Panic and Perception: The Hare and the Fruit

A hare fled terrified from the noise of fruit falling from a tree, convinced that it was the end of the world. Other animals — including deer, buffalo, elephants and tigers — asked him the reason for his fear and joined him in his flight, until a great host of animals were running for their lives.

A lion, who was in fact the future Buddha, realized that the animals risked death if they continued to rush headlong toward the sea. He halted their flight with a mighty roar and questioned each animal in turn, finally coming to the timid hare. The lion realized what must have occurred and took the hare back to the tree, where he made certain that the noise had indeed been caused by a falling fruit. The other animals were reassured and calm returned.

— The Daddabha Jataka

For Once in My Life

Ichi-go ichi-e (一期一会) is a Japanese idiom that means “once in a lifetime,” “for this time only,” or “one chance in a lifetime.” It's a cultural concept that encourages people to appreciate the unique nature of each moment and to enjoy it fully before it passes. 

The phrase originated in the 16th century during Japanese tea ceremonies, where participants would meet to have tea knowing that the exact ceremony would never happen again. The term is made up of two words: ichigo, which means “one’s lifetime,” and ichie, which means “experiencing something just once.”

The concept of ichi-go ichi-e suggest that you: 

Be open to new people

Say yes to spontaneous invitations

Be present with loved ones and friends

Allow all emotions to flow

Look forward to the next encounter with curiosity.

(Copy and art created with the assistance of AI)

How a Poet Saw America

"We will be known as a culture that feared death and adored power, that tried to vanquish insecurity for the few and cared little for the penury of the many.

"We will be known as a culture that taught and rewarded the amassing of things, that spoke little if at all about the quality of life for people (other people), for dogs, for rivers. 

"All the world, in our eyes, they will say, was a commodity. And they will say that this structure was held together politically, which it was, and they will say also that our politics was no more than an apparatus to accommodate the feelings of the heart, and that the heart, in those days, was small, and hard, and full of meanness."

— Mary Oliver

Rain on the Roof

Few sounds comfort with 

the rhythmic efficiency 

of rain on the roof.

The Answer is Attention

The more I consider it, the more I realize that attention, properly directed, is the solution to many of our difficulties. 

We tend to underrate the value of the simple act of attention, but I assure you that Madison Avenue and political propagandists do not.

After all, as the philosopher Alan Watts once observed, “The ego is nothing other than the focus of conscious attention.”

And the poet Mary Oliver advised, “To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work.”

Merely momentarily shift your attention from your driving to your phone, for example, and a child may die. This isn’t a metaphor, but a memory. The driver was a teenage girl, and the child was an 8-year-old boy.

Guarding the Mind's Eye

Theoretical philosopher Thomas Metzinger warns we are being overwhelmed as “…social media and tech firms aim to maximize user engagement by creating ever better attention sinks and developing pathological, addictive forms of media consumption.”

As New Scientist magazine reported, “Our attention, says Metzinger, is the resource they want, and that entails destroying our mental autonomy — our ability to control the focus of our minds — ceding it to who knows what algorithm.”

And what does Metzinger recommend? “Of course, meditation, which opens up news states of consciousness and provides mental control. He asks whether it should be a standard part of education, and argues strongly for robust intellectual honesty as well as old-fashioned values like integrity and sincerity. We need, he suggests, a fusion of critical rationality with mindful attention to help us grapple with rapid techno-cultural change.”

Back with a Vengeance

“(Trump) bears responsibility for what comes next, as do his allies and supporters,” wrote Timothy Snyder in The New Yorker. “Yet some, and probably more, of the blame rests with our actions and analysis. Again and again, our major institutions, from the media to the judiciary, have amplified Trump’s presence; again and again, we have failed to name the consequences. Fascism can be defeated, but not when we are on its side.”

Donald Trump is not a president at all. He’s the first American dictator, one the corporate news media helped usher into office by drowning us in sanewashing.