Review of downtown Seattle Target (Yelp.com)

Target is a great boon for everyone, especially those who work or have to go through downtown on their way to work.

It is a good alternative to online amazon shopping, where I had been doing most of my shopping because I wanted to avoid the hassles of crowds downtown.

However, I need to warn others that the area is not necessarily very safe, even from other shoppers!

Wednesday evening I went down to Target to pick up a soundbar speaker. I found it on the shelf and brought it over to the check-out electronics counter on the third floor.

I was standing about 5 feet from (to the side and to the back of) a young neatly dressed African-American woman who was paying for something. She turned and walked away. In fact she almost walked into me. Instead of brushing past me, she started to yell at me, "WHAT ARE YOU DOING THERE IN MY WAY?"

In a state of shock by this nastiness, I could only stammer, "You don't need to have to be so rude..." but she mumbled "You were in my way" and walked away.

(I'm sure if I had behaved that way towards her, she would have screamed in my face, or even smacked me, a racial minority like herself. As a person of color, I have the obligation to speak out against racism, whatever its color).

The store clerk witnessed the incident and was sympathetic, the other customers did not appear to take notice, which I think is typical of Seattle. Shop till you drop.

But something more than merchandise is being transacted: social dynamics (even if few shoppers are aware of or choose to admit it).

The experience left me shaken. Racism can upset even a simple shopping expedition.

I'm not so sure I want to continue shopping at Target, if it changes the way Westlake Plaza did only a few years after it opened and began to attract an aggressive crowd.

But I hope it doesn't, because having a Target downtown, one that is well lit and well organized, is so convenient.

A l'ombre de nous (Francais Lai)

The use of Buddhist images as aid to meditative practice

As one who has meditated most of his adult life and who deals with chronic pain, I have wondered since my stay in China during the 1980's how Buddhist paintings and sculpture have aided the practitioner of meditation.  The answer to this question was not something that readily came from my study of Asian art at the graduate level at the University of Kansas.  As far as I know, there is a paucity of historical documentation which would directly answer whether the practitioner in China, as opposed to, for instance, Tibet, was aided by Buddhist imagery.  In the case of the latter, visualization of the images contained in the mandalas or tankhas was explicitly used,and not just invoked as an abstraction or philosophical principle.

Buddhism is a living religion and something that can be consigned to historical archives or solely elucidated without reference to deeply felt and lived personal experience.

In this light, I would like to bring my own personal insights together with what understanding I have of the historical and visual record to speak to the aforementioned issue.

Even at my stay at the San Francisco Zen Center, it was not clear how the art there was supposed to contribute to meditative practice, other than providing an aura of sanctity or the sacred.

Ditto on my recent trip to Thailand and Cambodia, where I was hindered by my lack of language skills.

* * * * *

One of the most perplexing questions I have posed myself is why the wide variance in demeanor among the various images of the Buddha(s) or bodhisattvas or arhats, even if one holds as a constant the geographical locus or the approximate time period.

...

Il est tout a fait possible qu'aux Etats-unis on est vraiment arrive a se confondre la vie et un feuilleton ou une tele-realite.

De cette facon, l'Amerique a seduit et continuer a seduire le monde entier, y compris la France, la Chine, etc.

Le I-phone n'est qu'une meilleure facon de les faire arriver d'un instant a l'autre dans nos vies.

Phra Buddha Chinnarat, Wat Phra Si Rattana Mahathat (Phitsanoluk, Thailand)