“If you make subjective, personalistic judgments of past and present events, not having been through the process of refining and purifying your insight, this is like trying to do a sword dance without having learned to handle a sword.” -- Zen Master Fayan

Please do not be alarmed by the title. I have done plenty of dangerous things in Cambodia in the last three months – most of them having to do with transportation – but, in this case, the point is entirely metaphorical.

The encyclopedia has told me that there are four main types of sword dances: combat dances (e.g., ancient Greeks), circular guerrillas dances (e.g., Turkey and the Balkans), dances over two crossed swords (e.g., Scotland, India, and the Balkans), and hilt-and-point dances (e.g., old Europe). In another article, Tang dynasty China is mentioned to have had men performing “vigorous dances with swords” at the imperial court. I’m guessing that Zen Master Fayan had something more along these lines in mind. At least, it is what is in my mind on reading his quote.

Sure, I didn’t get much of a chance to see a sword dance back in Missouri. Maybe the hillbilly equivalent is something like juggling chain saws. At any rate, the picture is clear enough. Something can be beautiful and captivating, even if not entirely useful, when done by skilled practitioners. The same dance can be quite deadly in other hands, as most parents have had the anxiety to fear or find out with some stunt or another. I think, for example, that my parents experienced something like this a few times after I had watched professional dirt bike races on the television. Who knew how hard it could be?

Fortunately, most of us are sufficiently supervised and sufficiently lucky to live long enough to learn that we can’t do just anything we see someone else doing, especially if that something else has taken years and years of patient and dangerous practice to master. But that’s only in the obvious stuff, like juggling chain saws or, for those of us with more normal childhoods, flying with only the help of special underwear and a bath towel cape.

Unfortunately, there is a load of dangerous stuff that we indulge in all the time without the tiniest degree of skill. Doubly unfortunate is that the suffering it inflicts on us usually just encourages doing more of the same, adding suffering to suffering. To use Master Fayan’s metaphor, it would be a little like joining a sword dance but refusing to leave the circle no matter how wounded you became.

Master Fayan’s subject is a great example of just this kind of stubborn self-wounding.

“If you make subjective, personalistic judgments of past and present events, not having been through the process of refining and purifying your insight, this is like trying to do a sword dance without having learned to handle a sword.”

Memory is a wonderful thing. I love to laugh or cry at memories. But memories are notoriously slippery things. We all have marvelous inference systems in our brains that work wonderfully, but they also run on interpretations. We are constantly telling ourselves stories, even if we do it subconsciously. It is true that we do a lot of just that, but we also have a collection of words for doing it consciously: fretting, brooding, worrying, moping, fantasizing, dreaming, and deluding ourselves are a few of them. A key element in these actions is judging.

If you are like me, you judge yourself most harshly. I am always looking for what I did wrong, what I should have done better, and what not. But this does not keep me from indulging in that great skill of human memory, that of remembering and re-telling events in a way that puts the object in the best light. This means we can finally be funny or brave or compassionate or virtuous in whatever way. It also means we get caught up in blaming or second-guessing or even revising. We can replay a thousand contingencies in our minds in the course of a normal morning’s frets and fantasies. We tell ourselves the story so many times and in so many ways that it becomes a fixed melodrama inside our heads. We are such good storytellers, too, that we completely forget that at the heart of these interpretations are judgments about what is – and what is not – real.

This is why our grandparents warned us to take things with a grain of salt. This is also another reason why the study of history is such an enormously fascinating subject. As James Loewen has reminded us more than once, we can often learn just as much about the historian (or the historical society) as the subject of the study. And what we learn from listening to local history, the town gossip or even the din in our heads is that we very much want the story to justify our ways to the rest of the sorry lot of us.

I am not saying that none of us are interested in facts or truth or whatever name you give to an accurate picture of reality. I am saying that, generally speaking, our stories are built on assumptions about how the world should work and how we fit in that world. When it comes to making ‘subjective’ or ‘personalistic’ judgments about the past or present, we can get in over our heads in a hurry.

But let me give it in the words of Bhikku Bhodi –

“In ordinary consciousness the mind begins a cognitive process with some impression given in the present, but it does not stay with it. Instead it uses the immediate impression as a springboard for building blocks of mental constructs which remove it from the sheer facticity of the datum. The cognitive process is generally interpretative. The mind perceives its object free from conceptualization only briefly. Then, immediately after grasping the initial impression, it launches on a course of ideation by which it seeks to interpret the object to itself, to make it intelligible in terms of its own categories and assumptions. To bring this about the mind posits concepts, joins the concepts into constructs -- sets of mutually corroborative concepts -- then weaves the constructs together into complex interpretative schemes. In the end the original direct experience has been overrun by ideation and the presented object appears only dimly through dense layers of ideas and views, like the moon through a layer of clouds.”

It should be obvious, then, why it is potentially dangerous to give ourselves over to subjective judgments: we are living on hunches. And, if you hadn’t noticed, these judgments more often than not fuel anger, ignorance, and greed. We are sometimes shocked or surprised into remembering it. Remember all the children’s books about the child having a terrible day because his friends were ignoring him, forgetting his birthday, only to end with the child walking through the door into a surprise party? How quickly the story changed! ‘My friends hate me’ became ‘my friends love me’ with the opening of a door and the click of a light switch. We remember those stories, but forget their lessons. We forget not only how possible this kind of misjudgment is in our daily lives, but also how likely it is. We have joined the sword dance without skill and each wound drives us further into delusion. We are cut again and again, but we don’t think to step out of the dance.

Forgive me for quoting from Bhikku Bhodi again at length, but his teaching points past the delusion to the skill we must cultivate to ‘handle the sword’:

The deluded mind, cloaked in ignorance, projects its own internal constructs outwardly, ascribing them to the object as if they really belonged to it. As a result, what we know as the final object of cognition, what we use as the basis for our values, plans, and actions, is a patchwork product, not the original article. To be sure, the product is not wholly illusion, not sheer fantasy. It takes what is given in immediate experience as its groundwork and raw material, but along with this it includes something else: the embellishments fabricated by the mind.

The springs for this process of fabrication, hidden from view, are the latent defilements. The defilements create the embellishments, project them outwardly, and use them as hooks for coming to the surface, where they cause further distortion. To correct the erroneous notions is the task of wisdom, but for wisdom to discharge its work effectively, it needs direct access to the object as it is in itself, uncluttered by the conceptual elaborations. The task of right mindfulness is to clear up the cognitive field. Mindfulness brings to light experience in its pure immediacy. It reveals the object as it is before it has been plastered over with conceptual paint, overlaid with interpretations. To practice mindfulness is thus a matter not so much of doing but of undoing: not thinking, not judging, not associating, not planning, not imagining, not wishing. All these "doings" of ours are modes of interference, ways the mind manipulates experience and tries to establish its dominance. Mindfulness undoes the knots and tangles of these "doings" by simply noting. It does nothing but note, watching each occasion of experience as it arises, stands, and passes away. In the watching there is no room for clinging, no compulsion to saddle things with our desires. There is only a sustained contemplation of experience in its bare immediacy, carefully and precisely and persistently.

This is what Master Fayan meant by “refining and purifying your insight.” This is, I also think, the true meaning of Jesus’ teachings about losing yourself to find yourself. Bhikku Bhodi used the metaphors of clouds over the moon or layers of conceptual paint. Master Fayan used the metaphor of fools joining a sword dance. Our deluded minds are also like fetters. And, as anyone knows, it’s hard to dance when you’re all tied up, knotted in assumptions and bound by suffering. That is no time to handle a sword. The only wise decision at that moment is to stop.

Which is what I will do now. :)

It is official. The Ketchums have survived our first strain of Dengue Fever here in Cambodia.

For the last 2 weeks we have been fighting off this nasty virus. It started with David, but went undiagnosed because he had only a light rash. John David was next. He had some flu symptoms, too, but it was the rash that alerted us. We went to the doctor. The first doctor thought it must be some kind of measles. The second doctor thought it must be some kind of allergic reaction. Then the rash appeared on Holly. The third doctor finally gave us a solid diagnosis: dengue fever.

Dengue is spread through mosquito bites - you have to be bitten by a bug that has bitten an infected person. Which makes spreading through the family very easy! It's most common symptoms are nausea, flu-like symptoms, fever, headache, eye strain/light sensitivity, extreme pain in the joints and muscles, and skin rash. One of its nicknames is "breakbone fever." I thought I had reinjured my back! Also, it is common for your limbs to regularly 'fall asleep.' And the skin rash can completely cover your body - even inside the ears, on the lips, etc. It is very itchy! The greatest danger is dehydration, but sometimes keeping your sanity seems like the bigger challenge! ;)

The good news: once you get dengue, you are immune for life. In fact, many Cambodians claim that adults cannot get dengue - because they all got an immunity as children!

The bad news: there are 4 strains of dengue. Hopefully, we will escape Cambodia with only experiencing this once! :)

I posted a question on a forum once regarding hell. This was the initial response:

"My opinion on Hell is that it is real, eternal, and not a pleasant place. I feel bad for those that do not know Christ and will be sent there. However, people choose to go there by denying Christ. As for those who never heard of Christ, lets just say if you are reading this post then you have heard of Christ and cannot use ignorance as an excuse."

I have several knee-jerk reactions, and I'll share one. :)

The writer said, "I feel bad for those...."

Yikes, I'd hope so! I would hope, even, that this is an understatement. I am reminded of the only sermon I ever remember preaching on hell, from Romans 9. The drift of it was "Why every Christian should want to go to hell." Here are some excerpts:

To begin with, Paul is NOT saying that heaven is not important or that hell is not that hot. He is NOT saying that he wouldn't mind it too much if he actually did miss heaven and awoke in the torment of Gehenna. He's not suggesting that he's tasted hell like you taste the mystery meat at the church potluck and sit down saying, 'You know, it's really not that bad.' His point is that he has already felt something of torment. Something has made him writhe in agony, kept him sleepless, and made him suffer. His joy in Christ is diminished, not because Christ is not sufficient, but, in his words, 'for the sake of my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh.”

This sounds surprising at first, but Paul's heart should not surprise us at all. He was merely following Jesus, for Jesus, too, had considered something that important. Jesus, too, had “great sorrow and unceasing grief” in His heart. And if we are to love as we are loved, we will also have "great heaviness and continual sorrow" in OUR hearts. We will bear the pain of loving others, like Jesus and Paul and so many like them.

That's the nature of love. It makes us vulnerable, both to joy and to grief. And if we do not have both of those, then we probably don't have much love, either.

What I fear, then, is that too many Christians (and I am NOT accusing the person who responded on the forum of this, but speaking generally) feel bad about others going to hell in about the same way we feel bad about victims of exploitation here on earth (e.g., economic injustice,
sexual exploitation, etc.). In other words, we are glad we are in a better position, can't imagine what it would be like to suffer like them, pity them - but certainly aren't going to sacrifice our own comforts to alleviate that suffering.

But it is exactly this kind of suffering - going beyond our vague notions of apathy disguised as sympathy - that the way of Christ and his cross calls the Christian to. You cannot love your neighbor and be indifferent (not merely in sympathy, but in action) to their condition.
And if we are indifferent, the Scriptures simply point you to the One who could not bear heaven if we were abandoned to hell....

You blink and 2 weeks pass. We've been so busy it's a little tough to remember what's happened, but here's a little with what's new our way.

I spent the last week and a half in training seminars with Peace Bridges and getting behind on my language studies. ;) We have come to the place where our memories can't keep up with the vocabulary. We also managed to squeeze in a trip to a used children's book discount sale, where we found a book about Sue Hendrickson (paleontologist who found the largest T Rex fossil) and books by Patricia Polacco (one of our favorite authors) and Tomie de Paolo, among other odds and ends. John has started learning to read, so this should add to the fun.

We celebrated Halloween by carving a pumpkin with the neighborhood kids. Later, John dressed up with a sheet over his head and went from room to room in our house collecting candy. Then he handed out candy to us, but we didn't wear sheets. We then ate a lot of candy. I had a lot of White Rabbits (a Chinese kind of tootsie roll that has been one of my favorites for many years), while John David munched mainly on something not completely unlike starbursts. Holly had some Apollo wafers (kind of like KitKats, but not quite like). Then we sat around and watched Scooby-Doo. :)

And now a word about construction in Cambodia, for those who are interested in such things.

Cambodia is held together by cement and welding joints. As for welding, this is done almost entirely without normal safety precautions, like a welding mask or gloves. You get used to seeing the flash of torch and metal as you drive down the road. I stopped noticing the lack of masks as soon as I saw that the closest thing most people use is a pair of sunglasses. As for concrete, it is the king. They build concrete houses 7 to 8 stories into the air - often without true scaffolding or cranes or anything. They build little platforms on the sides of the buildings out of tree branches and lay 1x8s on them and climb out onto the air. It's all rebar columns with bricks in between, a little like the settlers used to build in Missouri with posts and then bricks for nogging. The laborers work barefoot, usually. They can climb in amazing places without holding on to anything but their tools. They have great balance. And they are very, very skillful with a rope and pulley.

And so that's it for now. Hope you are enjoying a splendid Autumn!

"I said to him that Zululand sounded fine, but that every man has a map in his heart of his own country and that the heart will never allow you to forget this map." - Obed Ramotswe, an old African man in Alexander McCall Smith's The No.1 Ladies' Detective Agency, p 18

There is a map in my heart - of hills and streams and sycamore trees rising above the banks, where boys would strip their clothes and climb trees and throw themselves into the swollen spring waters; of the stickiness of summer, skin clinging to lawn chairs and grass clippings tangled in leg hairs; of campfires fed by autumn leaves and limbs until it glows deep into the night; of frost in the tent and in my beard on a winter morning. I remember the camping trips as a boy, along the banks of lakes, where I learned how poor I am at fishing and how good I am at sleeping. I remember the woods, the empty lots near our house, where we tracked small animals, tried to smoke grapevine, and lit more fires than was safe. As I grew, more and more places made their maps in my heart - simple places with trees and water and a wind that comes down hills.

I remember taking a hike with a good friend from high school at a Missouri glade. We hiked a good 3 or 4 hours, me grinning at her as she packed a .22 pistol to protect us from dangerous persons in the empty place. I loved the walk, the grasses I had never seen before, the way the path opened up from the trees into rugged glade. We made it all the way through the loop, but she was disappointed. She had traveled extensively in the Northwest, she said, and such a long walk was usually rewarded by a more spectacular sight than wildflowers and lichen clinging to the bare rocks.

I have done my share of traveling now, too. I have seen the wonders of Yosemite and Yellowstone, the rugged beauty of the northern California coast, the silent splendor of the redwoods, the beaches of the Pacific and the Atlantic. I have traveled to Asia, Central America, and Europe. I have seen the sun set on 4 continents; I have seen more beauty of land and water than I ever deserved.

But the map in my heart is of Missouri.

I am not a traveler - not at heart, anyway. It's not that I am tired of traveling, that I have exhausted my sense of wandering. I have curiosity of other places; I have joy at seeing and sensing other places. But I didn't move to Cambodia because of wanderlust. It was much simpler than that. I needed a job and a job presented itself that was worth the doing. If I could have done the job in Missouri, I would have stayed.

Not that I regret being here. It's true that problems follow you wherever you go and you cannot escape yourself. If you are unhappy in one place you have a good chance at being unhappy anywhere. But the opposite is also true. I was happy living in Missouri, and that happiness has followed me here. Missing people and places and chocolate chip cookies doesn't make me unhappy. I'm glad I am alive to miss them. So Obed never went to Zululand. Maybe he was the wiser one, but I do not regret the places I have lived.

Still, he was right that the heart never lets you forget the map it hides. When the twilight comes and I sit on my hammock on the roof of the house, my eyes can't see quite clearly. For a moment, when the breeze is strong and the stars are bright, I can almost imagine that there is a path beside me stretching underneath the trees, littered with pine needles and oak leaves.

And I am home.