Skimming the headlines, I see this: « Finding order in the chaos of currents. »
I wonder if it’s referring to something like Bernie Glassman’s Order of Disorder. Somehow I don’t think so.
Quite a project, this chaos vs. order in the flow of things as they are. Like the way of the bodhisattva: What are we supposed to be doing, saving all sentient beings when there’s no one to be saved, and no one to save them? And everyone is already saved!
The « answer, » of course, is the interconnected nature of the « self. » Are the connections « orderly, » and the ungraspable nature « chaotic »? Or vice-versa? Or none of the above? Or both?
As the American Zen teacher Norman Fischer says: « We are not so much persons as ever-shifting points of meeting. »
Points of meeting
About the Author: zenscribe
Enseignante Zen et poète, Sensei Amy “Tu es cela” Hollowell est née et a grandi à Minneapolis, aux Etats-Unis. Arrivée en France en 1981 pour étudier la littérature et l’histoire, elle y est restée, s’installant à Paris, où elle élève ses deux enfants et gagne sa vie en tant que journaliste.
The Zen teacher and poet Amy “Tu es cela” Hollowell Sensei was born and raised in Minneapolis, but came to France in 1981 to study literature and history and has lived in Paris ever since, raising her two children and making a living as a journalist.
David,
Because we all are human, this story is speaking to us all, in one way or another — even just because it seems to be speaking to us all!
All I can really say is that for every action (whether by body, mouth or thought) there is a consequence. This reality is so vast and yet so intimate that we can not "see" it. We are it. In Buddhist jargon this is called karma. There’s no escaping it.
It’s true for Roman Polanski, the woman/girl in the case, the U.S. legal officials, the Swiss police, the French public surveyed, the French "crypto-intelligentsia" they disdain, the reporters, the readers and viewers of their reports, Hollywood "people," you, me, my cat, etc. etc. etc.
We don’t know what those consequences are, however, and we can’t make them happen or not happen. They, like all things, are beyond our control.
All the certainties on all/both sides of this case are, alas, illusion.
Amy,
I too was skimming the headlines and read an interesting article about how France is reacting to the arrest of Roman Polanski. An excerpt from the article reads "The mood was even more hostile in blogs and e-mails to newspapers and news magazines. Of the 30,000 participants in an online poll by the French daily Le Figaro, more than 70 percent said Mr. Polanski, 76, should face justice. And in the magazine Le Point, more than 400 letter writers were almost universal in their disdain for Mr. Polanski. That contempt was not only directed at Mr. Polanski, but at the French class of celebrities — nicknamed Les People — who are part of Mr. Polanski’s rarified Parisian world. Letter writers to Le Point scorned Les People as the “crypto-intelligentsia of our country” who deliver “eloquent phrases that defy common sense.”
How do you feel about it?
David