by Dave Maier

Belief, as Aristotle might say, is said in many ways. This would be okay, except it can lead to some annoying, and I think avoidable, muddles. Here I try to pick a way through the minefield.

Let's jump right in. When I say

(1) I believe/don't believe in Bigfoot.

I express my view on whether the “footprints” are fake, the famous film clip is a hoax, etc. For the negative form at least, we might say instead

(1a) I don't believe that there is such a creature as Bigfoot is supposed to be.

This is a statement of the form “I don't believe that P”, where P is some proposition with a truth value. I would say this is true for the positive form as well, but it sounds funny to say

(1b) I believe that there is such a creature as Bigfoot is supposed to be.

even if that is in fact what you believe. In any case I will mostly use the positive and negative forms arbitrarily, unless the difference really seems relevant.

How about this one?

(2) I believe/don't believe in God.

Taken in one way, this sounds like (1). Its negative form can be paraphrased in the same way:

(2a) I don't believe that there is such a being as God is supposed to be.

The context for this reading of (2) might be a conversation in which we were trying to decide whether the force of moral principles derives from divine command. If there exists no divine being to issue these commands, then whatever force morality has cannot come from divine command.

But (2), unlike (1), can also be used to mean

(2b) I am a religious believer; in particular, an adherent of a monotheistic religion such as Christianity.

Here I don't simply assert the existence of some entity, but also indicate the nature of my attitude toward it, which amounts in this case to, among other things, an existential commitment to be a certain type of person. In fact (if I am not particularly orthodox) I may not care very much if “God” is taken to refer to an entity at all, existent or not.

Read more »

Who made you? ,,,…………….,, God.
What else did God make? …… God made all things.
Why did God make you and all things?
………………. —Catholic Catechism for Small Children

Catechism

God made the world
as much an open sewer
as a blazing emerald
in space

Why did god
make the world
whirl, was it
grace?

And why me,
part dark
part bright

Why did god
concoct schism
emeralds and sewers
shade and light
television

Why did god so diddle
make two poles?
Ah! —no ends, no middle

Apprehending the corona
of an eclipse: grabbing the
ring of fire round a vacant gate

Here a veined leaf,
there scorched earth
upon an earthen plate

bitterness unbounded
unbounded love

weightlessness and weight
decision, indecision

Are we made to love and serve
or to send hate off on a roll
to suck the us from we?

But to suck the us from we
leaves just me
with no god above
.

by Jim Culleny
12/28/12

by James McGirk

Before we had any idea how dangerous it was to bolt human beings to exploding tubes and launch them into space, when inventions like the lightbulb and airplane and telephone were warping the planet at a ferocious pace and escaping the earth’s gravity well suddenly seemed possible —we imagined that exploring the Universe would be a lot like the famous expeditions we had seen before. Compare Jules Verne or sci-fi serials of the 1950s to Marco Polo’s Travels: worlds squirming with life and adventure, with bizarre wildernesses to traverse, silver cities that gleamed like sunlit crystal, galactic emperors and perfidious foes and glamorous green heartthrobs who wore togas and served slithering banquets and summoned lightning bolts from buttons on their belts.

It seemed natural our future would come to look like this too. Rocketships and sleek shapes seized our imaginations and seeped into our culture. The centerpiece of the 1939 World’s Fair was the Trylon and Perisphere, a 600-foot tall spire that stood beside an enormous sphere while klieg lights roamed the sky. Architects added ringed spines to radio towers, engineers built trains that looked like gleaming bullets; cars became swoopy and streamlined and eventually grew fins. Anything futuristic was swaddled with chrome and extraneous antennae. By day the movie theatres, airports, motels and diners lining the brand new superhighways looked like docking spacecraft, by night their neon blazed until it blotted out the stars.

Literature absorbed and was mutated by this great swell of imagination. The slender prose of Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald was replaced with huge tomes and colossal egos who tried to devour all of postwar America and regurgitate it into a single tome. This was the era of Norman Mailer, of Saul Bellow and William Burroughs and John Updike and Joseph Heller and Thomas Pynchon and Alan Ginsberg. Their work was as larded with glittering things—with extraneous information, details about objects and history and revolution—as the glorious motels and gleaming theatres had been a generation before.

Read more »

by Maniza Naqvi

It’s rotten! Completely, eaten through! Take this out immediately throw it away—When was the last time you bothered even to clean in here? Didn’t you see this? No—stop! First take your shoes off—they are filthy!—Beta—how many times have I told you not to come in here with your shoes on! Why can’t you do as I say? No! I don’t want to hear a word from you! Don’t answer back! Look at this! When was the last time you cleaned this closet? Before the rains I am sure of it! Now look at this outfit! Ruined, infested—eaten through—crawling with insects! Just lazy! Plain careless! Beta you aren’t a child—you are twelve years old, you should know your responsibilities. I told the sweeper not to throw it out until you had seen it for yourself! I’ve been waiting for you to get home so that I can show it to you! I wore this only once on my last trip abroad for my speech at the conference and everyone complimented me! Now it’s ruined! A waste! No, don’t talk! That is another unending problem with you! You always have an excuse! You never listen. Why are you so late today? Your classes finish at noon and it’s now gone past one! This is what I get in return for sending you to Koran school! It’s just around the corner and you’ve taken so long in walking back. I should have never decided to educate you and send you to school! I thought that getting an education would make you smarter and that this would help you in the future to get married to a decent man–but no—you remain as lazy as ever! I’m going to tell your parents that I can’t send you all the way back to your home for Eid if this is the thanks I get in return for keeping you in my house, giving you a job and educating you. I have been telling all my friends, that they should follow my example. If we don’t do this who will! But you make me ashamed. I will have to tell everyone that I made a mistake and that it is simply no good sending you to school! I mean, if nothing else, if you don’t care about anything else, our reputation, our trust, our generosity, then at least, for the sake of Allah, you must take into account that money doesn’t grow on trees, I’m not made of money. I am generous I know that and maybe that is my sin but please don’t skin me alive for being kind! I am sad to see how ungrateful you are —Beta—we try so hard to make it clear that you are part of the family. Now be quiet—Silence! Let me listen to the news, get out of the way so I can see the breaking news. Oh Allah! Save us, not again! Tsk! Tsk! What is to become of us! I must update my status on Facebook. What we have to endure on TV, the things we suffer on TV. When will the real moral and good leader appear on this blasted TV? I pray and I pray for it. Always these ugly scarey looking crazy mullahs! Where are the decent looking ones? There must be someone we can say we can have over for dinner–sit with at a party—socialize with? —-Hand me my IPAD—no not that that’s my IPhone—over there—bring it here! Get the remote, switch the channel to Al Jazeera—No that’s BBC—okay stop let me watch CNN! What are you sniffling about? Are you getting a cold? I can’t afford for you to fall sick! Move the heater closer to me. There is so much work to be done and I have thirty people coming to dinner tomorrow night, to celebrate Fahad Rizwan’s award for his documentary, you know this very well, you have spent all of yesterday afternoon taking out and washing all the crockery and polishing the cutlery! And tomorrow before you got to school we have to rearrange the dining room. Go change out of your school uniform at once, wash up and make sure the cook gives you lunch—fatafat—be quick–eat in five minutes and then lay out the lunch on the table for Zohra and Tahir–Go check with the guard at the gate–has the Pizza Hut delivery arrived–I ordered it an hour ago, it must have—the children will be getting in any moment now from school. Zohra had a mathematics and physics exam today—you know that! She is going to be so tired! And both Tahir and Zohra have to get to their tutors for their after school tuition for chemistry, math and English by three. Here take this—put it on the dining table–Make sure they take these vitamins! These children, my God, Alhamdolillah! Mashallah, mashallah!! Inshallah they will do well in their O levels. Mashallah they are all so hardworking! Jazakallah!! Now go! There’s no time to waste. Get going! I have to say my prayers. And oh yes, iron the outfit I’ve hung up in my dressing room! It’s brand new. Be careful, if you burn it I’ll skin you alive!! I’m going to wear it tonight to the fund raiser for schools in Swat. It’s the last charity ball of the season. I’m tired. So tired of all that I have to do!! We are going to be late tonight so make sure you stay awake till we get home. You can watch TV in the lounge downstairs. And here, take this, don’t put on that stinking outfit that you’ve worn all week. Take this, I’ve made a pile of clothes for you, these don’t fit Zohra anymore—now go! Go quickly and change. And say your prayers! And take these two dupattas as well—they are white so you can cut them up in half for making at least four hijab scarfs for your school uniform. I can’t have you wearing the same thing on your head every day—it is filthy and what would people say, after all you are associated with the respectability and honor of this family! And stop scratching your head—if you get lice—I’m warning you—I’ll have your hide! Now, quickly tell me: What did you learn today—have you finished memorizing the twenty first Siparah? No! Not now!—I don’t have time to listen right now! Oh for the sake of Allah!!! I’ll listen to you later when I have a moment’s peace. But recite it all the time to yourself today– I will test you later. And remember to mention my parents by name each time you finish reciting it. And after we leave tonight, make sure you mop the corridors on the second floor; Zohra spilled Pepsi there this morning. If I had time I’d ask you to massage my feet but I have no time at all right now, maybe when I get back tonight, the high heels I’m planning to wear I know will kill me. Now go get me a cup of tea.

Other Writings By Maniza Naqvi

by Carol Westbrook

The Golden Age of cancer research is here. The Human Genome program provided rapid sequencing tools and large databases to be mined, computers are larger and faster than ever, advances in equipment and robotics make high-throughput experiments possible, the info web permits quick literature searches…. and so on. Cancer patients are out there, digitally connected and eager to participate in clinical trials. An increasing amount of private and public monies are going into the research effort. We are poised to make great discoveries at a rapid pace, and bring them rapidly to the clinics.

So then, why are these anticipated advances in cancer treatment so slow in coming? What is wrong with cancer research today? Well, pretty much everything.

Cancer research has two sides to it: the basic science laboratory at the university, where ideas are generated and potential new treatments are designed, and the clinical research program, where these new drugs are tested on patients and developed into bona fide treatments which are then brought to the FDA and eventually the marketplace and clinic. There are inefficiencies and major barriers to productivity in both the basic and clinical arenas.

Laboratory research is terribly expensive, and relies primarily on government funding, though an increasing amount comes from private donations and foundations. Yet only a fraction of these research dollars are truly used for researc, as the university is permitted to keep a large share as “overhead” for its own use. Admittedly, these dollars support the teaching mission of the university and contribute to our country's education, but that's fewer dollars spent on cancer research.

There is intense competition for these research dollars, and the competition itself is costly, requiring large infrastructures merely to submit and review grants. One's success in academics relies on getting the most grant money, rather than on the productivity that results from the grant.

Read more »

by Kevin S. Baldwin

Amidst all the bad news about climate change and emerging diseases it is easy to overlook one of the most successful public health initiatives in recent memory. We are on the verge of exterminating an ancient scourge, the Guinea worm.

Dracunculus medinensis, (literally the little dragon from Medina), is a large nematode, which can reach up to 80cm in length. Humans acquire it by drinking unfiltered water that contains water fleas (copepods of the genus Cyclops) infected with larval nematodes. As the copepods are digested, the worm larvae burrow through the human gut and mature in the body cavity. Male worms die after fertilizing females and gravid females move to subcutaneous areas typically on the lower limb. After about a year of maturation, the female releases compounds that cause the skin to blister and the host goes to water to seek relief from the painful lesion, which then ruptures, releasin g the nematode larvae into the water where they are ingested by copepods to complete the life cycle.

This worm is the fiery serpent of the Old Testament. Its treatment in ancient times (and even today), slowly winding the worm around a stick to extract it from the skin lesion, gave rise to symbols for medicine we use today: The single snake on a club (the Asklepian) and the two snakes on a winged staff (the caduceus).

Read more »

by Leanne Ogasawara

Talking about sacred music the other day, the Rabbi quite unexpectedly said, the name Bethlehem means the “house of bread,” or “the house of lambs for sacrifice.” Just think about *that* for a minute.

Sacrifice. Whether understood in the traditional ritual do ut des terms familiar throughout much of Asia; or in the liturgical terms of the Eucharist; or even in the grisly terms of ancient Mediterranean polytheism–I wonder whether these acts haven't served to help to lead us away from the dangers of self-deification (even if it leads to other perils).

Binding the individual in communion with others, ancestors, and gods: this call to transcendence was certainly what was behind Guru Dreyfus and Kelly's book, All Shining Things. For as Heidegger famously said, “Only a god can save us.”

Life is more sterile now, anyway.

My own interest in this topic goes back to Carthage. Always and forever dreaming of time-travel, ancient Carthage was for a long-time my top choice destination. Hannibal-obsessed, I thought Carthage would be an interesting place to see. That is, until a friend re-minded me that the Phoenician custom of child sacrifice was practiced notoriously in Carthage. (I only have one son, after all!)

Stanford University professor and archaeologist extraordinaire Patrick Hunt is also pretty obsessed with Carthage. He is yet another great man in a long line of great men in search of Hannibal's route across the Alps.(That is John Hoyte crossing on elephant in the picture below). In Hunt's Carthage lectures he talks about the Carthiginian god Ba'al Hammon. This Baal was the same Baal known in the Bible as Ba‘al Zəbûb. Translated as “Lord of the Flies,” Hunt says this word is a visual image depicting the innumerable flies attracted to the massive amount of offerings of raw meat that were sacrificed to the statues of Ba'al in Can'an. It was all so long ago, and yet no matter what sources you read, whether Biblical or Roman historical– it seems conclusive that the Canaanite religions centered around sacrifice –sometimes human. And this was notoriously so at Carthage.

Read more »

by Joy Icayan

After a ten-hour land trip, the L300 parked in front of the Church. We had reached Legazpi, Albay, a province south of Manila just a year before ravaged by a deadly typhoon, which left hundreds dead. It was almost Christmas—Christmas lights hung from the trees around the plaza. In the center, a makeshift Nativity scene made of hay, and already disintegrating caught our eyes. We were sleepy, hungry, cooped in the boxlike vehicle for what seemed like forever. We had come in a convoy, a huge truck carrying our supplies—candies, junk food, foodstuffs, whatever we managed to get from donors back in Manila, and then the L300 carrying me, two clowns who offered their services free of charge and the boys from Tondo—our volunteers.

The boys were our lifeline: we were often tasked to bring relief goods to communities ravaged by typhoons, floods and with that frustrated, hungry people fucked over by weather changes as well as their own political fiascos. The staff was small: Paul who headed the program, a warehouse supervisor, an admin go-to person and me. It was those boys who packed and repacked, who helped organize the masses of people who came in droves, needing food, and water, and whatever assistance they could get. These kids (for I never saw them more than that, even if some of them were older than me) could hold a megaphone and get people lining up. They waded in floodwaters without a second thought.

And so they came to us to Bicol—Michael, ever trustworthy Michael who was twenty seven that time, the oldest and who was the closest to having it together, Alex, eighteen and who needed a way out of worrying over having his girlfriend pregnant, Ping, whom they all teased had some deficiency in the head and who managed to fall in love with every woman he talked to, Bryan, curly haired, ever fierce, who talked and cursed like a pirate, no, like a typical street kid from Tondo, who personified that place by heart.

Read more »

by Hannah Green

Kathryn Bigelow’s new film Zero Dark Thirty claims a “journalistic” approach- this claim has been rightfully skewered from a number of angles. The film, some say, inaccurately portrays torture as leading to actionable information vital to Bin Laden’s discovery. It also shows only one perspective- the CIA’s- on the hunt for Bin Laden and the War on Terror itself. For me, though, one of the most problematic aspects of this film that claims not to judge is its main character. Maya, a fresh CIA agent, righteously pursues her goal of killing Bin Laden against all odds. Her conviction to the unlikely exists only in film. It is Maya and her conviction that leave viewers only one correct reaction to the hunt for Bin Laden and all the methods it involves- support.

I am willing to believe that there was one CIA agent who had an especially large role in finding Bin Laden, and I even think it’s possible that she was particularly committed to a lead that other people were ready to drop. But no person exists like Maya, who is portrayed as single handedly making the decisions that lead to Bin Laden’s assassination. Real people have doubts unless they are insane, and real people have lives outside their jobs. In a conversation with a colleague Maya admits to having no boyfriend, maybe no friends at all. Where others have feelings of uncertainty, Maya hints that she is receiving divine guidance. In one scene, she suggests God without invoking religion- she believes that she was spared from an attack that killed her colleagues because she was meant to finish her job. Her ability to see important links that others let slip adds credence to this belief.

Read more »

By Liam Heneghan

[Spoiler alert: I discuss in some detail the plot outcome of The Great Gatsby and, for that matter, of Django Unchained]

I do not mean to suggest here that Quentin Tarantino set out in Django Unchained to revive in any sort of deliberate way the characters and themes of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. The differences between these two projects are more substantial than their commonalities. One, after all, is a movie and the other is a novel. More importantly, Tarantino is self-consciously a genre re-configuring story-teller, whereas Fitzgerald wanted in The Great Gatsby to write something new using the form of the traditional novel. The Great Gatsby is that most brazen of beasts The Great American Novel. That being said both, in fact, are distinctively American works. Moreover, in both works the action is driven by a hero’s bid to rescue a gal. Both play games with time, though quite different ones as I will elaborate below. In both, injustices are addressed and resolved with varying degrees of success. To my mind the commonalities of revision, rescue, and redress, though these are perhaps the stuff of all great works, are so distinctively rendered in Django Unchained that one can say that Tarantino has re-authored Gatsby.

***

Many years ago Bono identified, for the edification of an Irish audience, the differences between Irish and American sensibilities. He was appearing on Gay Byrne’s The Late Late Show — as close as one could get in those times to addressing the Irish nation. He was asked to account for U2’s growing infatuation with the United States. As best as I can remember it now Bono reported that when a man gets wealthy in the US and he builds that large mansion on a hill his neighbors look up and say: “Some day I am going to be that guy.” However, when a man builds that house on the hill in Ireland, his neighbors point up and say: “Some day I am going to get that bastard.” This was around the time that U2 were recreating themselves in anticipation of the release of the The Joshua Tree. One supposes they hoped for mansions and accolades. The interview occurred several years after I first read The Great Gatsby as a Dublin teenager. Despite my infatuation with American literature at the time Gatsby struck me as a dud. It was not so-much that a self-made man was uninteresting to me rather I did not even recognize this sort of hero. Gatsby was Bono’s bastard on the hill.

My second reading of the novel was shortly after I got married in the late 1980s. Not only was The Great Gatsby a favorite novel of my wife’s but she grew up in Queens, NY where we were living at the time and she brought me out to see those Long Island mansions. Naturally, a smitten young man rereads in such circumstances. This second, fairly attentive reading, was more successful. The setting of the novel, and the way in which this geography reinforced the class distinctions among the characters impressed me (my wife and I were living closer to Fitzgerald’s Valley of Ashes — Flushing Meadows, Queens — than to East Egg). As a nature-oriented fellow I was also pleased to notice the scattered but quite crucial references to nature throughout the novel.

Read more »

by Jalees Rehman

“This is the bond of water. We know the rites. A man’s flesh is his own; the water belongs to the tribe.” Frank Herbert – Dune

Land grabbing refers to the large-scale acquisition of comparatively inexpensive agricultural land in foreign countries by foreign governments or corporations. In most cases, the acquired land is located in under-developed countries in Africa, Asia or South America, while the grabbers are investment funds based in Europe, North America and the Middle East. The acquisition can take the form of an outright purchase or a long-term-lease, ranging from 25 to 99 years, that gives the grabbing entity extensive control over the acquired land. Proponents of such large-scale acquisitions have criticized the term “land grabbing’ because it carries the stigma of illegitimacy and conjures up images of colonialism or other forms of unethical land acquisitions that were so common in the not so distant past. They point out that land acquisitions by foreign investors are made in accordance with the local laws and that the investments could create jobs and development opportunities in impoverished countries. However, recent reports suggest that these land acquisitions are indeed “land grabs”. NGOs and not-for profit organizations such as GRAIN, TNI and Oxfam have documented the disastrous consequences of large-scale land acquisitions for the local communities. More often than not, the promised jobs are not created and families that were farming the land for generations are evicted from their ancestral land and lose their livelihood. The money provided to the government by the investors frequently disappears into the coffers of corrupt officials while the evicted farmers receive little or no compensation.

One aspect of land grabbing that has received comparatively little attention is the fact that land grabbing is invariably linked to water grabbing. When the newly acquired land is used for growing crops, it requires some combination of rainwater (referred to as “green water”) and irrigation from freshwater resources (referred to as “blue water”). The amount of required blue water depends on the rainfall in the grabbed land. For example, land that is grabbed in a country with heavy rainfalls, such as Indonesia, may require very little irrigation and tapping of its blue water resources. The link between land grabbing and water grabbing is very obvious in the case of Saudi Arabia, which used to be a major exporter of wheat in the 1990s, when there were few concerns about the country’s water resources. The kingdom provided water at minimal costs to its heavily subsidized farmers, thus resulting in a very inefficient usage of the water. Instead of the global average of using 1,000 tons of water per ton of wheat, Saudi farmers used 3,000 and 6,000 tons of water. Fred Pearce describes the depletion of the Saudi water resources in his book The Land Grabbers:

Saudis thought they had water to waste because, beneath the Arabian sands, lay one of the world’s largest underground reservoirs of water. In the late 1970s, when pumping started, the pores of the sandstone rocks contained around 400 million acre-feet of water, enough to fill Lake Erie. The water had percolated underground during the last ice age, when Arabia was wet. So it was not being replaced. It was fossil water— and like Saudi oil, once it is gone it will be gone for good. And that time is now coming. In recent years, the Saudis have been pumping up the underground reserves of water at a rate of 16 million acre-feet a year. Hydrologists estimate that only a fifth of the reserve remains, and it could be gone before the decade is out.

Saudi Arabia responded to this depletion of its water resources by deciding to gradually phase out all wheat production. Instead of growing wheat in Saudi Arabia, it would import wheat from African farmlands that were leased and operated by Saudi investors. This way, the kingdom could conserve its own water resources while using African water resources for the production of the wheat that would be consumed by Saudis.

Read more »

by Misha Lepetic

No subject has hitherto been so much neglected by the profession
to which the author has the honour to belong.
~Higgins, The House Painter, 1841

When we move into a new home or apartment, oftentimes the first thing we do (except for setting up the stereo) is to give most every surface a fresh coat of paint. This accomplishes several things. Obviously, there is the satisfaction of meting out a wholesale revisionism – the permanent occlusion, by the thinnest and yet most opaque and decisive means, of the previous inhabitants’ history or even presence. Paint fumes are redolent of fresh beginnings; their smell creates an almost Pavlovian reaction, celebrating a new start, or at least the thorough dismissal of what went before.

But in another sense, it is the first articulation of an implied contract between our new dwelling and ourselves. It is almost as if we are saying to all those empty rooms, “I will take care of you, and you will take care of me. As proof, here is my act of good will.” For those of us who like to paint before even moving in, it is our first, truly physical interaction with the space. We take its measure in a painstaking and intimate way, appreciating the true height of the ceilings, the idiosyncrasies (or shoddy workmanship) that has gone into correctly reconciling floors with walls. We wonder, too, when confronted with a vague and knobby detail, how many times it has been painted over by people, perhaps not dissimilar from ourselves. Inevitably, we leave spatters of paint that will haunt us for the remainder of our time there. But in the end, this act of tabula rasa is meant to broadcast our ownership of the place, in a way that is thorough, satisfying, and simultaneously public and private.

If these are the outcomes of a simple and oft-repeated ritual, then why not apply this kind of thinking to larger scales? It may seem to be a trivial suggestion, when one considers the fact that run-down urban neighborhoods are contending with extreme and persistent problems of economic degeneration, crime and social fragmentation. Budget cuts lead to curtailed services, and potholes, broken street lights and shuttered storefronts pile up in a seemingly irreversible, slow-motion car wreck. What could a few coats of fresh paint possibly do? Isn’t this just another elaborate form of denial, an almost literal act of whitewashing?

On the other hand, consider what would be a guiding principle of anyone attempting a revitalization of a beaten-down neighborhood: What is the smallest action that I can take that will have the greatest effect? There has been much discussion and praise of the movement towards DIY urbanism, or bootstrapping. I have written previously about strivers like Marcus Westbury in Newcastle, Australia, who are bringing nearly abandoned downtowns back to life using innovative financing schemes with virtually zero seed capital. And recently, interesting work has been done establishing the possibility that the simplest way to kick-start economic development in informal neighborhoods is to pave the streets. Conducted in the Mexican city of Acayucan, the study’s central finding noted that “while the price of paving the 28 streets in Acayucan came to roughly 11 million pesos, the land value increased roughly 12 million pesos — or 109 percent of the original investment.” While this is a great multiplier, paving streets is a complex business, costly to organize and prone to corruption. The idea here is to be even simpler than that – and what could be simpler than a few cans of paint? Yet, this story is as much about what paint can obscure, as what it can expose.

Read more »

after Iqbal

Stars, and beyond the stars other worlds
Love faces more trials

Not lifeless this speckled sky
Hundreds of caravans trail here

Earth’s scent and shade are not enough
There are many gardens, many nests

If one home is lost, why grieve
There are other vales wailing

You are a falcon
Fly

Gone the days I was alone in the crowd
Stars, my confidants

More poems and translations by Rafiq Kathwari here.

by Rishidev Chaudhuri

A recent study on the relationship between positive emotions, social connectedness and a measure of heart health has been getting a lot of attention in the popular media. ¹ It's an interesting addition to the emerging scientific literature on the uses and effects of meditative practices and on the mechanism of the placebo effect (which seems to be shorthand for a wide variety of fascinating and under-studied phenomena)². These are both compelling topics, and perhaps good subjects for a future blog post, but the study was also interesting because it's one of a growing minority of studies that look at compassion meditations rather than concentration or mindfulness meditations.

Compassion meditations, roughly, are a family of exercises where you try to practice compassion by cultivating love and good wishes towards other people³. One way of doing this is to picture a series of people and wish them well in turn (taking your time over each and, typically, moving from yourself to people you like, then to people you are indifferent to and then to people you dislike). Another practice is to look at people as you make your way in the world and, for each person, say to yourself, “Like me, this person wants to be happy and avoid suffering”. Yet another is, in the midst of encountering another person, to every so often ask yourself “What is preventing me from being present with this person?”

Over the last few years, there's been a gradual increase in the number of scientific studies looking at compassion meditations. This is promising, not because these practices should be entirely understood by their effects on physiology, nor because the scientific lens is necessarily the best way to see them, but because it points to greater visibility and more general interest.

It's easy to see why scientists would be reluctant to study these practices; despite their age, they can seem like fluffy New Age exhortations, akin to telling someone, “Now let's all love each other.” When I was first introduced to these techniques, about a decade ago, I remember thinking they were silly. Mindfulness meditation, where you attempt to become aware of your thoughts and feelings as they happen, seemed like an intriguing way of probing at the structure of subjective experience; it could be criticized methodologically for being unverifiable, ungeneralizable and so on, but it seemed to have intellectually sound goals. Similarly, concentration meditation, where you train one-pointed focus, seemed like a useful training regimen: everyone wishes they could concentrate better. But compassion meditations seemed like an exercise in unfounded benevolence for people who couldn't be bothered to think carefully about ethics.

Read more »

Actions always planned are never completed.
……………………… —Democritus

Carpenter's Shoes

Yesterday I told myself I’d finish on Sunday
the project I started two years ago
but I can never trust myself to carry through
when it comes to carpentry, so
I swore an oath this time and pricked my thumb
and smeared a blood spot on my forehead like a tilak,
faced the four cardinal directions in turn bowing,
crossed myself, right fingers first to blood,
then chest, left shoulder first then right
like the kid I once was, almost devout
but not quite convinced hammer and nails
were enough to coax the angels out

………………….
Jim Culleny
April 2009