A Taste of Buddhism

I have decided once again to look into Buddhism.

This will be the second time.  From the beginning I was intrigued by Buddhism.  It's message seemed close enough to my own beliefs that it warranted some study.  So as an elementary school graduation prize, I chose a The Buddhist Tradition in India, China and Japan which I started to read in my first year of high school.  Looking at my bookmark, I got through about 20% before giving up.

These were the days before the Amazon.com, before user reviews, and before the internet.  So my book choice was mostly random.  It took a scholarly approach to teaching about Buddhism, speaking dryly of the beliefs and going into great detail the differences between the lower vehicle and greater vehicle as if that was important.  It would be like teaching someone about Christianity by telling them the differences between Anglicans and Protestants.  The information may be interesting to historians but it's not important. 

Side note:  I do not know the difference betwen Anglicans and Protestants so I looked it up; the first link did not exactly clerify things.

This book turned me off my adventure.  I never dropped the desire to learn about Buddhism but I lost the drive.  Now as an adult I can look back at that experience and see that it was just the wrong book for me.  And I have the power to choose whatever book I like!  I chose What the Buddha Taught by Walpola Rahula.  The title seems to imply that it describes the teachings of the Buddha, which is what I'm looking for.  However, despite the existance of Amazon.com, user reviews, and the internet, I bought this book at a local Half Price Books after reading the name and the back cover, not even considering to use all the fancy technology that would have saved me in the first place.

Second side note:  It is interesting to note how important a single experience can be in shaping one's path; a single bad book had the power to derail for more than 16 years an investigation I cared about and deemed important.

In high school I did walk away with a vague idea of some aspects of Buddhism and as I grew to understand Christianity I did not find many great differences between Christianity and my vague ideas of Buddhism.

I'll let you know what I turn up.  Might the Buddha's gospel of peace and detachment be similar to my beliefs?  Might Christianity and Buddhism turn out to be similar?  Might this new book be as unhelpful as the first?  Tune in to find out.

Raspberry Jam Smackdown

Mark this day.  Someday someone will ask you where you were during The Great Raspberry Jam Eat-Off of 2012.  That day was today.

Our baseline, Greaves jam, is made in Niagara on the Lake and only available in Ontario, so we started looking for an alternative.  Greaves lists two ingredients - raspberries and sugar - so we want a jam that is similar.  No fruit juice concentrate, no corn syrup, and raspberries better be listed before sugar!  Finding such jam was remarkably difficult.  Everything in the US seems to be made from corn syrup.

Here are the top 5 contenders (and Schmucker's, which we bought out of desperation earlier):

Greaves	Sugar Raspberries (I assume it has pectin)
365	White grape juice concentrate Raspberries Cranberry concentrate Fruit pectin	We bought this because it's the Whole Foods brand, so it must be natural or free-range or something.
The Snohomish Nut House	Raspberries Sugar Pectin	Bonus: local from a farmer's market
Schmucker's	Fruit syrup Red Raspberries Lemon juice concentrate Fruit pectin Natural flavors	I bought this because it said "simply fruit" without reading the ingredients
Crofter's	Organic Raspberries Organice cane sugar Apple pectin Ascorbic acid (vitamine C) Citric acid	Bonus: organic!
Maury Island	Red Raspberries Sugar Fruit pectin	Bonus: local

From this lineup, only Greaves and the two local brands fit our requirements.  We decided to give the organic one a shot too so we can feel good about ourselves and be snobbish towards people who eat non-organic jam.

Eaten on their own, all jams were too sweet, some more than others.  My wife and I prefer it to be less than sickly sweet.

We judged the jams on a variety of factors, as one would judge fine wine:

• Aroma
• Taste
• Consistency
• Sweetness
• Raspberriness
• Existence of little bits (which make it look less processed)

And here's how it turned out.

Greaves	Light aroma A little sweet Good consistency Rich raspberry taste Has bits	Wife: Good Me: Good
365	Looks weird - dark purple Almost no smell Not sweet, per say No raspberry taste Too smooth No bits	Wife: "Ghar!" Me: Take it back; I won't eat it
The Snohomish Nut House	Slight raspberry smell Quite sweet (Wife: good sweetness) Very(!) red Me: Good consistency Wife: Too mushy Has bits	Wife: Goodish Me: Too sweet
Schmucker's	Stronger smell Fairly sweet Too Gelatinous	Wife: Too Gelatiny, not enough taste Me: Too Gelatinous
Crofter's	Looks fake - too consistent color Quite sweet Jelly-like.  Feels like a puree Firm raspberry taste Faint smell Bits have same color (weird)	Wife: Good, but a little too mushy Me: Ok.  A little sweet, too mushy,  good taste
Maury Island	Good color Good consistency Quite sweet Great(!) tart raspberry taste Sweet aftertaste is strong	Wife: Good, but a little too sweet Me: Good; great taste but too sweet

Wife's ranking: Greaves, Crofter's, Maury Island, Nut House, Schmucker's, 365
My ranking: Greaves / Maury Island (tie), Nut House, Crofter's, Schmucker's, 365

So the sad truth is that Greaves still wins - we're still stuck shipping jam from Ontario.  Also, but not sad, the top three were precisely the ones made from only raspberries, sugar, and pectin.

To celebrate, we also bought a rhubarb raspberry mix.  It wasn't very good.

And now we have six open jars of jam to finish.

Jury Nullification

In a recent conversation with coworkers about the law, I mentioned that, even if a defendant is guilty of a crime, the jurors need not convict if they think the law in unjust in that case.  My two coworkers, both American, completely disagreed.  It may work that way in Canada, but not here.  One had been on a jury and knew for a fact that the jury must judge based on the law; the trial judge informed him of this. 

This stance makes little sense since the purpose of the jury in America is to be judged by a panel of your peers.  Jurors have only one job, and that is to determine if someone should be punished for their crime.  To do this, the juror must:

1. Determine if the person has committed the crime
2. And if so, determine if the person should be punished for his actions.

If the prosecutor cannot convince twelve people that the defendant is guilty, then the case is not strong enough to send the defendant to prison.  If the twelve people are not convinced that the application of the law is just, the case is not strong enough to send the defendant to prison.  This is how laws are changed.  Judges only have the power to enforce the law, while the people have the power to change them.

Being diligent and preferring to win, I looked it up.

The practice is called jury nullification because jurors have the right to nullify a law that they see as unjust.  It is written in the constitution and John Adams, the second American president, had this to say:

"It is not only his right but his duty...to find the verdict according to his own best understanding, judgment, and conscience, though in direct opposition to the direction of the court."

It is of little surprise that judges are against jury nullification and prevent the defence from informing the jury of their power.  People in power like to stay in power.  I can see how someone might be annoyed that after years of dedication to the law a layman still has more power to decide a case.

What is surprising is that jury nullification is less acceptable in Canada.  The judge has the power to override a jury ruling if nullification was employed and the case can be appealed on grounds of nullification.

It is important for people to understand this right, since in America people have about a 33% chance of appearing on a jury in their lifetime.  More importantly, it may go some way to teaching people the difference between what is right and what is legal.  I find it alarming the number of times people use the law as a substitute for thought.  "What was wrong with his actions?"  "He broke the law!"  That's not an argument.  That's a cop-out.

Bad drivers, big cars

A friend of mine said that when she was younger she was a bad driver, so her mom bought her a big Jeep.  She got in a few accidents and each time the other cars were damaged but the Jeep was barely scratched.  Good thinking on the mom's part!

I find it odd that we live in a society where this is the norm.  In any other circumstance, if you heard "he's not competent so we put him in charge of the heavy machinery," would you be so quick to accept it?

This is not a statement about my friend (who's great and, of course, would accept a free car) or her mother (whom I don't know and, of course, would want to protect her daughter), but do other cultures enjoy this sense of entitlement?  Or do they work to make society better and safer?

Slightly more vegetables: three weeks later

I'm giving up on the diet.  After three weeks I have gained two pounds and, by the look of my stomach, none of it is muscle.  This is, by far, the fastest I have gained weight in my adult life.  It took a year at the gym to gain 2.5 pounds, so it is indeed significant.

The correlation is by no means scientific, however; my weight gain may be caused exercising less, for example, but I haven't been exercising much less.

I suspect it's the food.  I'm guessing that fruit simply has a lot of calories.  By entertaining a diet high in fruits and vegetables, I convinced myself that snacking on fruits throughout the day was healthy.  It may be a healthy alternative to snacking on chips and chocolate, but it's not necessarily a healthy alternative to snacking on nothing.

I'm still keeping up eating more fruits and vegetables than before, but gone are the days like the following:

Breakfast: Greek yogurt with stevia, a handful of berries, topped with some grainy cereal
Lunch: A small strip of steak, a dollop of pork, broccoli, mushrooms, asparagus, brussel sprouts, and a small cheese bread
Snack: A bowl of berries, lychee, grapes, a banana, or a peach; occasionally carrots
Dinner: Spinach, mushrooms, a handfuls of berries, raisins, nuts, a little cheese, and some meat

So long pseudo-healthy lifestyle.  Welcome back apparently-healthier pizza-and-saussage extravaganza!

Idolatry

Every once in a while while sitting in church I wonder what sermon I would give if it were my duty.  I always come back to the same thing - idol worship.  A few years ago I attended a sermon on idolatry; the sermon covered things like the worshiping other gods, statues, etc., and caring about money, cars, sports, fame, spouse/significant other, and sex more than God.

These are all bad things, sure, but I think it misses the big ticket item that many Christians need to understand.  I would add two items to the list: your kids, and, the big one, God.

Let's get the first one out of the way.  It's easy for people to sit back and say "I don't put money before everything else in my life" but suggest that their kids should not fill that role and they become hysterical.  While I say this from the perspective of someone without children, there are more important things than your kids.

Next, God.  How can God be an idol that detracts from my relationship with God, you may ask.  Here's how: many people don't worship God.  They worship "God."  The quotation marks are important, here indicating the word.  People create a mental image of God, combining, perhaps, passages from the Bible, sermons they've heard, and personal experience, then use this as a proxy for God, believing it to be Him.  They may worship a god who is like a father to them, or a god who sent his only son do die for them, or perhaps worship the son who died for them.  These mental images of God are just that.  These are ideas that are summarized in the few words of the Bible.

Often these images of God are extrapolations of passages from the Bible.  "God Hates Gays," says the picketers.  How do they know?  Because there are a few passages of the Bible that mention homosexuality in a negative light.  "You should love your neighbor, " says someone else.  Why do they believe this?  Because the Bible mentions loving your neighbor a few times.  They have created a model for God based on passages of the Bible, a model which they can understand and refer to instead of going back to the source.

In fact, I have heard many times Christians say that if you have a question you should go to the source - go to the Bible.  The Bible is not the source.  God is the source.  The Bible is a collection of pointers that people can use to prepare them to know God.  Jesus' messages were lessons meant to prepare people to know God.  There is a Buddhist saying that I like quite a bit.  It's summarized as "the finger that points to the moon is not the moon."  Here is one version of the story:

Wu Jincang, the nun, asked the Patriarch Huineng, “I have studied the Mahaparinirvana Sutra for many years, yet there are many areas I do not quite understand. Please enlighten me.” 

The patriarch responded, “I am illiterate. Please read out the Sutra to me and perhaps I will be able to explain its meaning.” 

The nun said, “You cannot even read the Sutra!  How are you able to understand the meaning?” 

“Truth has nothing to do with words. Truth can be likened to the bright moon in the sky. Words, in this case, can be likened to a finger. The finger can point to the moon’s location. However, the finger is not the moon. To look at the moon, it is necessary to gaze beyond the finger, right?”

Bringing it back to Christianity - don't confuse the Bible with the opinions of God.  A more kosher way of saying this: don't confuse knowing the Bible with knowing God.  In fact, this is a message that Jesus repeated many times.  The Pharisees knew the Bible inside and out but neither did they understand its meaning or God.  They used the Bible to create a model for God and then based their laws on the model rather than the real thing.

Are you worshiping an image of God instead of the real thing?  One way to find out is ask yourself what God is like; what Godly rules to you follow?  If you have to rely on your memory, on things you read in the Bible or learned in church, then you're hindering yourself.  God wants you (or at least me, but I assume you too) to love everyone, not because Jesus said so, but because that's the way He is.

This reminds me of the book of Genesis.  Adam and Eve ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and were forever separated from God.  The most common explanation I have heard is that the knowledge is a metaphor for sex.  This never sat well with me, as it doesn't fit with the tree's name, the separateness of human and animals (animals also have sex), or with the fall of man.  It seems more like an extrapolation from people who have demonized sex based on their own extrapolations of other Bible verses.  My pastor explained it in a sermon as the knowledge of right and wrong - that the Devil persuaded Adam and Eve to eat of the tree so that they would know what is good and evil and rely on themesleves instead of relying on God for this knowledge.  They would know what God knows and, by extension, be as great as God.

This ties back neatly to my point - by creating models of God in our mind, by relying on the words in the Bible or our own intellect, we trick ourselves into thinking that we know what God knows and we no longer rely on Him.

There are also more tangible idols closely related to Christianity.  The cross or crucifix are images of God that we can easily turn into an idol.  From Exodus 20 we see that God does not want any image of Himself created:

Do not make any gods to be alongside me; do not make for yourselves gods of silver or gods of gold...If you make an altar of stones for me, do not build it with dressed stones, for you will defile it if you use a tool on it.

And I find it interesting that God appeared to people as ideas that are difficult to visualize.  He appeared as fire, a pillar of smoke, and as a whisper.  These are things you cannot easily carve.  He made it impossible for us to create a picture of Him, perhaps because he knew that if we could picture him we would, and we would no longer know him but our picture instead.  From Deuteronomy 4:

You saw no form of any kind the day the Lord spoke to you at Horeb out of the fire. Therefore watch yourselves very carefully, so that you do not become corrupt and make for yourselves an idol, an image of any shape, whether formed like a man or a woman, or like any animal on earth or any bird that flies in the air, or like any creature that moves along the ground or any fish in the waters below. And when you look up to the sky and see the sun, the moon and the stars — all the heavenly array — do not be enticed into bowing down to them and worshiping things the Lord your God has apportioned to all the nations under heaven.

In the midst of writing this entry I was surprised.  My pastor gave a sermon on idolatry (not the surprising part, as we're in a series on the Ten Commandments).  He spoke of how we can create an image of God in our mind and that becomes an idol to us.  He also mentioned other potential idols that Christians may not see as such: the cross and crucifix, the church building, candles and incense, pictures of Jesus, a hymnal, your spouse and your kids.  I cannot claim that my pastor would agree with this post, as I take the idea slightly further than he, and in a more confrontational way, but it was refreshing to hear him bring up these issues.  Letters from Jesus' disciples to old churches, which make up much of the New Testament, often dealt with controversial or painful issues that the people needed to hear.

More from Exodus 20:

You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them.

Can do lists

You don't like to-do lists.  Same as me.  Good, you might like this idea.

'Can-do lists'

There it is.  I read The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin on the way to Australia.  I don't normally like books written by women, but the premise had promise.  Anyway, she said one thing like liked.  In order to decrease the weight of unfinished tasks in her life, she decided to not put off any task that takes less than a minute.  Seemed like good advice, so I thought I'd try it.  Only make it better.

I don't like to-do lists; they don't work for me.  I don't have any interest in letting an inanimate piece of paper tell me what to do.  And if the task is added by my wife, then it degenerates to a vicarious nag.  But can-do lists, now that's another story.  I don't have to do anything on them, but they'll probably make my life better.

Since I don't like lists, I made four: a list of 1-minute tasks, 5-minute, few-hours, and important tasks.  Now, if I have 5 minutes to spare and a desire to get something done, I have a place to look, but no rush.

In order that these remain positive in my mind, I have two rules:

1. It only contains tasks I want to accomplish - that I think will make my life better.

2. My wife cannot suggest a task for me to add - it's all me.

And there it is.  My smart phone has been essential in this endeavor.  As soon as I think of something interesting, I can add it to a list and not be concerned about forgetting.

Problem sovled.