The path

 

We've been talking at night, and I like to write in the morning. The path is difficult and unique. 

For me politics is about killing and harming the least amount of people. 

Some well meaning policies meant to prevent harm, like prohibition. Men were taking their paycheck to the bar, and spending it all and families were left with nothing. Women rose up and got this passed. But a unintended consequence was the rise of criminal element, violence. The same way legalizing marijuana would just cut into illegal sales, so to the lifting of prohibition was important to cut into crime. 

Nearly everything Trump is doing harms people. Putting incompetent people into his cabinet who's one trait is blind loyalty to him, harms people by lowering expectation and going against the norms of government. It's good to shake up government and change things, but not merely for grift, which is Trump's sole motive. It aligns with lowered federal expectations and the conservatives, so they joined in with him. It aligns with fundamentalists, which is more a conservative movement than a Christian movement. It aligns with confused people, who don't really read and like a strong man. People who come from countries where only strong men rule can vote for him, he seems familiar. He's honest in that he grifts out in the open. It aligns with the conservative agenda of driving down participation, but making people cynical about politics. 

People are noticing how Trump's playbook is following that of Hitler's. Deporting people, marginalizing people, othering people.

Buddhist can be conservative, prefer small government. I have a close friend (not Shams) who leans more towards libertarianism, but left libertarianism, and he can see how horrible Trump is. 

Buddhists might not want to join in politics. Meditating 2 hours a day I'm very sensitive, and I feel very deeply for those being rounded up by ICE. For trans and gay people who feel unsafe. For women and minorities who feel discriminated against. Leading a worldly life you have to harm people sometimes, and that just feels wrong to me. I think the deeper and deeper I go into Buddhism, the more I feel Theravada, even though I'm lay ecumenical, who reads everything, sees how everything fits in, wants to embrace everyone, from superficial or ethnic or secular Buddhists, to the monastic, devout and superstars. 

I believe in neither monastic nor lay, that lineage is an act of devotion, and I want to be a monk, to be monklike, follow the vinaya. I'm not a cool charismatic person who can grow the sangha. I support Shams in Iran, but he's got a fledgling once a week online sangha, behind enemy lines of a Muslim state, and can't practice out in the open.

Shams wanted me to change the name of the meditation group to his real name, which isn't light, which is what Shams means, but dark. He felt it was too presumptuous. He is not Rumi's great friend Shams, he's a modern Iranian who meditates, and doesn't like labels, wants freedom.

We talk like kalyana mitras, dear Dharma friends. Deeply personal and safe. 

It's overcast, and the moon probably has risen over the building in front of me, but I wouldn't see it anyway. It's only 11 percent, a sliver waning moon.

Two people showed up for the 2:30 PM meditation, and now I have met seven people in Iran online. They don't speak English very well. Shams speaks it the best. He translates, and leads the meetings in Farsi. Second woman, she forgot to turn off her mike, so we heard hear yawn, sneeze, a little sound for scratching her head and rubbing her eyes. 

Today I wondered at the price women have to pay in Iran for being so tough, in such an oppressive society. I imagine they are tired from it all. It's a drain on them. Iran has a brain drain, their chess champion switched teams and came to America. There were two: Atousa Pourkashiyan and Dorsa Derakhshani. Now Dorsa Derakhshani in medical school. She wrote about it in the New York Times, read her words in gift article, if you don't have a subscription, and honestly I almost quit my subscription.

Mahsa Amini was killed in 2022.

More recently Ahoo Daryaei in 2024.

Reading MN 70 today.