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.