Salesmen and Dogs: A Comparison

x      =       exhibits characteristic

―      =       does not exhibit characteristic

	Salesman	Dog
Hunts to Survive	x	x
Charming when necessary	x	x
Loyal	―	x
Always glad to see you (pre-sale)	x	x
Always glad to see you (post-sale)	―	x
Smells its prey's weakness	x	x
Requires grooming	x	x
Enjoys doing what he's told	―	x
Does what he's told	x	x
Best trained in a crate	x	x
Fits in with the pack	―	x
The young ones are cute; the old ones droopy	x	x
Cats are onto their tricks	―	x
Obsessed with fashion	x	―
Not good with paper work	x	x
Obsessive	x	x
Understands money	―	―
Scratches embarassing body parts - self	―	x
Scratches embarassing body parts - others	x	―
Means what he says	―	x
Pouts when he doesn't get his way	x	x
Loves to play fetch	x	x
Doesn’t reciprocate when playing fetch	x	x
Drives a nice car	x	―
Chases nice cars	x	x
Learns how to behave through positive reinforcement	x	x
Rebels against punishment	x	x
Happily sniffs alpha dog's butt	x	x
Been seen playing poker	x	x
Exudes self confidence	x	x
Constantly sheds old dead coat for newer, shinier coat	x	x
Gets along with others	x	x
Sometimes named after saints	x	x
Enjoys children poking and pulling his ears	―	―
Tolerates children poking and pulling his ears if it gets him what he wants	x	x
Barks when stressed	x	x
Could be reincarnation of a saint	―	x
Sometimes fakes being hurt to get his way	x	x
Kind to secretaries	―	x
Drools when he sees what he wants	x	x
Always scraping for better position amongst peers	x	x
Did well on High School SATs	―	―
Talked about nicely by others	―	x
Wishes he had studied to be a lawyer instead	x	―
Dreams of chasing something when he sleeps	x	x
Dreams of being chased when he sleeps	x	x
Anxious	x	―
Wonders if others are watching when he exercises	x	―
Eats the same food every meal	―	x
Drinks the same drink every meal	x	―
Makes for interesting reading	x	x

Man Seeks Dog

Wanted

A Pet, a Dog

A Boy's Dog

A dog I can get old with.

Looking for a non-shedding don't-make-me-sneeze dog. Must be into melding minds. Appreciation of Buddhism appreciated, but not a must.

You: Cute, active, enjoys a day on the trails, but evenings home in front of the telly. Digs cold weather, but grooves on a summer day. Lives in the now. Willing to teach me how to live in the now. Willing to sit with me, and meditate.

Enjoys books. Not slippers.

Me: Hard to follow, but still I expect it. Likes long walks down secluded paths, some alive with prairie dogs, some without. Smells. I like a path that smells, but I don't get close like you might want to. That's fine, do your thing. I'm not going to watch. I won't judge.

Must appreciate our differences.

Must enjoy quiet walks, as well as the loneliness of a quiet walk.

I prefer young, but I don't want to appear rigid here in public, so whatever age you are, you should at least say hello.

Send pictures please.

I want a dog who's not afraid to tell me what they're thinking.  But more than that, I want a dog who lets me tell them what I'm thinking.

That's really why I want a dog. Someone to tell my thoughts to.

That's how it's going to be between us. Me telling you stuff. Not that I'm bossy, I'm not bossy. I just want to tell you stuff. It'll be nice, a nice diversion. Doesn't mean we won't enjoy one another's company. Perhaps we'll enjoy one another's company more, this way.

Must be able to listen.

Must come when called.

Must sit, stay, roll over when asked. Can you shit on command? I want to help you shit on command.

Teach you how to stick your paw out. I like a dog with a firm shake.

Can we agree on that?

Me: Willing to work with you.

You: possibly a Rottweiler? (PS, I love Rottweilers. You could be #1―on the list of dogs I'm considering.) If Rottweiler, females only, please. You big bowsers, you're too hard on a leash. The girls are just the right size. Plus there's an insurance agent next door, and you know how they can get.

Labradoodles, don't be shy, would love to hear from you.  I admire a dog with a brain. Sometimes, I like to think of myself as a dog with a brain. Maybe you're brainy enough to tell me, explain―why are there so many different types of Labradoodles? F1's, F2's, F1B's, F― that.  Are you tough? Can you handle yourself? I mean, a dog like you and a me looking like me, walking around, we'll gonna get picked on. We're gonna get in fights. You up for a fight?  Cause that's why I really want a dog, you know. Someone to go out and get in fights with. Tell folks it's not our fault. It's just how we are. It's our nature.

Beaucerons, Pharaoh Hounds―we've had our time together, and you've taught me so much. Let's not cheapen it. Let's not try to figure out if we were really as good as we remember.

That's why I want a dog. Someone to show me my faults. That's what it's really about.

Look, I don't want to appear pretentious. I'm just talking, you know. I'm like that. I talk. Just don't get tired of me talking. You don’t have to understand what I'm saying, just don't get tired of me saying it.

All relationships fake a little.  Ask the Beauceron.

 

Ask the Pharaoh Hound.

Must enjoy hikes, but not every day. Should like cold weather, breaking snow tracks, and be leash-trained well enough that I can keep my hands in my pockets on cold winter strolls, in case I forget my gloves. Or they're missing.

Please don't take this next part as abandonment and go chew up my socks or something, but I bicycle summer mornings, and you're not invited. It won't be good for you.

That's why I want a dog.  So I can go bicycling by myself. Then go home, and there's someone there to come home to. Glad to see me. That's the real reason I want a dog.

I like Dobermans. Did I mention Dobermans? Boston Terriers?

No shedding please.

Is there anyone out there who can help?

A Buddhist Birthday Wish for a dawning new year

 

Holbrook Jackson said:

   "Man is a dog's idea of what God should be."

I say:
  "And then some."

h

In the Animal Realm,

beings are solid and predictable,

clinging to the ordinary,

and fearful of what seems out of the ordinary.

Christmas Spirit on a Winter's Day

A poem by A.R. Ammons

CLARIFICATIONS

The crows, mingled
powder white,

arrive floundering
through the

heavy snowfall:
they land ruffling

stark black
on the spruce boughs and

chisel the neighborhood
sharp with their cries.

A poem for a Solstice evening

Winter has withered everything
in this cold mountain place
dignity is in
its desolation now, and beauty
in the cold clarity of its moon.

                       - Saigyo

Writin' Like a Buddha: Lesson 733 - Dyin' like a Buddha; lessons from Laurie & Lou

I've gotten out the old records.  LPs I haven't heard in a while. I miss Lou Reed.  But that's not bringing him back.

The trick to coping with loss is being comfortable with loss. Laurie Anderson refers to her teacher's, Yonge Mingur Rinpoche, instruction to her and Lou - "You need to try to master the ability to feel sad without actually being sad". 

Read Laurie's tribute here.


http://www.theidproject.org/blog/nancy-thompson/2013/11/08/dharma-connect-lou-reeds-meditative-death

Writin' like a Buddha - Lesson 9: Show Don't Tell - an exercise from John Daido Loori

In his book The Zen of Creativity: Cultivating Your Artistic Life, John Daido Loori outlines the following exercise - a good one for writers, visual artists, or anyone looking to expand their insight.

Have a friend put five or six small objects that can be held in the palm of your hand into a wastebasket or some other container.  The objects should represent different types of tactile surfaces.

Without looking, reach in and take an object from the basket.

Now spend fifteen to twenty minutes exploring the object with your hands, your eyes closed. Feel its every part.  Don't try to identify it.  As thoughts arise, acknowledge them, let them go, and return to the object.

When finished, return the object to the basket.  Repeat this process at another time.

As you continue this practice, you'll come to be able to experience the object directly, without labeling it or identifying what it is.

The exercise can help you develop the ability to just see, just hear, just touch, just smell, just taste - without needing to name the thing.  This way of perceiving will allow you to expand how you describe people, scenes and environments in your writing.

Writin’ like a Buddha: Lesson 251 – The Bodhisattva’s Path: An appreciation of Gary Schanbacher’s Crossing Purgatory

You can like almost anything, but when push comes to shove you usually got to choose.

Like Westerns. There’s those big mythic Westerns with gunfights and outlaws and strong ego lawmen. One guy’s good, one guy’s bad, that kind of Western. And then there’s the nouveau Western, which tells the story of small men struggling in large landscapes. 

I’ve always preferred the nouveau. They’re more human, less predictable, more timeless, more Buddha, and more shaded with spiritual ambiguity. The mythic Western’s bombast can jolt you for a moment or two and maybe get you cheering for good to triumph over evil, but the nouveau Western haunts you for days and days, sticking with you like something finished but not quite done. Nouveau Westerns place us less in ourselves and more in the world. They’re not so smug. They spin their characters’ flaws and failures into the stuff of quiet redemption. Or maybe just a brief brush up against redemption. When we read the nouveaus, they help us feel fragile.

Gary Schanbacher’s written that kind of Western.  His first novel Crossing Purgatory tells the story of Thompson Grey, an impoverished Indiana farmer obsessed with the death of his wife and children and his failure to provide. There’s no bigger poverty than our failure toward loved ones. Suffering the guilt of losing his family, Thompson begins walking west into America.  If he’s searching for something, he’s not sure what. Should he find it, he may not even know.  He is uprooted, displaced, and uncomfortable in his thoughts and memories.

Crossing Purgatory is not a big novel.  It is quieter than that. Schanbacher’s sparse prose is his book’s first allure. Nothing is told in judgment.  Everything is told simply at plain face value. Thompson is a man in shock, and we the reader feel it.  We remain vigilantly sympathetic to his quiet observations, always a bit hopeful that the changing environment will coax some peace out of him. By the book’s end it has. Although it’s a quite peace at best, and one we know Thompson will have to keep pursuing long after we’ve finished our read and put the book back on its shelf.

That is the second allure of Crossing Purgatory.  In Thompson’s quiet observation we see and feel so much – about the time in which the book is set, about the environment and how it can simultaneously save and crush a man, and about the other characters, whose stories provide the main dramatic thrust through which Thompson’s journey plays out.

It may not a big novel, but Crossing Purgatory is epic. Epic in how it interweaves so many disparate lives into the fabric of Thompson’s soul searching. He finds work with a wagon train heading for western Colorado.  On the journey he takes up with a family of travelers, for whom he feels responsible and from whom he remains aloof.  Is that the guilt he feels over losing his own family, or the very behavior that caused him to lose them?  Is Thompson moving toward redemption or deeper into his own hell?  Throughout the book the question persists.

Arriving in Colorado Thompson absorbs into an even larger family –different bloodlines bonding into a new frontier community.  While Schanbacher keeps Thompson the main actor, it’s the others who lives and challenges appear more dramatic. Like the landscape, Thompson is a canvas on which the novel unfolds. In his quiet way, he is our narrator and our hope for the society growing around him.

Which is the third allure of Crossing Purgatory – how the story is the story of the land, with its large sweeping ebb and flow of challenges and fulfillment, and how its stubborn persistence allows its majesty to quietly prevail. 

In the nouveau Western the challenge is never complete. There’s no one big gun battle of hard won success. Success is something that plays out over time. That’s how Crossing Purgatory is. It stays with us on our path, as our path leads us toward wherever we may be going.

Writin' like a Buddha: Lesson 912 Zen Koan

What is this that I am?

When defining a character - his hair, the pudge of his face, where his eyes sit and how his body walks -  best to leave a question there as well.  Don't be so specific the reader doesn't engage.  Leave room for the reader to read into the character a little of the "this-ness" that the reader is.

Or maybe not?

Buddhism & Writing - Lesson 555

In Buddhism they teach you to treat all dharmas as dreams – which is really just a fancy way of saying whatever you experience in life, it is not solid.  It is fleeting.  

Too often we don’t see it that way.  When will this rain ever stop?  Why can’t I get rid of this pain in my knee? Will I ever be happy? I mean, long continuous everlastingly happiness (is there such a thing)? Who is this person I keep recognizing as myself all these many years?

If life consists of any one consistent ingredient, it is its potential for constant change. Hold onto any one pain or happiness for too long, and it will slip away soon enough. Sometimes long before we’re even willing to let go.  Sometimes long before we even know it’s gone.

Isn’t that like writing? Real writing, good writing is the ability to imbue one single moment, a scene, one single bit of action with the breadth and sweep of the entire story. Sentence by sentence, chapter by chapter, we create these little bon mots (with due respect to poet J Diego Frey) that serve as summary for the entire sweep of the tale being told.  Just as a single chromosome tells of the larger being. Or the way an acorn holds the entire secret of the oak tree it has inside it.

Buddhism tells us all things that originate – hate, love, heroism, guilt, and all the rest of it - originate in our minds. And although these thoughts are vivid, they are not solid. They each hold the potential to flitter away. To change for better or worse, grabbing onto the grand sweep of life.

And that is the promise of good writing.  The promise that nothing is ever stuck, everything changes, and we’ve been invited on the read-along ride to see and anticipate how it all works out.

Horror Writing, Buddhism, and Facing the Unknown

In Buddhism, they teach you to stay open to fear.

In order to practice what he preached, the Buddha sat under a Bodhi tree for forty nine days watching hour upon hour of horror movies, and reading classic horror stories, until finally he emerged from the darkness into enlightenment.

I wasn’t there, but I think that’s how it went.

Because Buddhism, like horror stories, is all about staying open to the unexpected.

Horror is a willing submission to the unknown. Buddhism tells you to approach life without any preconceptions.  Both are a seduction to which we surrender.  We go into them selflessly – without self – learning we do not survive this world by controlling it, but better by adapting to how we naturally ebb and flow with it.

Consider it like this.  In Buddhism we sit in meditation – our eyes open, our mind training to not label every little sound, smell or vision. In the next room we hear something bump, or some long-drawn creak. Do we listen to it, open to absorbing that sound without understanding it? Or in pursuit of mundane comfort do we label the sound – it’s the wood floor settling or a door closing. Do we name it in order not to hear it for what it is? Just an explained sound in the night.

With horror, we sit lonely in the dark – perhaps a candle lit, our minds empty (oh, so Buddhist) – as we wait for the unexpected to crawl up our skin. When we enjoy a good horror, we naturally surrender all reason and thought to our imaginations. That’s a Buddhist concept.

Because imagination is where we face the unspoken.  The hidden secrets and yearnings of our souls.

In his article “Saved from Freezing”, Norman Fischer writes it better.  And this is a lesson for all creators of horror to consider.  “Imagination confronts desire directly, in all its discomfort and intensity, deepening the world right where we are.  Fantasy and reality are opposing forces, but imagination and reality are not in opposition: Imagination goes toward reality, shapes and evokes it.”

Today We Remember

We should remember this.  Our minds and the world do not exist as opposites, because neither our minds nor the world truly exist. What does exist is vision, and vision arises when our mind and the world meet.

I use the word vision loosely here. Vision may be sight, or it may be hearing, smell, touch, taste or inspiration. Whichever of these it is, it is active, momentary, never lasting. It does not come back.

Remembering is a verb, not a moment we can recapture.

Today we remember. We remember veterans. We remember wars. We remember heroism and fear and survival.

Some think remembering is nostalgia – imbuing the present moment with a fogged image from long ago.

But remembering is no more than re-joining.  Remembering is when, in a present moment, we join our mind with the present world to see old thoughts in new ways.

Remembering is not a nostalgic satisfaction or fixation.  It is how we interact with the environment in which we live. It is about joining ourselves to the present moment, and having the courage to not look back.

That’s our tribute to the brave, and the fearful, and the survivors who came before us.

Why Mitt Romney will never choose Paul Ryan as his VP

For republicans, this year's presidential bid is a throwaway election.  

Romney’s not going to beat Obama, and republicans are not even sure they want him to.  The Bush recession isn't over, and the slow growth is likely to continue for at least another year or so.  Better for republicans to carp from the sidelines than risk  taking responsibility.

You can tell Romney’s going to lose because despite Obama's hard times, he's still better liked than  Mitt.  Republicans know this, for one very solid reason – they don’t like Mitt either.

You know it’s a throwaway election because no serious republican even considered getting in the race – no Chris Christie, no Jeb Bush, no Colin Powell or Condie Rice.

The question the republican party needs to ponder is - do they really want Romney’s November flameout to drag the Ryan budget down with him?

If Paul Ryan’s on the ticket, November 6 will go down as the day America clearly rejected his much touted plan for returning America to the Days of Deep Depression.  It's one thing to have a bunch of nuns, labor unions, Democrats and Catholic bishops tell you your budget plan is unholy, but when Americans reject in an election, it's toast.  Fait accompli.  

 

If republicans want to go into the 113th congress with the continued hope of further confounding Obama, privatizing Medicare and Social Security, taxing the working person and returning to the Roaring 20’s, they need the pseudo-serious Ryan plan to rattle in their fists as they spew their fire and brimstone.

But when a Romney-Ryan ticket loses, what will they have, except foul temperament and the penchant to blame Obama for everything from the weather to their dog’s unfortunate bowel habits.  

A Romney-Ryan ticket is the death of the republican agenda.

So snooze up, America. It's going to be Portman or Pawlenty for VP.  Or, if Romney wants to suddenly go adventuresome, Marco Rubio to hustle up the Florida vote.  

What we can learn from Colorado Rockies pitcher Jamie Moyer and my buddy Tim Lyons

Slow is not necessarily better.  But it sure is a nice complement to fast.

Last night the Colorado Rockies beat the Arizona Diamondbacks 6-1 with Jamie Moyer pitching 6 1/3 innings, giving up one run and six hits.  Slow pitched, in that Jamie Moyer style.  The D-backs stood around waiting for his 74MPH fastballs and sinkers to catch up to their bats.

But that’s not the slowest accomplishment for the 49 year old veteran (2-3).

In the bottom of the 4th with Jordan Pacheco on 3rd and Dexter Fowler on 2nd, Moyer dribbles a roller down the 1st base line.

So slow a roller, D-backs pitcher Patrick Corbin just stood by in amazement, stunned by its timelessness.

Arizona 1st basement Paul Goldschmidt needed to abandon his post in pursuit of the dribble, and then two time it back to the bag to try and tag Moyer out in time.  Moyer ran slow, but Goldschmidt’s return was a tad slower.  Safe. Had the ball rolled any faster, things might have been different.

But like we said, slow complements speed.

While the play at 1st was creating its own freeze-frame replay, Dexter Fowler rocketed around 3rd and snuck in for a completely unseen score at the plate.   I was there.  I didn’t see it.  Jamie Moyer didn’t see it.    The in-house replay didn’t even catch it.

“I assumed he’d be on third base,” Moyer said after the game.  “Then I looked at the scoreboard, and realized he had scored.”

Sometimes time passes like that.  You don’t see it .  You just notice later on the scoreboard.

When I got home from the game, I saw my buddy Tim Lyons skulking the neighborhood.  He says he was out running, but it was slower than running.  More like skulking.

Then he told me about his latest You Tube video – him performing his own The Ballad of Dick Cheney.  It’s a nice slow waltz.  Slow enough even a guy like me or Jamie Moyer  can get up and dance to it.   Slow enough that you’re likely to notice.

Here it is here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9YVlFUt1f-0

The Buddha wonders ...

Why meditate?

To know our mind.

Looking at our mind shows us the rhythm of stillness, of this very moment.  The Now.  Often we think of our mind as a continuum.  But the more we see of this very moment, absent of past grievances and future ambition, the more we lose anxiety and see the purity of the present mind.

Sometimes we mistake our mind for the thoughts that travel through it.  That’s like understanding the sky by studying the blueprints of airplanes.

In the Four Noble Truths the Buddha taught us that we suffer because of our attachments.

When we understand our mind as a thought it invokes, we attaching to that thought as if it is our mind.  We are getting stuck.

Meditation helps us see our mind empty of its thoughts.

How many hours should a novelist spend on their novel each day and why am I not doing it right now?

Aidan Donnelly Rowley got it exactly right (http://bit.ly/1pUZtH). There's an anxiety that creeps through all writers. All that wasted time in a day. Why am I not writing?

I read the blogs of other disciplined writers who comment they've "written their 3500 words for today", or managed to put in their 4 hours of writing time. These are writers. People driven by anxiety. Anxiety has forced them to prescribe a formula to tackle their anxiety and meet deadlines too. Man, that sounds so writerly.

I wish I had more anxiety in my life. More ways of getting stuff done.

I'm lucky if I lately I can sneak in a half hour or less on writing each day. Plus, it usually comes at the end of the day after work, dining, dog walking, cleaning and a snifter or two. I'm a novelist, but can only squeeze in a half hour per day (or less)! Could a surgeon say that thirty minutes really makes him a surgeon? A newsboy claim that thirty minutes a day makes him a truly gifted dispenser of newspapers.

Shouldn't I feel anxious about this?

The truth is, writing is a lot like meditation for me. It's not that it's got to be perfect or any specific period of time - there is no such thing as time when meditating. As long as it's exploratory, as long as it digs deep inside me and pulls out lessons I haven't yet learned, then it's worth each and every second, no matter how few.

That's meditation.

And that's efficient writing too.

Publishing is a Business. So what's that mean?

Really great article by Eric on his blog PIMP MY NOVEL. Eric works in sales at a NewYork publisher, and has great insight into the business of publishing.

Check it.

http://pimpmynovel.blogspot.com/2009/10/p-1-of-4-basics.html#comments

We are made up of false beliefs

Eventually, we all need to be willing to face the deepest, darkest beliefs we have about ourselves. Only in this way can we come to know they are only beliefs, and not the truth of who we are.

- ezra bayda, from The Three Things We Fear Most