In Pursuit of Mysteries

GRE Mood Swings

I just got out of taking the Graduate Record Exam (GRE) an hour ago. For those that never paid attention or simply didn’t care, this is, effectively, the graduate school equivalent of the SAT for most people (leaving aside GMAT and other things). It is divided into three sections: verbal, quantitative, and analytical.

I originally took this back in 1993, in preparation for graduate school then. I had originally planned to get an Anthropology PhD back in the day. Instead of doing that, I got married and a job. As I’ve said before, I don’t think it would have worked out well then anyway. I had no real focus and was pretty much a spaz when I graduated from my undergraduate years anyway.

When I took the GRE then, it was the first year it was computerized and there were no essay questions. Starting in 2002, they made the analytical section into a two part writing test, one of which is arguing for a point of view of your own on a question you are given, and the other where you analyze the potential problems with another argument which is presented to you. This is graded by humans (on a sale from 1 to 6), so you don’t get instant results anymore.

In 1993, I received the following scores:

Verbal: 660 (90^th percentile)
Quantitative: 620 (62^nd percentile)
Analytical: 780 (97^th percentile)

Today, I received:

Verbal: 680
Quantitative: 560

I’ll know the analytical score in roughly two weeks or so.

According to a guide that the GRE people publish, my verbal score is roughly at the 96^th percentile and my quantitative is at the 40^th percentile. (It’s a good thing that I work professionally within engineering, isn’t it!!) Having not cracked a math related book in, oh, 18 years or so, I’m not surprised by the latter score and don’t care since I’m looking at a Humanities doctoral program.

I was hoping to break 700 with my verbal score, so I am a little annoyed. They actually give you that section twice (or is it just broken in half) and I know I made a few mistakes in the second that I shouldn’t have. The whole test took me about three hours and the first hour and 15 minutes are for the writing portion.

At least this is done with before I leave for Egypt in a week.

Washington Mutual Seized and Sold Off by the Government

There you go, folks. From the New York Times:

“Washington Mutual, the giant lender that came to symbolize the excesses of the mortgage boom, was seized by federal regulators on Thursday night, in what is by far the largest bank failure in American history.

Regulators simultaneously brokered an emergency sale of virtually all of Washington Mutual, the nation’s largest savings and loan to JPMorgan Chase for $1.9 billion, averting another potentially huge taxpayer bill for the rescue of a failing institution.

The move came as lawmakers reached a stalemate over the passage of a $700 billion bailout fund designed to help ailing banks, and removed one of America’s most troubled banks from the financial landscape.

Customers of Seattle-based WaMu, with $307 billion in assets, are unlikely to be affected, although shareholders and some bondholders will be wiped out. WaMu account holders are guaranteed by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation up to $100,000.”

Damn, I’m glad that I moved 75% of my money that was in Wamu to other banks and entities over the last two weeks. I know others were doing similar things which, collectively, probably didn’t help but there have been good reasons to be paranoid about Wamu recently given its exposure.

Tendai Teachings in Berkeley

Rev. Keisho

On September 16, a “local” Tendai priest, Rev. Keisho, came to Berkeley to give a short lecture on Saicho, the founder of Tendai, and Ennin, his successor. This was held at the local Jodo Shinshu Center which is, not coincidentally, also the location of the Institute of Buddhist Studies, where I’ve done some classwork.

This was the first of a series of lectures and events that Rev. Keisho is planning on doing in the area if circumstances permit. The event was attended mostly by members of the center, from what I could tell, who did not have much specific knowledge about Tendai. That being said, they seemed pretty interested and focused on what Rev. Keisho had to say. He opened the session with some basic sutra chanting, including giving instruction on how to go about it for those of us who had not done it before. He then spoke for about 45 minutes on Saicho and Ennin, including discussing their respective trips to T’ang Dynasty China in search of Buddhist teachings.

I’ve visited Rev. Keisho up at his hermitage before, about a year ago, and have been in regular contact with him. I do hope that he continues to make the multi-hour trip down here from the mountain as I think that he has quite a bit to offer to people in the way of teaching. He is one of the few Americans that I know who have gone to Japan for extensive periods to really study the Dharma and then come back. He lives for roughly six years in a temple near (on?) Mt. Hiei, the headquarters of Tendai in Japan.

He is doing another lecture this coming Tuesday, September 23, at 7:00 PM at the Jodo Shinshu Center in Berkeley. This one will be on “Tendai: Its Usefulness and Relevancy Today” or “Tendai in America.” I am expecting that it will be an interesting talk.

Rev. Keisho recently redid his entire website and you can see the results over at caltendai.org. The site details his upcoming events and also some of his building plans to create a larger monastic space on Cobb Mountain, where he lives. If you are in the Bay Area and are interested in Tendai or the esoteric Buddhist traditions of Japan, I encourage you to come to the lecture this week and meet Rev. Keisho.