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(Zoe Alexander)

Date: Weds, 15 February 1999 13:55:21

Subject: Re: Ted Koppel

From: Zo <zoalex@aol.com>

To: eringh@uw.edu

Mime-version: 1.0

X-priority: 3

Status:

>My dear sister Alexander,

>There are a few items I would like to bring to your attention. It was > a lot of fun camping with you by the way. >

> 1. You need to think more about the image you are projecting. On Ted Koppel last night-- first let >me say you looked great, you looked wonderful, even with the >baseball cap-- but a lot of people are going to come away >thinking you are just posing. I must admit I had to wonder >myself. I know it is not your intention merely to pose, and >indeed I am sure you've got something simple and definite people >could use. But I'm not sure your points >coming through. How on earth can you be an innocent asexual yet >untamed Princess Leia raver-girl carrying a see-through purse one >minute and then all of a sudden in a silent retreat for 3 weeks >just sitting and walking, not even gazing around much, exploring >the so-called jhanas, etc? Then just as quick doing Lindy's Hop >in black high heels, throwing your ass around `neath a short black >dress?

> 2. People have no idea how to deal with your denunciations of >marriage: tone it down so they see how it connects with their own >lives. You just make them feel dizzy.

> 3. People know you as an artist yet you won't even talk about >that. Instead you always want to bring up your M.A. thesis as if >it woke up Derek up from his sci-fi slumber.

> 4. I realize that asshole ding-dong Liddy fraud in Nevada stole your >ideas, but you are going to have to just let that go. Its become >this he said, she said thing. He's gonna be on tv a lot more than >you, due to he won the primary.

> 6. And Lord only knows what people make of the things you say >about meditation. > Your jive-talk about renunciation and freedom makes you sound like some >urban Lone Ranger Buckaroo Bonzai Wonder-Woman who never gets the >blues! C'mon urban cowgirl cut the hype!!!!!!!!!!

> 7. You are acting as if the free world revolves around you and >your little projects. > The world of ideas = your little game?? >Auditioning to be the pin up PosterGirl for New >Formalism?-- obsessed with the poet's life, as Alice Fulton says, >this poetry expresses a “relentless concern with self” working to >exclude issues about “conscience, responsibility, power, cruelty, >or form” (The Nation 6-14-99). People are listening to what >you say, so you need to take this into account. I think maybe you >better get an agent, fast. Actually I got the impression, from >what they said, that Courtney Love and Madonna really wanted to >help you. You shouldn't be so dismissive.

> The prosecution rests. > Still on for dinner at 7? Love always, E.

>p.s. Did you hear about Ian Frazier's new book, On the Rez and this story> he tells about SuAnne >Big Crow? A friend of mine forwarded it to me after I saw him at a philosophy conference; he's pretty nice, by the way, I think you might know him from a meditation retreat. I think you would like him. He cut it from McMurtry's online review where McM >quotes a long passage, --let me paste it in for you.

>In the fall of 1988, the Pine Ridge Lady Thorpes >went to Lead to play a basketball game. SuAnne was >a full member of the team by then. She was a >freshman, fourteen years old. Getting ready in the >locker room, the Pine Ridge girls could hear the din >from the fans. They were yelling fake-Indian war >cries, a “woo-woo-woo” sound [the whooping sound].... As the team >waited in the hallway leading from the locker >room, the heckling got louder. The Lead fans were >yelling epithets like “squaw” and “gut-eater.” Some >were waving food stamps, a reference to the >reservation's receiving federal aid. Others yelled, >“Where's the cheese?”--the joke being that if >Indians were lining up, it must be to get >commodity cheese.... Doni De Cory looked out the >door and told here teammates, “I can't handle this.” >SuAnne quickly offered to go first in her place. She >was so eager that Doni became suspicious. “Don't >embarrass us,” Doni told her. SuAnne said, “I >won't embarrass you.” Doni gave her the ball, and >SuAnne stood first in line.

> She came running onto the court dribbling the >basketball, with her teammates running behind. On >the court, the noise was deafeningly loud. SuAnne >went right down the middle; but instead of >running a full lap, she suddenly stopped when she >got to center court.... SuAnne turned to Doni De >Cory and tossed her the ball. Then she stepped into >the jump-ball circle at center court, in from of the >Lead fans. She unbuttoned her warm-up jacket, >took it off, draped it over her shoulders, and began >to do the Lakota shawl dance.... The dance she >chose is a young woman's dance, graceful and >modest and show-offy all at the same time. “I >couldn't believe it--she was powwowin', like `get >down!'” Doni De Cory recalled. “And then she >started to sing.” SuAnne began to sing in Lakota, >swaying back and forth in the jump-ball circle, >doing the shawl dance, using her warm-up jacket >for a shawl. The crowd went completely silent. “All >that stuff the Lead fans were yelling--it was like she >reversed it somehow,” a teammate said. In the >sudden quiet all you could hear was her Lakota >song. SuAnne stood up, dropped her jacket, took >the ball from Doni De Cory, and ran a lap around >the court dribbling expertly and fast. The fans began >to cheer and applaud....

>That's page 27, Feb. 10 NY Rev Bks. McMurtry says she died in a car wreck >four years later in 1992 when she was eighteen.

Wow.

Let me say first, Erin, that the dharma is not some artificial PR glass bead game. I have a lot of faith it is going to take care of itself. Your reference re doing harm to the dharma almost sounded like you were a piss-ass Chinese bureaucrat assuming there was going to be a way to wipe out the Tibetans or get rid of that new Falun Gong sect they're so panicked about nowadays. But thanks to those very Chinese you now got the Beastie Boys hip-hopping the Bodhisattva vow! And kids all over the globe are listening to the lyrics and hip-hopping right back --including Chinese kids picking it up on the internet. ==Talk about unforeseen unintended consequences!! They should've just left them alone in Tibet! By the way, have you been following what they are doing to the Falun Gong--which is truly outrageous, sickening and disgusting, and so is the western willingness to ignore it for the sake of commerce.

Well, not off to a good start here am I?. sorry about comparing you to a Chinese bureacrat. That was pretty mean. But I could've even been meaner and said you were expressing what Nietzsche calls ressentiment -- maybe I will say that later!

You hit me with some energy so I'll just keep writing rather than try to correct everything as I go along. First, I am in a safe place. I am in a safe place because I am respecting the basic moral precepts, the fundamental principles.

Obviously I agree that being careful --being scrupulous-- is necessary = resolving to try not to harm in any way, and then following through. But after that it almost matters more that we DO NOT worry too much about our actions than that we do --especially when we're in a society as we are in which (a) people tend to feel guilty whenever a trace of joy appears. -- Oops! Must've done something wrong! Better check! --and (b) where people are basically intelligent enough to think and figure things out for themselves. --Of course, I will grant you that showing Ted Koppel how to salsa was absurd -- last time I ever do that! :}

About the image-machine culture and posing. This is important. Hollywood flashes one image after another, they trigger emotions or perhaps the image of an emotion. I don't have it all worked out. Not everything is like an intellectual game; which is posing usually. Uncle Fred a good example, I would say. The aphorisms work only because he was just so keenly aware of how his speaking these words in this context would be received. And his intuitions were so good and so deeply enmeshed they still work a hundred years later. Hollywood has to be good at that too. The work you do involves os much posnig I sometimes feel you need to be more aware how co-dependent you are, in your work in the university, on others' opinions-- it is more under the surface there than in the art world, perhaps, because for you from paycheck to paycheck is not so directly dependent upon it, but in any case it is real and hence the fear and ego display, pettiness, and so on. It is weird for me to see it because you have good jobs, steady incomes, health insurance --besides you get to work every day with young people. It seems to me that good fortune generally fuels greed which leads to pettiness. Which is pretty tragic given what life has to offer us and when others like the Falun Gong are putting their lives on the line, actuallly getting killed, just to be able to do some tai chi and cherish crackpot ideas. Of course it is similar in the art world too. Sorry I am rambling here. Rousseau said you are never free in the opinions of others.

I looked at that search you did of Nietzsche's references to the Buddha (this is related to what I was just talking about)--In Nachgelassene Fragmente #60 N quotes or manufactures this idea allegedly from the Buddha: conceal your good works, reveal your sins. Now even if the Buddha said something like this, it is definitely not central, and certainly not worthy of repetition in those words. First no concept like sin (German Sunde) is central at all for the Buddha; more importantly, the preoccupation with image in another's mind --especially in Another's mind (God's mind)-- is completely foreign to the Buddha. But of course it dominates N's thinking, as (I claim) it does ours, given the cultural conditioning, so that the image we cast is basic to all action. (Why this point was related to the image machine culture stuff.)

Dancing or meditating is a good break from all that. As for dancing it usually is pretty clear when it is and when it is not-- posing, I mean--and when I notice I'm posing I just stop it right then and there and do something else; -- go drink some water. At least I used to, haven't been for awhilte. My mom believes dancing is morally wrong as do the theravadan buddhists and I'm not even sure why those rules got made but I think it's because of a focus on dancing as a spectacle in which one either is an observer or a performer (that is, it is a form of entertainment or seduction) and why I insist on making an issue of this is that THAT WAY of thinking can be destructive. For one can dance as neither an observer nor performer. like in Eliot when there is no difference between the dancer and the dance= Nondual dancing, let us say. I assume this is what is behind Fred's use of the image of dancing when he uses it to express ultimate human activity. (???) Sitting still in meditation is an even better way to cut through it, since posing in those circumstances, esp. when it's difficult, is really crazy and obviously and vividly so --it is interesting -- and then it becomes even easier to see our crazy preoccupations with image and self-image. Of course it doesn't just stop then because we become more aware of how frenetic our minds are. But we definitely can cultivate freedom in this realm. To repeat: we definitely can cultivate freedom in this realm. Definitely. I try not to talk this way too much on tv because I don't like preaching like Jerry Falwell with only one tune to sing but with you I'm just saying what life has brought my way. To my great surprise and delight!! I feel that Krishnamurti like Uncle Fred saw only how discipline and practice can get warped. But it doesn't have to get warped. Ordinary people like us can practice it better perhaps because unlike somebody like K living with a lot of publicity and knowing himself to be in the public spotlight, we do not really have to worry very much about shading the PR warp factor. Or something like that.

Fourth, a small point. It just dawned on me you have no idea what raves are (or were, since I haven't really kept up). Let me tell you. You certainly cannot trust what you maay have seen in the mainstream media about it. Each year now for 10 years the media have re-discovered all-night raves were taking place and been shocked!! -- proclaiming how bizarre they are, how dangerous etc. And while there have been different phases like the illegal raves that took off for awhile in Detroit and Berlin --squatting in abandoned warehouses, and those could get dangerous after the cops arrived -- mainly it is just incredibly good fresh alive music. There are different forms of electronic music: techno (like a factory rhythm), drum and bass (simple yet intricate), ambient trance (spacious, light, yet energetic), forms of hip-hop, and many others. And often it is being mixed right there, meaning a DJ is standing behind 4 or 5 turntables playing and synthesizing things together on the spot, perhaps in response to the dancing that is happening or not. I have heard some truly transcendent music. One doesn't have to try to dance, one just does. The show-off aspect is there to some extent, of course since it feels good to look good, but since everybody is dancing it is more like a shared performance with no spectators and there are few prevailing norms for how one should move or not. One can even stand motionless in the middle of the room without drawing attention. In this respect, you know, it is quite the opposite from the swing and salsa scene and so on. A lot of the boys are in pretty good shape, and nowadays the girls have been doing aerobics and kick=boxing like the teen-age girls in our class so they can keep going too. Sweating and moving all night. The rhythm essence is no different from the wonderful drumming at halftime in high school football games on Friday night all over the country!! Raving is dangerous, but not exactly why the mainstream thinks so. The main threat to conventional reality is the low-key sexuality, a gesture towards spirit, away from gratification, consumption. (I am idealizing here, in a hopeful way, I will grant you.) What you call the Princess Leia innocence is not a pose, but it is an expression of purity and

--leave me alone: I am not a sex object. I am not a cheerleader for you either. That was junior high. Now I just wanna' dance a little bit. And don't get quite so close to me.--

-- Now that truly is radical.-- Also unrecognized but a real threat is the communal feeling, bodies moving freely, then kids lying feely in each others arms, its certainly not a one-on-one pick-up scene. The reporters who look in on it don't get it, perceiving only jungle rythms and trance music and ecstacy (but --horrors! -- no alcohol! :(

About freedom. I realize, Madame Professor, that some if not all of my ill-considered assertions about freedom on various occasion in the past have been a source of mild if not extreme irritation to you. Therefore you will be pleased to know that I finally have figured it all out!

Kundera inadvertently came up with it = the bearable lightness of being. At least possibly bearable. Why not? --Oops. I used “lightness.”-- Now that will just make you madder and then you will say once again, as you have said so many countless innumerable times before, have you not? that I wouldn't sound so stupid if I actually read the books and not just their covers. Would that be an affirmative?

Seriously--speaking of community and political action-- did you hear about the group last week protesting over at Sea-Tac airport? The jets are coming in very low over their houses, & they cannot deal any longer with

THE UNBEARABLE LOUDNESS OF BOEING :{?

Yah dinner at 7.

Thanks for going camping with us, and to see the docs. They called back, seem totally confused now by my head ... which hurts.

Did you see Liddy's review of your book in the Times? I can't believe they publish that sort of shit for him. Somebody should reply in no uncertain terms.--I might lash out myself in your defense.

See you tonight.

You won't believe what Mark wrote to me. --I actually still need to talk with you about it. I should've talked with you long before now.--

love, Zo

p.s. could you please pick up some hamburger buns on your way over? --

p.p.s. About the dizzy thing. Actually I am dizzy all the time these days. I can't tell if its from surfing the internet too much or because of the injury or what.

pp.pps. ok. I just realized you are right. I am posing then. Fuck it. --But at least my heroes are not posing. Or rather, they both and are not, or are not because of how they are. --I have a new hero now= thank you for the story about SuAnne Big Crow. --

pppp.p.s. Here's another one like that. Its about how Derek might use the idea of reincarnation in order to make vivid the practical ramifications of nondensity. The story illustrates the points I was trying to make when we were talking in the tent last weekend before the Blair Witch spooked us out.

Ok. It is a story about --duh-duh-- NOT me!

Once upon a time, there was a young women sitting at a weekend retreat with a Tibetan lama a few weeks ago in Vancouver. As you know, they do these chants, first a few times in Tibetan, then read the English version, for example expressing commitment to one's practice for the benefit of all beings, and so on. It happens before each session and the young woman --I'm not sure of her name, but let us call her Zora, short for Zoroastra, I think, --she is not really used to the Tibetan-type chanting practices, and to be honest, it was a bit annoying. Now Zora wasn't annoyed about directing her mind to bodhicitta --the intention that her practice be beneficial -- for those thoughts are usually refreshing and inspiring, but it was doing the chanting itself, first in Tibetan, then in English,--she wasn't accustomed to that. She's not used to doing a lot of rituals and so forth. But still she sort of halfway goes along with it, chanting with the group in an iambic monotone except for the last syllable of each line, which falls a whole step:

Sang gyay ch– dang tshog kyi chog nam la

jang chub bar du dag ni kyab su chi

dag gi jin sog gyi pa'i so nam kyi

dro la phan chir sang gyay drub par shog.

meaning in English roughly

Until becoming enlightened, I take refuge

In the buddha, the dharma, and the supreme assembly;

May the merits from my generosity, and so on,

Result in buddahood for the benefit of migrators.

So one morning on the retreat they're all chanting together these “Taking Refuge and Arousing Bodhicitta” verses, and Zora's doing it sort of halfheartedly. As for her heart, she certainly is wishing wholeheartedly for the benefit of all beings, let us suppose, she is abiding in a sort of lucid emptiness that is soft and open, where wishing the best for all without any restrictions or reservations is just so natural, but the chanting itself was half-hearted, and then she is aware of a lady nearby with a strong alto voice who is holding out the last syllables of each line extra long, just enough so that her voice rings out a millisecond longer than anybody else's so everybody can hear her --and then it occurred to me that maybe I did this sort of chantingt thing a lot in previous lives and did it enough to get bored. Or just did it enough so as not really to need to do it so much now. This definitely was sort of a conceited thought, I suppose, to think my boredom with the ritual chanting was due to the great merit of previous lives! -- but nonetheless buddhists do say things like that are possible. So maybe that is true. (C'mon squeeze that little mind of yours. It's only a story!)

And then suddenly as she sits there Zora has a vision of a nun in a mountain cave in Tibet perhaps 800 years ago. It is a barren time, and there are few practitioners, and this means not a hell of a lot of physical support for her. Her name perhaps is Z–e, the sun is rising, and she is cold because she ran out of wood, and hungry because she is too low on food and has been trying to ration it so that she won't have to go down the mountain until the warmer spring winds arrive in a few months, and she is sick, weak, and at times there are various animals sharing the cave who sometimes terrify her, at which times she observes terror, abides with terror, and it dissolves. How can she bear the cold, the hunger, the illness, the terror? She also abides with these questions continually. Her ass is calloused as hard as metal due to sitting so much on bare rocks, a bare cloth, a rag --an ass like Milarepa's was said to be --and as the sun rises she is sitting on the ground and chanting some verses in Tibetan.

Lo! The verses are the “Taking Refuge and Arousing Bodhicitta” chant which in Tibetan sounds like the following words would be pronounced in English, and although they would look very different in Tibetan script, of course, that is not particularly relevant to Z–e because she does not know how to read. She learned the verses from her mother, as had her mother from her mother, and her mother explained what the words mean, and the words inspired her, and she has never tired of chanting them. She chants in an iambic monotone except for the last syllable of each line, which falls a whole step:

Sang gyay ch– dang tshog kyi chog nam la

jang chub bar du dag ni kyab su chi

dag gi jin sog gyi pa'i so nam kyi

dro la phan chir sang gyay drub par shog

meaning in English roughly

Until becoming enlightened, I take refuge

In the buddha, the dharma, and the supreme assembly;

May the merits from my generosity, and so on,

Result in buddahood for the benefit of migrators.

She abides throughout days and nights in calm wakefulness, 800 years ago, the repetition deepens her concentration, she abides in tranquil lucidity, the result of the seclusion of the cave and the seclusion of mind induced by repetitive attention to the phrases she repeats in her mind, and at every moment she also is summoning the wish that her practice be beneficial for all beings. That is how she lives in the cold mountain cave. She is inspired somehow to do it. She is not she is not bearing children, she is not investing in mutual funds, she is not going to the movies, she is not snorting cocaine, she is not posing, she is not writing poems. She lives, she barely survives, in seclusion in the cave.

Spring comes.

She gathers enough strength to walk down the mountain. She meets a boy who gives her tormas to eat, and she teaches him the chant, the chant I just wrote out for you, “Taking Refuge and Arousing Bodhicitta,” and they chant together in a monotone except for the last syllable of each line, which falls a whole step:

Sang gyay ch– dang tshog kyi chog nam la

jang chub bar du dag ni kyab su chi

dag gi jin sog gyi pa'i so nam kyi

dro la phan chir sang gyay drub par shog

meaning in English roughly

Until becoming enlightened, I take refuge

In the buddha, the dharma, and the supreme assembly;

May the merits from my generosity, and so on,

Result in buddahood for the benefit of migrators.

She talks with the boy for awhile, which inspires the boy, and he never forgets it, especially the part about lucid wakefulness.

Now let us imagine, as Zora happens to imagine it as she sits in the retreat center up in Vancouver, B.C., that there just so happens to be a specific series of events in the world --by this I mean a causal series of events (or collections of events) x, x', ..., x*, y such that the event of the woman Z–e's talking with the boy causes x, x causes x', x' causes x'' etc--there is a series of causally interconnected events, let us imagine, stretching forward from 800 years ago, beginning with the woman talking with the boy about the chant, and the series of events, x, x', x'', ..., also includes Zora's sitting up at the retreat center 1999 wherein she is chanting the very same verses, somewhat half-heartedly, thinking she's not really much of a buddhist, am I?, yet still chanting the words, and noticing there is a woman nearby with a strong alto voice who is holding out the last syllables of each line somewhat pretentiously, and I am abiding all the while in a blissful empty lucid wakefulness, with which I have learned to connect --it is nearer than near, yet nonetheless she needed to learn to recognize it. She has been practicing for a few days in this beautiful retreat center with some friends and with a young Tibetan rinpoche who was born in India after his father fled from Tibet when the Chinese invaded and killed many tulkus and lamas who refused to renounce any part of their religion.

Ok, there you go, that is story #1.

Story #2 is very, very similar, but let us now only just imagine that there is not merely some causal series of events connecting Zora in Vancouver in 1999 back to the nun Z–e in Tibet 800 years ago but there is in fact a very special sort of causal series connecting them! Indeed let us imagine that there is psychological continuity between them!!! Zora literally is that nun who lived and practiced 800 years ago, by virtue of continuity of mind, and indeed she is here in this blessed place during these blessed moments of blissful emptiness precisely because of the merit accumulated through many lifetimes of chanting and diligence, abiding now with an open heart with no clinging.

No, really. --It is at least possible, Erin. By the way, I am using the word “because” in the second story #2 in a causal, natural sense such as the sense in which we say plants grow because they photosynthesize light -- Zora was where she was in Vancouver because of many events having already taken place in a series of lives of the person she is, that is, a chain of events that are psychologically connected in the way that a memory of an earlier experience is causally connected with the earlier experience.

-- Erin, c'mon baby-- Don't be so goddam closed-minded! Just entertain the ideas, is all I'm asking. It's just a story! -- Don't you remember that cheesy movie we saw in the late 80s “Chances Are” or something with Cybill Shepard and the poor guy who ended up in a real prison, Downey Jr., I think --he's on allie mcBeal now, or was--she was 45, Downey was her daughter's boyfriend and ended up being the reincarnation of her husband (which of course meant that Downey Jr. had been kissing his daughter!!). Stupid, but coherent. --Combine it with time travel, and he could be kissing himself! --Actually time travel would just be a form of reincarnation, would it not? -- I guess it might depend on the mechanism. By the way, Erin, before I forget here is how I think it could be done using space-time wormholes and quantum electrodynamics. Feynman showed long ago that certain quantum processes could be equivalently expressed in forward and backward time frames.

do you think that would work?

--Anyway, getting back to the stories. I have a point to maker here. Let's' go back for a moment to the first story #1 before I added the R-chain--the continuity of mind--in order to get literal numerical identity and reincarnation of story #2. In story #1 Zora is not the same person as the nun 800 years ago. I came into existence just over twenty-seven years ago. Her mind now is conditioned only by DNA, a certain brain and body, by the words and actions and songs of my mother and father, and their ancestors, by Plato, Jesus, Wesley, Lincoln, the sermons of MLK, Jr on tape, the books by Zora Neale Hurston, and music by Ella Fitzgerald and Janis Joplin and Stevie Wonder, Funkadelic/Parliament, The Cure, the artisit who for awhile would not be known as Prince, :) Bird and Magic playing each other, that time Magic came up to Seattle and gave us the b-ball clinic for girls, being afraid as a teen that Reagan was going to start a nuclear war, the cheesy movies we went to see together, the various buddhists and philosophers and artists and other teachers from whom she has learned stuff etc.

Yet if so-- even if the conditions for Zora's existence are as in the boring first story #1, as just describeded, nonetheless obviously there are causal chains that connect her to people 800 years ago, and it is at least conceivable that some causal series or other connects her to somebody like Z–e as in the first story and that a long, long story could be told, if only we had more time, about how the nun Z–e's words to the boy not only inspired him but, knowing how way leads on to way-- all this was such that had Z–e not done what she did 800 years ago, the information and practices that have meant the most to Zora would in fact never have reached her. (Of cour4se I realize that if relatively small things had been different in the past, nobody existing now would exist at all!-- since that certain quite special sperm wouldn't quite have reached that particular egg going way way back etc etc so given relatively small changes in the past nobody who exists now would exist now --but bracket that fact for the moment.)

Ok. Sorry. I keep getting sidetracked. To review. Z is chanting somewhat half-heartedly-- after all, she already got out of one religion in this life, one's enough, is it not?! -- and yet all the same she is abiding in lucid emptiness, which is what the nun Z–e told the boy about 800 years ago, or at least the main thing he remembered -- well, actually, to be more precise, if you insist on more details, it is what he, the boy after becoming a man, told his daughter about, her name by the way also is Z–e, a striking coincidence! --he didn't even remember the chant that the old lady taught him, although she the daughter learned it later on when she travelled to the village that became Lhasa, which became a great center for art and meditation and philosophy some years after she herself started up a little art school there in Lhasa, and the fact Z–e alerted the body so that he as a man could tell his daughter turned out to be a crucial event, for Zora in 1999, and the point is that this story is similar in very many ways to that second story #2 in which the punch line was that Zora literally is is the same person as Z–e.

DO YOU see THIS?

No, really. It is this SIMILARITY IN VERY MANY WAYS between the two stories #1 and #2 that I wanted to get you to see, Erin. Its what I was trying to get at the other night. The idea is similar to the article where Ray Martin looks at some of the more interesting stories collected by Ian Stevenson that are “suggestive of reincarnation.” Stevenson considers a bunch of different explanations for the alleged events, including some forms of ESP as well as traditional ideas about reincarnation. Martin shows that given Reductionism about people (that is, given an R-theory rather than a theory of a dense self) there is much less difference between ESP-explanations and the traditional reincarnation accounts. My point here is that given no dense self, the difference between reincarnation being real or not is not very significant.

To see this, let us review again: in story #1 Z–e is in the cave, cold, sick, and yet she is practicing, and there are things that she did that as a simple matter of fact, given the causal course of events, have benefited Zora enormously, so much so that the truth of Z–e = Zora, due to continuity of mind, their being psychologically connected as in the psychological criterion for identity, would be completely trivial compared to the significance of the fact that Z–e told the boy what she told him (the boy who became the father of the girl Z–e who started the art center in Lhasa) and the significance, as things turned out, of what she, the first Z–e, did as she struggled to survive and to practice to develop bodhicitta in the cave. And there is a long subsequent course of events by virtue of which by 1999 our dear current Zora sitting up in Vancouver had been able to learn some helpful stuff from Ram Dass' crazy wonderful books, and from Christopher Titmuss who learned it from Thai monks, and from Ron who read it out of a book of beginning meditation instructions from various buddhist traditions that Jack Kornfield put together, including the instructions from the Burmese teacher Mahasi Sayadaw; and from Sharon Salzberg's teaching about lovingkindness meditation and the other forms of meditation that both deepen concentration and cultivate qualities like compassion, equanimity, sharing in the joy of others instead of being envious; and including Krishamurti with his unusual life story drawing upon the ancient nondual Vedanta traditions coming totally smack dab into contact, then conflict, with the eager hyped whacko (?) spiritualism in Europe and America of the 19th century, and ever so softly in the background almost forgotten Thoreau and Emerson and Emily Dickinson, even Yeats and Eliot, I could keep listing all afternoon, lists and lists longer than those in the poems of Whitman and Ginsburg. Speaking of interconnectedness, I talked with a Burmese monk one long afternoon who tried to convince me that during his twenties Jesus Christ of Nazareth was wandering in northern India and Nepal learning the lovingkindess meditation practices of the mahayana buddhists!! .. I just kept laughing and saying, well how do you know that?

But it doesn't matter precisely how interconnected the various causal streams may be or exactly what are the details. That is really exactly my point here. The details about the causal interconnectedness are not as important as the simple fact of interconnectedness. Whatever the facts may be, we certainly know that there are very many such causal streams flowing through one's own life. SuAnne Big Crow has been dancing in my heart all morning, thanks to you, and McMurtry, and yes, even Merv= but she never knew it, it never would have occurred to her during her brief 18 years that you and I would be encouraged by thinking about her, nor would it have occured to her in a million years had she lived that long. But nonetheless it is true.

But (to sort of close out the argument here) if the particular details about interconnectedness do not really matter, then it doesn't matter whether Zora is anybody reincarnated. The difference between our two stories #1 and #2 is completely insignificant!! Sure-- a continuity of mind between Zora and Z–e as in story #2 where we posited that Zora = Z–e, literally the same person, would be pretty fascinating to know about, of course, but on the other hand, wouldn't it just as interesting to know the chain of events involving Z–e by virtue of which as in the first story some of the things that have meant the most to Zora and that have inspired her came to be known by her at all by 1999.

And Erin, the interesting thing about story #1 is that THERE ARE A MILLION JILLION STORIES LIKE THIS THAT ARE TRUE-- for there are a million jillion causal ties to earlier people, not necessarily famous people, obviously, -- and now I claim that many of these causal tiesARE MORE IMPORTANT to Zora now than having continuity of mind AND HENCE IDENTITY with Z–e would be even if it obtained !!!!

Do you get it?--Or am I going to have to repeat it 6 or 7 more times? The question of identity with the nun is absolutely trivial given non-density of self, that is, given no soul or anything like that in the picture, compared to the question of how that woman's courageous diligence played a role, as a matter of fact (we are imagining) in something Zora values today, even though Zora up in Vancouver is not as a matter of fact the nun reincarnated into the 20th century. Adding “identity” = reincarnation by means of psychological continuity really adds very little of interest;--

and IF YOU DISAGREE WITH ME or if you are even just inclined to disagree or are even uncertain whether you should agree or not then I SUBMIT YOU ARE ASSUMING “DENSITY” OF SELF!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This is a type of litmus test for the density-presupposition. And when we see this presupposition at work, that is the opportunity for renunciation, which is not exactly the same thing as “self-denial,” rather it is simply slipping into clear mindfulness of what is really going on in our minds. Resting in lucid empty awareness. So you drop that assumption of density and just see what is going on when you are defining yourself however you are doing it, whether in terms of being some reincarnation of Howdy Doody, or in terms of your beautiful yellow hair, your nails, your dreams or even your developed tranquil mind. If you want to define yourself then think in terms of the vast causal network of which your life is a part --this is how to do it and if I've done it right you can see how it differs from a self-definition via self-denial.

I realize that to develop this I might have to defend the idea--which I think I could do, this is a technical point about the picture of personal identity that I am assuming-- that for us to get waht we value in surival really requires more than simple continuity of mind, for also we might need some direction connections as well (such as direct memories), --but see how those fade even in the course of a normal human life, so that merely surviving beyond the confines of a normal human life (via the chain of psychological continuity) really would mean very little to us.

Now maybe I should address something right away before you delete this if you didn't already.

The stories had a sort of “religious” tinge to them insofar as Zora has a sort of devotion (even if it is a bit half-hearted). Normally we want to be wary of this because too often devotion is mindless. That is true. But revise the story, dear reader =you Erin, so that it is you appreciating something, e.g. Yeats or Plato or Miles' kind of blue, that you value which did not appear in your hands or heart ex nihilo. --Or just look, for example, the story you sent me about SuAnne Big Crow,-- for her story is inspiring.= We read it and go, yes, human life can be like that, it is like that, what like that could I do today?

SIMPLE REFLECTION ON THE CAUSAL CHAIN TENDS TO GIVE RISE TO A SORT OF APPRECIATION =DEVOTION.

It isn't necessarily mindless at all, nor is it necessarily contrived. It flows simply and directly from appreciation for the role of others in our lives. Tsok Nyi Rinpoche, the young Tibetan teacher, says devotion arises out of a sense of well being, ease and gratitude, feelings of self-confidence, of being pleased with oneself (!), and finally feeling pleased with a teacher, with teachings, and with a certain form of practice.

The point is that it isn't always mindless hype or pretense, and one might get religious, or one might not, but either way then to one's surprise one day one finds oneself rapping wholeheartedly --whoa!-- right along with the Beastie Boys:

As I develop the awakening mind

I praise the Buddhas as they shine

I bow before you as I travel my path

To join your ranks I make my full time path

For the sake of all beings I seek

The enlightened mind that I know I'll reap

Respect to Shantideva and all the others --like Z–e!--

who brought down the dharma for sisters and brothers

--Of course if you're not familiar with any of the teachings or practices there certainly is no reason on earth to try to drum up any feeling like that at all. Don't worry about it. --Just dance.

And anybody can experience the same thing for yourself even if you don't happen to care about the bodhisattva vow. Reflect on the causal chain by virtue of which x (where x is that thing that you value but did not just manifest on earth in your hands ex nihilo)--reflect how x ends up in your hands, and look through the telescope of history and the microscope of your imagination and find somebody, a poor dirty but eager trader in the north african desert a thousand years ago perhaps, with an intuition that these dirty greek texts (--could it be Greek? he wonders--) might be important, or whatever, and then his daughter figures it out (she is paralyzed, I should mention, by polio, but her uncle's camel driver, for some odd reason, took an interest in her and cared for her). And as you sit there holding x = Plato's Republic, say, or x= the Gospel according to Matthew, reflect for one moment on your relationship with that person without whom, as a matter of fact, you would not be holding x.

YOUR RELATIONSHIP TO THAT PERSON IS CLOSER AND MORE SIGNIFICANT to you THAN IF YOU LITERALLY WERE THAT PERSON!!!!

The point of all this is what I was trying to get at the other night-- how totally screwy it is to be focussed on survival of death. When we look at all the religious people preoccupied with ideas about surviving death in one form or another, it seems to me these points show their preoccupations are trivial compared with real causal effects our actions will in fact have, and with real effects the actions of many other people already have had in the world. Probably nothing we do will have very widesweeping consequences, but hte point here is NOT to get wrapped up in another way to promote a sense of self-density--e.g. by trying to measure some sort of causal influence, which'd be crazy--it'd be crazy even if we were famous etc because people who happent to be famous simply disappear too-- but the point is to shift from the preoccupation with survival of death, if one is inclined to be preoccupied that way -- and shift attention to real causal interconnectedness.

Also I realize there are exceptions. Whether the R-chain, the continuity of mind, would be completely trivial to a person or not might depend on some features of the person. Suppose, for instance, my own projects now include travelling to settle in outer space. This ain't gonna happen in my lifetime. So even if there is somebody, Zula, say, living in a remote place 200 years from now who is causally related to me in a significant way, but not R-related so as to make her me, then I just don't get what I wanted --since I wanted to do that--I wanted it to be ME doing that space travel; and if only I were reincarnated as Zula then I'd get what I wanted! So I agree we can and do have these “personal projects”.

--But the significance of these very types of projects--the ones where the MY involvement is crucial for their success-- might change when we shift our beliefs from belief in density of self to belief in nondensity. This gets us back to Derek's discussion of the practical ramifications of reductionism about personal identity, and what we were talking about the other night.

See you tonight.

--By the way --One more point going back to the two stories #1 and #2. Given nondensity, I was trying to show how Z's being some sort of reincarnation of somebody is really trivial, in light of the facts about our existence, and in the stories I was trying to put the spotlight on Z–e because of the essential role she played (I was imagining) in the exploration and preservation of aspects of human culture that have become important to Z -- but it equally shines elsewhere. In fact virtually nothing about Z's situation right now is unlit!!!!! Even the trivial details! We can know that even while recognizing that the specific causal stream is inscrutable! There are aspects of Z's life that are much less significant to her than, say, having had the opportunity to read Plato or Matthew but still they are meaningful and good.

To consider one example= Z's mother claims she was singing when Z was born, let us say. Not unrelated to this (one can imagine) is the following. An African lies in chains in the bottom of a ship on the Middle Passage two hundred years ago deciding whether to live or die, and she decides to live and then moments later begins humming a tune that later receives words, these words:

Nobody knows the trouble I've seen

--Nobody knows but Jesus.

The tune becomes a sort of power song coming back to her now and then. She hums it for her daughter. Of course she did not give those words, or any words, to the tune--in fact, she had not yet heard of Jesus; actually she never heard of Jesus because she died within days after reaching Virginia, but her daughter remembered the tune, and taught it to her son, and the words appeared well in time for my birth so that while I was being born my mother was singing them to the tune that occurred to the African slave as she decided to live rather than die.

-- Or so my mother says! -- I mean about singing when I was born. I'm not sure I believe her even though I can't imagine her just making it up, but it just seems so funny, and whether or not it is true --btw Erin, why don't you ask her some time to see what she says. Woulfd you? -- You can be like an FBI special agent to investigate this question for me. Talk to my mother about gave birth to your daughter then ask her how it was for her to give birth to me, you know, --then get around to finding out about this question, what was she doing wjhile it happened? Oh singing?? -- Find out: was she singing Nobody knows the trouble I've seen.. when I was born? I would like to know how firm a memory it is but if I ask her about it she'll just stick with the same old story she's told me before. --Ok?.

Wait a minute, what am I doing such writing all this shit. I'll just talk with you later. My head hurts. I think I might be geting sicker. Its not getting better. I am so frightened Erin. See you later--

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Recovered files #2

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FBI auth. #345o9990d

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(Zoe Alexander)

Date: Weds, 15 February 1999 17:43:22 -0400

Subject: Re: Ted Koppel

From: Zo <zoalex@aol.com>

To: eringh@uw.edu

Mime-version: 1.0

X-priority: 3

Status:

>My dear sister Alexander,

>There are a few items I would like to bring to your attention. It was > a lot of fun camping with you by the way. >

> 2. People have no idea how to deal with your denunciations of >marriage: tone it down so they see how it connects with their own >lives. You just make them feel dizzy.

> 3. People know you as an artist yet you won't even talk about >that. Instead you always want to bring up your M.A. thesis as if >it woke Derek up from his sci-fi slumber.

> The prosecution rests. > Still on for dinner at 7? Love always, E.

>That's page 27, Feb. 10 NY Rev Bks. McMurtry says she died in a car wreck >four years later in 1992 when she was eighteen.

Wow. Erin, that is such a great story.

And Ouch. Ouch!! Thank you. Are you anglin' to be my agent? What do you charge? --I mean, what do you pay?! I really really appreciate your comments, Erin,--at least some of them.

--I think I just want to talk with you about this in person. I'm a bit down about some stuff. Just call me up if you get this or see you tonight.

Actually I wrote a whole long thing replying. Going way off the deep end.Then deleted the whole thing. I just get going and it gets more and more absrtact.Your'e right . Fuck it. I am posoing then. But that deon'st mena I'm wrong to tlak about renunciation, about finding space. And the truth is you need to. You are like going way too fast.

Renunciation actually is essential simply to enjoy life. And it is getting more eseentiall every day because the cultural structure of stimulation, entertainment, minimum expected work requirements, minimum expected consumption levels, etc is getting more and more rigid. For instance, look at expectations about returning emails. 3 years ago it was fun to send and receive emails; now they have to be answered in split seconds. Or, for another example, after we bought that msft stock I began checking it every day; then on the internet I could check it whenever I wanted. So two times a day, then three. look! Intel went down, maybe we should get that too.-- Oops, went back up, too late. --Wait! It's down again. Etc. AND I DON'T EVEN HAVE ANY MONEY!!!!

Our minds our so interesting. We get caught up in patterns so fast. This is why renunciation is important.

Renunciation is essential just to have fun. Forget about meditation, or yoga or practice like that. Just look at dancing. Everybody can recognize that dancing would be fun, not anything fancy necessarily, just moving. It just doesn't matter what it looks like, what image youre making. Everybody can see that makes sense. Yet so many people don't even figure out how to get themselves out there! Last year when I couldn't dance for two months --after Payton broke my ankle when we were playing 3 on 3 --well, when my ankle was almost well enough I went down to this swing club and it was so beautiful there. I sat down at the bar and had a beer and was talking with this cute guy from Brazil and finally I said, “well, how about let's dance?” and he said “I don't dance” --

what?! “Why not?”.-- He didn't have any reason. So we just sat there and watched, actually I wasn't quite sure my ankle was well enough anyway so I was happy to take it easy. And it was interesting just to sit there for once watching, like people watching other people dance on tv or in movies. /

And then that was when I realized how renunciation is essential to have fun dancing. One thing a lot of people have to let go of is this sense of themselves as merely a consumer of entertainment. We are looking for interesting and beautiful and sexual images to observe and get pretty accustomed to that external observer point of view. We expect to be entertained. That is like so much very much not any fun compared to doing it -- and to do it rquires letting go of that external observer frame of mind, otherwise for one thing one will evaluate oneself too much and be too self conscious to enjoy it.

What I am trying to say is that I think a production/ consumption economy depends on most people being willing simply be compliant, predictable consumers (including entertainment) after doing their jobs. The system admittedly makes sense; otherwise how will corporations know what to produc3e? How will they exist? This may work fine for the production of stuff, even good and wonderful stuff --I am no setting out to criticize either the stuff or how it gets made-- but anyway my point is that we're in a system in which the same model, then, tends to get applied even to what are supposed to be our deepest pleasures. Since there is only so much time, it can be difficult to break through the patterns that develop. Something like dancing just doesn't fit it-- except of course to advertize pants. The image of dancing can be used to sell pants (works well because dancing sexy legs make the pants look good) but dancing itself is something that makes for independence which just isn't something a corporate culture really wants to encourage. Again the image of independence is useful, but actual independence doesn't really fit in the system. I realize this is obvious and the ideas are not unfamiliar but really to live independently is unusual. Its like when the supreme court Justice Douglas explained why solar energy wasn't going to get developed = nobody owns the sun.

Erin do you not see how experience of life is being replaced by experience of representations of life (in TVs, movies, computer simulations)? I do not think I am just being a Luddite here -- and true, experience of representations is real experience. But it is so abstract!! It is just one level. No matter how violent, “action-packed” a movie may be the experience of just sitting there is nothing compared with the reality of our bodies, of awareness of our bodies. --It is so odd how the forms of spiritual practice most needed--for our culture-- are first and foremost JUST PLAIN PHYSICAL. And of course it isnt enough just to go, oh yah right, of course I undrestadn that. One actually needs to get out there and dance.

It is so odd, Erin, come to think of it, how directly this connects with buddhist monks and nuns accepting a precept NOT To dance as part of their vows. Well, I understand that too, for just not doing it in a meditation retreat can help you deepen concentration and go in. so forth. Of course they don't watch tv or go to movies either. Which can make sense too when we see how we can get into a habit of watching tv just to distract ourselves, living our own lives vicariously in the experiences and images and emotions portrayed for us and stimulated in us.) which agian is why gointo a retraet situationh is so challenging and diffficlt

The connection is that, therefore, sometimes we renounce by not dancing, and sometimes we renounce in order to get oursleves out there.

What I would like to be able to say about renunciation would have that point as a conclusion, and it would be so subtle and in no way would equal self hatred or ressentiment against life. I wish is could say it bett3er.

oh forget it..

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Recovered files #3

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FBI auth. #345o9990d

Powermac harddrive XXFE3459390

(Zoe Alexander)

Date: Weds, 15 February 1999 18:52:37 -0400

Subject: Re: Ted Koppel

From: Zo <zoalex@aol.com>

To: eringh@uw.edu

Mime-version: 1.0

X-priority: 3

Status:

>My dear sister Alexander,

>There are a few items I would like to bring to your attention. It was > a lot of fun camping with you by the way. >

> 2. People have no idea how to deal with your denunciations of >marriage: tone it down so they see how it connects with their own >lives. You just make them feel dizzy.

> 3. People know you as an artist yet you won't even talk about >that. Instead you always want to bring up your M.A. thesis as if >it woke Derek up from his sci-fi slumber.

> 7. You are acting as if the free world revolves around you and are >your little projects. > The world of ideas = your little game?? >Auditioning to be the pin up PosterGirl for New >Formalism?-- obsessed with the poet's life, as Alice Fulton says, >this poetry expresses a “relentless concern with self” working to >exclude issues about “conscience, responsibility, power, cruelty, >or form” (The Nation 6-14-99). People are listening to what >you say, so you need to take this into account. I think maybe you >better get an agent, fast. Actually I got the impression, from >what they said, that Courtney Love and Madonna really wanted to >help you. You shouldn't be so dismissive.

> The prosecution rests. > Still on for dinner at 7? Love always, E.

>That's page 27, Feb. 10 NY Rev Bks. McMurtry says she died in a car wreck >four years later in 1992 when she was eighteen.

Wow. That is such a great story.

And Ouch. Ouch!! anwyay--

--I think I just want to talk with you about this in person. I'm a bit down about some stuff. Just call me up if you get this or see you tonight. Actually I wrote two two long relplies them delted then.

--Gotta' go. Someone is at the door. --Wait! It's almost 7-- which means probably that would be you at the door!!!!

Boy did I waste this afternoon!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

----

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