zenpundit.com

[ by Charles Cameron — some middle ground? ]
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Two pieces have struck me in the last couple of days for their, well, maturity. By which I find I mean their ability to hold the tension between two opposites — among the most celebrated of all — while seeking an appropriate balance between them.

There’s an interesting blend of PR and wisdom in there, and something akin to a disciplined exhaustion with war. But this is Amsterdam…

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My second example comes from Caitlin Fitz Gerald at Gunpowder and Lead, and is titled On Taking Nonviolence Seriously. A snapshot:

I understand the urge to dismiss nonviolence in the face of the brutality of the Syrian regime. I certainly don’t know what is best for the people of Syria in this conflict, and I’m not sure I would have the courage to urge non-violence to people who are being attacked by their own government daily, but I would urge anyone dismissing nonviolent means as completely absurd to read a little Gene Sharp (whose work Mr. Serwer references in his piece) first.

Early in his seminal work From Dictatorship to Democracy (pdf), Sharp makes a key point about the why for nonviolent means, that ”By placing confidence in violent means, one has chosen the very type of struggle with which the oppressors nearly always have superiority.”

I don’t want to get too strange about this, but we can exult in war and we can rejoice in peace — our lives play out in the tension between impulses, and that’s a long walk on a high wire…

[ by Charles Cameron — fictitious peoples (Israelis, Palestinians), approved and disapproved scriptures (Hindu, Falun Gong), religious violence (Afghanistan, Nigeria, Bethlehem) ]
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So, is there some sort of contest going on between Iranian and American ex-Speakers? Perhaps Elliott Abrams‘s response to Gingrich, quoted in the Washington Post piece, applies equally well to Haddad-Adel?

There was no Jordan or Syria or Iraq, either, so perhaps he would say they are all invented people as well and also have no right to statehood.

Next up…

And okay, what’s the point here? Is it that the Russians want to please both the Chinese and Indian governments — or that they don’t like new scriptures but are okay with old ones? Or is the problem that they haven’t decided yet on a “one size fits all” approach to unOrthodox religions?

Sigh. Next…

This is brutal — and apparently intercontinental.

You might think it’s obvious what the wrong answer is, and who’s doing the killing, in Nigeria. But these things can cut both ways:

Even here, it’s not clear who threw the bomb into the madrasa, although one could hazard a guess…

And even the site of the Nativity is infected. The Guardian’s account of events there this Christmas season is harsh in tone — but consider whose Nativity is supposedly being celebrated…

I’d say the Qur’an offers a better image of Christian monks than that experienced by those Palestinian riot police… who, in the event, although they themselves were also assailed with broom-sticks, declined to arrest anyone because, as Palestinian police lieutenant-colonel Khaled al-Tamimi put it:

Everything is all right and things have returned to normal. No one was arrested because all those involved were men of God.

Still, things could be worse. It was a squabble along similar lines in which nine several Orthodox monks were killed that triggered the Crimean War: details in Raymond Cohen, Conflict and Neglect: Between Ruin and Preservation at the Church of the Nativity — h/t Juan Cole, who also has video of this year’s brouhaha.

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Et in terra pax hominibus bonae voluntatis.

[ by Charles Cameron — disturbing and keeping the peace, OWS Oakland, paradox ]

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Paradox.

It’s a bit like the koan where a zen monk is asked “is it the flag or the wind that moves?” — is peace what the meditator is dipping into, or is peace what the occupier / meditator is disturbing while the peace officers are maintaining it for the rest of us?

Here’s a photo taken a few moments / minutes later:

And in fact, the whole incident does seem to have passed off pretty peacefully (in both senses of the word): as the Chronicle’s SFGate blog put it in a caption:

Police peacefully detain Occupy Oakland protester, “Pancho” Ramos Stierle who was meditating while police cleared out the Occupy Oakland camp early in the morning on Monday, November 14, 2011.

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And the zen master said, “Neither and both: it’s the mind that moves.”