Dharma Friends

Several months ago I happened into a lecture by Bhante Vimalaramsi at a local bookstore called Soul Food Books. Bhante V is quite well known in buddhist circles, a practitioner for over 30 years and the first westerner to be invited to address a major buddhist convention in Asia. He's schooled in the forest meditation tradition and stayed in the local Theravadan monastery in Woodinville while he was here. My reasons for showing up that day were completely unremarkable and not at all spiritual, I was bored. The store opened awhile ago and I happened by completely by accident, but quite surprisingly I made a new friend in the parking lot and we've stayed in touch. She's a health worker on the Eastside and has been practicing meditation for awhile. The funniest line in her email was something like "my ex and I ran marriage encounter in *City X* for a number of years". My friend turned to buddhist meditation a few years ago after some personal drama.

We developed a correspondence around dharma homework, questions like "how do you deal with nonviolence in an age of terrorism". She hooked me up with a few local sitting groups. Unfortunately that robs me of the usual excuse of Seattle traffic that keeps me away from the Shambhala Center. Tonight we signed out a room in the Bellevue library and sat together listening to Bhante V's recorded dharma talks and meditating together. Its nice to have a spiritual community again, even a very small one. I've missed that the past few years.

Jury Duty

A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to perform jury duty, and since it was an interesting experience and I thought I'd share. The jury selection process had us file in without knowing anything about each other except our numbers. Several people were dismissed due to job conflicts. At least one was legit, she was a midwife and had multiple patients ready to deliver babies that week. They asked us a bunch of questions about our past, our biases and ability to serve effectively. The judge's wife (also a judge) was in the jury pool, pretty funny. She was dismissed. Most of those in the low numbers, who sat in the jury box for the review, were dismissed.

The case was assault in the second degree. Supposedly the defendant hit his landlord over the head with a fire extinguisher. Secondary charges were assault in the third and fourth degrees and the prosecutor clearly believed we' d convict this guy on at least one of the charges. After listening to several days of testimony we deliberated for a few days and due to the intransigence of one individual our jury was hung on all but the first charge -- we voted to aquit. Frankly the case was B.S. It was, by all accounts, a he-said-he-said. The victim claimed to have been accosted. After hearing from all the witnesses it seems more likely he owed the defendant money and was generally a jerk. On top of that none of us believed he used the fire extinguisher to attack his supposed victim. Although he wasn't a nice guy there was no evidence.

The case was an interesting study in class politics. The victim was a medical professional at Cedar Sinai. The defendant was a minimum wage worker. The victim claimed to have a lot to lose as a result of the case. The defendant had nothing. The victim was immediately believed by the police. The defendant was arrested. All very tidy, but not a case of justice in action.

We aquitted the defendant and recommended to the prosecution that they drop the case. Their victim was obviously a liar. I was surprised to find that the prosecutor and defense attorney had the right to talk to the jury afterwards but relieved that they were available to hear our unvarnished opinions. Hopefully the guy got off, I really didn't believe he had done anything illegal.

Perhaps in a few years I'll see this differently, but for now I'm satisfied...

Thanks for listening