zenpundit.com

Hat tip to Kanani Fong of Kitchen Dispatch

The award -winning film HIGH GROUND  is due for release in August 2012:

Since 2002, almost 50,000 U.S. soldiers have returned home from Iraq and Afghanistan with their lives radically altered by war. With the improvement of battlefield medical treatments, these soldiers return alive yet not whole, and face long painful paths to recovery.

Full integration back into their community and the civilian world is a treacherous road, fraught with obstacles and pitfalls. After initial rehabilitation, these veterans are often left to fend for themselves, and struggle with physical and mental roadblocks, depression, and alienation.

This issue affects every aspect of society, not just families and hometown communities, but our national character and our legacy. How these wounded soldiers transition is one of the most important repercussions of these wars and an adversity with which we will contend for generations.

igh Ground was a showcase expedition bringing together disabled war veterans with world recognized mountain climbers to demonstrate what could be achieved by climbing a Himalayan giant. A key outcome of the expedition was to produce a documentary film that would tell the inspiring stories of these heroes and spread a healing message to a national audience.

This film, featuring stunning cinematography and capturing powerful emotions, will touch the hearts of concerned citizens, military families, outdoor enthusiasts and most of all, soldiers who find themselves wondering how to face the days and months and years ahead. It is an honest and gripping portrayal of our American warriors, telling an action packed story that unfolds in unexpected ways as the team makes their way high into the mountains, through the villages of Nepal, over raging rivers and up terrifying steep terrain risking injury and death for a chance at the summit.

A second and equally important goal is to continue to impact those thousands of injured soldiers in the midst of their own daunting recoveries through the use of the film at veteran’s hospitals and military bases around the United States. In the fall of 2011, a multi-city nationwide tour will be launched to welcome our soldiers home, celebrate their spirit and sacrifice, and to encourage them to pursue their dreams.

Efforts are currently underway to assess the potential of additional expeditions and to create a long-term strategy as a non-profit organization. By getting involved and supporting this project you can participate directly in this vital process and connect your company to the message that our soldiers can indeed… return home to live again.

Colonel John Boyd

This is a head’s up early warning so people can get their schedules and plans together.

From J. Scott Shipman at the Disciples of Boyd’s Strategy Group:

Greetings! A gentle reminder that Boyd & Beyond 2012 is scheduled for 12 & 13 October 2012 at Quantico, VA. 

I would encourage those interested in presenting to contact me or Colonel Stan Coerr. As far as I know, Stan doesn’t have a presenters list. As in the last couple of years, we discourage the use of PowerPoint. The last two years have been two compelling days, and I’ve no doubt this year will be no exception.

There is no charge to attend, as the Command & Staff College makes space available. So check you schedules and make plans to attend, and consider submitting an idea for a presentation.

[ by Charles Cameron — Pat Robertson, the Taliban, Bamiyan, Buddha statues, a Zen tale, Petraeus and Pastor Jones ]
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credits: (a) wikipedia under cc license, (b) dharmashop
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Here, by way of context, is a story posted on the Treeleaf Zendo site, and widely discussed in the Catholic blogosphere:

On a cold winter night, a big snow storm hit the city and the temple where Dan Xia served as a Monk got snowed in. Cut off from outside traffic, the coal delivery man could not get to the Zen Monastery. Soon it ran out of heating fuel after a few days and everybody was shivering in the cold. The monks could not even cook their meals.

Dan Xia began to remove the wooden Buddha Statues from the display and put them into the fireplace.

“What are you doing?” the monks were shocked to see that the holy Buddha Statues were being burnt inside the fire place. “You are burning our holy religious artifacts! You are insulting the Buddha!”

“Are these statues alive and do they have any Buddha nature?” asked Master Dan Xia.

“Of course not,” replied the monks. “They are made of wood. They cannot have Buddha Nature.”

“OK. Then they are just pieces of firewood and therefore can be used as heating fuel,” said Master Dan Xia. “Can you pass me another piece of firewood please? I need some warmth.”

The next day, the snow storm had gone and Dan Xia went into town and brought back some replacement Buddha Statues. After putting them on the displays, he began to kneel down and burn incense sticks to them.

“Are you worshiping firewood?” ask the monks who are confused for what he was doing.

“No. I am treating these statues as holy artifacts and am honouring the Buddha.” replied Dan Xia.

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In light of that, compare and contrast this recent video of Pat Robertson:

with this video (I don’t think you need to see all of it, just a taste perhaps?) titled The Beheading of the Buddha, posted on YouTube and “presented” by Al-Muhaajiroun:

and both of those with this third video, of Pastor Jones, discussing both his own burning of the Qur’an and GEN Petraeus‘ powerful and intelligent response…

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I think we should discuss these matters in an open and respectful way, and hope that this post will provide an appropriately respectful and open-minded framing for such a discussion.

As to my own view – I see a consideration that whatever opens us up to compassion and clarity is an icon and a grace, and another consideration that whatever closes us off from clarity and compassion is an idol or a poison…

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For those of a scholarly bent, here’s a downloadable fatwa on the Taliban’s destruction of the great Buddhas of Bamiyan — from which the screen-grab below is taken:

‘Cause Zen is dead tired.

Top Billing! Bruce Kesler –The Renewed American Revolution: The 9th Amendment 

….But constitutional scholars do agree on a basic point: the 9th Amendment was intended to be a guiding construct to interpretation of the rest of the Constitution, although specifics may be either lacking or in contention. After all, the 9th Amendment was considered necessary to be part of our Bill Of Rights without which the Constitution would not have been ratified.

Today, there are new factors requiring more attention to the 9th Amendment: the cumulative and continuing expansion of federal legislation into territories formerly outside its enumerated reserve, the almost unchecked latitude claimed by federal regulatory rules, and technologies’ facilitation of increased central controls and uniformity. The runaway employment of the federal purse and tax to compel obedience is, simply, out of control at the same time that it is evident that the economic security of the nation is imperiled by it.

Kudos to Andrew Exum for bringing rising star scholar-blogfriends Adam Elkus and Dan Trombly aboard Abu Muqawama. A classy gesture by Ex.  Wasting little time, Adam is already posting! (C’mon Dan, don’t fall behind):

The Political Economy of Operational Art  and Limiting Terminological Escalation

Infinity Journal– (LTC Ron Tira) Yes They Can: The US Can Prevent Iran from Acquiring the A-Bomb 

I am going to blog on this one in a day or two – a tightly argued and provocative piece.

Gunpowder&Lead – Gimme Shelter 

….Forty years later, Owen West, a Marine reserve major and Bing’s son, has published his own gripping saga of a modern day variant of the Combined Action Platoon – the Military Transition Team (MiTT) – fighting a similarly brutal counterinsurgency in Iraq. The Snake Eaters follows the 3^rd Battalion, 3^rd Brigade, 1^st Division (3/3-1) of the Iraqi Army and their American military advisors – known by their all-too-appropriate radio call sign, Outcast – during the dark days of 2005-07 as they attempt to defeat an insurgency and win the allegiance of Khalidiya, a village halfway between Fallujah and Ramadi. It’s a raw account of a motley crew of reservists called up for duty to fight a war for which they were ill prepared, ill equipped, and ill supported. Through force of bravery and grit, Outcast and their Iraqi brothers-in-arms overcome the enemy and, sometimes, their own chain-of-command.

SWJ Blog –Clausewitz and the Non-State Actor: A Contemporary Application of the Paradoxical Trinity to Countering Terrorism

S. Anthony Iannarino – Driving the Wedge Between Your Dream Client and Your Competitor 

Anthony deals with business situations, specifically, making sales. Why am I linking? Because he regularly  blogs about business in terms of strategy and tactics, lining up ends, ways and means.

That’s it.

[ by Charles Cameron — a meander from the symbolism of the Greek neo-Nazi party to the complex flow of the great Mississippi River ]
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As every red (or blue) blooded conspiracist knows, there’s a swastika-shaped building on the US Naval Amphibious Base Coronado near San Diego, CA.

That might of course mean the US Navy is under the spell of Hinduism or Buddhism, each of which makes use of the swastika for reasons that have nothing to do with the Nazis and more perhaps to do with simple geometric shapes and their near-universal use in rituals:

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I mention this, because symbolism is important, because the Greek right-wing party that did well in the recent elections has a flag that has been compared with the Nazi swastika, and because conspiracy theories, though informative markers of shifts in the collective unconscious in their own right, are also useful tools in the shame and blame game.

The Greek party concerned (Chryssi Avghi or Golden Dawn) points out that the central symbol of its flag (left) is taken from an ancient Greek “meander” (note similarities in the various common designs, middle) and not from the Nazi flag (right) – even though it’s curious that they choose the same black on white on red colors, isn’t it?

In my view the flag is suggestive, not conclusive: it’s their holocaust denial that proves the point.

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Anyway, it’s likely that none of that would have been interesting enough for me to post it, had my quirky researches not also pointed me to a far more interesting graphic.

Regular readers here will remember that I have an interest in graphical representations of complexity, and posted a piece titled Of railroad tracks and polyphonic thinking a while ago, in which I took the metaphor of trains of thought far too literally, and used railroad imagery to suggest a few ideas about complexity…

My researches into the Greek “meander” patterns were intriguing — but it was stumbling across this image from a post at the Ontario-based Onsite Review that decided me (and I think that’s the right usage, we are decided, we don’t decide) that I really did need to make this post.

Consider: it’s the mighty Mississippi, seen as it meanders across time:

The Onsite Review’s attribution is to Harold N. Fisk, Ancient Courses. Mississippi River Meander Belt, 1944. Their comment for this image reads:

The greek key pattern is sometimes called the meander, after the Maeander River, now called the Büyük Menderes River that flows from central Turkey to the Aegean. It winds through the Maeandrian plain in the manner of most prairie rivers, cutting into soft banks and creating oxbows.

We know a certain amount scientifically about river meanders, just as we know quite a bit about perturbations in the flow of liquids — but not enough, never quite enough to know where the river of time will take us next.

The map above illustrates the flows of a fairly simple complexity: take a good look at it. The thought-flows of a human are liable to be far more complex.