ON RELIGIOUS FREEDOM: SOMETHING WORTH DYING FOR

Chan Khong (Cao Ngoc Phuong), Learning True Love: How I Learned and Practiced Social Change in Vietnam  (Berkeley, CA: Parallax Press, 1993) ("But in April 1963, the most extreme anti-Buddhist proclamation was issued by the Diem regime. They declared that Wesak, the Buddha's nativity, could no longer be celebrated as a national holiday in Vietnam, and that it was a crime to display the Buddhist flag. In twelve northern provinces of South Vietnam, Wesak was the most important holy day. All fish and meat markets and nonvegetarian restaurants were closed, and anyone could enter a Buddhist temple and receive a vegetarian meal. Buddhist flags were on display everywhere, and processions of carts made of flowers carting a statue of the baby Buddha could be seen throughout the cities, towns, and villages. In Hue, the Buddhist stronghold in Central Vietnam, every household traditionally prepared an altar in the front yard on the eve of Wesak to welcome the baby Buddha. Imagine what a shock it was for the people to learn that all of these practices were suddenly forbidden." Id. at 34. "On June 11, 1963, Thay Quang Duc immolated himself to call for religious freedom. No one had informed me that he was going to do this, but just as the moment he set himself on fire, I happened to be driving by the corner of Phan Dinh Phung and Le van Duyet Streets on my motorbike, and I witnessed him sitting bravely and peacefully, enveloped in flames. He was completely still, while those of us around him were crying and prostrating ourselves on the sidewalk. At that moment, a deep vow sprang forth in me: I too would do something for the respect of human rights in as beautiful and gentle a way as Thay Quang Duc." Id. at 38. "The number of Buddhists who sacrificed themselves increased. Thay Nguyen immolated himself in Phan Thiet on August 4, 1963; the nun Diew Quang in Nha Trang on the same day; Thay Thanh Tue in Hue on August 13. I know that in the West it is hard to understand why Vietnamese burned themselves. It looked like a violent act. Please try to be in the heart and mind of the person performing such an act of great love and sacrifice. To move the hearts of the hardest en and women, you have to give a gift of great value-- even your own life. These people did not die when their bodies turned to ash. When I looked deeply at Thay Quang Duc's sacrifice, I could see his love and deep commitment to human rights born again in me and in thousands of Vietnamese and others all over the world. We received the fire of love and commitment to act from his great sacrifice." Id. at 39-40. Perhaps, those of us who have not found something worth dying for, have not found anything really worth living for.).

ON EDUCATION

Krishnamurti, Think on These Things, edited by D. Rajagopal (New York: HarperPerennial, 1964, 1970) (From "The Function of Education": "I wonder if we have ever asked ourselves what education means. Why do we go to school, why so we learn various subjects, why do we pass examinations and compete with each other for better grades? What does this so-called education mean, and what is it all about? This is really a very important question, not only for the students, but also for the parents, for teachers, and for everyone who loves this earth. Why do we go through the struggle to be educated? Is it merely in order to pass some examination and get a job? Or is it the function of education to prepare us while we are young to understand the whole process of life? Having a job and earning one's living is necessary--but is that all? Are we being educated only for that? Surely, life is not merely a job, an occupation; life is something extraordinarily wide and profound, it is a great mystery, a vast realm in which we function as human beings. If we merely prepare ourselves to earn a livelihood, we shall miss the whole point of life; and to understand life is much more important than merely to prepare for examinations and become very proficient in mathematics, physics, or what you will." Id. at 1, 1-2. From "The Problem of Freedom": "The function of education, then, is to help you from childhood not to imitate anybody, but to be yourself all the time. And this is the most difficult thing to do: whether you are ugly or beautiful, whether you are envious or jealous, always to be what you are, but understand it. To be yourself is very difficult, because you think that what you are is ignoble, and that if you could only change what you are into something noble it would be marvelous; but that never happens. Whereas, if you look at what you actually are and understand it, then in that very understanding there is a transformation. So freedom lies, not in trying to become something different, not in doing whatever you happens to feel like doing, nor in following the authority of tradition, of your parents, of your guru, but in understanding what you are from moment to moment."  Id. at 9, 11. From "Orderly Thinking": "In this country, unfortunately, as all over the world, we care so little, we have no deep feeling about anything. Most of us are intellectuals--intellectuals in the superficial sense of being very clever, full of words and theories about what is right and what is wrong, about how we should think, what we should do. Mentally, we are highly developed, but inwardly there is very little substance or significance,; and it is this inward substance that brings about true action, which is not action according to an idea." Id. at 59, 61.).

ENVY AND NARCISSISTIC CHARACTER DISORDER

Nathan Schwartz-Salant, Narcissism and Character Transformation: The Psychology of Narcissistic Character Disorders (Studies in Jungian Psychology by Jungian Analysts) (Toronto: Inner City Books, 1982) ("It is clear that notions such as 'fear of the Self' or 'rejection of the Self' have little meaning within a psychoanalytic framework. At best it is see as the fear of allowing the formation of the narcissistic transferences, lest the earlier wounding be repeated. But this is quite a different thing from fearing the 'will of the Self,' whose numinosity far exceeds the energy content of the ego, In terms of Jung's approach to the psyche, however, it would be the rejection of the Self, the failure to live one's true pattern, that leads to what we now call the narcissistic character disorder." Id. at 23. "Envy, the felt conviction that 'anything I need will be withheld form me, so I will spoil or otherwise destroy the withholding object,' is one of the most difficult emotions to experience and integrate. Envy, the 'evil eye' of folklore, is a central feature of the narcissistic character. It can take a grossly destructive form, but equally a subtle, spoiling one of precisely withholding what a person needs, for instance encouragement, warmth, bodily comfort, etc. In this manner, the narcissistic character often treats people in the way he experiences being treated himself." Id. at 41. "Envy is the dark side of the narcissistic character. I view it with great importance, because I find it to be the 'psychic glue,' the element of affinity that keeps the components of the self, in it grandiose form, cohesively together,  Dealing with envy and its associated components of rage and sadism can allow the deintegration of this self structure. As a result, a properly functioning anima or animus can emerge." Id. at 42-43. "If her partner is stuck in narcissistic  patterns, however, he cannot be of any help to her in her quest for real feminine identity, linked as it always is to the Goddess. The narcissistic male, indeed, is the greatest obstacle to the development in a woman of real, feminine power." Id. at at 112. Query: With many early twentieth-century women opting for same-sex relationships, is a woman's narcissistic female-partner an equal obstacle to the development in a woman of real feminine power? "Anima (Latin, 'soul'). The unconscious, feminine side of a man's personality. She is personified in dreams by images of women ranging from prostitute and seductress to spiritual guide (Wisdom). She is the eros principle, hence a man's anima development is reflected in how he relates to women. Identification with the anima can appear as moodiness, effeminacy, and oversensitivity. Jung call the anima the archetype of life itself." "Animus (Latin, 'spirit'). The unconscious, masculine side of a woman;s personality. He personifies the logos principle. Identification with the animus can cause a woman to become rigid, opinionated, and argumentative. More positively, he is the inner man who acts a a bridge between the woman's ego and her own creative resources in the unconscious." Id. at 180.).

FOLLOWING THE WARRIOR'S WAY: REREADING CARLOS CASTANEDA

Carlos Castaneda, Journey to Ixtlan: The Lessons of Don Juan (New York: Pocket Books, 1972, 1974) ("'You take yourself too seriously,' he said slowly. 'You are too damn important in your own mind. That must be changed! You are so goddamn important that you feel justified to be annoyed with everything. You're so important that you can afford to leave if things don't go your way. I suppose you think that shows you have character. That's nonsense! You're weak, and conceited!'" Id. at 21. "'When a man decides to do something he must go all the way,' he said, 'but he must take responsibility for what he does. No matter what he does, he must know first why he is doing it, and then he must proceed with his actions without having doubts or remorse about them.'" Id. at 39. "'You must learn to become deliberately available and unavailable,' he said. 'As your life goes now, you are unwittingly available all the time.' [] 'Let me put it in another way,' he proceeded patiently. 'It makes no difference to hide if everyone knows that you are hiding. Your problem right now stems form that, When you are hiding, everyone knows that you are hiding, and when you are not, you are available for everyone to take a poke at you.' [] 'Don't explain yourself, don Juan said dryly. 'There is no need. We are all fools, all of us, and you cannot be different." Id. at 66. "'To be a hunter is not just to trap game,' he went on. 'A hunter that is worth his salt does not catch game because he sets his traps, or because he knows the routines of his prey, but because he himself has no routines. This is his advantage. He is not at all like the animals he is after, fixed by heavy routines and predictable quirks; he is free, fluid, unpredictable." Id. at 74-75.).

Carlos Castaneda, A Separate Reality: Further Conversations With Don Juan (New York: Pocket Books, 1971, 1972) ("'Once you decided to come to Mexico you should have put all your petty fears away,' he said very sternly. 'Your decision to come should have vanquished them. You came because you wanted to come. That's the warrior's way. I have told you time and time again, the most effective way to live is as a warrior. Worry and think before you make any decision, but once you make it, be on your way free from worries or thoughts; there will be a million other decision still awaiting you. That's the warrior's way.' 'I believe I do that, don Juan, at least some of the time. It's very hard to keep on reminding myself, though.' 'A warrior thinks of his death when things become unclear.' That's even harder don Juan. For most people death is very vague and remote. We never think if it.' 'Why not?' 'Why should we?' "Very simple,' he said. 'Because the idea of death is the only thing that tempers our spirit.'" Id. at 47. "'I told you once that our lot as men is to learn, for good or bad,' he said. 'I have learned to see and I tell you that nothing really matters; now it is your turn; perhaps some day you will see and you will know then whether things matter or not. For me nothing matters, but perhaps for you everything will. You should know by now that a man of knowledge lives by acting, not by thinking about acting, nor by thinking about what he will think when he has finished acting. A man of knowledge chooses a path with heart and follows it; and then he looks and rejoices and laughs; and then he sees and knows. He knows that his life will be over altogether too soon; he knows that he, as well a everybody else, is not going anywhere; he knows, because he sees, that nothing is more important than anything else. In other words, a man of knowledge has no honor, no dignity, no family, no name, no country, but only life to be lived, and under these circumstances his only tie to his fellow men is his controlled folly. Thus a man of knowledge endeavors, and sweats, and puffs, and if one looks at him he is just like any ordinary man, except that the folly of his life is under control. Nothing being more important than anything else, a man of knowledge chooses to act, and act it out as if it matters to him. His controlled folly makes him say that what he does matters and makes him act as if it did, and yet he knows that it doesn't; so when he fulfills his acts he retreats in peace, and whether his acts were good or bad, or worked or didn't, is in no way part of his concern.' 'A man of knowledge may choose, on the other hand to remain totally impassive and never act; and behave as if to be really impassive really matters to him; he will be rightly true at that too, because that would also be his controlled folly.'" Id. at 85.).

Carlos Castaneda, Tales of Power (New York: Pocket Books/Washington Square Press, 1974, 1992).

Carlos Castaneda, The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge, with a new commentary by the author (New York: Pocket Books/Washington Square Press, 1968, 1998) ("At a very early stage of my apprenticeship, don Juan made the statement that the goal of his teachings was 'to show how to become a man of knowledge.'" Id. at 151. "'What do I have to do to arrive at that point, don Juan?' 'You have to be a strong man, and your life has to be truthful.' 'What is a truthful life?' 'A life lived with deliberateness, a good, strong life.'" Id. at 73. "'I have told you that to choose a path you must be free from fear and ambition. But the smoke blinds you with fear, and the devil's weed blinds you with ambition.' I argued that one needs ambition even to embark on any path, and that his statement that one had to be free from ambition did not make sense. A person has to have ambition in order to learn. 'The desire to learn is not ambition,' he said. 'It is our lot as men to want to know, but to seek the devil's weed is to bid for power, and that is ambition, because you are not bidding to know. Don't let the devil's weed blind you. She has hooked you already. She entices men and gives them a sense of power; she makes them feel they can do things that no ordinary man can. But that is her trap. And, the next thing the path without a heart will turn against men and destroy them. It does not take much to die, and to seek death is to seek nothing.'" Id. at 124.).

Donald Lee Williams, Border Crossings: A Psychological Perspective on Carlos Castaneda's Path of Knowledge (Studies on Jungian Psychology by Jungian Analysts (Toronto: (Inner City Books, 1981) ("Don Juan defines a man or woman or knowledge as anyone who has had the patience and the impeccability to follow the warrior's way, attempting to live in harmony with the unconscious and to follow the turns of his or her personal fate. [] In The Teachings of Don Juan,  don Juan describes the four enemies of knowledge: fear, clarity, power and old age. The second and third are sought by the warrior and become enemies only after they have been acquired.." Id. at 19.).

ZIMMERMAN JUROR SEEKS HER FIFTEEN MINUTES OF FAME ... AND A BOOK DEAL

Zimmerman Juror Discusses How Verdict Was Reached

By LIZETTE ALVAREZ

Published: July 15, 2013

MIAMI — George Zimmerman was guilty of nothing more than “bad judgment,” one of six jurors to find the neighborhood watchman not guilty said Monday night.

Related

• Tense Over Looming Zimmerman Verdict, City Eases in Its Aftermath(July 16, 2013)

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The juror, the first to share her story publicly, spoke anonymously, telling Anderson Cooper of CNN that she believed Mr. Zimmerman’s account that Trayvon Martin attacked him. Fearing for his life, Mr. Zimmerman had no choice but to shoot the teenager, the juror said. Mr. Martin was unarmed.

“I think his heart was in the right place,” the juror said of Mr. Zimmerman’s eagerness to try to protect the neighborhood. “It just went terribly wrong.”

She said later, “It pretty much happened the way George said it happened.”

Juror B37, the number she was assigned for the trial, also said that when the six jurors first began to deliberate, they were evenly divided between guilt and innocence. One voted for second-degree murder and two voted for manslaughter. B37 said she was one of three who initially voted “not guilty.”

“There was a couple of them in there that wanted to find him guilty of something,” the juror said.

But after sorting through the evidence and Mr. Zimmerman’s account, the three jurors changed their minds. Second-degree murder was discarded first. Then, after much confusion over the jury instructions, manslaughter was also set aside, she said.

The jurors, who gave their verdict Saturday, concluded that Mr. Zimmerman acted in self-defense, she said. “I have no doubt George feared for his life,” she said.

Unlike the swirl of anger and passion over the role of race outside the courtroom, race did not come up during 16 hours and 20 minutes of deliberations, she said. No juror, she said, viewed the case through the prism of race.

The fact that Mr. Martin was black did not drive Mr. Zimmerman to suspect and follow him, she said. It was the overall situation — he was cutting through the back, the townhouse complex had been hit by a rash of burglaries, and Mr. Martin appeared to be walking aimlessly in the rain, looking in houses, she said.

“I think he just profiled him because he was the neighborhood watch and he profiled anybody who came in and saw them acting strange,” she said, regardless of race.

The juror also said that she and most of the other jurors believed Mr. Zimmerman was the one screaming for help during the recording of a resident’s 911 call because he was the one being beaten. An “important” piece of evidence, she called it.

“It was a long cry and scream for help — whoever was crying for help was in fear for their life,” she said.

For whatever reason, Mr. Martin, she said, decided to confront Mr. Zimmerman and threw the first punch.

“Trayvon got mad and attacked him,” she said.

The juror also said that Rachel Jeantel, Mr. Martin’s friend who spoke to him on the phone moments before he was killed, was “not a good witness.” The juror said Ms. Jeantel “clearly didn’t want to be there.”

Clearly sympathetic to Mr. Zimmerman, the juror, who is married to a lawyer and has two grown children, referred to him as George. The juror, who has signed with a literary agent with the intent of writing a book, said she felt sorry for Mr. Zimmerman and for Mr. Martin, calling the situation a “tragedy.” The six women became very emotional, she said, immediately after they handed their verdict to the bailiff.

“It’s just sad that we all had to come together and figure out what is going to happen to this man’s life afterwards,” she said. “You find him not guilty, but you are responsible for that not guilty, and all the people who want him guilty aren’t going to have any closure.”

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BRUCE CHATWIN

Bruce Chatwin, On the Black Hills (New York: Penguin Books, 1983, 1984) {"'Nothing', she concluded the final paragraph, 'can be lonelier than the loneliness of marriage...'" Id. at 86.}.

Bruce Chatwin, The Songlines (New York: Elisabeth Sifton Books/Viking, 1987) (From the bookjacket: "In this extraordinary new book, Bruce Chatwin has adapted a literary form common until the eighteenth century though rare in ours: a story of ideas in which two companions, traveling and talking together, explore the hopes and dreams that animate both them and the people they encounter. Set in almost uninhabitable regions of Central Australia, The Songlines asks and tries to answer these questions: Why is man the most restless, dissatisfied of animals? Why do wandering people conceive the world as perfect whereas sedentary ones always try to change it? Why have the great teachers--Christ or the Buddha--recommended the Road as the way to salvation? Do we agree with Pascal that all man's troubles stem from his inability to sit quietly in a room?" "We do not often ask these questions today, for we commonly assume that living in a house is normal and that the wandering life is aberrant. But for more than twenty years Chatwin mulled over the possibility that the reverse might be the case." "Pre-colonial Australia was the last landmass on earth not peopled by by herdsmen, farmers, or city dwellers, but by hunter-gathers. Their labyrinths of invisible pathways across the continent are known to us as Songlines or Dreaming Tracks, but to the Aboriginals as the tracks of their ancestors--the Way of the Law. Along these 'roads' they travel in order to perform all those activities that are distinctively human--song, dance, marriage, exchange of ideas, and arrangements of territorial boundaries by agreement rather than force." "In Chatwin's search for the Songlines, Arkady is an ideal friend and guide: Australian by birth, the son of a Cossack exile, with all the strength and warmth of his inheritance. Whether hunting kangaroo from a Land Cruiser, talking to the diminutive Rolf in his book-crammed trailer, buying drinks for a bigoted policeman (and would-be writer), cheering as Arkady's true love declares herself (part of The Songlines is a romantic comedy), Chatwin turns this almost implausible picaresque adventure into something approaching the scale of a Greek tragedy." "The life of the Aboriginals stands in vivid contrast, of course, to the prevailing cultures of our times. And The Songlines presents unforgettable details about the kinds of disputes we know all to well from less traumatic confrontation: over sacred lands invaded by railroads, mines, and construction sites, over the laws and rights of a poor people versus a wealthy invasive one. To Chatwin these are but recent, local examples of an eternal basis distinction between settlers and wanderers. His book, devoted to the latter, is a brilliant evocation of this profound optimism: that man is by nature not a bellicose aggressor but a pacific, song-creating, adaptive species whose destiny is to quest for the truth.").

Bruce Chatwin, Utz (New York: Penguin Books, 1988, 1989).

Bruce Chatwin, The Viceroy of Ouidah (New York: Penguin Books, 1980, 1988).

TWO FEMALES

In exploring the possibility of getting a second dog, I came across this and wondered whether it might to true of woman as well.

"THE CANINE BEHAVIOR SERIES By Kathy Diamond Davis Author and Trainer

Adding a Second Dog to Your Family

Choosing the Dog

Leaving aside for a moment all the changes a second dog would bring to you family’s life, let’s assume you’ve been through all that and it seems right to you to add a dog at this time or some planned time in the future. Of course you need to look at all the normal things about choosing any dog. Those things include: size; grooming required; activity level; disposition for interactions with the people and animals in your environment; genetic tendencies to make noise (and your facilities for keeping noise from disturbing neighbors); matching the dog’s training needs to your training ability; and other factors.

Before settling on a breed, think about the gender of the dog. For the happiest dogs and the safest household, opposite sex dogs almost always do best together. Many same-sex combinations of dogs will fight, sometimes to the death. Those who work out a dominance order may not fare much better. The dominant of two males will become more dominant (toward other dogs, not humans) than he would have otherwise been, and the sometimes submissive one will be pushed into more submission than would have otherwise been normal for him. Because they live with humans rather than in the wild, they are stuck in this situation. It can be stressful.

Two females are more likely to fight to the death than males are. It’s as if neither is willing to admit the other girl is “better than” she is, so they cannot come to a stable pack order. The males make that decision more readily in some cases, but the one who has to be submissive can take it more to heart than the female."