Impermanence

A key concept of Buddhism, in which we are admonished to be able to treat our present moment as our last, to be ready to go without regret. It has, of course, parallels in all spiritual/religious teachings. a Buddhist teacher of earlier decade suggested that this aspect of life was crucial to liveliness, that change was essential to life. An even earlier teacher warned that one's passage from impermance was as if (we when pass) we are hurtled into outer space without our baggage, our ego, body or past; we are suddenly orphans of the cosmos, with nothing to rely upon.

Another version of this to me represents a twisted scenario of anthropomorphism, since its story assumes that we want to hold on to this lifetime, our present ego, learning and acomplishments, etc. tenaciously expending our consciousness trying to hold on to the "unholdable." Isn't this just the reverse side of a coin? Indeed much of religious/spiritual thought and writing seems to be an indulgence with this legacy of anthropomorphism.

Another version in Zen Buddhism is that of "transitoryness," c h a n g e is the constant that can be relied upon, "Here today, gone tomorrow." When I was a child there was a saying about "Not taking it with you." But the deeper matter is that when you go you cannot take you with you, in the sense that ego pictures possession and identity. Back in the 1940s a novel by Aldous Huxley called "After Many a Summer Dies the Swan" about William Randolph Hearst drammatized this dilemma.

Infrastructure

This might have been my first post for the Blog, since it is of primary importance to most any endeavor. One of the first stories I remembered as a child was the one cautioning about building on sand, the importance of a good foundation whatever the structure was to be. Now-a-days, infrastructues are seldom if ever mentioned ... the are assumed as is much else. Except when a bridge goes down, as it did in Minneapolis a few years ago. I was heartened, and almost dumbfounded to hear a program on Wisconsin Public Radio on the subject last week. Voila.

Someone commented a few years ago, perhaps when Bill Clinton was President, that the boomer generation was particularly re-miss when it came to infrastructure focus. About that time I called Senator Wellstone's office in Minneapolis and suggested that the good Senator would do well keep his sights and actions more focused there. The young voice taking messages asked: "What is infrastructure?" I gave her a few examples and suggested she check any dictionary about the word. I never heard from Mr. Wellstone, he died not long after that.

Growing up in the depression it was utterly mandatory to pay attention to the foundations of things, the "nitty gritty," the reasons why things worked or didn't. To make assumptions about whether something was "grounded" or not was just not a good thing to do There wasn't the slack around, and maybe that is a problem in some regards. But my feeling is that with the growing number of so-called "natural disasters" and the disasters caused by humankind's proclivity to manufacture problems for itself (eg.building standards, techniques & inspections) including so-called terroist actions, we had better turn our sights to what supports us, what ever that is.

The second definition is extremely important: "The basic facilities, and installations needed for the growth and functioning of a country, community, or organization," The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language.