with other women in a transitional home. And though she has no money, is faced with stigma and can’t get a job, she comes to my office and accompanies me when I go to speaking engagements. She uses her pain and suffering for the benefit of others and her life is infinitely richer because of it. Knowing what she’s gone through, I don’t know if I would have the spiritual dignity to act as she does, with an open heart.

I do know her example takes away all my excuses and that’s the power of the teaching she embodies. What about you? What’s your excuse?

Love,

Eddie