[Buddha-l] The DVR as a Kalyānamitta

[Richard Hayes]

On Wednesday 10 October 2007 15:09, Franz Metcalf wrote:

> If you insist on watching the news, you really need to get a DVR
> (digital video recorder, the machine that comes with satellite TV but
> can be acquired independently) so that you can record the entire thing
> but skip over the sections that excite your kilesas.

Sounds great, but ma femme et moi are seriously trying to reduce the number of 
things we own, and buying another gadget would be moving in the wrong 
direction. But your point is well taken. We have vowed to stop watching the 
news (or anything else) on television during meal times (because I have 
broken nearly all our dishes by hurling them at Republicans who invade my 
home via television). I subscribe to podcasts of the few news and analysis 
programs I can stomach, and I skip all the stuff that I know would multiply 
kleshas in my beleaguered consciousness continuum.

A genuine problem these days is that Americans keep getting such pathetic 
political candidates partly because American voters are so abysmally 
ill-informed about almost everything (except sports and Paris Hilton's sex 
life), and yet it is so horribly painful to keep informed of what is going on 
in this country that only those with nerves of steel can bear to be 
well-informed. 

I used not to believe in evil. I took the position that it what people call 
evil is just settling for lower goods. The Bush administration has cured me 
of that view. It is now my view that something close to pure evil lives and 
works in the White House. But even if this country were to get a much-needed 
exorcism, look at what we have waiting to fill the vacuum. Aside from 
Kucinich and maybe Richardson (if you pinched me very hard), there is not one 
of the Democratic or Republican candidates I would be willing to back in a 
race for rat catcher. The poor world that suffers under the yoke of American 
incompetence and delusion is, I fear, in for quite a long and dark ride.

Oh shit, I forgot the requirements to mention something about Buddhism. Here 
goes: Buddha.

-- 
Richard P. Hayes
Department of Philosophy
University of New Mexico
http://www.unm.edu/~rhayes