Heirlooms

As noted in yesterday's post, traditional Buddhist teachings regard being born as a human as a rare and precious opportunity. Believe it or not, we could do way worse. Even more rare and precious is being born a human in a time and place where one can become aware of the Buddha's teaching or the Dharma.

By those standards at least, El Cabrero is pretty lucky. Although I was raised in and remain attached to the Episcopal Church, there was never a time in my life when I can remember not knowing who the Buddha was or at least what he looked like (according to traditional iconography anyhow).

My paternal grandfather spent many years in China, where my father and uncle were born. He wasn't a missionary, although he did become a priest when he returned. Though he died several years before I was born, the artifacts of his travels decorated the old family farm. Among these was a bronze statue of the Buddha and a prayer wheel. When my grandmother died, those were the only things I asked for.

When I was a child, while everyone at the old home place adhered to the 1928 Book of Common Prayer, the Buddha was always spoken of with deep respect, as were other elements of Chinese culture. I wound up being drawn to and equally comfortable with each. They are not identical, but I've found them to be complimentary and the tension between them to be interesting.

A wise old priest once told me that creative tensions were what made things like Gothic cathedrals work and that Christianity itself was the product of creative tensions between the Hebrew and Hellenistic traditions.

THE (GLOBAL) PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS. A worldwide study of the subjective sense of well-being finds that it tends to be higher in places with less poverty, better health care and access to education. Who would have guessed?

A VERY UNMERRY BIRTHDAY. NAFTA turned 15 on Jan. 1. Ordinary folks on either side of the US-Mexico border weren't big winners.

CURIOUSER AND CURIOUSER. From the Wall Street Journal, here is a brief description of some rare but interesting neurological disorders.

THESE ARE YOUR BEES on drugs.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Philosophy in one sentence

Roman Emperor and Stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius.

El Cabrero has been pondering the role of luck and chance in human affairs lately. This is an interesting time to do it, since the goddess Fortuna has been cranking her wheel with unusual velocity these days. Some go up and some go down.

From ancient times, people have grappled with how to live in a world where unpredictable (for us at the time anyway) things can happen at any time. Many have turned to different kinds of divination for clues. Others chalk it off to the inscrutable providence of God, whose ways are not our ways nor are his thoughts our thoughts, to paraphrase Isaiah.

Another way people have dealt with uncertainty is through philosophy. Of the many schools of ancient thought, I've always had a soft spot for the Stoics, a Hellenistic vision of the world that became popular in imperial Rome. Stoicism was all about living a rational life in accordance with the nature of things and accepting external events as they come.

Interestingly, two of its greatest exponents were at opposite extremes of the social scale. Epictetus (c. 55-135) was a slave, while Marcus Aurelius (121-180) was one of the last truly great Roman emperors.

Stoicism was as much a kind of self-help or ancient cognitive therapy as it was an intellectual tradition. It has some features in common with other wisdom traditions such as Buddhism or Taoism.

If I had to come up with one of the most useful single sentences I've encountered in studying philosophy, it would probably be one from the Enchiridion of Epictetus. It simply says,

Some things are in our control and others not.

GOING GREEN. More retail businesses are going green.

THINK BIG. Here's economist Jeffrey Sachs with suggestions for the next administration.

ONE TO WATCH. The lawsuit filed by widows of Massey Energy's Aracoma mine fire has begun.

REMEMBER THE TROOPS WE'RE SUPPOSED TO SUPPORT? The Charleston Gazette reports:

More than half of all West Virginia soldiers who live in the state's most rural counties and recently served in Iraq and Afghanistan show signs of post-traumatic stress disorder or depression, according to a recent analysis of data from a survey of the state's war veterans.

About 56 percent of returning soldiers from West Virginia's rural counties suffer from mental health problems compared to 32 percent who live in urban areas, and 34 percent residing at out-of-state military bases.

TUG OF WAR. A new theory of mental disorders suggests that competition between parental genes may be a contributing factor.

I WAS NOT AWARE OF THAT. Did you know that snakebites kill 20,000 people a year in the developing world?

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: OCCLUDED