what if there were more women in politics?

Would governments take a gentler approach to resolving conflict … caring for this planet … tackling diseases, hunger, housing, education, and economic imbalance … planning for the future … including so-called minorities …? Just look at the figures below, the percentage of elected women in country known to be at war or to manufacture weapons big time.

What do you think? 

               

Three of the 17 women who hold cabinet posts in European governments (left to right): Nyamko Sabuni (39), minister of intregration, first black member of Swedish parlament, married with twins in elementary school; Maud Olofsson, Swedish minister of economics; Rachida Dati, French minister of justice. Germany’s chancellor Angela Merkel has five female ministers; the cabinets of Finland and Spain comprise more women than men. source: SPIEGEL

Percentage of women among elected to Lower Houses (parliaments, assemblies) worldwide: Data from 188 countries compiled by the Inter-Parliamentary Union as of 29 February 2008. My excerpts. 

Top 15 

1.       Rwanda  48%

2.       Sweden  47

3.       Cuba  43.2

4.       Finland  41.50

5.       Argentina  40

6.       Netherlands  39.3

7.       Denmark  38

8.       Costa Rica  36.8

9.       Spain  36.6

10.    Norway  36.1

11.    Belgium 35.3

12.    Mozambique  34.8

13.    Iceland 33.3

14.    New Zealand  33.1

15.    South Africa  33.3

 

Assorted major players 

17.   Germany  31.6

29.   Australia 26

30.   Canada  21.3

52.   China  20.6

59.   United Kingdom  19.5

63.   France  18.3

70.   United States  16.8

82.   Israel  14.2

83.   Russian Federation  14

 

Percentage of women members of Lower and Upper Houses combined (such as Parliament-Senate/House of Lords, Bundestag-Bundesrat, House of Representatives-Senate): 17.8%.

 

Current elected heads of state (such as prime minister, premier, chancellor) 

Michelle Bachelet (Chile),

Helen Clark (New Zealand),

Luisa Diogo (Mozambique),

Zinaida Greceanîi (Moldova),

Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf (Liberia),

Cristina Fernández de Kirchner (Argentina),

Angela Merkel (Germany),

Yulia Tymoshenko (Ukraine).

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what is important?

Jon Kabat-Zinn is the driving force behind the “mindfulness-based stress reduction” (MBSR) program which originated at the University of Massachusetts Medical School and has spread world-wide. His popular books include Full catastrophe living: using the wisdom of your body and mind to face stress, pain and illness (Delta, 1991), and Wherever you go there you are: mindfulness meditation in everyday life (Hyperion, 1994). He writes:

“When you come right down to it, what else is there to do? If we are not grounded in our being, if we are not grounded in wakefulness, are we not actually missing out on the gift of our very livesand the opportunity to be of any real benefit to others?

It does help if I remind myself to ask my heart from time to time what is most imortant right now, in this moment, and listen very carefully for the response.

As Thoreau put it at the end of Walden: ‘Only that day dawns to which we are awake’.”

Take a moment now (or promise yourself to do it within the next few hours) to sit still somewhere, without interruptions or distractions, to sit quietly. Lower your eyes, exhale. Meet your body where it is: notice where your feet touch the ground, your body the chair, your skin your clothes and the air. Pay attention to your breath by placing a hand above your belly-button: inhale, exhale–rising and falling. Be with yourself. Ask your heart: What is important right now, heart? Listen. Listen!

bag of bones in the forest

I’m a part-time student at a small art school in nearby Victoria (90 minutes by ferry, 35 by car). In a photography course (black and white with lots of darkroom time), we were given the assignment of a tableau. That’s a term for a staged scene, a motionless performance, where the resulting photo is meant to intrigue, perplex, and engage the viewer in closer examination and interpretation. 

I used the assignment to continue the exploration of seeing my own body as a container, not as “me” or my/self. (see Sunday’s post on this). Acting as prop, photographer, and darkroom technician, I captures images of a naked body lying in a winter forest setting. On close inspection, a pair of rubber boots, a rain jacket, and a spade can also be seen. Please note that the illustration here is from preliminary shots taken with a digital colour camera. The photo that eventually appeared in our end-of-term show was in black and white, using 35-mm camera and 400 ASA film.  

grace inside

My inside, listen to me, the great spirit,
the Teacher, is near,
wake up, wake up!

Run to his feet–
he is standing close to your head right now.

You have slept for millions and millions of years.
Why not wake up this morning?

Poem by Kabir, fifteenth-century, son of a Moslem weaver in Benares, influenced by Sufi poets and Hindu ideas. source: The Kabir book. Version by Robert Bly. (1971). Boston: Beacon Press, p.13.

naked and vulnerable

Henri J.M. Nouwen (1932-1996) was a Dutch Roman Catholic priest and author of 30 books. After an academic career at Notre Dame, Yale, and Harvard divinity schools and time as a missionary in poverty-torn areas of Latin America, he lived his last ten years with developmentally disabled people at L’Arche Daybreak Community in Toronto.

Following the breakdown of a personal relationship, he suddenly lost his self-esteem, his energy to live and work, his sense of being loved, even his hope in God. Here’s an excerpt from a journal he kept during that prolonged crisis. Each time I read his words, I feel geborgen, a German word meaning ‘ understood, protected, cared-for.’ As this dear man writes to himself, he speaks to us all. 

“You have an idea of what the new country looks like. Still, you are very much at home, although not truly at peace, in the old country. You know the ways pf the old country, its joys and pains, its happy and sad moments. You have spent most of your days there.  …

“Now you have come to realise that you must leave it and enter the new country, where your Beloved dwells. You know what helped and guided you in the old country no longer works, but what else do you have to go by? You are being asked to trust that you will find what you need in the new country. …

“Trust is so hard, since you have nothing to fall back on. Still, trust is what is essential. The new country is where you are called to go, and the only way to go there is naked and vulnerable.”

source: Nouwen, H.J.M. (1996/1997). The inner voice of love: a journey through anguish to freedom. London: Darton, Longman, and Todd, p.18.

Καλό Πάσχα

Last week was Megali Evdomada, Great or Easter Week for Greek Orthodox people. This year Good Friday fell on April 25 and Easter Sunday on the 27th. (Orthodox Christians everywhere are celebrating at this time.)

I’ve just now returned from offering meditation instructions at a yoga retreat.  As our hosts have strong Greek connections it was natural that they’d invite us to an Easter food tradition. Gathered around the breakfast table, we were each given a dyed-shiny-red boiled egg. Eggs are symbolic of fertility and new life.

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They showed us to hold the egg with one hand and tap it against the end of omeone else’s egg, trying to crack theirs but not ours. The last one standing with an uncracked egg can now count on good luck in the coming year. We all tried to say “Christos Anesti“ (Christ has risen) to which the poper reply is “Alithos Anesti” (truly, He is risen) and exchanged expressions of well-wishing amidst the tapping and cracking.

bag of bones department

During sitting meditation yesterday I had a sense, briefly, of not being my body. I felt as if I was witnessing a mechanism (for lack of better word) that gurgled, pumped, creaked, and functioned all on its own. For that moment it wasn’t me or mine at all! My teachers often speak of us not being our bodies, that it’s a construct of the ego, the small-self, which claims to control and know everything. They encourage—such is my limited understanding of all this—to not separate from the body, but to see it for what it is. They urge us to become aware of the body as body in everyday activities.

As a key Buddhist texts points out, ”When the practitioner walks, he knows he is walking. When he stands, he knows he is standing. When he sits, he knows he is sitting. When he lies down, he knows he is lying down. When he wakes up, he knows he is waking up. Awake or asleep, he knows he is awake or asleep. This is how the practitioner is aware of body as body, both inside the body and outside the body, and establishes mindfulness in the body with understanding, insight, clarity, and realization. This is called being aware of body as body.”

Jean-Paul Sartre viewed the human body as “an assembly of sense organs,“ as “flesh.” Reminds me of sitting in the medical clinic, watching the nurse placing a stethoscope against my skin, listening to organs, muscles, blood vessels, etc.  And of times when something is not working properly and I might say that “I have a bad back,” “my teeth hurt,” or “my skin broke out in a rash.” That sort of language suggests that we’re reporting from a separate place, looking at something. Kay Toombs: “My body, like the world in which I live, has its own nature, structure, and biological conditions …”.

I’m not arguing a separation of body and mind (and heart and soul, for that matter). I find myself looking for words to describe what seems a Self (capital S) that is larger than the small-self of this skin and bones object I call “my body.” By experimenting with this “larger” view I begin to see my ageing body as just that, a “bag of bones” (as the ancient teachers called it). In short, I inhabit a body, but I am not my body.

source: S. Kay Toombs. (1992). The meaning of illness. Springer, p.60; Nian Chu Jing. The Sutra on the Four Grounds of Mindfulness at www.purifymind.com/FourGroundsSutra.htm.

post from italy (now with a follow-up)

Photo and caption posted by rutH, a Californian who’s been living in Rome “longer that I’d like to admit.”

 

“a few weeks ago zen master Thich Nhat Hanh came to rome to lead a walking-silent meditation through the centre of rome. as we walked on the cobblestones in silence, many uninformed romans were screaming, complaining and honking their horns. after working through my initial irritation with italians (!), i began to feel that our energy as a group, walking silently, was so DENSE and so lovely that it was actually stronger than the chaos happening around us. 

 

it brought my concentration to that peacefulness, that calm, and as we approached our final destination, i suddenly realized that i was fully in the moment and actually meditating as i walked! it was very powerful. i took a picture of this little simple and amazing man and wanted to share it with you.”

 

 

p.s. “these noisy italians can be very annoying at times, trust me, but here i am after 20 years still amazed every time i walk out the door and glance over my shoulder to see a beautiful bernini statue or that lovely reddish light shining off a building or an old man watching a young gorgeous girl glide across the piazza … it has been a very hospitable place to live. thank YOU for your generosity and sharing your inner world with the outer world!” namaste. rutH

stay where you are

 

You need not leave your room.

Remain seated at your table and listen.

You need not even listen; simply wait.

You need not even wait; just be quiet, still, and solitary.

The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked.

It has no choice; it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.

 

–Franz Kafka (1883-1924), German-language fiction writer

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doctrine of the ‘middle way’

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One of the appealing features of Buddhist teaching is its approach to problem-solving and decision-making (and thus ethical living). It advocates a middle way … not compromise or least resistance, but making every effort to acknowledge and honour opposite and divergent views. As my teachers would say, look for ways to make the container big enough to accommodate as many views as possible. I take the Dalai Lama‘s stance vis-à-vis China as a bright example of such a non-confrontational approach.

 
Modern-day philosopher Ken Wilber puts it this way:

“Everybody is right. More specifically, everybody—including me—has some important pieces of the truth, and all of those pieces need to be honored, cherished, and included in a more gracious, spacious, and compassionate embrace ….”

source: Wilber, K. (2000). A theory of everything: an integral vision of business, politics, science and spirituality. Boston: Shambala, p.140.

ray of hope: china willing to talk

Excerpt from this morning’s CBC News:

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The Chinese government is preparing to meet with a private representative of the Dalai Lama, China’s Xinhua News Agency reported on Friday. The meeting will happen “in the coming days” and is the result of “requests repeatedly made by the Dalai side for resuming talks,” an official told the news agency. Conditions for the talks must include “credible moves” by supporters of the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader to abandon violence and protests, the official said. 

 

But the prime minister of the India-based Tibetan government-in-exile said he had not received any official Chinese confirmation of the Xinhua report and sounded a cautious note on any potential talks. “The Dalai Lama is always open to have a dialogue but the present circumstances in Tibet do not appear to be an appropriate platform for a meaningful dialogue,” Samdhong Rimpoche told the Associated Press at the government-in-exile’s headquarters in the town of Dharmsala.

 

The announcement from Beijing also called for an end to “activities aimed at splitting China,” and urged Dalai Lama supporters to “stop plotting and inciting violence and stop disrupting and sabotaging the Beijing Olympic Games.” Beijing has consistently blamed the Dalai Lama for orchestrating a violent protest in the middle of March in the Tibetan capital of Lhasa.

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1.66 million signatures … still climbing

Update: by Monday April 28, 1,663,600 people had signed the petition. Can you ask one more friend to sign?

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Petition to Chinese President Hu Jintao: As citizens around the world, we call on you to show restraint and respect for human rights in your response to the protests in Tibet, and to address the concerns of all Tibetans by opening meaningful dialogue with the Dalai Lama. Only dialogue and reform will bring lasting stability. China’s brightest future, and its most positive relationship with the world, lies in harmonious development, dialogue and respect.

photographic memory

This 1954 photo came in the mail today … a long-forgotten childhood memory. There’s my brother Kurt in front (age 4), with me (age 11) “driving” the 125 ccm Lambretta belonging to our here-today-gone-tomorrow dad. What surprises me is how delighted I am to see these two boys, Lederhosen and all. They look happier than my memories of a dysfunctional and abusive family milieu would have it. Why might that be?

Aldous Huxley explains that ”experience is not what happens to you, it’s what you do with what happens to you.” And the cognitive psychologist Roger Schank: ”We tell stories to describe ourselves not only so others can understand who we are but also so we can understand ourselves. Telling our stories allows us to compile our personal mythology, and the collection of stories we have compiled is to some extent who we are.”

sources: Schank, R.C. (1990). Tell me a story: a new look at real and artificial memory. New York: Scribner’s, p.44; see also: Randall, W.L. (1995). The stories we are: an essay on self-creation. University of Toronto Press; my EdD dissertation Vulnerable to possibilities: a journey of self-knowing through personal narrative. (2001, University of British Columbia) is available here in PDF format.

a respite

A guest arrived on the morning ferry and will be at my house for a brief time-out, a respite. Caring for an ailing mother at home, she’s here for a day and a half of silence and rest. “I’m not used to have someone cook for me,” she said when I asked about her food preferences. My job today and tomorrow will be to provide a restful environment, to make tea, to cook and share meals, to sit in meditation with her. Her sole task is to “be” and do (or not do) whatever her body needs: reading, working in the garden. going for walks, sleeping …

For details on my respite offer, click on the tab at the top of this screen.

you be the judge

Excerpted from an article in THE INDEPENDENT (U.K):

 

An American expert in torture techniques has denounced his government for allowing “waterboarding” to be practiced against terror suspects. Malcolm Nance, who trained hundreds of US service personnal to resist interrogation by putting them through “waterboarding” exercises, demanded an immediate end to the practice. President G.W. Bush recently vetoed a Bill that would have outlawed such methods of “enhanced interrogation,” refusing to describe it as torture.

 

Mr Nance said: “You have a purpose-built table … so that people can be strapped and unstrapped quickly. The head is elevated so the water goes down the esophagus. It is poured carefully over the nose – you keep a constant pour. You are drowning in water but you don’t have the ability to hold your breath. You feel the water going in, you understand that water is filling your lungs.”

 

Amnesty International is leading the campaign to persuade the US to abandon the practice – a form of torture used as long ago as the Spanish Inquisition – and is stepping up its efforts with the release of a disturbing advertisement. It will be shown in 50 cinemas in the UK next month. For further information and/or to view, go to the article in THE INDEPENDENT or click for the Amnesty International site. Caution: very graphic!

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