How Would Buddha Vote?

Joe The Plumber may be a big, bald, happy fellow, but he definitely is not a Buddha impersonator. The non-licensed plumber from Ohio misrepresented himself to Barack Obama during their rope line exchange. He became a Republican shill for no other reason that he could and he manipulated his 15-minutes of fame and UTube notoriety into a potential (and probably unlikely) book and record deal. 

In other words, Joe The Plumber is an opportunistic scam artist whose inalienable Buddha nature remains stuck somewhere inside his colon.

I mention Joe The Plumber because he serves as just one talisman during this seemingly eternal presidential election. Sarah Palin represents another — a politico who offers limited intellect, questionable agenda but who generates ecclesiastical exhilaration among those who seek a Reagan-esque messiah.

Catholics had their Kennedy (Al Smith doesn’t count); Jews, their Joe Lieberman (although he went over to the dark side). Muslims cautiously vote for any candidate who will welcome them.  But how do Buddhists vote?

An article in today’s Houston Chronicle stated that Buddhists in America vote a split ticket. The number of Buddhists in the United States range from 1.5 million to more than 6 million depending on who’s counting, especially since Buddhists follow a variety of practices, groups, philosophies and even non-affiliated meditation

While some would suppose that Buddhists, who tend to take the world as it is (or with a grain of illusionary salt) might profess to be more liberal or independent politically, But, according to the article, that’s not always the case. Traditional Asian Buddhists (those born into the faith), particularly those from Southeast Asia, lean conservative. Memories of religious and social persecution by the communists in their home countries drive many Asian Buddhists into the Republican fold. On November 4, many of them will punch the chad for John McCain.

American Buddhists, those who came to the philosophy/religion from another background, do tend to be more liberal. They may see their ultimate goal to become a bodhisattva, one who renounces personal enlightenment to help other beings. American Buddhists who tend to respect the rights of all sentient beings (humans, animals, plants, even neo-cons) would be more inclined to vote for Democratic candidates who promote programs to aid the disadvantaged. Indeed, a new group calling themselves Buddhists for Obama sponsored numerous events and raised nearly $250,000 for their chosen candidate. A “Buddhists for Joe The Plumber’s Guy” doesn’t seem to exist.

Some American Buddhists take Buddha’s admonishment to “Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense” as the libertarian ideal —  not follow political parties and not rely on government to solve problems.

And, according to the article, many Buddhists seek refuge from the campaign noise, chaos and altercations by quieting their mind, meditating, not watching negative TV ads and refusing to answer robocalls.

But for those who ask “How Would Buddha Vote?” in this election, I would have to rely on Buddha’s own teachings, the Eight-fold Path of what leads to a world without argument, conflict and suffering. I guess the candidate who most follows the Eight-fold Path would get, perhaps, Buddha’s vote:

1. Right View — The right way to see the world is simply with an open and clear mind. Right view does not color things with personal agendas, expectations, and fear of what could be. Those with Right View accommodate as events unfold with balance and joy, not hope or fear.
2. Right Intention — Our intentions are pure. We no longer need to be manipulative or base our thoughts or actions on preconceived notions. We work with what is as it comes.
3. Right Speech — If we follow Right View and Right Intention have noting to hide and eschew manipulation and agenda, we never must be hesitant to speak, bluff our way through words, speak in tongues, or lecture with pompousness. We speak what needs to be said, when it needs to be said in a kind and genuine way. Otherwise, we listen and learn.
4. Right Discipline — We renounce all the biases, issues, conflicts that cloud our judgment. We seek an open and honest relationship with everyone and every situation. We drop all the bullshit that impedes our relationships and our ability to act as we should.
5. Right Livelihood — We should perform our job with appreciation and joy for the good it provides others, the satisfaction it gives us, the improvements it offers to the community, If our work causes suffering to ourselves, other beings or the community, we must find a different livelihood that first does no harm and second allows satisfaction for all involved, worker, proprietor, customer, community. Whether politics falls into the realm of “right livelihood” remains to be seen.
6. Right Effort — Wrong effort creates an “us against them” world. Struggle, argument, battles of illusionary good versus evil tears at the fabric of the world. Negative tendencies are magnified in other persons and other groups. However, right effort avoids struggle. Right effort emphasizes nonviolence and understanding and patience. Problems are resolved through skillful means without recrimination. Right effort promotes peace and kindness.
7. Right Mindfulness — Right mindfulness requires precision and clarity. We become aware of all around us, the bug balancing on a blade of grass, the brush of wind against our hair. We become mindful of how we approach others, how we talk with them, how we perform our jobs, how we care for others. With mindfulness we stand straighter, we walk confidently, we remain calm, and we stay mindful of our attitude toward everything and everyone around us.
8. Right Concentration — We daydream. We’re absentminded. We’re addicted to TV, video games, computers, blogs and other vapid entertainment. We lose interest rapidly and seek the different, the newness, the nowness. That leads to a loss of focus.  We lose our place in life. Right Concentration combines all of the other noble paths and emphasizes the need to stop and smell the roses. To be aware that roses do exist and only for a short season. With focus we begin to see gaps in the way world works. We learn that these gaps, rather than empty, provide the insight we need to truly make change in ourselves and our world. Right Concentration stops our obsession with busyness and ourselves and makes time to understand calmness and silence.

While some see Buddhists as nihilists, we actually have been highly political from ancient times. Buddha taught dharma to all interested beings including the lower caste, criminals, royalty and animals.  He allowed women to be disciples. He reluctantly dealt with bureaucracy that politics inevitably entails. He had to establish a strict monastic canon to keep insolent disciples in line. He confronted political deceit by his cousin Devadatta who created schisms in the sangha, attempted a coup against Buddha to take over the Awakened One’s leadership position. Buddha also proposed a “Middle Way” of practice, a centrist position between the extremes of religious mania and depression, so to speak.

Buddhists engage in political protest, whether selfless immolation during the Vietnam War, or much more peaceful and nonviolent marches against the tyrannical Burmese leadership. Today, the Dalai Lama epitomizes the Buddhist “politician” who follows the Eight-fold Path and the “Middle Way” in his dealings with his disciples and world leaders as well as his enemies.

So how would Buddha vote in Tuesday’s election? As far as that hypothetical goes, I guess we’ll just have to sit on it.

 

© 2008 by Winking Buddha Blog.  All Rights Reserved

 

Oy, Ike!

Congress is in chaos; the Federal government broken! Dow Jones plunges into a deja vu Black Monday. Wall Street fears trickle down to Main Street. The automobile-addicted Southeast faces empty gas pumps. And Kruschev’s due at Idlewild (sorry, when panic ensues, an old TV theme song plays in my head). 

Who cares about run on banks when a post-Hurricane Ike Houston faces a more urgent crisis — a run on challahs for this evenings Rosh Hashanah festivities.

Seems that Hurricane Ike left several of Houston’s kosher bakeries in tsoriss. The family-run Three Brothers’ Bakery, a favorite source for the of the yellow, eggy braided bread sustained serious damage by Ike. The bakers planned to knead 3,000 of the challahs for those who need the special round Rosh Hashanah bread to dip into honey, symbolizing the circle of life and hopes of a sweet coming year. To be challah-less during the High Holidays equates to being without fruit cake at Christmas (well, in theory). And any matzo or similarly unleavened alternative will not cut it.

The Houston Chronicle reports that other Jewish food purveyors rush to take up the slack. [Note, I am constantly baffled that in a city the size of Houston — the fourth largest in the US — we have so few true Jewish delis, bakeries, and other food establishments. In my mid-sized Iowa hometown with a tiny Jewish population, we had four kosher Jewish delis and other food stores.]

People stood in line at Kenny & Ziggy’s deli praying to wrangle some challah. Other Jewish mothers (and daughters) resorted to baking their own. 

The Almighty did not smite Jews alone during this holiday season. Hurricane Ike hit during the holy Islamic month of Ramadan, a time when Muslims fast, pray and practice charity. The storm cut power to thousands of Muslims homes in Houston, making their nightly break-the-fast meal a vexation. 

But according to the Houston Chronicle, many Muslims believe the inconveniences of powerlessness gave new meaning to their Ramadan observances. Some said the hurricane tested their faith while others said it intensified their understanding of the needy and suffering.

The lack of bread, the lack of power. What has the Lord wrought? If a natural disaster can bring new empathy between often sworn enemies, perhaps some divine intervention with strategically pinpointed whirlwinds may be just what the world needs.

“Lost: The Sequel”

Nearly three weeks after Hurricane Ike pummeled the upper Texas coast, upwards of 400 of its residents cannot be located, according to today’s Houston Chronicle. Hopefully, many of the missing still may be without the power to contact worried family. Or some evacuees chose not to return. Or those who could afford to jet to Aspen or Paris to ride out the storm took a relaxing side trip before returning.

Or, as many family, friends and officials fear, maybe they were swept away into the Gulf of Mexico, Galveston Bay or buried in the new sand drifts carved by Ike. 

The Chronicle reported that the body of Gail Ettenger, 58, a Bolivar resident who attempted to ride out the storm, washed up 12 days later in a debris pile in Chambers County — 10 miles inland from her home.

As Ike hit land, the Coast Guard rescued about 100 Bolivar residents who remained behind, thinking the storm would take a southerly course. But as the hurricane intensified at least 150 people were still stranded on the peninsula, the Coast Guard reported.

They most likely weren’t the only beach dwellers taken by surprise by Ike’s furious path. Newscasts predicted ike to be a “minor” Category 2, a “weakling” many had ridden out without hassle before. But Ike pumped up into a Cat 3 packing Cat 4 storm surges when it punched in. Those who gambled may have lost everything.

Abandoned and overturned cars along marshes, debris fields and flood waters may harbor more ominous clues. Were the vehicles merely pushed by the surge from the safety of their garages, or were they transporting late evacuees who met the floods head on?

Many of the doomed areas rely on limited volunteer fire departments to spearhead rescues and they are literally swamped (no pun) with search and rescue — or recovery — efforts.  The professional local first responders also find resources exhausted.  Even so, the Chronicle reports that the Galveston County Sheriff’s office denied assistance from the respected non-profit Texas EquuSearch SAR teams from coming in to help locate some of the 200 lost souls in that county alone, even though many of the missings’ relatives requested such assistance. EquuSearch, by the way, has spearheaded search-and-rescue operations for missing persons internationally.

Who knows how many of the transient populations that live in Galveston and coastal compounds cannot be accounted for since no one possibly cares about them?

Yes, who really cares about them all — the transients and the other 400 missing souls? How come the national news hasn’t jumped on this story like a pit bull with lipstick?

Is it that the missing or dead are invisible — wiped out to sea or buried in tsunami-like debris piles or buried in unmarked graves underneath sand dunes? If we had those visibly shocking bloated bodies floating in what were once yards and streets of post-Katrina New Orleans, maybe Anderson Cooper would focus a camera on one as he motored by embedded with SAR teams? 

Perhaps Ike chose to leave no bodies, at least none we can find at present. Maybe no floating corpses exist. Maybe they will never be found. 

Nevertheless, their story needs to be told. They must not be forgotten because I see no reports on national news about the Lost 400.  I hear no debated words condemning the continuing ignominious and ignoramusful response of the Department of Homeland Security and FEMA to another natural disaster. That the Department of Homeland Security fails to make the disappearance of 400 US residents a top priority should send shivers of terror down our collective spines.

Unfortunately, these Lost 400 are invisible. No one talks about them on the network or cable news. Friends outside the area do not ask about the future of the Lost 400. That’s why I think we need to make a TV series about those still missing from Hurricane Ike. Let’s make it a sequel of the popular, Emmy-winning TV drama Lost.  We can call it Lost: The 400 about a bunch of people from all walks of life who, instead of crash landing in an airplane on a deserted island, are swept away from a populated island into parts unknown.

Maybe if we knew their names, faces, relationships, families, hopes and dreams as we do the fictional TV characters, the fan site blogs would pop up to help locate them, their plight would be discussed around water coolers at work, and the 24/7 TV news cycle would yak them up — of course, only as long as the ratings remain respectable.

© 2008 winkingbuddha.com

Enlighten Up, Already! River Oaks Update

Yesterday, I discussed the serious problems Houstonians face in the aftermath of Hurricane Ike, specifically the endless wait for up to 500,000 customers to get any semblance of power restored.

After reading today’s Houston Chronicle, I realize that not only do the poor folks in Galveston and surrounding small towns suffer, but that Houston’s swankier residents also endured hardships due to this hurricane.

So, let me summarize two harrowing stories that appeared in today’s Houston Chronicle:

Ike’s Aftermath: Let Them eat…osso buco?

and Being Powerless Doesn’t Stop The Party

The rich are different from you and me. Their affluent abodes never take on affluence during storms. Many of Houston’s poshest pads accessorize their curbside appeal with invisible buried power lines invulnerable to tempests and the resulting inconvenience of blackouts.

However, some of the humbler River Oaks denizens found that Hurricane Ike failed to distinguish zip codes. Those whose electricity grows on tree poles evacuated to more welcoming climes, jetting to Paris, Aspen or New York (in summer, how gauche!). Those who lacked private aircraft sought out refuge in Four Seasons or Five Diamond lodgings around the Lone Star state. One socialite, already safely in Austin on “philanthropic business” found her suitcase(s) contained only “a cocktail dress, diamond earrings and running shorts and a t-shirt.” Hopefully, she also included some Jimmy Choos to complete that ensemble.

Houston’s movers and shakers weren’t spared moving and shaking from Hurricane Ike. The Houston Chronicle reports that “the prized Bentley of one major player was smashed by a tumbling tree.”

Thus, no one escapes hurricane or karmic forces. All are twisted in the enduring loop of samsara (suffering). Some of us just spend it shoveling sewage from our living rooms and others sweat over gala party rescheduling snafus at the toniest Tony’s restaurant.