Zencast - Right Effort

In the podcast about Right Effort Dharma teacher Gil Fronsdal suggests that right effort is putting in a minimum of effort. Do, whatever you do, without trying to achieve something. Do things as a matter of being, not as a matter of establishing, changing, struggle or whatever emphasis. I am paraphrasing a bit.

I went back to listen to this teaching, because it struck a really deep chord in me. Ever since I was a kid I was inclined to do exactly this. But I learned otherwise. Common sense dictates that you won't achieve something unless you put in effort. Real effort, sweat and toil and persevere and fall and stand up again. And the need to achieve endless amounts of things is above criticism. As much I internalized this, my deepest incentive was always to delicately dose my efforts. As soon as I felt I had to push, strive, sweat, trample others, force myself and such, I had a resentment. I had a feeling of engaging in something unwholesome. Thus I acquired a name of being lazy, of being an underachiever, a wishy washy giving in weak dork, and I thought of myself likewise.

Nevertheless the failures, I did manage to grow up and build my life and family and also a career. And there have always been exceptional moments of putting in great effort and achieving a lot, but somehow maintain the feeling I was not forcing anything, neither myself, nor others nor any state in the universe. The way Fronsdal defined right effort, no matter how counterintuitive, connected with this inclination deep in me and these experiences. It proves to me a great inspiration. If anything, it allows me to conduct my life in the way I naturally feel fits me, and not feel bad, guilty or inapt about it. To be, not to strive.

The Daily Whiplash (5)

Physiotherapy has been cruel on me again. In the early morning my therapist by the name of Bilhah, sort of gently stretched my neck and shoulders and had me leave the table slightly dizzy, but still optimistic. After an hour, however, pain started kicking in, as if I were a shell brutally pried open. And my friend ibuprofen was of little use. The right shoulder has proven to be particularly tenacious and I am typing this post with my left hand only.

Prescriptive and descriptive grammar

The August 22nd lecture "Prescriptive vs Descriptive Approaches to Grammar" by Dr. Amy Fountain, Adjunct Lecturer, Department of Linguistics, University of Arizona is the introduction to a linguistics lecture series that I found through iTunes U and is available as a podcast.

I used to be a stickler for rules in language. Not only in Dutch, also in English and Hebrew (and other languages I dabble in). Being explained in the is lecture the difference between prescriptive grammar (the stickler) and descriptive (whatever we find people use and passes for comprehensible and correct language), brightens up a whole area in my life. With regret I recall the useless discussions in my childhood whether a certain use of Dutch was correct or not. It was prescriptively incorrect en descriptively correct - nothing more nothing less. Could have thought of it myself, but never did.

So, I am going to go for more lectures. As opposed to what you might expect from a linguistic lecture, there is a lot of visuals going on. Even to the point of certain texts, sentences, words, shown in Dr. Fountain's power point and she doesn't even read them out loud to the poor podcast audience. A bit of a drawback that I will hope won't prove to be disastrous. Need not be.

The Daily Whiplash (4)

All in all, the situation is improving. I can clearly detect more pain-free time (even though this is with the maximum dose of ibuprofen) and when pains occur, they are less pervasive and really heavy only for short periods of time. The point is however, this is far from normal. I need to take the pain killers regularly in the highest allowed dose and must restrain from anything that demands effort from back or neck. And when I am doing fine, like today with another half day of feeling quite good, the strain on the back is apparently made without noticing, and there is relapse.

Speaking of Faith - Einstein and God

This is a two part radio program of APM (American Public Media) about Albert Einstein's metaphysics. The first is about God. The second is about Ethics. A transcript of the program is available. The broadcast was in March this year. Luckily the issues of Speaking of Faith are also delivered as a podcast.

In the first part, program lead Krista Tippett speaks with physicists Freeman Dyson and Paul Davies. I had to open my podcast molded mind to this radio molded podcast. Short interview snippets, music, leaders etc; the program is much more of an assemblage than a singular built up thinking arch. Funny to see how pure podcast invites such different broadcasting style.

The show ends with a quote from Einstein's writings:

I cannot conceive of a personal God who would directly influence the actions of individuals or would sit in judgment on creatures of His own creation. I cannot do this in spite of the fact that mechanistic causality has, to a certain extent, been placed in doubt by modern science. My religiosity consists in a humble admiration of the infinitely superior spirit that reveals itself in the little that we, with our weak and transitory understanding, can comprehend of reality. Morality is of the highest importance, but for us, not for God.

By the way. I found these two parts thanks to a post in the open culture blog.

The Daily Whiplash (3)

My wife is running double and triple shifts. She is taking over much of the household stuff that I used to do or share with her, because I can't strain my back. Cooking, cleaning and bathing the kids. Then, I have had a couple of pain attacks that had me rolling in bed (or on the floor next to it) and she drove me to the Police and several other places. In short, she is making everything happen right now. Otherwise, a small accident would have brought our lives to a kind of stand still.

In the mean time the whiplash makes its rounds. I have had a couple of stretches with little pain again. One hour here, a couple of hours there and this coupled with some short but hefty attacks of excruciating pains. It's all in one bag.