The Dukkha of Christmas

I come from a family with six kids, and as a young child my Christmases were usually anti-climactic, and sometimes worse than that.  Every year my parents would buy clothes that were cheap, unstylish, and identical to my brother's who was 18 months younger than I.  They also contained assembly flaws now and then.  There were usually a couple of toys, but as the middle kid in a cohort of 6, basically Christmas for me was marginalization,  with my older brother and older sister and youngest brother and youngest sister.  I'm sure my 18 month  year younger brother felt similarly to me.   There was extreme pressure given by my parents to accept any and all gifts, which was strange because my parents weren't so much giving gifts often as buying a whole lot of junk and distributing it.  They were filling orders; about the only thing that was often taken into consideration (and often not) was clothing sizes.

And I might add the stuff my parents bought was junk not because my parents were poor, but because they were  miserly.   The Depression had screwed them up mentally.  And one result of that was they bought a whole lot of low quality stuff for a lot of kids rather than less stuff but higher quality.  Their Christmas approach was maximizing the amount of stuff to unwrap and open.  Period.  In a sense then, I don't think any of my brothers and sisters often got what they wanted for Christmas; in a sense my parents weren't actually  buying stuff for any of us.

I come from a large family, and traditionally, for Christmas, that once one was old enough everyone got gifts for everyone else, and of course as nephews and nieces started getting born, well doing a gifting Christmas (literally) became exponentially more difficult.  I was single until I was 43, and what this meant  in practice is that this time of year I was redlining work,  Christmas preparation,  and social life.

At some point I had had enough; that point was sometime after I moved out to the Pacific Northwest from the New York area.  I've sort of resolved to have a minimally labor intensive Christmas efforts.  I have not wrapped any packages this year.  Yes, we don't have that distracting tinsel on our tree either.  But we do have a tree representative of our family.

What remains is the idea of social obligation.   It's that little voice in the back of the head saying you have to get something for X because otherwise Z won't get something from Y.

But that's not a gift giving at all is it? One should give a gift in thought that there are people at the other end, and forgetting yourself. And luckily those to whom I give gifts now are mostly nephews and nieces and their kids. 

But YES,  all the stuff above notwithstanding, I give 'em all gift cards, because frankly, our lives have unfortunately  diverged, and yes, I'm very busy these days,  and so while they're all the same gift, when the receivers do with it is exactly what they want.  In that sense my gift cards are empty too!  

I try to treat social obligation as an itch on my nose when I'm sitting in zazen.

So to me, Christmas has always had and will always have an aspect of emptiness, of a nullity.  Christmas is the stuff of dreams unfulfilled,  of the cheap toy that is broken upon opening the package, after the transient joy of opening the package fades.   Christmas is fundamentally empty.  Christmas is about eternally receiving less than you give.  It's really why it's better to give than to receive - because what you receive will always fall short of what you had hoped, and when you realize that,  you can give without fear or hindrance in the mind, knowing that we're all in the same boat with receiving falling short in our lives; it's a form of dukkha. 

I am able to be at peace with that.  Christmas is the memory of being forgotten.  And in remembrance of being forgotten on a day that is supposedly joyous,  I will try to be  aware of others.

A peaceful, if not merry Christmas to all. 

The 道 of patriarchy, whiteness and privilege

Warning: This post may contain ideas that are not what people want to read.  I apologize in advance,  and am willing to revise my views, but not out of coercion.  I'm nobody's guilt-ridden white liberal. 

I, like many people of European descent, come from a background of privilege, compared to people of color, and African Americans especially, though it certainly does not seem like it on a day to day basis.   

But compared to any other number of groups I'm in and depending on the time and place, I'm not privileged at all (e.g., being an American in a foreign country).    And because I am married to a woman of Asian descent, well I'm in an interesting place.  Sometimes in the in-between place nobody will have you.   I have heard remarks from European-descended people that were as rude as things I've read from those of Asian descent.  I have seen and been collaterally involved with racial profiling, but there are those who would deny me a voice, even when it's my immediate family involved.  That, by the way will not happen, whatever your politics, class, identity group or whatever. 

Call it a vestige of patriarchy if you will, but the instinct to protect one's family is primal.   And if you minimize overlook, or are in any way involved in anything that hurts my family, whether it's some random fool on a social network on the United States government,  I will speak and act appropriately. 

But there is privilege, and it really can't be denied. Being born at a particular time, working in a particular field, and being reasonably successful at that has improved my lot financially.  I have been involved in technologies that changed the world.   But privilege is distributed like wealth, and put in those ways (and much of wealth is privilege).

Sometimes in the in-between place nobody will have you.  My parents grew up poor in the Great Depression, and I was raised as though we were poor, even though we were not.   Both my parents, despite being descended from Europeans, were discriminated against by groups with self-perceived higher social standing, and by "higher social standing" I mean the class of folks that only years before had its members perish in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire.

My parents would have made excellent Reagan Democrats, except for the fact that  they were too right-wing to have ever been Democrats in the  first place.

My parents' privilege had to do with a confluence of things, not the least of which was America's opportunism in World War II,  civil rights and Communist revolutions, etc. etc.   They worked hard and suffered and would never have used the term "privileged" to describe themselves.

Much of my life has been a response to all of this, especially as I, a middle child, an ethnic minority white person in an all-white school,  has been in-between for pretty much my whole life.  And yes, yes, yes, I've seen some of the horrors of class and divisiveness and marginalization, things I can't talk about here, but suffice it to say I've seen the effects of marginalization of people of color, sexual minorities,  and known people who were affected, and have been on a first-name basis with a few of them.  And, as for me, I have not always been privileged with wealth myself;   I have been in my own financial state rather precarious for a while.  I was unemployed for the better part of a year while in graduate school with bills piling up and no health insurance.

Anybody who tries to deny, marginalize mystify or disconfirm my experience does the same, in part to their own experience, and holds themselves down as a result.  

I also, from my life's experience am firmly committed to acknowledging that yes, there is privilege or lack of it due to ethnic background, and this privilege should be subverted and deconstructed, but in a way that, like good 功夫, moves with the forces of things, not to reinforce power structures that exist, but to erode them.  ("Be like water my friend.")  And yes, to do that one needs a certain amount of power one's self - it's not for nothing that the 功 in 功夫 contains the character 力, which means "power," "strength," "proficiency," and "ability."

I wish for all to develop 功夫, without regard to status, gender,  class, rank, or any other category.   But I cannot - nobody can - help all to develop 功夫 without developing it myself, without cultivating 気 and hence 力 myself.  Nobody can help others if one is powerless, and nobody who is trying to cultivate such in the service of all beings has anything for which to apologize.

So here's a few points on the 道 of patriarchy, whiteness and privilege:

• Privilege exists, especially the privilege of being descended from Europeans, at least in the current era.   Those who have it have a moral obligation to do what they can to help others, and to change the system to help others, if they give a damn about helping all beings transcend suffering.  And that includes the erosion of privilege so that more people can help other people.
• Nearly everyone is marginalized somehow.  Some people who you might put into class ethno-demographic or other boxes might have suffered  tremendously, and you just might know about from superficial interactions. And as a result one should strive to treat all without regard to rank but as you would be treated, you who are like a prince that was denied his kingdom, if I'm referencing Blaise Pascal correctly.
• Patriarchy exists, and it exists in a Confucian form amongst Asian cultures that Europeans might not recognize as such.  
• Privilege is truly is like a 太极 - everyone has some in some in some areas and contexts, and even the most privileged can and are marginalized from time to time.  Nobody consciously created that, but despite that structure we're obligated to help others.

Much of this is impermanent, to say the least:  For much of recorded history Europeans were highly marginalized.   But this is the way things are now.

If you think you are marginalized, disempowered, and unprivileged, you'd do well to consider and study yourself, to cultivate yourself to develop the power and skill to help yourself and others.   I will gladly ally myself with anyone committed to that, but alliance is a two way street; it's not capitulation, and I can't compromise what in my conscience is the best way I'm learning to help others.   And this isn't theoretical.  It's the way things get done.

A Response to Herb Eko Deer on money and Buddhism

Herb Eko Deer also wrote something recently about "fee for service Dharma," although frankly I'm a bit puzzled by it.

Now before I begin with Eko's post, let me just say there are some things I can see paying for regarding the Dharma; it would seem unseemly to me not paying honoraria to oshōs to officiate at weddings and funerals and what-not. That's not what we're talking about here. We're talking about a situation where someone that wants to cultivate the Way in all aspects of his life is providing a significant portion of the sustenance of another person who ostensibly is helping that person along the Way.

Think about that for a second. OK? Uh...Shouldn't everyone be helping each other cultivate the Way without an explicit "quid pro quo"? And the real question of course, is what is the quo for which quid is requested.

Thanks. Oh and one other thing, see my previous posts if you happen to take umbrage at my placing "teach" or "teacher" and the like in quote marks.   Now on to Eko:

Why isn’t meditation taught in schools? Why not in police stations and hospitals? Why isn’t it offered in corporations or government administrations? Why not in the military?

It is simply not valued enough, not as a religion, but as a practical way to foster peace and serenity, not to mention spiritual awakening. 

I believe it would shift the planets energy towards peace if it were valued, implemented and supported for its full potential. Compassion and wisdom are priceless. This is because they are more valuable than any price we could pay, not because they are impractical or not valuable enough.

The issues with teaching meditation in schools, corporations, and what not  are several:

• Ethical issues of power and the potential for coercion:  in schools, police stations, hospitals, and work-places there are hierarchies of power, and those hierarchies of power should not be compromised by anyone's beliefs, whether for or against meditation.

• Ethical issues of religious freedom: While I very highly value a meditative practice, it's absurd to think in this society that everyone values it equally.   Although I find their way of life problematic on so many levels, we have to dwell with fundamentalists.

There is a sort of “free dharma” movement who’s members think Dharma teachers should not be compensated financially for their teachings. These voices, in my experience, are usually practitioners who are not authorized teachers themselves.
So what are we talking about? Well, the teachings for example include “introductions” to meditation, perhaps extended workshops, dharma talks, face to face teachings, books, articles or blogs, or “just” holding the space for meditation to happen. These are offered by teachers who must pay for utilities, maintenance, insurance, food, etc.
As i understand the complaint, since the Buddha didn’t charge set fees for his teachings no students seeking teachings should ever be asked to contribute to any of these teachings or activities. But, since the Buddha accepted offerings it is ok for teachers to accept their money as long as it is not asked for.

The complaint that's been made is the one I've referred to above.  Nobody in his right mind would challenge a fee to attend a retreat, or the above honoraria.  We're talking about people claiming explicitly - explicitly - to be enlightened (with or without wishy-washy language to try to walk back any claims to being a Buddha themselves) charging money so that you, too, Bucky, can see what the Buddha saw.

The issue, Eko, is that  you can't sell it and  a student can't pay for that. Because ultimately the trainee is living his own life.  

Let me be clear about my perspective, in our modern American culture, expecting the teacher to cover the overhead for you to come and be taught for free is ludicrous. Not to mention I don’t hear anyone pining for the good old celibate days. Things have changed, but the teachings are still pure, in their impurity...

I have to say, what kind of teacher teaches what cannot be taught?  But putting that aside, Eko is making what, at least from my perspective is a straw-man argument.

Money is empty, it is not good or bad, asking for it is not good or bad, giving it is not good or bad. Renunciation also is empty, it is not valuable or ethical in itself. It does not really exist and we cannot absolutely renunciate the basic necessities of life. The buddha never turned down a meal and he accepted offerings, this is not renunciation, this is modesty. He simply took what he needed and didn’t ask for more. Of course when he expected others to dedicate their entire lives to his path and support his cause full time was no modest compensation.

Well. The goodness or badness of giving and receiving money depends on the circumstances, no?  And we baldly have to ask the question here: Is Herb Eko Deer fundamentally more of a Buddha than you are I? And did the Buddha expect something in the way of a guaranteed middle class lifestyle from either his monks or lay supporters? 

Herb Eko Deer, like everyone else, needs money for food and shelter.   That's a given.  And people who patronize him as "teacher" should certainly support him.   I'm not talking about supporting someone who chooses to do this (mostly) full time at levels significantly different than what I would pay another trained person.

However...

• We're talking about levels of payment significantly more than compared to compensation of a music teacher or martial arts teacher.
• It's unrealistic and  ahistorical to think that, unless one is an abbot of a temple, that one did this kind of thing full time in the past, at least in the Chinese and Japanese traditions.  This is not about not giving to those who need it.  It's partly about how the word "cynic" evolved.  But above all, it's about humanizing the provider; to what degree is the provider a person of accomplishment (in the sense of 功夫) if all they can claim is to be able to "teach?" 

That last point is a major one in my book: what good is your "teaching" if you can't allow someone to authenticate it outside of the context of a reference as explicit teaching, if it's not tangible like playing music or demonstrating proficiency at martial arts?

In fact, Daido Loori mentioned various "outside" practices, namely art practice and body practice in his book "The Eight Gates of Zen." 

By contrast, there's Genpo Merzel ("Big ___") and a guy litigating his former sangha who was not embraced by Myoshinji.

Herb Eko Deer seems to have an interest in the martial arts.   Hopefully he has access to a good tradition here. Some work better than others, as Sam Harris pointed out.   I probably won't have the time to learn Brazilian Ju Jitsu in my life.  But I'd encourage  Eko to  continue to practice martial arts if he isn't already, because this is a skill that can be taught well from the background of Zen training.

Words cannot open another's mind...

That's in a koan somewhere (Case 27 of the 無門関 (Mumonkan, or The Gateless Gate), to be exact.) Also see here for a different source.)  I have heard different commentaries on Case 27, but this one has seemed so apt for me when dealing with certain people.  Here is the case from the second source, which I'm using because it has the Chinese original, from which it's possible tease out meanings that I haven't seen yet :

Case 27 Nansen's "Not Mind, Not Buddha, Not Things"                   二十七　不是心佛
南泉和尚、因僧問云、還有不與人説底法麼。
A monk asked Nansen, "Is there any Dharma that has not been preached to the people?"
泉云、有。
Nansen answered, "There is."
僧云、如何是不與人説底法。
"What is the truth that has not been taught?" asked the monk.
泉云、不是心、不是佛、不是物。
Nansen said, "It is not mind; it is not Buddha; it is not things."

Mumon's Comment無門曰、南泉被者一問、直得揣盡家私、郎當不少。
At this question, Nansen used up all his treasure and was not a little confused.

Mumon's Verse 頌曰叮嚀損君徳 Talking too much spoils your virtue;
無言眞有功 Silence is truly unequaled.
任從滄海變 Let the mountains become the sea;
終不爲君通 I'll give you no comment.

The operative phrase, "無言眞有功" can indeed be translated in various ways; perhaps in another way to put it, once can say, "Words have no merit," or, conversely, silence has accomplishment.

This is a ridiculously useful teaching.

We in the USA are somehow silently,  unconsciously inculcated by Dale Carnegie, it seems.   It seems we are taught we should "influence" people, by appealing to their desires, including, but not limited to, a "feeling of importance" and "life in the hereafter."  I know that I'd been taught that I need to try to both reach people and also submit - surrender - to "legitimate authority."  About the latter, well, that's a subject for another post - it has political implications where I do not wish to go right now. 

But, as far as "getting through to people" is concerned, it is undeniable that there are people with mindsets, very educated people in some cases, that you simply cannot rationally reach. They're true believers, or so they present themselves to the world.

It doesn't quite matter what they believe in; I have met doctrinaire communists with the same mindset as  Republican conservatives - they are so close psychologically it's astonishing, except that I think the latter more consciously tries to ape the mannerisms and public paranoia as the former from time to time.

(And no I do not put New Atheists in the same category as doctrinaire fundamentalists, but that's another digression.)

How to deal with such people?

To open your mouth (or keyboard) to try to hammer home the truth with them will do nothing.   To speak kindly and as persuasively as one can will also accomplish nothing - at least not at first.

It seems the best strategy is not avoidance of the issues here, or acquiescence to odious things presented matter-of-factly.   That is, I'm not saying let hateful words simply be accepted.  But do not expect such people to be taught.

This line of thought had its origin in some on-line thing by a relative who posted something on line that led me to a series of links that led me to a website for some right-wing talk radio demagogue that I'd never heard of before.  The website points to the usual hateful, ignorant stuff that appeals to the baser instincts, that seeks to motivate by appealing to resentment.  (See these photos for a sample of the mindset involved. Ugh.)

Why, I thought, would any sensible person spend their lives cultivating such anger and resentment? IT MAKES NO SENSE!  I mean, I can imagine folks driving home in a long commute, with this sewage bubbling on through from from the AM band, feeding resentments that provide the narrative to the worried lives that they lead. But it also MAKES NO SENSE to think that there is anything I can do or say that can "change" that relative's mind, because such a person will try to respond with the "walls" of reasoning they've put up.  Any such words might challenge their entire reason for being.  Moreover, exposure to such things teaches one to respond to such challenges with hatred and resentment - it is learned in an almost (maybe more than almost?) Pavlovian way.

There's no point in taking that head-on;  it's bad 功夫 (kung fu).  It's also in a way not compassionate; and it is ineffective at removing the poison of hatred such people may have.  And, as the 公案  (koan) notes, 無言眞有功 - in silence there is truly merit or accomplishment.

It is a far better strategy to practice being the person of accomplishment one rarely encounters.  Such a person could not be harmed also by words of hatred either, though they may defend against them. That takes effort.

All of the above is going through my mind as I will be visiting relatives and friends for a couple of days.   Many words will be spoken amongst us.  Some folks I know are pretty set in mindsets I wish no one was trapped in. If one sentence comes for from their lips the profound acute suffering of the world is shouted with thunderous echoes that reverberate through the heavens as does the soundless sound.    And if I say the wrong thing such a thunderous reverberation will result that will only amplify the misery of all beings.  While part of me is concerned about what to say, when to say it, and what not to say, I know have enough familiarity with 話頭 (watoh) practice that I'm fairly confident there won't be major problems. 

I mean, geez, I've seen this stuff work in practice.  I wish others did too.

Here is a good link re: 話頭  practice.

Violence and Buddhism? What about 功夫 ?

I'm glad other bloggers are looking at the Burma violence situation.  But there are some points that have been made in the blogosophere, especially regarding violence, that I think merit a reply. First of all, I think Barbara's got a point here:

There is a knee-jerk assumption that if an individual or group self-identified as Buddhist commits an act of violence, Buddhism must be the cause. This is unvarnished bigotry, of course. Since Buddhism unequivocally condemns hatred and violence, blaming Buddhism for violence makes no more sense than blaming any other attribute one could assign to the perpetrators, such as race or ethnicity.

But then there's this:

At Wildmind, Bodhipaksa offers some valuable comments on what it is to "be" a Buddhist who commits violence. As he says, there is no justification for violence in Buddhist scriptures or teaching. He continues,

There is no Buddhist doctrine of "just war" or evesn of "righteous anger." The Buddha condemned all forms of violence, and famously said that even if bandits were sawing you limb from limb, you should have compassion for your torturers.

What I don't want to leave hanging here is the phrase "there is no justification for violence in Buddhist  scriptures or teaching."    That may be.  I have to admit that I haven't seen in Buddhist scriptures any such justification...However...

The history of Buddhism and martial arts, particularly in Japan and China, is very well known.  In fact, this history of Zen is not without its bits of violence, even if some of the stories are more fictional than they have been handed down to be.  I would find it difficult to think that the folks who gave us that were rank pacifists.  In fact, even if you read Bodhipaksa's comment above, I think the wrong takeaway would be "Therefore Buddhism recommends pacifism."   There is no Buddhist doctrine of just war that I know of.  But there is also no Buddhist doctrine of doctrinaire pacifism, either, to my knowledge.

And I don't think there could be or would be.  This is because doctrinaire pacifism is itself contrary to the Buddhist precepts, in some cases. For those who would doubt otherwise, reading a work like Rollo May's Power and Innocence, though not Buddhist in nature, is enough of a trenchant critique  of innocence as a way of avoidance of confrontation  that it is difficult not to see how his argument exists in a Buddhist perspective; that is, the morality of Buddhism suggests we have a duty to actively help others, even if that means that we must violate the precepts to do so. (And of that you can certainly find examples in Buddhist scriptures - the parable of the Burning House does feature a father saying untrue things to children to save their lives, for example.)  And also because Buddhist scriptures, as all well know, aren't read like Christian scriptures either; they are also not black-and-white-infallible "musts."

Still, having said all of that, I did want to go to see what the Dhammapada said about the subject:

^{P1    P2    E2}  137. He who inflicts violence on those who are unarmed, and offends those who are inoffensive, will soon come upon one of these ten states:
^{P1    P2    E2}  138-140. Sharp pain, or disaster, bodily injury, serious illness, or derangement of mind, trouble from the government, or grave charges, loss of relatives, or loss of wealth, or houses destroyed by ravaging fire; upon dissolution of the body that ignorant man is born in hell.
^{P1    P2    E2}  141. Neither going about naked, nor matted locks, nor filth, nor fasting, nor lying on the ground, nor smearing oneself with ashes and dust, nor sitting on the heels (in penance) can purify a mortal who has not overcome doubt.
^{P1    P2    E2}  142. Even though he be well-attired, yet if he is posed, calm, controlled and established in the holy life, having set aside violence towards all beings - he, truly, is a holy man, a renunciate, a monk.
^{P1    P2    E2}  143. Only rarely is there a man in this world who, restrained by modesty, avoids reproach, as a thoroughbred horse avoids the whip.
^{P1    P2    E2}  144. Like a thoroughbred horse touched by the whip, be strenuous, be filled with spiritual yearning. By faith and moral purity, by effort and meditation, by investigation of the truth, by being rich in knowledge and virtue, and by being mindful, destroy this unlimited suffering.
^{P1    P2    E2}  145. Irrigators regulate the waters, fletchers straighten arrow shafts, carpenters shape wood, and the good control themselves.  

Umm... I see that  the qualifier for the laity, at least, is as far as bad things happening the operative word is "unarmed." Self defense is not an issue for the laity, at least.  But it would also seem to be the case that verse 142 seems to mean that the lay person has achieved the state of the monk if he is able to set aside violence towards all beings. But what really strikes me about this is verses 143 and 144: the restraint from violence as "modesty" seems to be cultivated in the manner in which a horse is trained.

A horse is a being, of course, of course. And the way in which we should avoid violence is as though one were training one's self as though one were a horse; i.e., with a whip.

Isn't that kind of, umm...violent?


I think that simile is there deliberately.  I think verse 144 can be said to mean: as one who has been the recipient of violence, cultivate yourself to destroy this unlimited suffering.

"Destroy," too, is not a word commonly associated with supine pacifism.

In other words, I think the point of the passage is quite clear: one should avoid initiating violence, and one should renounce violence against those who cannot defend themselves unequivocally.

But...

Finally, I'd like to return to the issue of Buddhism and the martial arts.  I must say that among the people I've met, the most skilled of martial arts practitioners are also among those that are the calmest and most peaceful; they really have their stuff together, as it were.  I don't think this is an accident.  I think it is because there is a spiritual aspect to the martial arts, despite what some might think.  When one comes into possession of the ability to wreak violence upon someone, the desire to wreak violence on someone can attenuate; much anger that leads to violence is rooted in feelings of impotence, as May writes.  Remove the feelings of impotence, and inculcate a calm, relaxed approach to deal with life, and even if you were to meet the Buddha on the road, you'd have no problem killing him.

But that doesn't mean you would kill him. Get it?  That's what it means to practice 功夫  (kung fu).

The Way is found in the tiny bits in your everyday life.

In retrospect, it seems sort of obvious that this Michael Roach story would take the turn it did.  A Japanese girlfriend from long ago advised me that her family were "just Buddhists," never mind the crazy Aum Shin Rikyo cult.

The thing is, many practitioners, at a relatively small level of experience, get into thinking that what they're doing is going to have some rather grand results in terms of "universal enlightenment" or the "emerging Buddhism," or some utopian notions of re-making society or what-not.  I too have had such notions from time to time in a time long ago.   It's the kind of thing that makes one fodder for a spiritual huckster.  These notions and wants encourage one to want to glue to a "teacher" one's  notions of what they want their existence (and the existence of everyone they know)  to be. 

But

it

is

not

the 

Way.

A guy with more cred than me once said "Everyday mind is the way."  

You don't need to do anything special to find the path in which to go; it's right the heck in front of you.  You don't need to go into the desert for a year, you just have to get yourself to work in the morning.  Woody Allen said something to the effect of "Eighty percent of success is showing up."  It's generally not a good idea to make one's case with a guy that ran off with his 19 year-old adopted step-daughter to be sure, but this was said before the auteur did that fateful deed.

I'm still planning to get back to writing about the story behind this post here.  But one of the points behind that post is apropos for this post: everyday life is the Way, and doing something in everyday life can help transform the rest of your life, as long as it's not taken to extremes.

Here's a reference about which I'll post sometime in the future:

 There's points here to which  I'm very eager to respond, to say the least, especially the issue of "spirituality" and the martial arts, but, as I've said, I'll save that for another post.

Confrontation, Force, Sensitivity, Zen, Right Livelihood, and Being Like Water

You need to relax if you're going to confront or by confronted by someone physically, especially if they're a foot taller than you and have 100lbs on you.   That's the 2 cent take-away from 詠春 (Wing Chun).  It's the only way you can be aware enough - or sensitive enough - to figure out what to do, and what to ignore.

It turns out this principle is ridiculously useful in life; that is the parallels with this principle in everyday life actually make life much easier to do successfully and with integrity.  As are a some other principles from 詠春:

It's important to keep one's basic "structure" intact.  In Zen we can call that a constancy of practice.  In 詠春, if we act, we're acting from our "core." Likewise, in 詠春, although the force used arises from the 丹田

(that point below the navel you know about as the tanden), you're centered through your feet.

A strong force is never directly opposed; it is diverted, or one moves around it.  This is one of the most useful things I've seen/absorbed.  Someone responding to me in anger or rage does not have to be met with anger or rage, if only because it's freaking useless and a waste of energy to do so.  It is "being like water," as that famous student of 葉問 (Yip Man) pointed out.  Bruce Lee might have seemed silly saying these things in movies, but the guy did study philosophy when at the university.  And the funny thing is, these apparent dime-store dollar-store aphorisms can be used in real life.

Likewise, when the opportunity arises, go directly to the center; and defend your center. In everyday life, we might have to wait days or weeks or months for the opportunity, but we should take it when it arises.

I cannot tell you how useful it is to generalize these notions in everyday life.  I do think that the approach of the folks at the Mountains and Rivers Order (don't tell me about their historical issues) has merit here:  Zen should be applied in all aspects of one's life, and one's Zen practice should be informed by other aspects of one's life.  Doing something that you can apply positively to all aspects of your life is helping all beings.  And in practicing these principles, one definitely experiences what used to be called a "paradigm shift" in one's view of one's self.  Not 悟りor 見性 (satori or kenshou) but it can feel now and then like the Day the Universe Changed. Yet we still don't know what we don't know, so that feeling isn't always entirely useful.

It's also increasingly why I'm not so enamored of "causes" or "engagement," as I've written previously.   So very much of that stuff being written or discussed is just so unaware of actually how to do anything useful.  It's not surprising - it's not something widely disseminated in our culture.

While  this post was bubbling around in my head,  I came across this article in the NY Times on the apparent increasing popularity of Mixed Martial Arts.  The NY Times, in its corporate persona as arbiter of all things of the trend, seems to have pronounced that MMA is to young men as yoga is for women and other older people, and places the blame/origin for this on the movie "Fight Club."  While "Fight Club" was a pretty good movie (and therefore roundly denounced by right-wing fundamentalist Christians in the US), I'm not sure of this data as presented by the NY Times.  I'm sure MMA is popular today, and I'm sure a big aspect of this is its violence.  But from the folks I know in 詠春, I know this: It is useful to know about other styles and aspects of martial arts.  In reading that Times article, I thought, this certainly has aspects of pointless spectator sport violence, but it is arguably better than WWF. Besides, anyone who's read anything about this stuff or seen it does get to think silly thoughts after a while, such as just  what would happen if a kick-boxer fought a sumo wrestler? 

MMA? I never watch it. I think the NY Times is just "style pronouncing" again.  I think at least some of the people who watch MMA are looking at something they cannot do themselves, and as such, it's a distraction (and a violent one at that).  It's better to learn to do something yourself.  It might help other areas of your life.  So if one were learning MMA, one might become more peaceable. I mean, it's the case with 詠春 - as someone told me, the more one knows of it the more one is reluctant to actually get in a real physical fight, because if one skilled in the art does enter into such a fight, at least one of the fighters will be effective, and that means someone will get hurt. Luckily, it doesn't have to get that way most of the time.

Right livelihood and not being vulnerable to exploitation

I woke up this morning thinking that it's probably not a great career move in and of itself to become a Ph.D. in theoretical physics - most of the physics Ph.D. folks I know are actually doing something quite removed from their chosen field of study. 

And yet,  despite in many cases personal experience with the above, that's not stopping many "tiger parents" who might be pushing their kids in this direction.

Coincidentally,  I've read  that many folks are engaging in a "lottery system" for their careers. 

Generally, in my experience, the people that make it to the top weren't the ones who aced all the tests. You look at the so-called (but likely ephemeral) "success stories" in American business, and the millionaire/billionaire founders of some of the name corporations got their start as dropouts.  

 Malcom Gladwell had a fascinating article recently in the New Yorker about "How David Beats Goliath" After discussing how in basketball the full-court press can be used by weak teams to upend balances of power based on raw talent through disrupting the expected timing of events, Gladwell brings in out of the box thinking:

In 1981, a computer scientist from Stanford University named Doug Lenat entered the Traveller Trillion Credit Squadron tournament, in San Mateo, California. It was a war game. The contestants had been given several volumes of rules, well beforehand, and had been asked to design their own fleet of warships with a mythical budget of a trillion dollars. The fleets then squared off against one another in the course of a weekend. “Imagine this enormous auditorium area with tables, and at each table people are paired off,” Lenat said. “The winners go on and advance. The losers get eliminated, and the field gets smaller and smaller, and the audience gets larger and larger.”

Lenat had developed an artificial-intelligence program that he called Eurisko, and he decided to feed his program the rules of the tournament. Lenat did not give Eurisko any advice or steer the program in any particular strategic direction. He was not a war-gamer. He simply let Eurisko figure things out for itself. For about a month, for ten hours every night on a hundred computers at Xerox PARC, in Palo Alto, Eurisko ground away at the problem, until it came out with an answer. Most teams fielded some version of a traditional naval fleet—an array of ships of various sizes, each well defended against enemy attack. Eurisko thought differently. “The program came up with a strategy of spending the trillion on an astronomical number of small ships like P.T. boats, with powerful weapons but absolutely no defense and no mobility,” Lenat said. “They just sat there. Basically, if they were hit once they would sink. And what happened is that the enemy would take its shots, and every one of those shots would sink our ships. But it didn’t matter, because we had so many.” Lenat won the tournament in a runaway...

Eurisko was an underdog. The other gamers were people steeped in military strategy and history. They were the sort who could tell you how Wellington had outfoxed Napoleon at Waterloo, or what exactly happened at Antietam. They had been raised on Dungeons and Dragons. They were insiders. Eurisko, on the other hand, knew nothing but the rule book. It had no common sense. As Lenat points out, a human being understands the meaning of the sentences “Johnny robbed a bank. He is now serving twenty years in prison,” but Eurisko could not, because as a computer it was perfectly literal; it could not fill in the missing step—“Johnny was caught, tried, and convicted.” Eurisko was an outsider. But it was precisely that outsiderness that led to Eurisko’s victory: not knowing the conventions of the game turned out to be an advantage.

“Eurisko was exposing the fact that any finite set of rules is going to be a very incomplete approximation of reality,” Lenat explained. “What the other entrants were doing was filling in the holes in the rules with real-world, realistic answers. But Eurisko didn’t have that kind of preconception, partly because it didn’t know enough about the world.” So it found solutions that were, as Lenat freely admits, “socially horrifying”: send a thousand defenseless and immobile ships into battle; sink your own ships the moment they get damaged.

This is the second half of the insurgent’s creed. Insurgents work harder than Goliath. But their other advantage is that they will do what is “socially horrifying”—they will challenge the conventions about how battles are supposed to be fought...

I've been thinking about this quite a bit lately, for reasons that have to do with some of the things I in the course of my work.  It's also related in a way to the principles in 詠春 (Wing Chun) - the principles in 詠春 are quite counter-intuitive to anyone that's had to deal with bigger, stronger, schoolyard bullies. Above all, the principles teach one to remain relaxed (but aware and sensitive) even if a 260lb 6'6" guy is threatening to pummel you.

A lot of folks think that the defense against being vulnerable - to whatever - lies in the raw countering of force with force. In business, this thinking, unfortunately abetted by America's (former) material wealth and low-cost labor, has resulted in America's decline as wealthier, lower labor cost competitors have bested America on the playing field where it thought it could play.  And yeah, on some level, "get more education" might just be trying to counter force with force.  Yeah, get more education, but do it wisely.

Although, as I continually say, I stand with the folks who decry economic exploitation, I want to caution those working for peace and justice against adopting a narrative set either by those in power ("lift yourself up by your bootstraps- just work harder!") or those who are acting only out of their visceral reaction to those doing the exploiting ("hey, we're getting shafted, let's take it back!.") Armchair Marxists never succeed because although they've got the diagnosis right, they don't understand the treatment. 

It is true that even in crappy economic times economic successes can emerge by "borrowing the power" of the prevailing conditions to create new conditions that allow one to achieve an advantage: Google really came into being in the aftermath of the dot-com crash, for example.   That doesn't mean that therefore one should adopt a form of capitalist engagement that is savage, but it does mean that there are "openings" to be found if one is aware, and if one is also aware and disciplined, one might be able to help all beings.

Offense

There's a passage somewhere in something Kierkegaard wrote called "The Possibility of Offense," which is a multi-page (20? 30? 40? I can't remember) tour de force examination of what, for a Christian, "offense" might mean in the context of  the bit about that part  about "Blessed is he who is not offended..." in Luke's gospel. In the case of Kierkegaard (and probably most Christians with any knowledge of the subject) "offense" here was sometimes a stand-in for "angry doubt" but in at least one sense just might have meant  offense as we might use it.  Kierkegaard's main point was that offense, in whatever form it took, was an impediment to belief in Christianity. 

There's a lot of offense around here these days; offense that somebody's sacred concept as represented in some form is being misused in some way.  There's offense that a lot of superstition and hoo-hah is being introduced in the modern world.  There's offense at the way  group X is dominant and mistreating groups Y, Z, and Γ.

Buddhists could substitute lots of things for what Kierkegaard wrote as catalysts of offense, as could any of a number of other groups.

I don't think being offended any way changes anything, however legitimate the grievances may or may not be.  And I'm one of the people that think that, though Buddhism is a minority religion in the West, there may not be  anywhere near enough religious ridicule in our discourse today.  As Bill Maher is fond of saying, people that believe in talking snakes should be disqualified from the presidency of the United States.  But even that offense is too much; it's extra baggage.  My point is not to discredit or disqualify the umbrage one might take in response to others' actions- and there's a lot of legitimate umbrage for the taking, and people feel what they feel.  But the alternative is not being an automaton.

My point is that the umbrage, the outrage, as outrage,  is horribly, horribly ineffective.  Outrage fueled conflict is not an opportunity to grow or to awaken. It's not.  And that's not saying that the outrage and offense cannot be used as a catalyst for growth and awakening.  But it can't be used that way if our minds are stuck in outrage and offense.

One of the things that is a "hard" thing for an early practitioner of Wing Chun (詠春) is to be relaxed and to not fight when one is doing, what appears to the unbiased, uninformed observer, as "fighting."   That's because countering force with direct force will, especially for the weaker person, be disastrous. Only by acting "orthogonally" to the direction of force, in as relaxed a manner as possible, as fluidly as possible, is it possible to get an advantage against a stronger and larger opponent.  But in order to do that you have to detach from the "offense" that you feel that you, a smaller, weaker person is being attacked by the stronger, larger opponent.  And if you get a glimpse of that, you get a glimpse of really going beyond the offense, and actually effecting a change. And it's a metaphor that can be used outside of martial arts; for example it can be applied to the cantankerous person in the office meeting, or in the kitchen. It also applies with 書道. This isn't meek passivity by any means.

If you search around Youtube, you'll be able to find a bit where Bruce Lee is saying "Be like water..." It was my first impression on seeing this that it was all gibberish.  But in fact, Lee was actually giving away the secret of his trade here.  Being like water when there's a big rock in your way takes more practice since, especially when we're in "offense" mode, we've forgotten we are water.

Natural Unnaturalness

Somewhere or other, Brad Warner's going to mention to this post.  I mean, he'll want to, because I could see Warner  could use the words "central" and "autonomous" nervous systems here, and say "See! Nishijima roshi meant this."

Well, he probably did; it's just that the medical terms don't actually convey what I think is referred to here.

Via Buddhist Geeks on Twitter, I came across this article on "Freedom and Choic."  which is  by Ken McLeod. McLeod writes:

Most people equate choice and freedom. It seems so reasonable. Freedom means you are free to choose, right? It means you are free from restrictions. If you can't choose, then you are not free. And it would seem to follow that the more choice you have, the more freedom you have.

But it doesn't work out that way....

What does choice give you? One answer is that choice makes it possible for you to shape your world according to your preferences. All this does is to enable you to fashion a world that is an extension of your own patterns...

Choice is a dubious blessing when it comes to spiritual practice, in fact, when it comes to any creative endeavor. Great art is often the result of restriction, in form, in materials, in themes, etc. The restrictions concentrate attention and spur creativity. It is the same in practice. How do you increase your capacity in attention? By eliminating all choice. One posture. One object. Rest right there. No choice. And, as all of us know, it's not easy...

What is freedom? It is the moment by moment experience of not being run by one's own reactive mechanisms. Does that give you more choice? Usually not. When you aren't run by reactions, you see things more clearly, and there is usually only one, possibly two courses of action that are actually viable. Freedom from the tyranny of reaction leads to a way of experiencing life that leaves you with little else to do but take the direction that life offers you in each moment. Hence, the illusion of choice is an indication of a lack of freedom.

I really don't follow as many of these "modern" teachers as others but here's Mr. McLeod's bio on Huffington Post. I hadn't known my world was roiled by him.  Based on the blurb written there I can guess why, but that's the subject for a whole other blog post. This post is about that section just quoted.

Mr. McLeod's incorrect, or at least very poorly phrasing what he's trying to convey. Freedom in the restricted sense of being the result of training is not the experience of "not being run by one's own reactive mechanisms."  It's something else.  I'll let another teacher explain it for you:

Bruce Lee could have made a comfortable living, I suppose, as a "spiritual" teacher, but he was simply in this clip trying to explain the point of martial arts training.  But then this is a metaphor for life: to have the instinctual in harmony with the consciously controlled should be the goal of practice.  That's what I mean: Brad Warner can use this quote whenever he talks about Nishijima and the autonomous nervous system.  It's just that a lot of this instinct I think arises and coexists in the central nervous system, and that's why I still find Nishijima's terminology unfortunate.

You're not going to get rid of a reactive mind, of instincts, of emotions, it doesn't matter how much training you do, whatever type of training you call it.  And it's not the point of such training either. Eventually it's not a point of being run by the conscious mind or by the instinctual mind, but of them working together in harmony.

Somebody trips you up. You do not want to rely on anything other than where the instinctual mind has chosen, that is, the choice made by  that stuff wired into the cerebellum.  You learned that stuff likely before you were 3 years old, and your instinct has it right!  Similarly with jumping in a pool.

At least part of the point of training is eventually to have different reactions when otherwise "buttons would be pushed," to use a phrase I detest, but which I use here to convey instinctual reaction that would have adverse consequences.  And part of that of course is not to be too upset about being upset that one will suck for a long time before getting to that point. Where one is right now is that harmony between the consciously controlled and the instinctual. It's just that practice/training should make that harmony more effective, whether it's in the Buddhist sense of being able to effectively practice the Way or in the martial arts sense of effectively extinguishing a dangerous situation.

Buddhify

Right speech does involve some degree of being truthful, not truthiness.  I'd have appreciated it if Rev. Fisher had picked up a couple of the points I make below, but I guess that's my perspective.

I hope this isn't seen as picking on Danny Fisher or Rohan Gunatillake  in particular, but this interview with Rohan Gunatillake is problematic for me.  More particularly, I've issues with this bit:

You're very clear in the FAQs on the website that buddhify is not meant to be a comprehensive meditation system. Can you say something about your understanding of the limitations of format--like a mobile app? Also, are there things you think are not fully appreciated yet about what a format like an app can do?
As you say, buddhify is not a complete system since that is not what it has been designed to be. It is an accessible and different approach to teaching meditation to new audiences.

While some of the more tech-wary members of the practitioner community see digital as a threat to dharma practice, I think this fear is misplaced.  I'm a firm believer that technology can only augment, and not entirely replace, other forms of teaching and delivery.  Nothing beats face-to-face teaching from a qualified instructor, nor indeed the support of a local community you connect with. But the fact is that for many people, even if they do have a local community, it's not for them - that's certainly why I myself have found the community around Buddhist Geeks so valuable since even in London there wasn't really a scene I felt was speaking my language.  Digital tools can, of course, take meditation and so on to a scale never possible before and for many people.  This is especially true, I think, for Gen Y: to have an online community or a digital training tool can feel better and more relevant than a local one if it is designed well and the content is strong.  It might even feel worth the trade-off of it not being local or physical.

And when it comes to buddhify, I'm very clear: all it tries to do is introduce people to meditation, and says that if people want to explore more they should do that through deeper more personal modes of delivery such as more advanced courses, the great meditation literature we have, and also local teachers.  As meditation providers, we all need to know where we sit in the system and what our limits are - that's really important to me.

Something I'd also just like to add is that people underestimate the power of a mobile phone.  It is a very intimate device - with us pretty much all of the time - and very personal and tactile.  Therefore it is in a way much more suitable as a vehicle for teaching meditation as things like laptops.  How we relate to our mobile phones was part of the design thinking behind buddhify for sure.

"Urban" is an important adjective for you in much of the work that you do. Can you say something about what you mean "urban," and the importance of that distinction for you?

Yes, urban is perhaps the most important word when it comes to buddhify.  So much of the meditation tradition - especially in the Theravada/insight/vipassana school that I know the best - is designed for forest or remote or retreat environments. As such, many of the meditation delivery models we see are just taking systems designed for a rural or stylized environment and placing them in an urban one and expecting them to work perfectly.  They don’t...

 First, let me say right off: if Rohan's making money from this (or even if he's doing "the socially responsible" thing) and pointing people in a general direction towards a practice that keeps them from going into murderous psychotic rages against those with whom they dwell, great!

But...as a guy who's been practicing for a while, who's practiced in urban settings as well as rather far from the madding crowd, as a guy who's certifiably tech savvy, I've got a perspective. 

Augment? 

I've a colleague who's Gen X, who's been doing some new popular video game.  It's apparently "very real;" in his description of the game he said, "I've gotten really good at shooting arrows." I replied, "I don't think so."

Augment? It's not the same thing.  It's like "augmenting" real strawberries with artificial strawberry flavor on some level.

Buddhify is no more a threat to Dharma practice than shooting an arrow in a video game is a threat to archery.

Maybe it's useful in a bompu Zen kind of way, but a Buddhist  Dharma practice it ain't.

Rohan's idea that "urban" must be an impossible venue for mindful practice is also pretty wide off the mark. I used to practice at both the Zen Studies Society and the MRO Zen center when the latter was in downtown Manhattan. Both were pretty noisy due to the urban environment.  With both practice would extend after the sitting quite well - it's possible to be very mindful on the subway.

Last night in 詠春 the training place was quite cold.  In quite a few martial arts the training is done under rather non-ideal conditions, for obvious reasons if you think about it - real life is a non-ideal condition.  It's also where we are.

So it is with many traditions of practice. 

Like I said, for what it is, it's probably OK for what it is (though I've a general reservation about "guided meditations" in general, as I've written before), but it doesn't even augment Buddhist practice.  It's more like it's like the Sil Lim Tao (小念頭)app on my iPhone - it's useful as a beginning tool, but it's no substitute for watching it done by Ip Man or Ip Chun on Youtube, let alone being instructed by a guy who's been doing it for over 40 years.

One more point I'll make, and it's on this sentence:

The history of meditation is one of evolution and change and this is just another chapter in that.

 That's a pretty grand statement, but I must point out the the "history of meditation" - like lots of other histories (economics, social ideologies, etc.) is also one of fads. Proof is in the pudding,  they say.  Hope the pudding's good, but doubt's part of the practice.

詠春 and non-violence; continued...

One of the things I've noticed about the few months I've been doing 詠春, besides how much I continue to profoundly suck at it,  is that of the people who come in new, quite a few don't stay. 

I've no idea why unless there's some economic or health or other scheduling imperative (e.g., family obligations) as to why they don't, which is understandable.  For the others I've no idea.  I mean, if you were tone deaf and you could take guitar lessons from Eric Clapton or violin lessons from Itzhak Perlman, wouldn't you avail yourself of the opportunity?

Of those that do stay, the astounding thing to me is that even with my profound suckiness, even with people who actually have some prior martial arts training, I can in sparring "have my way" with most of them.

For small minority of those newcomers, however, as well as all of the more experienced ones, this is profoundly not the case.  And in pretty much all of those instances, the main stumbling block is my own mind, which brings me to the point of this post.

It's all well and good for folks to want to advocate for non-violent solutions to everything; I think it is the hope of the planet.  But...

If you can't skillfully defend yourself - even just simply to the point where you can gain a momentary advantage to run away - to what extent is this noble position of non-violence a justification for wanting things settled on your terms (i.e., you don't fight no matter what and which might include the loss of face, but hey, maybe you're used to that)?  This is maybe one (of many other) reasons why I think the best practitioners of these arts are pretty relaxed people - nobody's going to walk away unscathed if they're dead serious about messing with them, and even if you run away, it might not involve the loss of face.  Or even if someone starts something, it can be finished in a way that allows for a quick and lasting end to the conflict.

I'm not advocating some kind of return to the early '80s Bernhard Goetz right-wing over-reactions to the impotence one accustomed to non-violence in everyday life feels when confronted with violence.    But it does occur to me that the reflexive calls for "non-violence" and abjuration of all forms of skill which might be useful in fighting situations just might be a form of pride which might be as dangerous to one and others as a cockiness which takes on all comers no matter what the consequences are.

Or is it?

PZ Myers goes somewhere he shouldn't...

I'm a Buddhist kind of guy that deprecates the usage of the word "spiritual" because it means more things to more people - as well as less things to more people-  than I wish to convey with my practice.   Here, Professor Myers goes over the line wth someone who himself goes over the line, as far as "spiritual" things and "Buddhist" things are concerned:

Take some woo-inclined individual, put their brain to work on some incompletely understood process, and it’s pretty much guaranteed that they’ll come back to you utterly convinced that mundane physical events are ultimately confirming evidence for whatever metaphysical nonsense is poisonously wafting about in their heads. And now we have a wonderful example of this kind of sloppy stupid bullshit right here on freethoughtblogs.

I have no idea why Daniel Fincke is indulging this Eric Steinhart character, but he’s had a number of guest posts lately that are raving mad rationalizations for ‘spirituality’, whatever the hell that is. Here’s an example.

Spiritual exercises typically involve mental preparation for performance through visualization or emotional preparation for performance through arousal regulation. Visualization involves working with mental imagery while arousal regulation involves conscious control of physiological and emotional arousal (it involves neocortical control of the limbic system and autonomic nervous system).

Now I haven't read Fincke, and frankly I've no problem with calling certain practices "preparation for performance," since that's sometimes largely what a practice is.  Sometimes - oftentimes - the practice is the performance itself.   But I actually agree with Myers that this is a bunch of pseudo-scientific gobbldey-gook.

Just practice!  You don't have to justify to me or anyone else why you're doing it.  But Myers goes on:

Notice the scientific justification of “neocortical control of the limbic system and autonomic nervous system” — sure, that’s the core of your brain that is involved in arousal, and we know that from scientific experiments and observations. But look what he does: he calls these spiritual exercises.

They are not. They are physiological exercises. They do not manipulate “spirit”, they change the physical state of the brain. But these glib pseudoscientific quacks just love to borrow the language of science and slap the label of “spiritual” or “Wiccan” or “transcendental meditation” or “Buddhist” onto them. It’s intellectual theft, plain and simple: it’s woo-meisters doing their damnedest to appropriate natural phenomena to their cause. It’s the same thing as when Pat Robertson ascribes a natural disaster to the wrath of a divine being — he’s pointing to reality and claiming it for the kingdom of irrational supernaturalism.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Spiritual, physiological, blah, blah, blah. Just practice!

I really don't mind if you call them "spiritual," "physiological," or "performative" exercises. (Heh, folks like Myers could do well to read more po-mo stuff - they'd get more words.)

Point is, if you don't mindfully practice, you won't mindfully perform anything whatever it is and whatever you call it, and your chance at attaining any skill is worse than a shooting craps.

I realize that not all Buddhists - maybe most! - don't have the viewpoint I have here,  but Myers should understand that not all Buddhists are woo-meisters.

Updated shortly after I wrote the above:
OK, now I've read Fincke, and I understand a bit why Myers is peeved: it looks like a justification for applying "spiritual" things to "atheist" things.  Once upon a time I thought "spiritual" wasn't a bad word, and my embrace of Buddhism was an attempt to reconcile the "spiritual" aspirations I thought I had with the reality I encountered.   Eventually - via practice - I realized that the aspiration itself was an issue - which meant the "spiritual" could be dropped as well.  But having said that, I still take issue with Myers.  There ought to be no problem with an atheist doing meditation; ask Stephen Batchelor, or me.  I don't call it "spiritual;" I don't know what Batchelor calls it.  But the meditation is good practice for the practice of actually being there in your day to day life, whatever adjectives you might append.  Myers would do well to ...um...pay attention.

Practice and potentially violent stuff...

Nathan writes about Yoga, Buddhism and guns.

Although I tend to support any efforts to reduce the number of guns in circulation, the larger issue is really one of approaching the violent seeds each of us carry within ourselves, and which also come together collectively in our communities and nations. Whether someone in my yoga studio or Zen sangha owns a gun is less important to me than how they handle violence in their lives. At the same time, it's difficult for me to forget the periods of history when large groups of Buddhists twisted elements of Buddha's teachings to support warfare and violent oppression. Given the collective energy here in the United States, it's possible something similar could happen in the future. 

 It's easy to say that "the wrong people have guns," "the wrong people" being people who are too crudely violent in themselves to be able to own one well.  And somewhere buried in that is the assumption that the state includes employees of the people who are themselves the "right people" to own weapons. We hope that is true somewhere within us, though history hasn't exactly been entirely supportive of this assumption.

I know one or two "gun nuts." They're  not "nuts" by any means when it comes to the care and feeding of their weapons, though I personally think they might have a few too many of them.I'm sure they differ on this point.

That said, I myself have generally been supportive of "weapon rights" but in the sense that weapon rights should be considered as overall expressions of 功夫 - the skill of one's self.   Nathan writes:

What's the overall impact of more guns on our communities? On each of us? On the environment? Can a society that upholds gun ownership as a collective response to potential violence also be aiming in the direction of overall non-violence? 

 As a guy studying a martial art, I can say that the study and skill of the art itself seems to have an inverse relationship to one's own tendencies toward aggression and violence. I do not think that is because I am so culturally superior to ...oh, insert the kind of "wrong person" who shouldn't be owning a gun or know how to comport one's self in unarmed fighting here.  Also, as an engineer, I appreciate the esthetics of the simplicity of design of a revolver, or the beauty of a katana. 

I'm not sure I buy the arguments commonly put forward by the right in this country, though let's face it, guns have been pretty instrumental in replacing some rather nasty regimes (far too often, with nastier regimes, alas).

But the gun isn't  our minds - the  associated ideas, concepts, beliefs, and emotions about guns are actually stuff inside our minds, and not the gun itself.  Wanting to remove guns from society to foster non-violence is like wanting to ban alchohol or other intoxicants from society to promote clear thinking - it is the policy equivalent of scratching your foot through your shoe.

Well, enough about that...I have some cooking to do. Gotta sharpen the santoku.