While writing my last post about how Buddhist metta meditation can help you to develop an open-hearted stance, I realized how bizarrely Pollyannaish that idea must appear to the uninitiated. These days, mainstream culture pushes us to adopt a “cool” stance: don’t smile or say hello, never look enthusiastic, tune out with your iPod/Blackberry/cell phone as much as you can, and generally try to look as though you’re much more important and sought-after than the next person. In contrast, the idea of going about zapping passersby with little “May you be happy!” thought bubbles is SO not this millennium.

Too bad for us! What you can miss out on by adopting the coolness stance was apparent to me on a recent bus ride, when a young mother boarded the bus with her pre-toddler son.

As the bus pulled away from their stop, the baby crawled from his mother’s lap onto the window seat just in front of me. Chortling and cooing, he pulled himself up to standing so that he could look out the bus window. Just below us—what a fabulous development!—he saw that an SUV had begun to slowly overtake our bus. It inched along below the watching baby, who whooped and belly-laughed with delight as he observed this fascinating motion.

Next, the baby’s gaze shifted to a line of trees along the far side of the road. From our perspective, those trees were zipping northward at a tremendous rate. The baby was enthusiastic about this behavior as well. Laughing hard, he lifted himself onto his toes, then bounced up and down with enthusiasm as he watched the trees fly past.

How wonderful to be thus gladdened by events so ordinary that they normally are utterly beneath our notice! The baby needed no metta thought bubbles from me. He already was the soul of gleeful open heartedness—and the antithesis of coolness. How sad for us that somehow, little by little, we lose this happy way of being that we’re all born into.

May the baby be safe and protected. May he keep his glad heart, and never trade it for “coolness.”

I spent the evening of Boxing Day (Dec. 26) at a women’s transitional center, where other SIMS members and I host a monthly dinner. We gather at the center with the dishes we’ve agreed to bring, and serve a potluck-style dinner to the residents and staff.

Each month, this convivial dinner ranks among my very favorite social events, and December was no exception. On Boxing Day, we exceeded ourselves—hard to do, because everyone puts heart and soul into what they bring—with a savory pot of beef bourguignon, an array of vegetable dishes, a candle-studded centerpiece of Christmas greenery, and my own contribution of homemade gingerbread cookies.

Last month, for the November dinner, a fellow SIMS member had made and brought a beautiful braided loaf of challah bread. Knowing that a blessing is usually made over this bread as it is broken during a Jewish Shabbat dinner, she had suggested that we offer some kind of blessing or short meditation along with her loaf. And so I had led the dinner party in a Buddhist metta meditation that night.

On Boxing Day, I was delighted when two of the center residents separately asked me to lead a metta meditation again, and so I did. I could see that, like me, they had quickly come to appreciate the simple power of this heart-opening practice, taught long ago by the Buddha to his disciples.

And so I offer a metta meditation to you, if you’d like to try it. The verses are taught slightly differently by different dharma teachers. The version below is very close to one taught by Sharon Salzberg, who probably has done more than anyone to popularize the practice. Metta, a Pali word, is often translated as “loving-kindness,” and the meditation practice is meant to cultivate an attitude of loving-kindness toward everyone you encounter, including yourself.

First, turn your attention to yourself, and then say (to yourself, not out loud):

May I be safe and protected.
May I be healthy and strong.
May I be peaceful and joyful.
May I have ease and well-being.

Next, turn your attention to a mentor, and say (to yourself, not out loud):

May you be safe and protected.
May you be healthy and strong.
May you be peaceful and joyful.
May you have ease and well-being.

Next, turn your attention to a person or group who is(are) dear to you, and say (to yourself, not out loud):

May you be safe and protected.
May you be healthy and strong.
May you be peaceful and joyful.
May you have ease and well-being.

Next, turn your attention to someone you encountered recently, but don’t know personally (e.g., a grocery checkout clerk, or fellow bus rider)—and say (to yourself, not out loud):

May you be safe and protected.
May you be healthy and strong.
May you be peaceful and joyful.
May you have ease and well-being.

Next, if you’re feeling relaxed and open-hearted, turn your attention to someone who is difficult for you in some way, and say (to yourself, not out loud):

May you be safe and protected.
May you be healthy and strong.
May you be peaceful and joyful.
May you have ease and well-being.

Finally, turn your attention to all beings, seen and unseen, in all realms, seen and unseen, and say (to yourself, not out loud):

May all beings be safe and protected.
May all beings be healthy and strong.
May all beings be peaceful and joyful.
May all beings have ease and well-being.

As we were leaving the center at the end of the evening, another SIMS member and I talked about we've both come to rely on metta practice in stressful situations such as driving in heavy traffic or waiting in a traffic jam. For example, I turn my attention to other drivers—especially those I might otherwise form a judgment about—and say: "May you be happy; may you be safe and protected." If I'm waiting in a traffic jam with an accident ahead, I turn my attention to the unknown people who may have been hurt in the accident, and say: "May you be safe and protected; may you be healthy and strong."

Sharon Salzberg suggests the easiest metta practice of all: as you walk down the street, simply turn your attention to each being you encounter, and say to each one (in your mind, not aloud), "May you be happy!"

She also shows a photo of Burmese monks holding a metta banner.

So perhaps if we practice metta long enough, one day we all will be happy!

It's Christmastide. Outside my brother's house in Port Angeles, darkness fell hours ago, and a storm front has brought wet wind and rain. But inside, we are warm, dry, and full of good cheer and my sister-in-law's good cooking. A fire blazes in the woodstove, and lights blink on the tree. On the television, the choirs of St. Olaf's College are singing: "Sing we Noel, Noel..."

Back in Seattle, where the numbers of homeless people are growing and crowded shelters are full, thousands of people must sleep outside tonight in the cold and rain, as Paul Leighty explains in a Seattle P-I editorial. Fortunately, the City recently responded to rising criticisms and a campaign led by Real Change: it suspended its sweeps of homeless encampments in the city's parks and greenbelts. Until a few days ago, police officers had been making unannounced visits to encampments and removing homeless campers' personal belongings, often leaving people without the means to pass the night safely in the winter cold.

The first of many readers to comment on Paul's editorial characterized the homeless as either "lazy, crazy, or stupid." But it's worth giving a bit more thought to who is homeless today, and who has been homeless in the past. Today, for example, the Dalai Lama remains homeless in Dharamsala, India, far from his home in Lhasa, Tibet. Likewise, many of Tibet's greatest teachers are now scattered across the world, and the beloved Zen master, Thich Nhat Hanh, has lived in exile far from his homeland of Vietnam for the past three decades.

A little more than two thousand years ago, King Herod became fearful of rumors that he would be overthrown by the newborn King of the Jews. He began sweeps of his own, sending soldiers to kill male children under the age of two. Warned in advance by a dream, Joseph gathered his wife and child, and fled across the border to Egypt. Just like thousands of Iraqis today, this little ancient family escaped violence in their own country to became homeless refugees in a foreign land.

So as a young child, Jesus was homeless by necessity. Later, he became homeless again, this time by choice. We can only speculate about the reasons that led him to this decision. Perhaps the Prince of Peace understood how too many possessions can burden the spirit and harden the heart. Maybe he heard the voice of God in the desert.

We also can imagine how compassion for the dispossessed must have grown in him during the years of his own young life as a homeless exile. Perhaps if one is homeless and dispossessed for a time, as Jesus was, one can never feel superior. May Jesus' example inspire compassion and generosity of spirit to grow in our own hearts as well. Merry Christmas!

Weekend before last, I had a remarkable experience that I've been meaning to write down before the details fade in my mind. I hardly understand all that happened, but perhaps I'll come to understand more later:

8 Limbs Yoga, the studio where I regularly practice yoga, hosted a visit from Dungse Rigdzin Dorje Rinpoche, a high lama in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, accompanied by a small group of monks and nuns, all accomplished in leading an ancient Tibetan healing ceremony called the Chod. They came to Seattle as part of a tour of US cities to offer the ceremony as a way of raising money for a medical clinic they are building near their home in India, Zangdokpalri Monastery.

I had no experience with the Chod, but I'm always curious about such things. Besides, a Tibetan Buddhist friend strongly recommended it, and the event flier included an endorsement by Sharon Salzberg, a beloved teacher in my Buddhist tradition. And I could benefit both myself and others at the same time! At first, I felt that I should sign up immediately. But then again, googling revealed that the young Rinpoche had only very recently succeeded the elder Rinpoche who had long been considered a great master of the Chod. And so I found myself wondering: would the younger Rinpoche be as good as his elder at leading the ceremony? Would I get my money's worth? Looking back now, I marvel at how readily I dropped into "shopping mind." But fortunately, I did sign up for the Chod.

From the point of view of a recipient of the Chod, everything's very simple. You just spend two afternoons rolled up in a blanket on the floor of the studio while the monks and nuns perform the ceremony, using chanting and a variety of musical instruments. I passed a very peaceful Saturday afternoon in my blanket, barely awake, as the first snows of winter fell outside the studio window. That night, I slept a sound 10 hours, feeling as though some sort of deep level healing had begun, and that my system was rebooting itself. Sunday afternoon passed peacefully as well, as the ceremony was completed.

Afterwards, we were invited to share a "small feast" with the monks and nuns--fruit, nuts, and other simple foods that we had brought in at the request of the monk coordinating the event, and that had been blessed by the Rinpoche. And then came an invitation to meet the Rinpoche in person. I had read about the etiquette involved: how one offers a kata--a white silk scarf--to such an honored person. And katas, along with other simple souvenirs, had been for sale in the back of the studio, so I had one.

We all held back bashfully, hoping someone else would go up first, but no one did. In the end I was the first to go up, scarf held out before me, feeling awkward and hoping that I wasn't committing any serious gaffes. The Rinpoche took the scarf from my hands, draped it around my neck and shoulders, and tied a protection cord around my wrist. I offered a Namaste salutation, and he offered a gentle half-smile in return. I returned to my blanket so that the next person could come up. We had not exchanged words.

Back on my blanket, I could feel a light energy playing across my body, and then I suddenly felt myself caught in a powerful flow of compassionate love. I don't know what it was, and had no sense of its source, but the words that come to me now are names like sacredness, Buddhanature, and Holy Spirit. In those moments, I also had an insight--very much as though I was being offered a teaching--that, although I work diligently to become a more compassionate and loving person, I had never been willing to direct that love and compassion towards myself. But the strong flow of love directed at me in those moments overwhelmed the defenses I had not realized I kept around my own heart.

The moment passed, the feeling faded. When I left the studio to walk downtown to my bus stop, the tall buildings around me, the traffic, the Christmas lights, all looked insubstantial, like ghosts or shadows. Back home, I pulled off the kata, to hold it in my hands. I marveled at how it felt--and still feels--full of healing energy.

I returned recently from a month in Vietnam, my first trip there. Most of my time was spent in a retreat--I'll write more about that later--but I had time and opportunity to explore a bit of the country as well.

I went there with my mind filled with preconceptions--most having their origin in my childhood memories of TV coverage of the war there--and returned with new, and much, much brighter impressions. Of course, my impressions live in my mind only, not in reality, wherever that is. There must be so much I missed seeing, and so much I've gotten wrong. Nevertheless, below are excerpts from a few emails I sent home to family, describing what I encountered. I've also posted some photos.

July 15:
I'm happily settled in our lovely retreat center, as of yesterday
afternoon. It's a stunning location--nicer than the photos, actually.
I had thought it might feel a bit too polished and posh, but it does
not. We just finished dinner on an outdoor patio, overlooking the
beach, sea, and offshore islands. As we ate, the local fishing fleet
was putting to sea, so we could see the lights of the boats heading
out across the water like big, slow fireflies. I started today with
some languid barefoot walking on the beach, and tomorrow is likely to
start similarly. It's a wonderful, peaceful setting to spend a month.

I'm so taken with Vietnam, as are the other retreatants here. I just
shared stories of Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City, but everyone seems to use
the old name) with a French friend over dinner. My Seattle friends and
I had had just an afternoon to see a bit of the city, but its
endearing spirit came across to us even in that short time. My party
rented a car and driver to tour for the afternoon. Everywhere you
drive in that city, you are in a sea of motorbikes, bicycles, and
pedicabs, all skillfully sharing the road, usually with only inches to
spare. And so you see human vignettes everywhere you look: the man on
a motorbike with a refrigerator strapped to his back; the family of
four, all balanced gracefully on one small motorbike; the son
chauffeuring his gray-haired mother, also by motorbike; the very
fashionable, poised young woman driving her motorbike with great
skill, despite her high stiletto heels, the flower saleswoman so
loaded down with bouquets that it took a few seconds to realize that
she was riding a bicycle, not a motorcycle...We visited three temples,
two Buddhist and one Hindu, and the heartfelt, dignified faith of the
people making their prayers was so evident.

My French friend, on the other hand, visited the tunnel system that
the North Vietnamese had dug around the city, and was stunned by the
huge system--many layers, extending for many dozens of miles--all
excavated by hoes and baskets. People lived in it for many months at a
time, shoulder to shoulder, existing on a diet of boiled manioc and
tea. She was struck by the utter determination and cleverness of the
people who had built the tunnel system, lived in it, and fought in it.

July 19:
All is still well here on the coast of
Vietnam (!). Life has settled into a lovely routine that includes both
workshop sessions and simply enjoying this beautiful location. I tend
to get up early, since the sun rises about 5:30 am. Yesterday, I rose
at about 4, and walked up the hillside above the retreat center to a
nice overlook. There, I watched the light slowly come up in the world:
the dark silhouettes of islands took on form, as did the little
fishing village near the center. I watched fishermen going back and
forth to their boats in little basket boats--round woven baskets that
hold 2 - 3 people and are propelled by a single oar. Dad would have
loved to watch them! Eventually, the sun itself rose out of the sea as
a big red disk, and then I walked down the hillside to the beach and
went for a swim before breakfast and the beginning of the workshop for
the day.

August 7:
I have a few free minutes right now, so I thought I'd
send you a news update. I'm at the retreat center near Quy Nhon right
now; we've been doing a workshop session this morning. This afternoon,
a small group of us will visit a private orphanage near here. This
orphanage was begun by a local man 17 years ago when he saw a need to
help young orphans, especially disabled people, learn job skills. Most
of the orphans are between 9 and 14 years old; some became disabled by
exposure to Agent Orange. We learned some of the basic information
about the orphanage from three people from our group who paid a short
visit there last week; one of those people is a social worker from
London who was interested in seeing social work projects in this area
and a retreat center staff member suggested a visit to this orphanage.
We've all contributed a few hundred dollars, which we'll give to the
orphanage director this afternoon. We'll stop at the supermarket in
town before our visit, to pick up some treats for the kids. It should
be an interesting visit in many ways.

Since I last wrote a few days ago, I've been in and near the retreat
center, mainly involved in workshop activities, but enjoying other
things as well, including a brief outing to town last Sunday, when we
were invited to visit Quy Nhon's main pagoda. I'm learning that in
Vietnam, a pagoda is not a single building, but a Buddhist
monastery/temple complex (generally Zen Buddhist). We were invited to
listen to the monks chanting. When we arrived, we settled quietly in
the back of the main worship hall, behind the regular congregation
members, who chanted along with the monks. After the chanting, which
was lovely, a young monk who speaks good English helped us to have a
question-and-answer discussion with the vice-abbot, who explained the
basics of Buddhist practice to our group and invited us to the
meditation hall for a basic introduction to meditation. We moved over
to the meditation hall and first practiced sitting. At this point, I
think the monks were surprised to find that most Westerners can't
readily settle into cross-legged position on the floor. For them, the
lotus position--cross-legged with one foot on top of each thigh--comes
naturally. (I can comfortably sit crosslegged on the floor, but only
with the help of a pillow, so I sat in the prescribed position, but
with my legs slowly going to sleep.) The vice-abbot then talked
everyone through the proper hand position for Zen meditation (right
hand cupped in left with thumbs touching). One of the monks helped me
to get my hand position exactly right, to the great interest of the
various members of the congregation who were enjoying watching the
whole procedure in the background. I'm wondering whether Westerners
had ever visited the pagoda before--we obviously were a very
interesting phenomenon. Characteristically for Vietnamese people,
everyone was very welcoming, and alert to ways they could help us.

Yesterday, four women from a hat-making village came here to
demonstrate how the typical Vietnamese conical hats are made. In
Vietnam, each village specializes in a particular business: rice wine
production, ceramics, hat-making, and so on. They brought all the
needed equipment and supplies to make four hats. It was fascinating to
watch them work to create what initially seems to be a simple
creation. As they worked, we came to see, step by step, how careful
craftsmanship and great expertise--not to mention centuries of
experimentation and technique refinement--go into the making of each
palm leaf and bamboo hat. They were lovely and gentle, so it felt
completely natural and relaxed to just sit and watch. When they
invited the children to try doing some of the sewing of the hats, one
of the Irish kids in our group, R, snuggled into the lap of one
of the hatmakers and spent the next hour or so--to everyone's
delight--being tutored in the stitches used to make the hats. I took
photos and was given one of the completed hats, so I'll be able to
show you when I return.

Last night, my neighborhood felt like a war zone, with the cracking, popping, and banging of fireworks, occasional screams and shouts, and thickly accumulating smoke. The experience brought back memories—my own and my family’s:

Gettysburg, 1863: In the words of my great-grandfather, who was 16 at the time: “On the first day of the Gettysburg fight, our corps was 30 miles to the S.W. We marched all night & reached the field in the forenoon on the 2nd day’s fight….Our Division was ordered to the relief of Sickles Corps & it took the hill in fine shape…Our regiment lost heavily in this charge in killed and wounded. Among the killed was James Bailey [also about 16], who came from England with me & enlisted at the same time…We fell together, struck by splinters of the same shell. We lay where we fell—he dead, I wounded, until daylight of the next morning, when I was carried to a field hospital.” Great grandfather was wounded again, and taken captive twice, before the end of the Civil War.

Northern Israel, 1977: I arrived at Kibbutz Dafna, a communal farming settlement in the northern Galilee, very close to Israel’s border with Lebanon. I was 22, out to see the world, and I had just signed up at an office in Tel Aviv to be a volunteer kibbutz worker.

This was country where Jesus once walked and taught. But during the time I lived at Dafna, a multifactional civil war was raging in Lebanon, just to the north, and that country was descending into bloody chaos. Machine gun fire from the nearby hills of Lebanon was a constant background sound, supplemented on the worst days of fighting with frequent bomb explosions. When the fighting came too close to Israel, Israeli fighter jets shrieked low overhead—as fearsome as the Nazguls in the Lord of the Rings movies, but real and terrifying, even though I knew I was not their target.

This was also a time when the PLO had stepped up its incursions into northern Israel. Once, near the end of my night shift at Dafna’s boot factory, the guards caught a terrorist just inside Dafna’s high barbed-wire fence. It also wasn’t long after my arrival at Dafna that I learned that many of its residents were victims of yet another war: about eight or ten were survivors of the Holocaust, and some remained deeply disturbed by their experiences.

When I arrived, my head was full of romantic notions about the world, and I was as self-centered and naive as any young person. Initially, these manifestations of war fit so effortlessly into my idealistic mental picture of Israel, the brave nation fighting the world for its survival. At first they seemed like the glamorous backdrop to the screenplay of my own bit part in Israel’s history. Things were so black-and-white, and one-dimensional, and all-about-me then! But as I came to know the people around me and to share a little of their experiences, even I began to understand, little by little, about the fear and suffering inflicted on all the peoples of the Middle East by the deadly business of war.

Kuwait, 2006: My 22-year-old nephew K, who is a Navy hospital corpsman, spent most of last year at a field hospital in Kuwait, caring for wounded people evacuated from Iraq. One day, an old friend of K’s arrived as a patient. This young man had enlisted in the Marines at the same time that K enlisted in the Navy. He had been hit by a bullet during fighting in Anbar Province, and has been paralyzed by his injury.

It seems to me that if you have had so little experience with real war zones that you’re drawn to recreate them with fireworks, then you are lucky indeed.

July 4 has come around again, and still we Americans find ourselves--metaphorically speaking--wandering with troubled minds and hearts in a dark wood, looking for light and landmarks. What to do with respect to Iraq, the Middle East, and our ever-deteriorating relations with the rest of the world? No one sees any easy solutions.

It's the long view that gives me hope. I'm reflecting on two related experiences today:

In early 1981, I was a trainee in the Peace Corps training center at Thies, Senegal. There, I was getting a 10-week crash course in Pulaar, one of West Africa's most widely-spoken languages, along with an intensive brush-up on my French (the official language of Senegal). I was to be detailed to a Pulaar-speaking village along the Senegal River in the north of the country, where I would work as an aquaculture extension agent.

One Saturday, we trainees were taken on a field trip to Goree Island, just offshore of Dakar, Senegal's capital. Goree is a beautiful island, with sunny beaches, seaside cafes, and historic architecture, and it's a popular day outing for Dakar residents. But worldwide, it's best known for the Maison des Esclaves, the Slave House, from which captured West Africans were loaded onto slave ships for the dangerous, terrifying trip to the New World. A walk through this forbidding fortress brings you to the single doorway through which so many people were forced to pass.

Wandering through the fortress on my own, I encountered a friendly guard, and began to chat with him in French. It was he who explained the significance of the doorway to me. He wondered what I was doing in Senegal and I explained that I would be a Peace Corps Volunteer in the River Region. As it happens, he was from that region, and Pulaar was his native language. So I switched from French to my halting Pulaar. On that day, I was just 3 or 4 weeks into my study, and could say little without great effort and concentration. But the guard was patient, and every word I could say seemed important in that our conversation represented as complete a break from the past as one could imagine, and felt like a small act of atonement on behalf of my country. Some of my maternal ancestors were wealthy Southerners who may well have owned some of the people who passed through the doorway. But there at the horrible doorway I stood, their development-worker descendant, speaking a language that would have been spoken by many enslaved people, in equal-to-equal conversation with a citizen of the free and democratic nation of Senegal. For the people being shoved through that doorway long ago, such a conversation might have seemed impossible.

Now it's 2007, and in my passport is a new visa for Vietnam, where I'm headed next week for personal travel--my first trip to Southeast Asia. I was a child during the Vietnam War (which the Vietnamese call the American War, I have learned). The TV images from that era, of frightening battles, bomb blasts and napalm attacks, exhausted soldiers and terrified villagers, are embedded deep in my consciousness, along with the names of so many places where battles were fought and lives lost.

So it's been a great pleasure lately to read through my Lonely Planet guidebook and discover that so many of the places with those forbidding names are now well-known tourist centers and historic sites. The Vietnamese countryside that once seemed so forbidding and hostile is lushly beautiful and inviting in the guidebook photos. A colleague who recently traveled to Vietnam on business reports that the Vietnamese people she met were delighted to meet and work with Americans--she would love to go back and explore more of the country. I'm impatiently waiting for these last few days to pass before I can board my flight to Ho Chi Minh City.

Someday, I'd love to walk along the banks of the Euphrates, and visit ancient Babylon and modern Baghdad as a peaceful and ordinary tourist. Today, such a trip seems impossible in my lifetime. But 30 years ago, my upcoming trip to Vietnam would have seemed the unlikeliest of dreams. We can't know how our future will unfold. But looking into the past, I see some signs of hope.

Bite of Seattle is a summer food festival at which attendees sample dishes prepared by local chefs. Over the years, offshoot "Bite of" festivals have appeared in the Puget Sound area and elsewhere.

Yesterday seemed to be a multispecies Bite of St. Edwards State Park festival. Immediately adjacent to the park, in Bastyr University's medicinal herb garden, clouds of bees were working over the herbs that are now in bloom. Most fun to watch are the fat bumblebees pushing their way into foxglove flowers. These flowers are designed, I recently learned, so that the bee must push all the way to the top of the funnel-shaped flower to get to the nectar, receiving a liberal dusting of pollen on the way. Smart plant!

Not far along one of the trails through the adjacent woods, I stopped to admire a handsome, thorny stand of Devil's Club--easy to appreciate when you don't need to push your way through it, as I've sometimes had to do on backpacking expeditions. A big Douglas fir cone scale dropped in front of my toes from somewhere far above. A moment later, another, and then another. I looked around and noticed that the ground around me was littered with fresh cone scales--the sure sign of a feasting squirrel high overhead.

As for me, I wasn't going hungry, either. First course: some salmonberries and thimbleberries overlooked by other walkers. For an entree, along the lakeshore, I found Indian plum trees heavily laden with ripe fruits, and ate a handful. Then two first-of-the-season ripe trailing blackberries along the sunniest paths by the water.

Also near the lakeshore was ocean spray in full bloom. When I stopped to admire the clusters of tiny white flowers on one bush, I discovered a miniature feast in progress: the diners included dozens of small brown flies and many inchworms heartily chomping on the flower centers.

Everyone was eating enthusiastically, but some diners forgot their manners completely. First, around the next few bends of the trail, a junco was alternately singing and playing with his meal (a hapless insect, I think). Farther along, two red squirrels were having an outright food fight, yelling insults at each other at top volume and feinting attacks.

Another bend or two, and then a red currant bush offered me dessert, before the trail ended.

My friend Tim Harris is the founder and director of Seattle’s award-winning street paper, Real Change, and current president of the North American Street Newspapers Association. These days, he’s also the devoted father of a pair of charming 3-year-old twin daughters. Though Tim would squirm at the idea, surely he’s become one of Seattle’s most admired and productive citizens. He’s even been fictionalized—favorably—by Sherman Alexie in the New Yorker!

But Tim has been in a self-revealing mood these past couple of weeks. In a series of memoir tales, he has surprised those of us who thought we knew him, by describing his youth as a troubled time dominated by drinking, drugs, loveless sex, truly outrageous behavior, and complete alienation from conventional mores and institutions. I have to admit: it’s a pretty fun read.

But a question remains: What transformed the youthful Tim into the one we know now? We can’t yet know because he hasn’t gotten that far in his memoir writing. But reading his stories brought to my mind a character from one of my very favorite movies, The Sorrow and the Pity, by Marcel Ophuls.

In the 1960s, Ophuls interviewed many people who had lived in the French city of Clermont-Ferrand when it was occupied by the Nazis during World War II. Those interviews make up his riveting 4-hour film. The film is full of images of people—generally from the most acceptable levels of society—uncomfortably rationalizing how they had accommodated themselves to Nazi rule. Watching, it was all too easy for me to imagine myself in their shoes and to recognize the immense difficulty of acting otherwise. I had to ask myself—as I’m sure Ophuls intended me to do—whether I would have done just as they did. Most had not been overtly bad people, and most were sympathetic characters—it’s just that they had not done anything significant to resist their occupiers. And as for me, I had to ask: Could I ever have found the courage to stand up against that frightening regime, or to act to protect Jews, dissidents, and other imperiled people around me? Could I ever have hidden someone in my attic, hearing the footsteps of storm troopers in the streets below?

The film also shows a handful of people who did find the courage to resist. There were two farmer brothers, for example, who refused to see themselves as special in any way, and explained matter-of-factly that they had joined the Resistance because “well, obviously, it was the only thing to do.”

Most memorable of all the characters—the one who still often comes to my mind—was a man who had become one of the greatest leaders of the Resistance. He was asked how he had found it in himself to do that. His explanation will gently resound in the back of my mind for the rest of my life: For the bourgeois, it would have been very difficult, probably impossible. But for him, it had been relatively easy, because he had been the town roué. Since he was already a social outcast, he had had nothing to lose by acting courageously.

We'll have to wait for Tim's story. But meanwhile, we can wonder whether he and the Resistance leader, were they to share a good vin rouge at a sidewalk table, might find some common ground.

This week, I’ve learned that when I judge too hastily, I can miss out on something really worth noticing. Not that I didn't know that, conceptually--but it's so very easy to miss seeing the judgments arising in one's own mind!

This past weekend, I talked with S, a lawyer friend who is a skillful birder. S has been enjoying watching the flocks of starlings living in the marshland adjacent to the University of Washington. He’s been amused to discover that these starlings have learned to mimic the sound of cell phones so well that people sometimes check their phones to see whether they’re ringing.

Since S mentioned this interesting finding, I’ve been paying much more attention to starlings. Researching them on the Internet, I’ve found that they’ve been observed to mimic everything from human speech to car alarms, as well as the calls of many other birds. And indeed, while walking along the lakeshore listening to starlings this week, I’ve heard them make a variety of calls, including one that sounds like a series of beeps (maybe an imitation of a frustrated motorist?). What could be the purpose of so much mimicry? I can only wonder at the starlings’ intentions—and at my own failure to notice such an obvious phenomenon!

Now I’m really interested in starlings! Until now, I’d dismissed them as not really worthy of attention. Reflecting, I see that my lack of interest has been founded in judgment. Because I know that starlings are a nonnative species that successfully competes with native bird species for nesting habitat, I’ve thought of them as a problem species—a kind of living trash—rather than as something to delight in, as I delight in many other birds. And because I see so many of them so often, I had taken them to be something ordinary and uninteresting—not exciting like an uncommon species. As I let my judgments go this week, I finally can appreciate them for themselves, and life is richer for it.

Senegal, West Africa, 1983:
Dusk was falling when the “bush taxi,” a battered Peugeot station wagon, pulled into a tiny desert town to stop for the night and let me out. I was a Peace Corps Volunteer, on my way home to my own village far downriver, but I could go no farther until morning. I knew no one in the town, and there was no hostel or hotel in that remote place. But—Allah akbar!—I had no concern, since everyone in rural Senegal knows and follows an ancient rule: Offer shelter to those who need it. Soon, I had been invited home for the night by one of the women packing up her stall in the town’s small market.

When I was young, I traveled widely. In Senegal and elsewhere, I was offered shelter when I most needed it, and sometimes just because I was a visitor.

Seattle, 1995:
I was a new volunteer at the Saturday Night Youth Shelter at University Baptist Church, and I had arrived at the locked door of the church too early for my first assignment. I joined a homeless man resting on the doorstep as I waited for other volunteers to arrive with the key. “How is it that Seattle’s churches stay locked at night,” he asked me, “while thousands of people sleep in the streets? Why not open them so people can come in to sleep? Aren’t they supposed to be places of sanctuary?”

I'm sure I know why the churches remain locked—the reasons are not much different from mine when I lock my own door each night. But I can never be fully reconciled to the situation. What if by some djinn’s magic a market woman were conducted out of Senegal’s desert and into Seattle on a typical night? She would be awed by the abundant evidence of material prosperity. She would be astonished by the grandeur of Seattle’s tall buildings, elegant shops, and bright skyline. But I know that she would be most amazed to find that in such a city, children, youth, and families sleep in the streets because no one offers them a place to stay. I can’t imagine how I ever could explain the situation to her.

This is the time of year that we wait for all winter. Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge was a world of wonders this evening when I stopped there on my way home from a weekend visit with Mom. I saw so many species of birds that I've lost track. Among the highlights were a cinnamon teal--the first one I've seen, if I remember right (I don't keep lists)--a ringneck duck, many wood ducks and shovelers, a couple of greater yellowlegs, yellow-rumped warblers, and a dozen or so pintails, probably resting before the next leg of their flight up to the arctic. Best of all were fluffy mallard ducklings just learning to dabble, and a single gosling, carefully attended by its parents.

As I walked the usual 5.5 mile loop on the old dike road around the refuge, it struck me that I've been taking that trail routinely for 20 years now, usually alone, sometimes with various members of my family, sometimes with other birders I meet along the way. Each time, so many familiar sights and old memories appear: the bench along MacAllister Creek where I sat watching young eagles fledge...the hedges of wild roses out by the tide flats...the old duck blind where Dad, Mom, and I had a picnic of cheese sandwiches and tea on a long-ago November day...the bend of the Nisqually River where I often watch seals...the gnarled old big-leaf maple with its scarred and broken trunk...the slough where I saw a fox late one summer evening...the swampy spot where skunk cabbage comes up every year...the spot where R and I, still smelling of hospital, saw three owlets perched in a tree on the afternoon of the day Dad died...

On this particular evening, a breeze at my back blew me down the last leg of the trail, winding below high-arched maples and cedars. New green leaves fluttered and flashed in the late sun, swallows swooped, and warblers and sparrows darted and dashed through the trees. The constant motion of greenery and birds set up a sort of dizzying optical illusion, so that it began to seem as though not just leaves and birds but everything--the world itself--was gorgeously in motion, rolling down the path along with me, all of us come completely loose from our moorings, even time itself. And for a few minutes, it seemed almost as though all those long ago times I'd passed this way all rolled together into one single Now--the eagles, the owlets, Dad, Mom, R, the birders who've come and gone over the years, the trees that put forth their leaves and then drop them down again, year after year, the birds that come and go, and hatch and fledge, and then bear their own young in their own time--all of us were heading down the path back towards my car together.

On Tuesday evenings after work, I drive to the hillside home of C, my yoga/dharma buddy. From there, we carpool to the weekly sitting of the Seattle Insight Meditation Society on Capitol Hill. Last Tuesday, the view from C's yard was so beautiful that it stopped my progress to her front door. I took in the fresh green leaves of her trees, the flowers spilling across her her flowerbeds, the singing birds, and the sunlit lake in the distance below me. She came out of her door, laughed at me, and we were off to our sitting.

By the time we returned, thick clouds had replaced blue sky and darkness had fallen. She parked, and we chatted for a while in the carport behind her house. Our conversation turned to her new project: a short story. C is a successful novelist with a series of books to her credit, but she hadn't written a story for years, and was struggling to come up with a plot. She was drawn to begin her story by describing a dream she'd recently had: she and others were trapped in a building and stalked by a nameless and dreadful entity. The question was how the plot should proceed from there.

Talk of her dream drew us on to the topic of how other writers had depicted dread, then on to scenes from Stephen King books we'd read. Soon, the trees that had looked so gay in the sunlight hunched ominously over the long driveway I would have to descend back to my car. The birds had fallen silent. The heavy clouds blotted out the stars and added to the gloom, and the flowers, of course, were now invisible in the shadows. I felt a touch of dread building in my own heart as I bid C goodnight and scuttled to my car.

There is just one landscape in C's hillside, but there were two wildly different landscapes in my mind. And so I, and you, and everyone else sees reality: never clearly as it is, but filtered through the mind's preconceptions and expectations like something seen through a glass darkly.

In 1999, a freighter ran aground on the Oregon coast, then broke apart, spilling its fuel oil. The response to the accident was difficult and controversial, and very much in the public spotlight. At that time, I managed a government website that provided frequent news updates about the response. Our site was inundated with visitors, and I got all the emails sent to the webmaster.

Many of those emails were so filled with hatred and vitriol that they astonished me. It was my first encounter with the phenomenon of flaming. Generally, I wrote back with a polite answer to the writer's question or concern, thanking them for their concern for our coastal environment, and signing my responses with my own name.

More often than not, I received a reply. It's not that the writers apologized--as I remember it, none did--but the replies all had a contrite tone, and the writers thanked me for my work. I could tell that they had imagined they were addressing a faceless government drudge, not a real woman with a name and personality.

I thought of that experience last week when I saw something similar happen to my good friend Tim Harris. Tim runs Real Change, Seattle's street paper. The Seattle Weekly, for reasons that aren't clear to me, chose to write an investigative piece about Real Change's policies for employing vendors. I suppose that they had expected to find shoddy practices, but the eventual article revealed none. An altercation arose after Tim wrote a criticism of the upcoming article on his own blog shortly before the article appeared in print, and the Weekly took offense (actually, when Tim wrote that post, I doubt that he expected that more than 8 - 10 people would read it, counting his wife).

I know Tim to be a kind, dedicated man who has worked courageously and smartly to keep his paper alive, thereby building opportunities for homeless and at-risk people to earn a little money and build connections with the community around them. But in the comment threads on the Weekly website and elsewhere, I saw Tim described as the deranged author of a bizarre diatribe, and suspected of sneakily making money off the impoverished. It all seemed so familiar!

During the early years of the World Wide Web, I expected that the Internet would help to develop understanding among different people, by giving people a chance to communicate freely together. Sadly, something about being able to speak anonymously brings out the worst in many people, and so often poisons online conversations. Still, there's hope. As the New York Times reports, thoughtful bloggers are searching for ways to build civility online. The trick is to build civility without unduly constraining writers, as Monica Guzman notes.

The Buddha offered us Four Noble Truths. For a long time, I wondered what made them noble, until I heard a dharma teacher's explanation: think of them as ennobling truths which, if you reflect on them, will enoble you.

The First Noble Truth is often misinterpreted as "Life is suffering." Among teachers in my Insight Meditation tradition, it's usually translated from the original Pali text as "There is suffering." Of course, we know that life isn't only suffering--for most of us, it's full of all kinds of happiness as well, ranging from quiet contentment to experiences of great joyfulness. What the Buddha was pointing to, for one thing, is the fact that nobody's life is without suffering, despite all the joy it might also contain. The Buddha also was pointing to the ubiquity of unsatisfactoriness. For example, say, you've been really looking forward to a special occasion, but then when the occasion arises, things just don't quite live up to your expectations and you end up feeling at least a bit let down. And he also was pointing out that happiness is always transient, like everything else--for example, you eat a wonderful piece of cake, and then it's eaten, or you go on a vacation, and then it's over.

The Second Noble Truth is that desire and aversion are the causes of suffering. If you can train yourself to feel neither desire nor aversion, your suffering will cease. This point was beautifully explained long ago by the Third Chinese Patriarch:

"The Great Way is not difficult for those who are unattached to preferences. When love and hate are both absent, everything becomes clear and undisguised. Make the smallest distinction, however, and heaven and earth are set infinitely apart. If you wish to see the truth, then hold no opinions for or against anything. To set up what you like against what you dislike is the disease of the mind..."

The Third Noble Truth is that there is a way out of suffering, and the Fourth Noble Truth presents the Eightfold Path, a way of living that can lead you out of suffering.

I think a lot about the Second Noble Truth because I so often observe desire and aversion arising in my own mind. For example, I've noticed that at any given time, there's a sort of mental shopping list in my head. It contains the things that I'd like to get next, once I have saved enough money. No sooner have I purchased one thing on the list than another takes its place. This list is all about desire. My list has become smaller in the last few years as my practices of yoga and meditation have developed, but it's never quite zeroed out.

The one time my mental shopping list was shortest was when I was a Peace Corps Volunteer in West Africa in the 80s. I lived in a remote rural village at the edge of the Sahara in northern Senegal. There was very little to buy in that region, other than the small essentials of rural African life, and no advertising. I wore essentially the same small collection of clothes during the 2 years I spent there. Once in a while I traveled to a larger city, where I had a restaurant meal or two, and perhaps an ice cream cone, and bought a few sundries and small gifts to bring back to the village. There was so very little on my mental list at that time!

A few weeks ago I remembered that experience when I watched David Brancaccio interview Dr. Muhammed Yunus on the PBS show, Now. When David made a side comment to the effect that Bangladesh was a disadvantaged country, Dr. Yunus replied that Bangladesh is near the top of the gross national happiness list, while the U.S. is near the bottom. He pointed out that Bangladeshis don't feel themselves to be disadvantaged, and that he'd seen more unhappiness among Americans. (I'm not sure which list he was referring to, but he might have meant the Happy Planet Index.)

I can imagine that Bangladeshis may be happier than Americans because material wealth is less prevalent and valued in their culture, and because they aren't so targeted by advertising campaigns designed to make them desire more material things. So much of the U.S. economy is about generating desire!

The idea that great material wealth is not a cause of happiness--and may even make it more difficult to be happy--resonates with me when I think back to the mental ease and freedom I felt during those 2 years at the edge of the Sahara, when I had little and my material desires were fewest. Nowdays, it seems to me that I can be happier and more relaxed whenever I am able to counter my own material desires. I do that by trying to observe and reflect on those desires when they arise, by challenging myself to be generous, and by minimizing my exposure to advertising (giving away my television, for example, and subscribing to no commercial magazines).

Of course, life is not so simple that living without a TV will bring you to enlightenment, but it may be a good way to make a step on the Great Way.

Yesterday ended with a pretty evening, and I went for a walk before supper. I live in a basement apartment in, well, the low-rent section of a suburban city next door to Seattle. My mother rolls her eyes each time she thinks of my present living arrangement. But I can pop out of my front door and wend my way uphill through well-gardened landscapes, until I reach sweeping views southward across Lake Washington and across to hills and ridges in every direction.

Last night, the lake was a quiet sheet of silver, and lights blinked on the hills around it. At the highest point along my walk, I came to a subdivision of very expensive houses set among finely landscaped grounds, perhaps modeled after the rural manor houses of Europe. As I walked along street after street of elaborate residences, I began to wonder what the owners do for a living that allows them to afford their houses.

Then I remembered a story that my brother R recently recounted. He’s a firefighter on the east side of the lake, where expensive homes are even more common. He and his colleagues were dispatched on an emergency medical call to one of those homes. R recalls pulling the aid car into the driveway of a huge, elaborate home, with a luxury car parked in front. Inside, the firefighters found no furniture, rugs, or pictures--just a man, alone on the floor with a laptop and the cell phone he’d used to dial 9-1-1. He was crying, and in the midst of a panic attack. He explained that he had felt compelled to buy his property to fit in socially. But now he faced a financial crisis, and had no idea how he ever would pay for his house and car.

R says that this sort of encounter is not uncommon. And maybe it was ever thus. Poor human beings! At bottom, we just want to feel self-assured and respected. May that man eventually find peace and self-respect in a smaller, cheaper place. And may I continue to feel content in a modest home...

Buddhism is the Listmania of spiritual traditions. It's full of lists. There are the Four Noble Truths, for starters. Then the Eightfold Path. The five hindrances. The Four Brahma-Viharas. The three pillars of Zen. The Eight Verses of Training the Mind. And so on. Each of the many listed items points to a whole constellation of complexly related ideas. If you don't enjoy numbers, you might prefer a tradition such as Christianity, which draws the line at just 10 Commandments and 12 apostles.

Still, a very few of Buddhism's listed items seem especially key, to my mind, and none more so than the first fold of the Eightfold Path: Wise View. Wise View holds that any separation, or difference, you think you see between you and anyone--or anything--else is delusion. The Buddha offered the idea that we are all like waves on the same ocean, appearing different for a few moments, but ultimately the same. Once you fully grasp Wise View, you've Got It.

Many other items on the lists have the effect of helping the practitioner achieve Wise View. Among them, Wise Speech is especially challenging. To speak wisely is to avoid distorting the truth, speaking harshly, or speaking in a way motivated by personal gain, instead speaking in a way that strengthens the connections among people. Wise Speech is much harder on a practical level than a conceptual level.

I rely on occasional visits to E and L, who have a Tivo and big-screen TV, to catch up on my TV watching, since I don't have a television. Last night, we watched episodes of Stephen Colbert and Bill Maher, whom I hadn't seen before. One of the guests on Bill Maher's program was a conservative commentator who had helped develop the argument for the invasion of Iraq. The other two guests, the audience, and Bill himself seemed to hold strongly anti-war positions. Because of these divergent outlooks, the discussion, which centered on the war, itself had the character of a war, with a few jokes thrown in to lighten the mood a bit. The conservative speaker , thoroughly outgunned, struggled to maintain his composure and articulate his ideas. The audience applauded loudly when any of his opponents made an effective counterpoint to anything he said.

Reflecting on that conversation later, I realized that it was essentially the diametric opposite of Wise Speech. It struck me as well that divisive speech is In and Wise Speech very much Out these days, perhaps in large part because these witty late-night comics, along with Jon Stewart, are compelling to watch and powerful role models. I laugh at their jokes, but I'm hanging with the Buddha on this one. Though I actively opposed the invasion and hope to see the war come to a peaceful end soon, I can't see how widening the divisions between people can help us to find the solutions we need and the peace we seek.

This is my first weekend in town for a few weeks, and one of the changes I've noticed is in the church next door. It has adopted a new style of ministry. Last night and again this morning, it has been rocking its congregation's socks off. They've kept the volume low enough to avoid annoying neighbors (of which we're the closest), but loud enough to set me to musing on the difference between this choice of religious expression and that of their Master, whose preference seemed to run more towards a few weeks alone in the desert now and then. But then, He was something of a party guy, too, apparently happy not only to turn up at social functions but to help keep the wine barrel from running dry when that became an issue. So who knows what He would think of modern Christian worship practices?

For myself, I headed off this morning for a different sacred place, St. Edwards State Park, for a meditative walk in the woods. On this Sunday morning, the park was populated only by a few people, presumably the unchurched and those of different spiritual traditions, like me. When I pulled into the parking lot, a vanload of mountain bikers had just finished a ride. They were glowing, grinning, and happily speckled head to foot with mud. Starting my walk across the grounds of the old seminary, I realized that the three or four small groups of people I saw scattered around the lawn were students in a Mountaineers field trip practicing snow and glacier travel techniques. I'd been both student and instructor in that annual class.

The trail took me down through tall firs, cedars, and bigleaf maples towards the lake. Signs of spring were everywhere: new green growth and unfurling leaves, birds flitting through trees and calling to each other, flowering Indian plum and salmonberry, yellow flower stalks of Oregon grape slowly uncurling...Near the bottom of South Canyon trail, a congregation of skunk cabbage was visible through the pale green haze of new Indian plum leaves and white blossoms.

Then back up the steep South Ridge trail--for St. Edwards serves both as as gym and cathedral--I took a shortcut onto the grounds of Bastyr University for a visit to its medicinal herb garden. I'm a new member of the University's garden guild, and this was a chance to observe and study the dozens of species of herbs. Most had begun to wake up from their winter sleep, but a few from more southern climes, such as the Astragalus in the beds of Chinese herbs, hadn't yet wakened.

And then I cut back onto the shortcut trail into St. Edwards, now filling with picnicking families and a flock of very young Cub Scouts. As the last group of Mountaineers headed home, I pulled out onto the exit road behind them.