Hot:

I am a cultural Buddhist. What does this mean? This means I don’t proclaim to be a Buddhist or actively practice either of the major branches of Buddhism, but lead a Buddhist-esque life. This means, as a friend recently said of himself, I’m a stone cold atheist. I was raised with Buddhist ideas, but I never attended any of the meetings.

Why am I telling you this? Because I am sick and tired of born-again Buddhists telling me what Buddhism is (they give me this watered-down claptrap about “living in the moment” and having compassion for plants). So, if you’re thinking of becoming a Buddhist, if you’ve “looked” into it, like so many brands of teeth whitening toothpaste, and want to share, consider the bullet points below as an introduction to your ignorance (my apologies for the harshness of my tone, but I am fed up).

• “living in the moment” is Zen, not Buddhism.

• Having compassion for all living things is great, but it’s not the end all and be all of Buddhist beliefs. The first axiom you need to accept is this: life is suffering. Not sure what that means? Well, go away and ponder it because explaining it will defeat the purpose.

•If your shopping religions because your current one doesn’t quite fit your lifestyle, don’t expect Buddhism to be a better fit. Buddhism is the James Brown of religions, you have got to work for it – it’s not even a religion to be honest with you, it’s a method of training your mind to be disciplined and yet open, to be mindful yet free. Not sure what this means? See bullet point number 2. Want to read about the difficulty, the effort it takes to truly be on a path to enlightenment? Read this.

• Give me a break with the beads around your wrist – they’re not meant to be worn as jewelry. Stop advertising your Buddhism. No one should care about it but you.

• The Dalai Lama is not a figure to be worshipped. He never asked to be worshipped and he doesn’t want to be worshipped. Stop it. Don’t believe me? Here’s a quote from the man himself:

“I always consider myself as a simple Buddhist monk. I feel that is the real me. I feel that the Dalai Lama as a temporal ruler is a man-made institution. As long as the people accept the Dalai Lama, they will accept me. But being a monk is something which belongs to me. No one can change that. Deep down inside, I always consider myself a monk, even in my dreams.” This quote is the first answer on the Q&A page of dalailama.com.

• Stop proselytizing Buddhism. Even the above mentioned international spokesman doesn’t do it. Why are you? Is it because you just can’t let go of the Old Time Religion?

• Stop assuming every Asian you meet is a Buddhist. I’m an atheist. Most of my relatives are Christians. I don’t have your car keys, I don’t know where you left your wallet and I certainly don’t have your answers – you have them. Not sure what this means? See bullet point number 2.

• Stop trying to reach enlightenment now. It doesn’t work that way. Learn to be compassionate first – crawl before you walk.

Still interested in Buddhism? Good, go read about it, ask a monk some questions. I have nothing to teach you, I’m not a Buddhist.

Namaste.

Hot:

So, a beauty pageant contestant, Carrie Prejean of California, was asked her opinion on gay marriage during a televised contest. She replied, “And you know what, I think my country, in my family, I that I believe that a marriage should be between a man and a woman. No offense to anybody out there, but that’s how I was raised.”

There was a time when people were raised to believe the stars were dead people looking down at the living; the flat Earth was the center of the universe; a warrior was within his rights to cut off the head of a person for failing to bow. History is filled with cultural mores and accepted practices that offend and shock the sensibilities of modern humans. Bloodletting, slavery, eugenics, harems, human sacrifice, lawn darts and The Gong Show are just a few examples of things 21st century humans look back on and say, “What the hell were we thinking?”

What were we thinking? What were we thinking when we institutionalized slavery, when we, as people raised in this country, decided that women should be doped up on valium and confined to a suburban prison for the rest of their adult lives? What germ of an idea gave birth to the notion, in this great land of ours, that it was okay to expose unsuspecting soldiers to lethal doses of radiation in the name of national defense? What jackass came up with the brilliant idea of “separate but equal”?

We look back at places like Auschwitz, Buchenwald and Dachau with shame, disgust and anger — at least most of us do. Places like Little Bighorn, San Salvador and Plymouth Rock have much different meanings to people outside the Christian tradition, as do the names Sitting Bull, Christopher Columbus and John Smith. It is the perspective of our cultures that give us a way to look at the world and all the things in it. 

I was raised to view the culture of the samurai and its Bushido Code as something less than noble, but I found something of value in it anyway. I was raised with the idea that people outside of my ethnic cadre were not to be trusted, and that each and every one of them could be summed up with a gross caricature. My experiences in the world have taught me otherwise. 

The thing is, Klansman and nazis were raised a certain way. So were the people of Salem and so were the people who hijacked four airplanes on a cloudless day in 2001. They were all raised to believe in what they were taught, raised to believe that they were privy to the divine. They were all taught intolerance on a level so epic, Homer would be lost for words (doh! not that Homer). 

I was raised to look beyond the ignorance of previous generations and look ahead to educated discourse and informed cognition. I was raised to make sure that the no one is pushed to the margins for the sake of idiotic rhetoric, morally questionable beliefs or to score points with Middle America. And you know what? I think my country, in my family, I believe that a marriage should be between whoever wants it. No offense to anybody out there, but that’s how I was raised.

Hot:

I read an article published in The Atlantic roughly a year ago entitled, In the Basement of the Ivory Tower by a Professor X. No, not the guy from the X-Men – the author chose to remain anonymous to avoid getting his academia nuts caught in a vice. The reason for his concern is made evident by the content of the article, which basically states that at least one corner of our collegiate pyramid is built on a foundation of mud.

This mud is a mixture of overworked, overburdened and overlooked people who have ended up at low-level colleges for no other reason than ignorance. I don’t mean the prerequisite ignorance required for learning, the lack of knowledge that begins the cycle of education, nor do I mean ignorance of college rankings, availability of financial aid programs or laziness. No, these people are there because they have no realistic idea of what it means to be in college.

Some are there because, as the article states, they need a certain amount of credits to qualify for municipal or state jobs, promotions, or because they simply want more tickets to the brass ring lottery. After all, they have been told time and again that a college degree is the gateway to the American Dream, the portal to wealth and everlasting happiness – or at the very least a job that offers a transfer pass from the emergency room to a private doctor’s office. Regardless of their reasons these people have one thing in common: None of them are ready for college level work. I don’t mean that they don’t deserve a chance to learn and grow, I mean they simply don’t have the basic skills necessary to take advantage of a college education.

So what’s the problem, you ask? Colleges and universities are places of education aren’t they? Teach these people what they need to know. They may take longer than the average student to get their degrees, but they will eventually graduate won’t they? The answer to the last question is… no.

According to a 2005 article in The Atlantic, only 27 percent of US citizens have a college degree. According to The Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor, “In October 2008, 68.6 percent of 2008 high school graduates were enrolled in colleges or universities.” Unless there was a dramatic increase in college graduation rates in the last 3-4 years (and there hasn’t been) these numbers tell a very sad tale. And of course the U.S. DOL statistics don’t include the number of adults who enrolled in colleges during the same period. The simple fact is the vast majority of people attending college never end up graduating.

So, why am I summarizing articles you could easily read for yourself? Because this post is not about the articles. This post is about my friend, Charles Bivona, an adjunct professor in the English department at… I won’t mention the name of the university for fear of backlash against my friend.

Like the unnamed author of said article, Charles teaches Composition 101 (or English 101) – a remedial class designed to instruct students how to write at a college level. However, this is not a college level course. Sure, the university collects tuition, strong coffee and colorful euphemisms are dispensed in liberal amounts in and around the classroom, but this is not a college level course. This doesn’t even qualify as the 13th grade. This is where hope goes to die.

Many universities and colleges, at the very least, understand that the barely-literate cannot hope to keep up with an actual freshman curriculum – they won’t understand their textbooks let alone be able to write a research paper. But instead of telling these students that they simply don’t have the infrastructure for higher learning, that they need to have more in their academic arsenal than a GED and a receipt for a recent SAT exam to make the program work for them, they simply made Composition 101 mandatory. And  if they fail the course – and the majority usually do – they have to take it again before they can apply a single credit towards a degree. They have to take it as many times as necessary to pass the class. All the while the university collects tuition semester after semester, for each time the student repeats the class, while continually selling its message of a brighter future to a fresh crop of ill-equipped recruits. If, by some miracle, they pass Composition 101 they get to apply what they’ve learned in Composition 102. And the cycle repeats. Getting the picture? Like looking at a Francis Bacon painting after pulling eight G’s in the Space Shuttle isn’t it?

The thing is, these students are not stupid. They are not incapable of learning. They’ve just had to overcome an incredible number of social obstacles just to get into the classroom. I won’t list them. You know what they are. And if you don’t, you need to get out into the world a little more and get some grit under your finger nails – but I digress. The point is, these students need the best teacher they can get. Not simply an expert in the field who published ten academic papers before she was out of diapers, or the professor who will go along with whatever the university tells them to go along with as long as it leads to tenure, but the best teacher. My friend, Charles Bivona, is that teacher.

I know this because I know about Michel Foucault’s critical history of modernity and his thoughts on discourse; I know that much of our Western views of good and evil and the epic struggles between Satan and God comes from the works of John Milton and not the Bible; I know that Denis Diderot challenged the structure of the novel in the 18th century and that this eventually led to works like Ulysses by James Joyce. I know these things, and much much more, because Mr. Bivona taught these things to me. But more importantly, I am able to write this post with confidence as a direct result of Mr. Bivona’s tireless efforts to help me become a better writer.

Why should you care about any of this? You should care because Mr. Bivona was recently passed over for a full time teaching position at his university. You should care because this is not the first time he has been passed over, but the fourth time he has been passed over. I have no idea who ended up getting the job, and frankly I don’t care. I don’t care because they can’t be a better teacher than Mr. Bivona. I know this because if there are better teachers at that campus than Mr. Bivona, it would have been admitted into the Ivy League by now.

No, I’ve never taken a class of Mr. Bivona’s, but I know how he teaches. He engages his students with charm and wit, with knowledge and compassion, and he takes great care to construct the big picture with polished gems and potent pearls. He teaches with passion and counsels with empathy because he recognizes himself in all of his students. He is qualified, he is an expert in his subject and he loves what he does. So why then would a mediocre university, any university for that matter, decide not to hire a young, vital and enormously popular teacher with a bright future? 

I can only guess that it has to do with something other than providing the best possible education to the most necessitous of its students. I can only guess that it has to do with Charles believing that the best way to teach students is to discuss and not simply lecture, to treat them as human equals and not pledges to some elite fraternity of sacred knowledge. I can only guess that his university is content in hiring only uninspired and indifferent faculty, who will ensure that the advancement rate of their Comp 101 students remains as an abundant revenue stream. I can only guess because I am not privy to the inner workings of that university. But for the sake of every future student, I hope my guess is wrong.