I'm back in Finland. Yay! My tour page has been updated with all the latest info. Go here to see it all.This is a land where the doors have no knobs on the outside, where they have brushes beside the entry ways to wipe off your shoes, and where the sun never sets in the summer.
Actually last night it was still bright enough to read outside at midnight. It finally got dark an hour or two later. Then the sun comes back up at like three or something. This is fucking with my circadian rhythms big time. I usually wake up pretty early, but I woke at about nine this morning feeling like I'd been run over by a truck. Which may be because I went to Linnnamaki amusement park yesterday and rode lots of rollercoasters and whirly thingies.
I made it through Germany unscathed. But that was also a whirlwind. Three cities in three days. I managed to see a bit of Berlin by night thanks to my friend Vajra and my wonderful hosts at Dharma Buchladen who took me to see the gate and the old Soviet monuments and stuff. The rest of my German tour was sort of a blur of things seen from the autobahn on which I spent much time fahr'n.
By the way, small towns in Germany have been invaded by alien beings who set up gigantic machines then went back to their home planet. No one knows what these are for or why the aliens put them there. They may be weapons, or surveillance mechanisms of some sort. Perhaps they intend to use them to move the planet into a new orbit. It's unclear. Attempts by the Earth people to destroy them have all failed. Just so you know.I'm not sure if non-Facebook people can see this link about my upcoming talk in Helsinki or not, or if you can read this link of questions for the talk. But there it all is. Maybe some genius can re-post these in the comments for non-FB people or maybe everyone can read them anyhow.
The theme of the talk is Zen, punk and politics. I've never been too interested in politics. Zero Defex was considered a "political" band. But we weren't really political in terms of taking specific stands on specific issues. "Political" in our scene just meant that you tried to be more involved with general social issues and suchlike rather than merely thrashing out for the fun of it. Even the "fun" bands in our scene would get a little political, like Starvation Army with "Political Song" and The Offbeats with "Who the Fuck Do You Think You Are?" (about Zero Defex, I'm told).
I have no idea how I'll answer the Finnish political questions on these pages. My biggest concern is that I have no idea what the word epistemology means. So I hope they don't ask that question. I once looked it up and even the definition left me confused.
I also feel like Zen should not be politicized. I really hated it in the early 80s when all the televangelists used their position to push the Reagan agenda. These days I see a lot of Buddhist organizations using their positions to push left-wing politics, which I think is a similar abuse. Because I've said this some people imagine I must be a neo-Nazi. Because in certain circles the view seems to be that anyone who doesn't shout the praises of liberalism from the rooftops at every opportunity has to be a neo-Nazi. But I promise you I'm not. I just don't think Buddhism ought to get mixed up in such matters.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know the come-back. "What if the fascists come back in power??? What if your neighbors are being rounded up and sent to re-education camps???" I'll worry about that if it actually happens. For now, there's no good reason to mix the two.
It's like vegetarianism. I've been a vegetarian longer than I've been a Buddhist and I'm pretty committed to it. Yet I try very hard not to use my position as a sort-of-but-not-really-very famous Buddhist teacher-thing to push vegetarianism. This came up at one of the talks in Germany, where someone asked if it was necessary to stop eating meat to be a good Buddhist. I told him "no."
Which brings up another thing I did want to mention. Poland, the land of keilbasa and blood sausage and pork in every dish including salads, has its own chain of vegetarian fast food restaurants called Green Way. They're fantastic! Why are there none of these in the US?
In any case, I'm not gonna try to address these political questions here. At least not today. But I'll record the talk and maybe see what I can do with the recording if it comes out any good.
