 |
|
|---|---|
|
March 31, 2014
| New at Tricycle: We continue our ongoing mission to eliminate Buddha
misquotes; a visit to S. N. Goenka in 1970s India; Roshi Pat Enkyo
O'Hara gets intimate; we host an Enlightening Conversation; and we offer
you a last chance to watch Souls of Zen, our Film Club selection this month. |
|
 MAGAZINE: WHAT THE BUDDHA NEVER SAID |
|
| There are lots of fake Buddha quotes floating around, but the granddaddy of them all is “There is no self.” Theravada Buddhist monk Thanissaro Bhikkhu goes all the way back to ancient India’s debate culture to explain the origins of this dubious quote. | |
| | |
Mozilla’s mission is to make the Web more open so that humanity is stronger, more inclusive and more just. This is why Mozilla supports equality for all, including marriage equality for LGBT couples. No matter who you are or who you love, everyone deserves the same rights and to be treated equally. We realize that not everyone in our community or who uses our products will agree with this. But we have always maintained that as long as you are willing to respect others, and come together for our larger mission, you are welcome. Mozilla’s community is made up of people who have very diverse personal beliefs working on a common cause, which is a free and open internet. That is a very rare and special thing.Hampton Caitlin, a Firefox developer who with his husband last week announced a boycott of Mozilla, has tweeted his pleasure with this development.
I worry that Mozilla is in a tough spot right now. I worry that we do a bad job of explaining ourselves, that people are angry and don’t know who we are or where we stand. And, I worry that in the time it takes to work this through and explain ourselves the things I love about Mozilla will be deeply damaged. And I suspect others do too. If you are a Mozillian, I ask that you help the people around you understand who we are. And, if you have supported Mozilla in the past are frustrated or angry with us, I ask you for kindness and patience. What Mozilla is about is working through these things, even when they’re hard. Because the web need us to. It’s that important.
| |
|---|---|
Enlivening the Ordinary | March 30, 2014
Through art, a painter can make the ordinary come alive. As Zen students, we try to bring this kind of relevance into each moment of our lives, into this one moment that contains all moments. In this way, we allow the ordinary to enliven us. Sometimes this is successful, sometimes not, but the work itself goes on. Persistence is one of the major virtues in both the artist and the unenlightened.
—Gary Thorp, "The Dust Beyond the Cushion"
|
| |
|---|---|
Searching for Self | March 29, 2014
This mind that we identify as the self, which we could call ego-mind, controls everything we do. Yet it can't actually be found—which is somewhat spooky, as if a ghost were managing our home. The house seems to be empty, but all the housework has been done. The bed has been made, our shoes have been polished, the tea has been poured, and the breakfast has been cooked.
—Dzigar Kongtrül Rinpoche, "Searching for Self"
|
On Thursday the Human Rights Campaign and Americans for Marriage Equality released the results of a study, entitled "Victory In Sight", conducted by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research and TargetPoint Consulting that investigated the nuances of voters' views on marriage equality. More than a simple matter of "Should gays and lesbians be allowed to marry?", the poll looked at shifts in opinions over time, reasons for such shifts, and differing opinions among ages, faiths, geographic areas and more.
The first question addressed acceptance, comparing voters' favorable or unfavorable feelings towards gays and lesbians and towards evangelical Christians. In a nearly 80% Christian-identified country, the results might surprise you. Fifty-three percent of voters said they felt favorably toward gays and lesbians, compared to 42% who felt favorably toward evangelicals. Eighteen percent said they felt unfavorably toward gays and lesbians, while 28% reported unfavorable feelings toward evangelicals.
This morning, a number of Mozilla employees took to Twitter with a united, nearly simultaneous message to new Mozilla Foundation CEO Brendan Eich: "Step down." Brendan Eich's Prop 8 donations come to light, and internal response is mixed. The internal response began this morning with two tweets from Mozilla Open Badges project lead Chris McAvoy. "I love @mozilla but I'm disappointed this week." He then made a more pronounced declaration: "I'm an employee of @mozilla and I'm asking @brendaneich to step down as CEO." Within minutes, many other Mozilla employees followed suit, using similar language or copying each other's statements outright. Those included Mozilla Festival curator Chloe Vareldi, partnerships lead John Bevan, designer Jessica Klein, and engagement team member Sydney Moyer. McAvoy added that he feels fortunate to work at a company like Mozilla, "where I can say that without fear of retribution."(Tipped by JMG readers Joel and Marc)
Hampton Catlin, creator of Wikipedia Mobile and CSS extension language Sass, said he would no longer develop apps for Firefox after Eich's appointment. Catlin and his husband run a development firm called Rarebit which makes a game called Color Puzzle and was set to bring a dictionary app to Firefox Marketplace. In a blog post, Catlin wrote: "As a married gay couple who are co-founders of this venture, we have chosen to boycott all Mozilla projects. We will not develop apps or test styles on Firefox any more. This is in protest of the appointment of Brendan Eich to the position of CEO of the Mozilla Foundation, where he had previously served as CTO. We will continue our boycott until Brendan Eich is completely removed from any day to day activities at Mozilla, which we believe is extremely unlikely after all he’s survived and the continued support he has received from Mozilla.”It wasn't until the Supreme Court overturned Prop 8 that the couple married. Catlin was also able to sponsor a visa for his British husband with the overturn of DOMA. The couple married at San Francisco City Hall on the very day of the Prop 8 ruling, landing their story on the front page of the New York Times. Read Catlin's blog post about the boycott and his open letter to Mozilla.
God I hate that “word”. It describes no single person; it cannot be spoken easily; it reeks of bullshit. No one started using that word of their own accord as a way to describe herself. It was created by leftists who believe that all oppressed groups are primarilly defined by their oppression and that the very different lives and identities of gay men, lesbians, bisexuals and transgender are somehow all one. I know it’s an effort at inclusion. I appreciate the good intent. And if it had any wit or originality, instead of sounding like a town in Croatia, I could live with it. But it doesn’t.I like LGBT - most of all for its writing utility as an umbrella term. But while I grok why it's done, I do sometimes feel that the ever-growing number of letters sometimes tacked onto the end of LGBT are worthy of the eye-rolling it receives from inside our community and mockery it gets from our enemies. Which takes me back to my appreciation for the catch-all "queer," which to me simply means anybody who isn't heterosexual.
A donation that I made in support of California Proposition 8 four years ago became public knowledge and sparked a firestorm of comments in the last few days, mostly on Twitter. People in other countries or other U.S. states do not know why “Mozilla” was listed in the donation data. Donors above a certain amount are required by the State of California to disclose their employer. Mozilla had nothing to do with the donation. I’m not going to discuss Prop 8 here or on Twitter. There is no point in talking with the people who are baiting, ranting, and hurling four-letter abuse. Personal hatred conveyed through curse words is neither rational nor charitable, and strong feelings on any side of an issue do not justify it. In contrast, people expressing non-abusive anger, sadness, or disagreement, I understand, grieve, and humbly accept.For someone who is "not going to discuss Prop 8", he manages to on for several more paragraphs. (Tipped by JMG reader Chris)
