Hartog’s Den

So, normally I love Zen stories, little parables that make you think about a greater meaning or a non-face-value way of looking at things.  But I just came across one that is totally lame.

Finding a Diamond on a Muddy Road

Gudo was the emperor’s teacher of his time. Nevertheless, he used to travel alone as a wandering mendicant. Once when he was on his was to Edo, the cultural and political center of the shogunate, he approached a little village named Takenaka. It was evening and a heavy rain was falling. Gudo was thoroughly wet. His straw sandals were in pieces. At a farmhouse near the village he noticed four or five pairs of sandals in the window and decided to buy some dry ones.

The woman who offered him the sandals, seeing how wet he was, invited him in to remain for the night at her home. Gudo accepted, thanking her. He entered and recited a sutra before the family shrine. He then was introduced to the woman’s mother, and to her children. Observing that the entire family was depressed, Gudo asked what was wrong.

“My husband is a gambler and a drunkard,” the housewife told him. “When he happens to win he drinks and becomes abusive. When he loses he borrows money from others. Sometimes when he becomes thoroughly drunk he does not come home at all. What can I do?”

I will help him,” said Gudo. “Here is some money. Get me a gallon of fine wine and something good to eat. Then you may retire. I will meditate before the shrine.”

When the man of the house returned about midnight, quite drunk, he bellowed: “Hey, wife, I am home. Have you something for me to eat?”

“I have something for you,” said Gudo. “I happened to get caught in the rain and your wife kindly asked me to remain here for the night. In return I have bought some wine and fish, so you might as well have them.”

The man was delighted. He drank the wine at once and laid himself down on the floor. Gudo sat in meditation beside him.

In the morning when the husband awoke he had forgotten about the previous night. “Who are you? Where do you come from?” he asked Gudo, who still was meditating.

“I am Gudo of Kyoto and I am going on to Edo,” replied the Zen master.

The man was utterly ashamed. He apologized profusely to the teacher of his emperor.

Gudo smiled. “Everything in this life is impermanent,” he explained. “Life is very brief. If you keep on gambling and drinking, you will have no time left to accomplish anything else, and you will cause your family to suffer too.”

The perception of the husband awoke as if from a dream. “You are right,” he declared. “How can I ever repay you for this wonderful teaching! Let me see you off and carry your things a little way.”

“If you wish,” assented Gudo.

The two started out. After they had gone three miles Gudo told him to return. “Just another five miles,” he begged Gudo. They continued on.

“You may return now,” suggested Gudo.

“After another ten miles,” the man replied.

“Return now,” said Gudo, when the ten miles had been passed.

“I am going to follow you all the rest of my life,” declared the man.

Modern Zen teachers in Japan spring from the lineage of a famous master who was the successor of Gudo. His name was Mu-nan, the man who never turned back.

I mean, wtf?  The whole problem in the first place was that the man was drunk and neglected his family.  So the teacher helps him see the light by convincing him to permanently leave?  LAME.

Sorry, random rant.

A hang glider takes off from a ridge just south of Palmdale, CA.

An ex roommate of mine was avidly into hang gliding, and a couple of weeks ago I stumbled upon some photos I took from a day invited me to come out and spend a day in the fascinating world of unpowered flight. Though I work extensively with air and space craft on a daily basis as an engineer, it is always a pleasure and a privilege being invited by a pilot to tag along and see the front lines of aviation, where it all happens. It turned out to be a fantastic experience, and I came away with a new appreciation for the science, craft, and art of riding the wind.

Hang gliding sites see traffic rise and fall with the seasons and changing wind patterns; this being a late-winter/early-spring day, the launch site just a couple of miles from my house (at the time) on Avenue S in Palmdale, California is in prime condition. “The Santa Ana’s are blowing today,” my roommate tells me, referring to the east, northeast, and northern winds that pick up in colder weather. “This should be good.”

A group of about 8 pilots and 5 observers and ground crew get down to work setting up for the day. As they unpack, assemble, and flight-check their gliders, I get some shots of them working, and scour the mountaintop for good vantage points from which to capture the moment of takeoff. The late February wind at around 4,000 feet altitude is a bit chilly, and I am glad for my jacket. The birds don’t seem to mind however; looking up, I can see hawks and ravens alternately swooping and hovering, riding on the ridge lift. It strikes me how artful they are, how simple and elegant their construction — efficient, aerodynamic, and optimized in their environment to a degree our best aircraft cannot hope to match.

Hang glider Darin Flynn prepares to take off.

I snap a few shots of the hawks, and wander back to the setup camp, where the older veterans are imparting some last words of wisdom unto their younger colleagues. After one last equipment check, the time has come. The pilots don their helmets, and it is the moment of truth. The moment that requires them to trust in their equipment and team, to set aside everything their primal, survival-seeking inner selves are screaming… to take a running leap off the side of a 4,000 ft ridge into the arms of winds that don’t give a damn who they are or how much they paid for their gear.

It’s breathtaking.

It’s wild.

It’s more than a little bit insane.

And most of all, it’s beautiful.

Just after takeoff.

In trying to capture the dynamism of the moment when the pilots first take into the air, I find myself nearly tumbling off of the ridge from running with my face glued to the eyepiece. There is excitement, certainly; but it is juxtaposed oddly with the profound silence of it all. After the final “all clear” to the ground crew and that last step on terra firma, only the wind can be heard, whipping over the jagged rocks and through the scant trees on the windward side of the ridge. It’s the kind of wind that muffles your words, quickens your breath, and makes your eyes water; a wind that dares you to come up and play, yet warns you that you had better be able to handle its own particular kind of game. In the end, I am left with a sense of wonder, breathlessness, and a strange loneliness, as if the vastness of the air somehow swallowed my friends up for a little while. It’s a long, quiet drive down the ridge to the landing zone to pick them up.

I don’t care if I nearly fell off the mountain backwards getting some of these shots; you can bet that the next time someone I know is going up, I’ll be there camera in hand… and perhaps with a part of me wishing I was up there too, riding the wind with the best of them, armed only with a wing and a prayer.

It is a beautiful but hazy morning in the San Joaquin Valley, as I ride the Amtrak #701 north to Sacramento, sipping my habitual coffee as I type. In the early morning light, the endless fields of crops – the farms, vineyards, and orchards that supply the nation with a third of its food – are at once modern and nostalgic; both a testament to the industrial age of machinery, and a pleasant appeal to the pastoral legend of early rural America.

Yet the many fallow fields and piles of idle equipment also speak to the times; the megastate of California, the world’s 6^th largest economy, stares down the grim specters of severe drought, insurmountable debt, and a broken state government. And to be sure, these are but our regional reflections of hard times across the nation and the world over.

After the initial rawness of 9/11, the opinion was generally held that the dark times were temporary, and lofty rhetoric from our leaders spurred us on to seek a recovery of spirit and confidence. And in spurts and starts, some light did shine through. Yet eight years since the trauma, the times remain quite dark.

In the face of such extended troubles, optimism grows ever harder to come by. We may ask, is this the way things will always be? Are we, as a civilization, now inexorably committed to a downward spiral of our own making? I think not. At least, I disagree that our slide is inexorable in any sense. But recovery, and more importantly, long term survival, growth, and prosperity, depends wholly on a fundamental shift in our perspective.

For generations, we as a nation have held a strong sense of entitlement – the notion that we as a people are wholly unique in the history of mankind, and that, as such, we must therefore be first in all that we do, no matter the cost. This belief, in itself, is neither incorrect nor misguided; even the harshest (sane) critic of this country must admit that it is this very attitude that has spurred a great many of the world’s most profound feats of scientific discovery, invention, exploration, medicine, and the spreading of liberal democracy throughout the world.

But what has been profoundly lacking in our core principles (or perhaps what has been gradually lost from our system of ethics) is a sense of prudence – the judgment to exercise restraint on our ambitions and wants, and a tolerance for those times when life is not comfortable.

Our way forward lies in renewing that old American can-do attitude, the irrepressible optimism that divides us from our dourer estranged parent, Europe. But it must be tempered with the willingness to once again understand the nobility of, and need for, sacrifice. The sacrifice of the perceived right to excess – no longer, with 6 billion people (and more coming), can we disregard the environmental and socioeconomic consequences of our standard of living. The sacrifice of the perceived right to isolationism – no country, not even the most powerful the world has ever seen, can survive on its own. The sacrifice of the perceived right to comfort – security and success demand hard work, education, and solid principles. The sacrifice of the perceived right to dominance – our head start after WWII has evaporated, and we can no longer take for granted that we shall be the standard of excellence in the world; instead we must sharpen our skills and compete.

So, on this eve of our nation’s 233^rd anniversary, I ask my fellow citizens to reflect; when you behold the rocket’s red glare and the bombs bursting in air, consider not only the tremendous amount of good we have done for the world, but also the difficulties we face, and how we must reform ourselves to ensure our future prosperity; the fields of the San Joaquin, like our way of life, must not lie fallow forever; they must be replanted and grown sustainably. It is only the truly free whose primary concern is the improvement of themselves and society; those more fettered in life or spirit lack this luxury, which we must ever refuse to take for granted.

In the spirit of the NPR series “This I Believe”, the Antelope Valley Unitarian Universalist Fellowship decided that we should write our own, share (if so inclined), and discuss as the primary activity for today.  It was an engaging discussion, and I found that while my opinions differed from most in the room, I very much enjoyed the perspective and a chance to discuss philosophical issues.  I wrote the following:

This I once believed: That the soul and spirit were inventions of the deluded and coerced mind, serving only the powers of oppression and willful ignorance.

This I now believe: that the soul exists, and that it is the part within us that spurs us on to the pursuits most defining of who we are as a people – the drive to explore, create, grow, and progress; that it is the responsibility, indeed, the duty, of the individual to affirm the soul, and to cultivate it for the betterment of oneself and society; that spirituality holds a rightful place in the soul of a balanced individual, justly prompting reflection on oneself, empathy for others, and an abiding tolerance for the world and its diversity of people and ideas.

My morning thoughts on this beautiful spring SUNday.

As the May 8th opener of the new Star Trek movie rapidly approaches, I have many things to think about.  Not just the mundane (gosh, my Starfleet engineering uniform needs to be ironed probably, and did I ever replace that broken communicator?), but also thoughts more profound.  Now, I know what you’re thinking, this uberg33k is about to write a giant post on how much he loves Star Trek, and…. well, fine, you’re right.  But bear with me a few paragraphs, as the topic I wish to discuss is not the show itself, but the philosophy found therein.  I am a Trekkie today for the values that the show espouses, which I will explore and explain here.

For the majority of my life I have been a Star Wars fan, and don’t get me wrong, I still am.  As a child, during the 7 year run of Star Trek: The Next Generation from 1987 to 1994, that show was always more of a background presence to my more direct love of George Lucas’ world.  I vaguely remember my parents turning on TNG every now and then in the evenings during dinner.  My brother and I had an obsession with having dinner on a picnic mat placed in the middle of the family room; TNG just happened to be a series on at dinner time that my mother somehow determined to be devoid of objectionable material.  (Later of course I realized that nearly every episode contains a ludicrous amount of sexual tension, though I was far too young to pick up on that at the time).

Star Wars was always more immediate; it was about action and adventure – two-dimensional and easily lovable/hate-able characters gallivanting about on epic crusades to save the galaxy and reestablish the noble and mysterious Jedi order.  This is a science-fiction universe that appeals to all ages, is simple to follow yet as complex as you want it to be (I happen to own the Imperial Sourcebook, a giant technical guide to the Empire’s starships and equipment), and a story that touches on from whence our civilization came – our past Christian and pre-Christian archetypal characters that have pervaded Western epics since the Greeks, possibly earlier.

Star Trek on the other hand, is harder to latch onto because it looks ahead, to where we might be.  Whereas Luke, Han, and Leia are detached from us in that their adventures happen “a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away”, the USS Enterprise in Gene Roddenberry’s story is built on our Earth, in our future.  After a second 21st century Dark Age of world war, the fragmentation of humanity, and near nuclear apocalypse, humanity eventually unites following the discovery of intelligent life beyond Earth (see the amazing movie First Contact).

How profound it indeed would be, to find that we are not alone in this vast sea of blackness, and that the differences that divide us here on Earth are in fact laughably minuscule compared to the infinte wonder of what is out there. In the words of President Whitmore (played by Bill Pullman) in the popular sci-fi thriller Independence Day: “Mankind… those words should have new meaning for all of us today.  We can’t be consumed by our petty differences any longer.”

By the end of the 22nd century, so the story goes, Starfleet has been established, world government formed, and humanity realigned with the goals of peaceful exploration and scientific knowledge of the universe.  Yes, we still have weapons, and yes, on occasion we have to use them; but our progress as a society, as a people, is no longer tied to military dominance or nationalistic goals.  In Star Trek, we mature into the core of what humanity is – intrepid explorers, not devoid of prejudice but rising above it, and always creating, learning, protecting, and pushing the boundaries of what is possible.

The following quote is from an essay posted to Living Trekism:

The whole show was an attempt to say that humanity will reach maturity and wisdom on the day that it begins not just to tolerate, but to take a special delight in differences in ideas and differences in life forms. We tried to say that the worst possible thing that can happen to all of us is for the future to somehow press us into a common mould, where we begin to act and talk and look and think alike. If we cannot learn to actually enjoy those small differences, take a positive delight in those small differences between our own kind, here on this planet, then we do not deserve to go out into space and meet the diversity that is almost certainly out there. And I think that this is what people responded to.

More broadly, I think its a fair argument to make that Gene Roddenberry, the creator of Star Trek, is a secular humanist.  As described by the Council for Secular Humanism, theirs is a philosophy that espouses the following tenets:

• A conviction that dogmas, ideologies and traditions, whether religious, political or social, must be weighed and tested by each individual and not simply accepted on faith.
• Commitment to the use of critical reason, factual evidence, and scientific methods of inquiry, rather than faith and mysticism, in seeking solutions to human problems and answers to important human questions.
• A primary concern with fulfillment, growth, and creativity for both the individual and humankind in general.
• A constant search for objective truth, with the understanding that new knowledge and experience constantly alter our imperfect perception of it.
• A concern for this life and a commitment to making it meaningful through better understanding of ourselves, our history, our intellectual and artistic achievements, and the outlooks of those who differ from us.
• A search for viable individual, social, and political principles of ethical conduct, judging them on their ability to enhance human well-being and individual responsibility.
• A conviction that with reason, an open marketplace of ideas, good will, and tolerance, progress can be made in building a better world for ourselves and our children.

Reflect on every (if any) episode of Star Trek (especially The Next Generation) that you have seen, and I think you will find that one or more of these tenets are central themes of each.  I myself would not go so far as to call myself a secular humanist, but in general, the philosophy described here is one in which I find many principles that would take us far if we let them.

This vision is not just far off in the future.  There are men and women working today to make it real, perhaps not in terms of secular humanism, but certainly for the core spirit of peaceful and bold exploration and discovery.  Consider the memorable opening lines of the series, set to appropriately inspirational music (and spoken as dramatically as only Patrick Stewart can):

Space…  the final frontier.  These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise – its continuing mission: To explore the universe; To search for new life and new civilizations; and to boldly go where no one has gone before.

And compare to the mission statement of a particular agency of our government:

To understand and protect our home planet; to explore the universe and search for life; to inspire the next generation of explorers… as only NASA can.

Further, reflect on the words of a great man, President John F. Kennedy, as he launched this great agency, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, on it’s most historic mission.  The whole thing is relevant here, but I have underlined a few choice phrases that drive the point home:

“For the eyes of the world now look into space — to the moon and to the planets beyond — and we have vowed that we shall not see it governed by a hostile flag of conquest, but by a banner of freedom and peace. We have vowed that we shall not see space filled with weapons of mass destruction, but with instruments of knowledge and understanding. Yet the vows of this Nation can only be fulfilled if we in this Nation are first, and therefore we intend to be first. In short, our leadership in science and industry, our hopes for peace and security, our obligations to ourselves as well as others all require us to make this effort to solve these mysteries, to solve them for the good of all men and to become the world’s leading spacefaring nation.”

Profoundly moving, and to me clearly in keeping with the spirit of the creative explorer that Roddenberry so revered.  The respect that the world of Star Trek showed to the mission of NASA was acknowledged and even returned.  On September 17, 1976, America’s first constructed space shuttle orbiter, designated OV-101, rolled off Rockwell’s line near Air Force Plant 42 in Palmdale, California.  Roddenberry and many of the original cast were present; and before OV-101 was transferred to NASA’s nearby Dryden Flight Research Center for its first flight tests, it was christened… Space Shuttle Enterprise.

So lets reflect.  I have written here an essay on why I love Star Trek, yet not once have I  gone into detail about the characters, the worlds, the starships, the geek conventions, the special effects… these are fun and interesting to me certainly, but in my mind they are secondary.  The real reason I have come to enjoy Star Trek is what it represents – it is a bold and positive view of what we could become if we tried.  It is the idea that we can set aside our differences, that we can someday be free of militarism, that we can learn to use our strengths as a species and learn to grow from our weaknesses… and that all else will someday be secondary to the great quest of exploring the strange and overwhelming beauty that awaits us on that infinite final frontier.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a Starfleet uniform to iron.