zenpundit.com

[ by Charles Cameron — lend me 18 minutes, thank me later! ]
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I had no idea: a raga from the superb Kaushiki Chakrabarty. I have no idea why it took me seventy-plus years to know I shared the earth with such a voice — and such a beauty! — there is hope for us yet:

With profound thanks to 3 Quarks Daily for the pointer.

[ by Charles Cameron — a definite case of Mini-Me in my opinion ]
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Jump directly to the 9.25 mark to see the 20 or so seconds of Daily Show video DoubleQuote, in which the artifice of Scaramucci eerily imitates the life of Trump:

Or see the whole thing –your choice. Me, I’m just amazed at the gestural similarities — and on this occasion I can say, as the movie detective so often says: I don’t believe in coincidence.

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Hilarious, if unsettling.

[ by Charles Cameron — Senators Hirono, McCain — and death shall have no dominion ]
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You have probably seen Sen. John McCain‘s speech, so I’ll begin with Sen. Mazie Hirono. She too, like McCain, has a severe cancer diagnosis, she too flew in to vote, she too made an impassoned speech on thr Senate floor. Here’s a clip from her speech:

Here, from the other wise of the aisle, with similar dignity and depth, is McCain:

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And death shall have no dominion

And death shall have no dominion.
Dead man naked they shall be one
With the man in the wind and the west moon;
When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone,
They shall have stars at elbow and foot;
Though they go mad they shall be sane,
Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;
Though lovers be lost love shall not;
And death shall have no dominion.

And death shall have no dominion.
Under the windings of the sea
They lying long shall not die windily;
Twisting on racks when sinews give way,
Strapped to a wheel, yet they shall not break;
Faith in their hands shall snap in two,
And the unicorn evils run them through;
Split all ends up they shan’t crack;
And death shall have no dominion.

And death shall have no dominion.
No more may gulls cry at their ears
Or waves break loud on the seashores;
Where blew a flower may a flower no more
Lift its head to the blows of the rain;
Though they be mad and dead as nails,
Heads of the characters hammer through daisies;
Break in the sun till the sun breaks down,
And death shall have no dominion.

— Dylan Thomas

[ by Charles Cameron — or fly swatting, fly watching, in white house and zendo ]
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Trump once summoned Priebus to kill a fly in Oval Office: report

A source told The Washington Post that once during an Oval Office meeting, a fly began buzzing around Trump’s head, distracting him. Trump eventually summoned Priebus and told him to kill the fly. As a senior White House staffer, the chief of staff would not ordinarily be tasked with such matters.

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I was going to write something about the fly being the buzzing, distracting thought that disturbs the quiet of meditation — but hey, I’m not a zen master, I just play one, as the saying goes..

Shunryu Suzuki, om the other hand, just might be the real thing, and in his book Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, on pp 68-69 he leaves the question of the fly open:

[ by Charles Cameron — & compare the symmetry of projection ]
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White House (new) communications director on symmetrical loyalty. At about the 4.25 mark:

Maitlis v Mooch – in which he likens scrapping Obamacare to the abolition of slavery. Full interview. https://t.co/copnDSH4wo

— Rupert Myers (@RupertMyers) July 27, 2017

Scaramucci on Trump:

He’s a remarkably loyal guy. The loyalty, though, has to be symmetrical. And good loyalty is always symmetrical, you don’t want asymmetrical loyalty.

File that under “on the importance of form”.

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Symmetry as projection:

Matching Scaramucci‘s symmetry of loyalty is James Fallows‘ symmetry of projection. From an ongoing discussion with readers at The Atlantic:

I argue that “projection,” in the psychological sense, is the default explanation for anything Donald Trump says or does.

Projection means deflecting any criticism (or half-conscious awareness) of flaws in yourself by accusing someone else of exactly those flaws. Is Trump’s most immediately obvious trait his narcissistic and completely ungoverned temperament? (Answer: yes.) By the logic of projection, it thus makes perfect sense that he would brag that he has “the greatest temperament” and judgment, and criticize the always-under-control Hillary Clinton for hers.

One of Fallows’ follwers notes the connection between projection as parallelism and projection as self-reference (ie, our old frined the ouroboros):

In simple terms, one might say his [Trump’s] mind is empty of any thoughts that are not self-referential. And so self-projection is simply a consequence of this vacuity.

There’s more in Peter Beinart‘s article, The Projection President, subtitled Months into his tenure, Trump still responds to controversies by lobbing the same charges at his opponents — and see also Katy Waldman‘s piece, We the Victims, subtitled Trump’s Paris accord speech projected his own psychological issues all over the American people..