Sagesses Bouddhistes: maitre Dogen, fondateur du Soto Zen

C'est pas un mythe

Ce n'est ni un mythe ni un stereotype:


Comme un copain belge m'a confirme recemment,
(la grande majorite) des americains parlent fort, avec insistance, a haute voix meme si ce n'est pas du tout necessaire et si ca agace les autres a 100 metres de la.

En publique je peux constater que d'apres mon experience les americains--surtout les noirs americains--parlent 5-10 fois plus fort que les francophones (francais, suisses, belges, etc....mais peut-etre pas quebecois).

Ils hurlent quand il se parlent (y compris a l'aide d'un portable) et ca n'embete pas grand monde.

Mais, en fait, en quoi sont-ils si differents des allemands ou des cantonais?

Et comment ca se fait que les francais ne croient pas que la langue anglaise comme on le parle aux Etats-unis ne fasse pas mal aux oreilles?

Surtout en ne cessant pas de dire des betises...

Mais ils ne sont pas tout a fait insensibles, s'apercevant pour la plupart que le francais est beaucoup plus doux ou que l'anglais britannique (Oxford) a des qualites plus agreables.

Sagesses Bouddhistes: Bodh Gaya

Bodh Gaya

(Inde)

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x5dr7e_bodhgaya-l-eveil-du-bouddha_news

http://www.bouddhismes.net/carte_1

Bodh gaya, en hindi बोधगया, est une ville indienne, située 

dans l'État du Bihar, à une centaine de kilomètres au sud 

de Patna.

Elle est particulièrement connue pour être le lieu 

où Siddharta Gautamaa atteint l'illumination et l'état 

de Bouddha.

<<L'eveil>> sculpture aniconic en bas-relief de Bharhut (Inde), 1er siecle 

avant J.C.

Le deuxième site fondamental, celui de Bodh-Gayâ est celui où le prince Siddhârta a acquis l’éveil à l’ombre d’un pippal (ficus religiosa). Ici encore, sur un pilier de Bhârhut du Ier siècle avant notre ère, on voit un pippal  au milieu d’une colonnade et, sous l’arbre, un siège vide sur lequel est censé se tenir le Bouddha. Plus tard, comme sur un relief du Gandhâra des IIIe-IVe s., l’Eveillé est figuré sous le pippal mais le relief illustre aussi un autre événement : celui au cours duquel le démon Mâra – le dieu de la mort et de l’enchaînement dans le cycle des renaissances –, déniant au Bouddha ses qualités spirituelles, envoie son armée et ses filles pour le distraire et le détourner de sa méditation ; mais le Bouddha prend alors à témoin la Terre, effleurant le sol du bout de ses doigts, afin qu’elle témoigne de ses hautes qualités morales et spirituelles. Ce geste (bhûmisparsha mudrâ) fait reconnaître sans hésitation ce moment particulier.

(http://blog-comptes.rendus.amis-musee-cernuschi.org/category/inde/)

A voir aussi:   

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bodhgaya#Lieux_et_monuments

The Maginot LIne, without a reponse

La ligne Maginot:  a quoi ca sert a s'en rappeller apres des siecles?



Is it possible that a boundary crossed and an entity invaded 20 years earlier can still be the source of pain and self-introspection?

http://www.la-ligne-maginot.com/presentation.php

http://www.maginot.org/histoire/plan_jaune_fr.htm

Metropolitan Museum; Musee Guimet

Metropolitan Museum

Musee Guimet

http://www.xn--avenue-des-champs-lyses-sccd.com/?p=2262

Minority Report: Jumping on the Black Bandwagon

It occurred to me that one of the reasons that other minorities--from Hispanics, Asian-Americans to gays and lesbians--side with African-Americans on so many issues, to the point of imitating their culture and swagger/persona is that they subliminally see the advantages that have accrued to blacks.

So you see (and hear) them on the street on television, just like their white counterparts, aping African-Americans, with their tough, loud, hip, cool, urban talk and gait and gestures.

This, of course, is terribly politically incorrect, to say this, but the victim mentality and moral superiority (slavery, oppression, discrimination) combined with the superman* heroism that all but political conservatives associate with African-Americans make for a heady potion.

African-Americans are everywhere and numerically superior to their actual proportion of the U.S. population (only one in 8 Americans is black), nowhere better illustrated in professional sports.

And in terms of Hollywood movies, national news, or pop music, one would think that America were something along the lines of 50% white, 40% black, with the rest split up among not very noticed "other" minorities.

Liberal whites champion first and foremost African-Americans, and the two-term presidency of Obama have given blacks a visibility envied and a model to be copied by other groups.  Some of this is positive, some of it is not.  The model of "we are an oppressed group" can lead to a militancy ("Society owes us something," "we are always a victim," and "we can do no wrong") and a way of seeing things situations as either all-black or all-white ("You are an oppressor" and "I am a victim of your oppression").

So even though, for instance, Asian-Americans may have a much higher average family income or much lower crime rate, or Hispanic-Americans actually are the largest minority in the U.S., it is African-Americans who bask in the admiration and "celebrity" imagination of Americans.

What other minority has such an array of superstars:  an Oprah, a Michael Jordan, Mohammed Ali, Beyonce, Stevie Wonder, Denzel, Aretha, Will Smith, Michael Jackson, Toni Morrison, or the late Martin Luther King, Jr., John Coltrane, Maya Angelou or has such powerful champions as the New York Times, the Democratic Party (Clinton, Carter, del Blasio...) and other political royalty (Colin Powell), the NAACP, and so on?

No other minority has won such widespread acceptance and adulation.  So it is no wonder then that African-Americans as a group certainly have the highest standing--this is apart from questions of economic or educational parity--and greatest sympathy in this country so that even staggeringly high rates of urban crime have been turned into evidence that they have been wronged and bear little or no responsibility.

It's as if Americans now want African-Americans to be the majority or dominant culture, dislodging the so-called "white" (or, erroneously, "European") culture from its position.

The problem is that such an America, with African-Americans holding, given proportionally equal or greater weight than whites, would not look like America as it actually is.  That would mean ignoring other racial/ethnic groups as well as reject the notion of "one man, one vote" or parity in terms of actual demographics.

I am all for shifting power to underrepresented groups, but not at the expense of some minorities or in a disproportionate fashion that would simply, effectively disenfranchise the majority. 

But only in conservative circles will you hear such opinions openly voiced, because in liberal and in most mainstream circles, they are taboo.

And certain taboos are not supposed to be broken, on pain of intense social censure and ostracizing.

(So much for diversity).

Do we need to be clones of either Anglo-Saxons or, now, African-Americans? 



* America has always worshiped Superman, Batman...down to Paul Bunyan, over-sized figures.