monkey see, monkey do serves as a personal blog and creative outlet for
david evans.
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ooh, my cousin ana is staring in a feature film. here’s the trailer, looks like a pretty intense role for her. good job, ana! does anyone need a baby sitter?
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i have to report on respire, a coordinated project with stanford’s design group and their medical center to provide super low cost asthma spacer for inhalers for children in mexico.
this is such a clear example of human intelligence, applied to an important problem, creating real progress and alleviating suffering. with this redesign the cost of spacers drops from $50 to pennies. they’re easier to manufacture. and the result should be improved health care for 8 million young asthma sufferers in mexico and potentially everywhere. such goodness!!
will be out of communication for the next week and change. going to the desert again this year. going to build a glacier.
i did not know him well, but just the short time i spent with him was profound. he was one of the sweetest, most loving people i’ve ever known. he was inspiring to me, giving me a sense that meditation practice can have a deep and positive effect on a person. he was a living example of compassion and insight.
senior buddhist teacher simon luna died unexpectedly of heart failure yesterday. he was 62.
after my last retreat in vermont, i carpooled south to boston with him. what good fortune it was to spend three hours in the car. it felt like i was a small sapling and he was a cool rain. i talked with him about long, intensive retreats. he had completed a series of three year long retreats - 14 or more hours a day of meditation practice and contemplation - without days off. i’ve been considering doing the same. he encouraged me to proceed. if i were to obtain even a small measure of his kindness, his open heartedness and generosity from my meditation practice and studies i would consider it a tremendous success for my life.
the christian science monitor is reporting that the u.s. government broke terror suspect padilla by using three and a half years of isolation including two years where even his lawyer could not see him.
first, i’m outraged that we would treat anyone - even someone we feel is murderous - in that way. independent of how little respect we feel he might deserve, what’s important is that we respect our process of law. that all accused receive the same standard of decency and dignity. in doing so we honor our own decency and dignity. but i guess this case had too much public propaganda riding on it, that we could not extend that same standard to mr. padilla. this is again failed logic, that the desired result out weighs the method. and in doing so we diminish our own dignity and we should be embarrassed.
but then i have to say i’m struck that isolation is a kind of torture. i paid good money for the solitary, isolated meditation retreats that i’ve done. to see no one and yet have food arrive is quite a luxury when doing intensive meditation. i even met a gentleman last month who completed a four year long retreat in isolation and silence, longer that mr. padilla, and paid good money for it. so i find this quite odd that for some it would be a debilitating form of torture and for others it’s worth enough to pay for!
why wasn’t this reported more widely? peace activist malachi ritscher committed a very public suicide last year as a protest for the iraq war, by burning himself to death in front of rush hour traffic in chicago.
it could have been his writing, in one statement he lamented not murdering donald rumsfeld. yet he claims he went so far as to stalk mr. rumsfeld and pass him on the street gripping tightly to a knife in his pocket [1].
his statement bears the unfortunate ethical view that the outcome alone determines the ethical nature of an act and the method of action can be disregarded. or that in this case it overrides it. even if we accept mr. ritscher’s implied viewpoint for a moment that rumsfeld was the cause of great human suffering and atrocity or immorality, then that does not allow us to pursue justice with any action we see fit. the method of ensuring an ethical society is as important as the outcome of that action, therefore we have courts and due process.
for that reason i think mr. ritscher’s writing includes a kind of meglomania, that he alone must act out with violence in order to provide for the greater good. but that mirrors the very justification of the iraq war! therefore, it’s exactly the kind of psychosis that the peace movement is trying to overcome, yet is mirrored in his own protests. and so i find his point diminished and his self sacrifice similarly reduced. may he find greater peace in any future life.
friend adam recently sent me some quite good flash animations based on the spoken poetry of alan watts.
i found alan watts books as a teenager and loved them thoroughly. my parents were concerned but basically let me read whatever i wanted. this even after an incident at my mom’s lab, where a colleague remarked about my new interest in philosophy, “that’s great as long as he stays clear of alan watts”.
i think he presents the buddhist view, especially in these short flash animation, in a particularly approachable way.
also of interest, at least the first three animations are done by the makers of south park, trey and matt. they all might be. apparently trey parker’s father was a huge fan of alan watts.