Sam Harris: How to meditate

In our IPS discussion on Harris Balder brought to our attention his new blog post, "how to meditate." Therein he recommends vipassana as it is most easily shorn of its metaphysical accoutrement. I agree with Mr. Harris yet again. This is why vipassana is the only "Buddhist" meditation I've been able to take up and maintain over the years. Particularly the brand out of Spirit Rock in northern CA, which is still Buddhist in orientation but also allows a more generic approach.  Jack Kornfield is one of the founders and I like his mix of psychotherapeutic methods and western education in his overall presentation. I also very much appreciate how Spirit Rock still operates on dana and has not commercialized (i.e., capitalized for profit) its teachings. Of Kornfield's writings one of my favorites is this one on the limitations of meditation.

Following is the excerpt of Harris' blog Balder provided:

Michael Moore on bin Laden

Michael Moore has some recent comments on the killing with which I agree. Some excerpts:

The Nazis killed tens of MILLIONS. They got a trial. Why? Because we're not like them. We're Americans. We roll different.

I would like the evildoers to be forced to stand trial in front of that world. I know a lot of people see no need for a trial for these bad guys (just hang 'em from the nearest tree!), and think trials are for sissies. "They're guilty, off with their heads!" Well, you see, that is the exact description of the Taliban/al Qaeda/Nazi justice system. I don't like their system. I like ours. And I don't want to be like them. In fact, the reason I like a good trial is that I like to show these bastards this is how it's done in a free country that believes in civilized justice. It's good for the rest of the world to see that, too. Sets a good example.

The people vs. Goldman Sachs

The past few posts have highlighted that laws are only for the masses, not those at the top of the system who are always beyond the law because they can buy off those who make and enforce the laws. The recent world financial crisis is yet another example in a long line of just this obvious principle, and that so-called democracy is just an obfuscating rallying flag for capitalists to hide behind, since it is the furthest thing from their true agenda. To further reinforce the obvious Matt Taibbi's usual and fine investigative reporting discusses the case of Goldman Sachs as revealed in the US Senate subcommittee looking into the matter. Exactly when are we, the people, going to demand from our lawmakers that they and their corporate masters must be subject to the same laws as the rest of us?

Some excerpts from Taibbi's article:

The next step in US assassination policy

As an expansion of the bin Laden thread this news story takes the legality of US assassination to new heights. Now we're trying to kill American citizens who have not been charged with any crime, let alone been given a trial after such charges. Let's just move right to killing them because they are deemed an enemy of the State. WTF is going on?

Here are some excerpts from “U.S. tries to assassinate U.S. citizen Anwar al-Awlaki” at Salon, by Glen Greenwald (see the article for the rest and discuss):

That Barack Obama has continued the essence of the Bush/Cheney Terrorism architecture was once a provocative proposition but is now so self-evident that few dispute it (watch here as arch-neoconservative David Frum -- Richard Perle's co-author for the supreme 2004 neocon treatise -- waxes admiringly about Obama's Terrorism and foreign policies in the Muslim world and specifically its "continuity" with Bush/Cheney).  But one policy where Obama has gone further than Bush/Cheney in terms of unfettered executive authority and radical war powers is the attempt to target American citizens for assassination without a whiff of due process.

Hitchens on Chomsky & Moore

Hitchens' response to Chomsky's remarks (posted earlier) can be found here. Therein Hitchens calls the likes of Chomsky and Moore the "paranoid anti-war left," and that their  "unstated but self-evident premise...is that the United States richly deserved the assault on its citizens and its civil society." This reveals far more about his own right-wing worldview, since it can only frame legitimate criticism in such stark, anti-American terms. This "reasoning" is strikingly similar to what happened in the case of Mary Surratt being discussed in "the conspirator" thread, the reactionary response of conservatives to defending the alleged conspirator in Lincoln's death. If we don't buy their limited view wholesale we want the destruction of the US, all under the evil guise of asking that our governmental leaders, like everyone else, be held accountable to the rule of American, and international, law. Including, and especially, in times of war.

Redford's The Conspirator & bin Laden

I finally had opportunity to see this fine film by Robert Redford, the story of the trial of Mary Surratt. Surratt owned a boarding house where J. W. Booth and her son plotted the assassination of Lincoln. Her son escaped but she and the other alleged co-conspirators were tried before a military tribunal. The case against her in particular was fabricated but it didn't stop the tribunal, and the political forces behind it, from finding her guilty and sentencing her to hang with the others. It is a story of how law and the Constitution were suspended to provide an emotional release to the general public, since she was assumed guilty from the start.There was a line in the movie about how law must be suspended in a time of war, with the protagonist lamenting the tragic irony of such a statment.

The movie brought so many parallels to mind on the recent assassination of bin Laden.

Chomsky on bin Laden's killing

Chomsky finally speaks up, copied in toto from this source:

It’s increasingly clear that the operation was a planned assassination, multiply violating elementary norms of international law. There appears to have been no attempt to apprehend the unarmed victim, as presumably could have been done by 80 commandos facing virtually no opposition—except, they claim, from his wife, who lunged towards them. In societies that profess some respect for law, suspects are apprehended and brought to fair trial. I stress “suspects.” In April 2002, the head of the FBI, Robert Mueller, informed the press that after the most intensive investigation in history, the FBI could say no more than that it “believed” that the plot was hatched in Afghanistan, though implemented in the UAE and Germany. What they only believed in April 2002, they obviously didn’t know 8 months earlier, when Washington dismissed tentative offers by the Taliban (how serious, we do not know, because they were instantly dismissed) to extradite bin Laden if they were presented with evidence—which, as we soon learned, Washington didn’t have. Thus Obama was simply lying when he said, in his White House statement, that “we quickly learned that the 9/11 attacks were carried out by al Qaeda.”

Kennilluminati

In the IPS thread "what the fuck is going on" we've been discussing the apocalyptic visions rampant in new age conspiracies, in which kennilinguists are willing participants. Therein kela brought up the difference between sapiential and apocalyptic eschatology. I said:

"It seems there is a relation between the differences of sapiential and apocalyptic eschatology with the distinctions I was drawing between progressive and conservative religious politics in that thread. That is, a correlation between the latter being more attached to an "absolute" in distinction with the relative an hence the need to get to the end or highest level  which redeems the world etc. (kennilinguists included). Whereas the former sees more their relation in the here and now, how we make the world better through pragmatic political (en)action and in so doing redeem (the idea of) God. Also note Michael Lerner's response to Obama's death.

I then referenced a Psychology Today article that explores why people fall for conspiracy theories:

Ding dong bin Laden's dead

bin Laden's dead, ding dong the wicked terrorist is dead. (Sung to the tune of the Wizard of Oz song about the wicked witch.)

Ok, yes it feels good to get vengeance on the bastard responsible for the 9/11 attacks on the US. The blood lust is thick and heavy in the US with not just his death but the manner is which it was executed, shot in the head at close range. The left eye, to be exact. An eye for and eye and all that. We feel relief that he was murdered in cold, calculating foresight, which by the usual legal standard is 1st degree murder. Ah, but this is war, where all is fair, eh?

Radical hermeneutics

I'm feeling kind of religious this Sunday morning, wanting to go to church but just cannot find one compatible with my postmetaphysical "beliefs." Which led me to realize, yet again, that this virtual online monastery/seminary (i.e., IPS Forum) is as close as I get to going to church so I might as well share where my religious impulse led this morning. The following reminds me of some of the discussions of late in the Big Stories thread, the differences between religious (or spiritual) and scientific cosmological stories, and how sometimes their mix just leads to a muddle (but not necessarily). Anywho, here is my Sunday Sermon by Saint Caputo from the brief essay "Radical Hermeneutics." (Btw, one can read his book Radical Hermeneutics (IUP, 1987) for free at this Scribd link, from which I'll draw further sermons with or without commentary, depending on how the Holy Spirit (aka daemon) moves me.)

Excerpt:

"By "radical hermeneutics" I mean a theory of radical interpretation, and by radical interpretation I mean that interpretation goes all the way down, that there are no uninterpreted facts of the matter that settle silently at the bottom that can be unearthed by patiently peeling away the layers of interpretation. To say that interpretation matters all the way down is not to say that "anything goes;" it is simply to recognize that we are not God. The charge of "relativism" thrown up against theories of radical interpretation is a confusion and an obfuscation. "Relativism" is a red herring used by the God-and-apple-piety crowd; it does service for thinking when the discussion gets too complicated.