Woke versus Awake

This post is largely, but not entirely a response to the confluence of a few tweets, one a nice tweet by Brad Warner, which can be found around here, but also this thread.  What I'd like to express in this post is:

• There's massive amounts of ignorance in the universe; it is an unfathomable amount of ignorance.
• As I wrote somewhere way back when,  regular Buddhist practice results in something, "awakening-wise" something like the way death is mentioned in the movie Beetlejuice:

• Just because you're highly experienced at whatever doesn't mean you don't have an obligation to learn more, do more etc. In such ugly times as these, not only is beauty true protest, but insouciance can be fatal.  The same applies for anyone who's ever had any kind of realization in practice.
• Just because you're highly sensitive to marginalized groups - because you may be in a marginalized group - doesn't mean you're not influenced by a massive amount of ignorance, especially since it tends to be the case with all of us.
• I don't consider myself woke, especially since I respect what a lot of folks are doing to realize their struggle in life is far more treacherous than mine. I won't opine on anyone's awakened state or lack thereof.  What I do know is privileged folks need to be more cognizant of marginalized folks regardless of what they do or know now, and people who are more aware of the issues and struggles of marginalized folks need to cultivate awareness, wisdom, compassion, and generosity.  Everybody anywhere along  the continua ought to try to excel in both ways.

So those are the points I wanted to cover in this post, and if I leave anything out here, well, consider it covered in my bullet points.  But I want to elaborate a little here and there at least:

I found this thread - pointing to this article - about a kid and a kimono, and how some that are derided as "SJWs" picked a target that revealed their ignorance, especially since it was later pointed out that kimono making is a dying industry in Japan, and wearing kimonos, and other Japanese stuff had been disseminated from Japan.  It was, in fact,  another example of what I mentioned in my post about Buddhist "cultural appropriation."  

I found it interesting because the thread I found on Twitter dealt with two people of Chinese ancestry talking about whether a Westerners using Japanese disseminated stuff was cultural appropriation or not. Yes, Virginia, they were Chinese-splaining proper behavior of Japanese towards Japanese culture.  I didn't know whether or not it was appropriate to White-splain Japanese culture to them, but they had unwittingly stepped on an inter-East Asian fault line (they're probably still unwitting, maybe not if they read this).  That fault line of course is that  if group X comprises subgroups A, B, and C, and A is the vast majority of those people in X,  people in B and C don't expect or desire that A is going to be the spokes-group for them.

I regularly work with East Asians, and there's certain protocols that are observed, because people need to get along with people in their work, and because there's laws, they're good laws, and they should be observed.  It is a tribute to the massive ignorance in the universe that laws that make people do the right thing for their business need to exist, but such laws do need to exist.  I try not to speak for any subgroups of people in which I work because of the law and because we have work to do.  Would that this would be the case in society at large, but it's not that way, even amongst those that favor social justice.

Back to Brad Warner.  Of late Brad Warner took a lot of heat (some of it from me) for his post here, which unfortunately sets of a false equivalence/comparison between alt-right buzzwords and the buzzwords of  what some deride as  SJWs.  I don't like the term SJWs,  because it reduces all people who hold certain positions to a caricature. (Such positions include some of my positions,  e.g.,  "Black Lives Matter" was a clever way to call attention to the fact that Black lives weren't being treated like White lives; it was a kind of koan: How are Black lives different than non-Black lives? That some liberals like Hilary would say "All lives matter" was precisely the point of Black Lives Matter. ) I also don't like the term "allies" either and that whole nomenclature that goes along with some of what those who (often mis)use critical theory use in advancing yes, justice and equality.  That was what Brad was decrying - the reduction of everything to shibboleths.  But, as I replied here and there to him, on one side, there's people trying to fight for people getting screwed by prejudice and bigotry, and on the other side there's racists and bigots who might be little guys screwed and exploited by others, but still racists.

The social justice folks, being human, are as capable of ignorance, violence, and hatred as anyone else, and, as Brad might point out, some of the people feeding into and exploiting bigotry and racism might make a mean apple pie and make you feel welcome in their home.  Maybe. But the current objectives of one group is not the moral equivalent of the other. It just isn't, regardless of who's in anyone's family.  And you know what? A million billion social  and cultural faux pas by a myriad number of social justice folk is not the same thing as a white person complaining that they are socially sanctioned for calling minority groups with derogatory names! There are however exact analogues for other groups in the world  because racism and bigotry are pretty widespread in the world.

There was something in one of Shunryu Suzuki's Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, that pointed to one's own self, one's own practice, one's own awareness as the locus of where any meaningful action should be initiated.   "Culture grows out of you," I think he wrote (and I don't know where my copy of the book is, so I'll rely on my memory here.)  Culture and you and/or culture and I are not separate. Cultural dissemination and cultural appropriation can't be completely separate either; and when something is disseminated the disseminated thing may not be bound to the social structures in which the thing existed prior to dissemination.  Bill may have to be killed because he used the skills disseminated to him for evil ends.  Or not.

Culture, social action, and any such related things can be used for good or bad ends; we have to have some degree of ethical principles to use them towards good ends, and we have to be aware of them to use them effectively towards good ends. 

So it's not enough to be "woke," you have to work towards being awake.  And what good is being awake if it's not helping yourself and others?  To the agree that we're awake, we're awake but we became awakened/died each in our own way, each with our own baggage. We still have an obligation to deal with the baggage.

Watch where you're aiming that thing. You could hurt yourself.

One of the best things about the internet is that it is possible to juxtapose things that in their "native" contexts would not be against one another; you can contextualize almost anything with anything.

Here's a few links today:

• Nathan has a great article on the commodification and the co-option of mindfulness by techies in "Silicon Valley" (which, I understand, these days is a state of mind to many rather than the actual place).
• Nathan links to another critique of "Wisdom 2.0" gobbledygook,  which rightly points out that this whole meditation thing isn't doing much to deal with the whole feral capitalism thing.
• In case you missed it, some folks at Princeton have concluded that the US is no longer a functioning democracy, but rather an oligarchy.   That seems about right.

I could link more, but I have enough links here to make my point, or rather points:

• Inviting the wealthy to tread a path that transforms greed, hatred, and ignorance into wisdom, generosity and love is not a harmful or bad thing.
• That said, that path needs to involve ethical behavior.  That includes concepts of great compassion (大悲, だいじ ),  and benevolence 慈悲心 (じひしん) or  (仁、じん ).
• I haven't taken any polls, and have no demographic information per se, but I would wager the folks who are going to those Wisdom 2.0 conferences as well as the large majority of folks working in that imaginary Oz called "Silicon Valley"  are in agreement with the above points, as well as their critics.   Why do I say this? Well, for one thing,  though I'm not "in the Valley," I am not doing badly relative to most of the country and I agree with most of the critics.  Yeah, I'm one data point, but I know other people too, evidently.    Plus, in the "Wisdom 2.0" link above there's a quote from New Age person Marianne Williamson - I suspect her tirade about wealth was not badly received, at least because the article doesn't mention an adverse reaction on the part of her audience.

Which brings me to my main point: the real, ultimate issue in the wealth disparity issue is not addressed by attacking your natural allies, just as racism, religious bigotry,  and sexual identity oppression are not addressed by attacking one's natural allies either.  It benefits an oligarch to have those who are not in the club squabbling with each other,  and I'd suspect the folks at Wisdom 2.0 aren't in that club.  That club goes to Davos, or elsewhere. They would not  stand for having the usual mindfulness suspects hawking their "wisdom."  Don't get me wrong, I fully agree; a lot of that "Wisdom" stuff is shallow, and if it takes Marianne Williamson to make a dancing monkey remark, you know there's problems.  But I don't see the point of assuming that the folks at Wisdom 2.0 are responsible for the conditions under which electronics are manufactured, at least any more than anyone else.

And even in the case of a Steve Jobs (who gets way too much credit and blame for everything, even now),  as flawed as he was, not budging an millimeter from a position seeking care and justice for all, we should not wallow in the "No true Scotsman" fallacy.  Jobs was a Buddhist.  Maybe Jobs didn't move the world in a direction that produced utopia (Nicholas Kristof has an opposing view that I don't think needs expounding here, other than to point out that  such views exist, and I abhor them, frankly.)   But that did not mean he was not a Buddhist.

And if you're a Buddhist, chances are you're still suffering as well. There's always a potential that class enemies can be identified a little too close to home, if we're in the business of hunting down class enemies who are called that because they're not the poorest of the poor, or the most marginalized of the marginalized.  

I applaud Nathan's views about the commodification of mindfulness (though he should change the word "gates" in his post to "entrances.")   I would go in a slightly different direction, and not want to posit an "us versus them" scenario, but at the same time I, too, insist that progressives actually make progress, which is what I would expect of myself in my own life. 

Once upon a time I was going to write a book called "Why the revolution hasn't come"

It's name was taken from the title of a show on WBAI a long time ago, hosted early Saturday mornings by a guy named Simon Loekle.   The show morphed into "As I Please," which was very literature-centric.

Ah that was then.

I knew why the revolution hadn't come: the revolution hadn't come because the revolution was a manifestation, a projection of what we thought we were lacking in ourselves.  What I didn't see is why the revolution hadn't come was what I was not seeing and living from in my own life; or to put it another way, we included me.  And I certainly couldn't put in motion anything like a revolution because it wasn't operative in my own life. The revolution happens when the Wheel turns.  If you are personally stuck no wheel is turning.

Emma Goldman might not have said, "If I can't dance, it's not my revolution!" Apparently she did say,  "I want freedom, the right to self-expression, everybody's right to beautiful, radiant things."  But it's not clear that her revolution ever really came.

Somehow, somewhere along the way I lived a life and met some remarkable people, and somehow somewhere along the way I actually did participate in a revolution, and you may have benefited from my participation in that revolution.

Some folks are still stuck.  Some folks may not know what Mazu was talking about, and think that cultivation is unnecessary.  Some folks may be too concerned with polishing a tile or not polishing a tile.  It's possible to get stuck in the notion that you're complete as you are without X, because it seems so good, right, on the side of the angels.   But of course having that expression is still attachment.  And what I wrote is still attachment.  Take the I out, or replace it with you or some other noun; play Mad-Libs with it, and it's still 90º off target.

I don't know about anyone else (though I have conjectures), but as for me, the encounter with my own suffering, and the idea that this suffering could be everyone's (see last paragraph) was useful for me to get beyond that. And beyond that is something wonderful.  

There is a heck of a lot of suffering out there.  Some people are in a particularly difficult place; they feel (often with justification) that they have been marginalized, and feel impotent to act with those who are seen as marginalizers.   

The revolution comes when the First Noble Truth is begun to be apprehended.  

Alliance, from a European-Descended Male Buddhist Perspective...

First, I'd put other qualifiers in if I could...but I can't, because I don't think I can abide those other qualifiers frankly, whatever they are.  I really can't.  And that's a subject for a whole other post dealing with leftist moral panics. And I'll use the term "European-descended" here because I think it's  a) more accurate, and b) is not based on outward appearances leading to a dualism.  I haven't even started writing this and I'm digressing.  I'm like that.

In the course of recent social media discussions on gender and ethnicity,  and what seems to be to me to be characteristic of what has been called a moral panic,  I came across this article by Rachel Safeek, which I found rather helpful to engage in a conversation.  I am grateful to her for a reasoned view of the situation.  I have stated earlier that I am ready, willing and able to ally with those who are ready to empower themselves, and will offer help if needed based on what I've learned.  I have also said to her that I would have more comments, so here goes.

Rachel writes:

When members of minority/oppressed groups call out allies for being insensitive, overshadowing minority groups, or overlooking certain things because of their privilege, allies can oftentimes become offended and get defensive...

It happens - it has happened in my case - that despite my background, and my immersion into Asian society and culture (maybe more than some of my critics; I can point out sexism in the structure of  East Asian languages some of them can't read, and I've probably lived in Asia longer than they have ), and other things (see my reservations about other qualifiers), that I've been reduced to a category.  In fact, I was reduced to a category into which I can't rightly put myself, in fact.

Sorry, but that is offensive.   

I note with understanding that of course I have been the recipient of privilege.  But I also note that I have been marginalized, as have people in my family.

Rachel tweeted:

Listen to the group you are allied w/; learn from yr mistake. A true ally will listen. Defensiveness makes the issue about you. NOT ABT YOU
— Rachel Safeek (@RachSafeek) February 17, 2014

I agree with the profound importance of listening.  Listening is hard work. Let me repeat that: Listening is hard work.  Whether you read what someone is saying or listen to what someone is speaking you should listen in the same sense that you might "listen" to fine incense.  It's the only way peace and harmony can be approached. I'm being serious as a heart attack here.

Now let me say something else: Nobody, but nobody, is exempt from listening.

If you, as  a relatively privileged group are not listening, of course you will offend the less privileged group, hurt them, hurt yourself, propagate division, give fodder to rightists who want to continue the game and thus be extremely counterproductive.   But if you as a rightly perceived less privileged group are not listening to someone you believe is from a more privileged group, and you respond with a mapping of that person to the "Other," you're no better than those to whom you're trying to ... to what? To get them to convince you to join them in a fight for equality? OK, let's say that.  But...it just might be that your supposition is wrong.  There are so, so many variables that might demolish one's preconceptions about things.

I was aghast at some of the things I was reading on Twitter recently; a complete ignorance of how, for example,  at least one of the (IIRC)  #notyourasiansidekick tweets might be seen by Asians who were adopted or have step-parentage of European-descended folks.   This is not theoretical; being in my position in society I know some of them well.  That was disgusting, and there's no sugar coating or justifying it.  They are part of the oppressed too.

I was also aghast at how some of the situations I've dealt with first hand were dismissed as irrelevant, which I've had to respond to facts on the ground first hand,  were minimized; these were situations involving my wife and son and mother in - law.  I don't need to be given a primer or lecture on how "insensitive" I am to certain groups frankly, when I have fought for them (with at least one success)  against the strongest political force on earth, and they're doing... what, "hashtag activism?"

On the other hand, there are ethnic groups, for whom I have not had nearly enough interaction and sensitivity...until recently.  But with regard to that, let me put it this way: I think some of those hashtag activists would have a real epiphany  practicing a sparring-centered martial art with an African American or Latino.  I have, and when I did I realized how profoundly deep my own inclinations to  racism are, and how profoundly important it is to overcome it, and how grateful I was to have a space where I could practice overcoming it.

I have spoken before as well that I have been "in-between" in some way or another, excluded some way or another, all my life.   Yeah, I've been privileged,  but marginalization is ubiquitous.  Reification of people who are perceived as privileged to ethnic classes categories, and using denigrating language to describe such people is harmful; it's harmful to all, and it's harmful to overcoming oppression.   If someone wants to overcome oppression I can help, but if someone's engaging in (especially unwarranted)  personal attacks they're not achieving their objective.  To put it politely, they're wasting their lives.  We should be working towards overcome oppression, rather than reifying others.

Like I said, I will gladly ally myself with anyone willing to consider and study themselves, to cultivate themselves to develop the power and skill to help themselves and others. And I will help if asked, and I won't provide help if not asked.  If one wants to ignore people because of perception, or disconfirm or mystify people because of their perception as being in a category, they are hurting us all, and (preview of future post) engaging in a leftist moral panic about it only plays into the hands of the real problem.   It is foolish and disempowering to think that listening is a one way street.  It sure as hell is not.

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.

Rape Culture and Right Conduct, Continued...

Now, recently an "open letter from Dylan Farrow" appeared in the NY Times.  It was accompanied by an op-ed from Nicholas Kristof, whom I quote thusly:

Look, none of us can be certain what happened. The standard to send someone to prison is guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, but shouldn’t the standard to honor someone be that they are unimpeachably, well, honorable?
Yet the Golden Globes sided with Allen, in effect accusing Dylan either of lying or of not mattering. That’s the message that celebrities in film, music and sports too often send to abuse victims.
“I know it’s ‘he said, she said,’ ” Dylan told me. “But, to me, it’s black and white, because I was there.”
I asked her why she’s speaking out now. She said she wants to set the record straight and give courage to victims: “I was thinking, if I don’t speak out, I’ll regret it on my death bed.”
These are extremely tough issues, and certainty isn’t available. But hundreds of thousands of boys and girls are abused each year, and they deserve support and sensitivity. When evidence is ambiguous, do we really need to leap to our feet and lionize an alleged molester?

Just how far do we wish to take this argument?  

So far much of the comment around the 'net that I've heard is about "if you question Dylan's story you're for rape culture."   I myself see the situation differently: if you don't put things in the right perspective about issues like this you might be enabling rape culture because you might be trivializing  justice itself.

But let's go back to Kristof's question: When there are allegations just how do you treat a person?  

We have, shortly after Kristof's op-ed appeared, there was an article in the Daily Beast from a guy who might be considered a friend of Woody Allen, who brings up a lot of relevant things (and some irrelevant things) related to these allegations that didn't make it into Kristof's column.  I quote thusly:

A brief but chilling synopsis of the accusation is as follows: On August 4, 1992, almost four months after the revelation about Woody and Soon-Yi’s relationship understandably ignited a firestorm within the Farrow household, Woody was visiting Frog Hollow, the Farrow country home in Bridgewater, Connecticut, where Mia and several of her kids were staying. During an unsupervised moment, Woody allegedly took Dylan into the attic and, shall we say, “touched her inappropriately.” Later in the day, it was alleged that the child was wearing her sundress, but that her underpants were missing. The following day, Mia’s daughter allegedly told her mother what had happened, and Mia put the child’s recounting of the story on videotape as evidence...

Let’s back up a bit: Mia’s allegations of molestation automatically triggered a criminal investigation by the Connecticut State Police, who brought in an investigative team from the Yale-New Haven Hospital, whose six-month long inquiry (which included medical examinations) concluded that Dylan had not been molested. I’ve since read a recurring canard that Woody “chose” the investigative team. Yet nobody has suggested how or why Mia’s team would ever outsource the investigation to a team “chosen” by Woody. Others have said that the investigators talked to psychiatrists “on Allen’s payroll” before letting him off the hook. The only way I can explain this is that the investigators, naturally, would have spoken with Woody’s shrinks before giving him a clean bill of health. So technically, yeah, Woody’s shrinks would have been paid a lot of money by Woody over the years. (Let’s even call it an annuity.) The same would be true of his dentist, his eye doctor, and his internist. 

As for the evidentiary videotape of young Dylan’s claims, it’s been noted that there were several starts and stops in the recording, essentially creating in-camera “edits” to the young girl’s commentary. This raises questions as to what was happening when the tape wasn’t running. Was Mia “coaching” her daughter off-camera, as suggested by the investigators? Mia says no—she merely turned the camera on whenever Dylan starting talking about what Daddy did. Maybe we should take Mia at her word on this. Since I wasn’t there, I think it’s good policy not to presume what took place. 

The videotape and the medical exams weren’t the only problems Mia faced in bringing abuse charges against her former lover. There were problems with inconsistencies in her daughter’s off-camera narrative as well. A New York Times article dated March 26, 1993, quotes from Mia’s own testimony, during which she recalled taking the child to a doctor on the same day as the alleged incident. Farrow recalled, “I think (Dylan) said (Allen) touched her, but when asked where, she just looked around and went like this,” at which point Mia patted her shoulders. Farrow recalls she took Dylan to another doctor, four days later. On the stand, Allen’s attorney asked Mia about the second doctor’s findings: “There was no evidence of injury to the anal or vaginal area, is that correct?” Farrow answered, “Yes.”

I won't go into the more irrelevant details of Robert B. Weide's piece I've quoted; but I think this information above is relevant to the question Mr. Kristof asks.  Let's slightly reframe Kristof's question: When there are allegations as well as exculpatory evidence  just how do you treat a person?  

Mr. Kristof apparently gave a forum to someone who might have been coached to the point where to this day she truly believes events took place that didn't happen.   (And no that doesn't make her a liar; it merely makes her possibly mistaken^*.)   Mr. Kristof did not go into any detail about the exculpatory evidence that exists, and pointed out that he is not an impartial observer.   Mr. Kristof's behavior in some ways is more clear-cut in terms of its professional implications than the question Kristof asked, as it goes to journalistic  ethics, though it is an opinion piece.   Should Mr. Kristof give back his awards?   Frankly I think he should do that for his pro-sweatshop writing.  The fact that the context of events like the McMartin preschool affair are left out to me is damning though.  

It has been considered ethical in our society where there are allegations and exculpatory evidence that we don't treat a person as though they committed a crime.  So most readers of this blog would agree that Edward Snowden not be charged with a crime.  Edward Snowden of course is a far more attractive figure than Woody Allen, and I for one am not all that enamored with Hollywood awards.  

To answer Mr. Kristof's question though, if someone loses a civil case, in which allegations of criminal acts aren't developed into findings of fact, it seems morally questionable to sanction such a person in their career.   Right conduct would be to demonstrate graciousness towards them.   I wouldn't necessarily give such a person an award though, especially one who has not really had an impact outside of New York and Hollywood for decades.

Here, for the sake of completeness, is another take on the matter, from an author who is clearly taking sides in the issue.

Everyone I have quoted here, and myself included, is against the alleged crimes committed.  We differ in how the evidence is viewed and presented.

It does not enable rape culture to point out exculpatory evidence in cases where sexual abuse has been alleged.  Rather, I would submit, to ignore exculpatory evidence would enable rape culture more, as it would minimize those cases where there isn't exculpatory evidence - because it creates an equivalence between the two classes of cases!

So no, I wouldn't have given Mr. Allen an award, and I wouldn't have published Mr. Kristof's piece in the form it was presented, and I'd have doubts about publishing Dylan Farrow's letter without additional context.  It's probably why their public editor pointed to Mr. Weide's piece.


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* This to me is one of the most potentially ghastly aspects of what I've seen written about this, and Kristof's writing.   Kristof  - and the other writers I've quoted, though Mr. Weide goes near the point - downplay in large extent the issue of the malleability of a child's mind.  See also here for more context.   The Allen - Farrow case is precisely the type of case in which it is most likely that false allegations might be made.  Kristof ought to have known this, and ought to have considered that there was a real possibility that he was not so much helping Dylan Farrow as enabling what possibly was Mia Farrow's abuse.   And again, it is to me the opposite of rape culture to bring up this point, and enables abuse culture to downplay or minimize or ignore it!

Rape Culture and Right Conduct...

I recently had a Twitter exchange with someone who I respect greatly about the whole Dylan Farrow/Woody Allen issue.  I found Woody Allen funny for many years - and still do watching his earlier movies, but that wasn't hardly the motivation  for my comments entreating a larger perspective on the issue.

It was the McMartin preschool affair that did that.

In the 1980s and 1990s, crazy things happened in the American justice system, besides the Woody Allen sexual abuse charges: Eric and Lyle Menendez, the McMartin preschool trials, the Roxanne Pulitizer divorce trial, the William Kennedy Smith rape trial,  etc., etc., leading up to the O.J. Simpson trials and finally, the Bill Clinton affair.

The thing that sticks in my mind is the McMartin preschool trial.  People paid with years of their lives for what we learned from that, and we're fools if we don't put those lessons into practice. 

From the Wikipedia entry:

The McMartin preschool trial was a day care sexual abuse case of the 1980s. Members of the McMartin family, who operated a preschool in California, were charged with numerous acts of sexual abuse of children in their care. Accusations were made in 1983. Arrests and the pretrial investigation ran from 1984 to 1987, and the trial ran from 1987 to 1990. After six years of criminal trials, no convictions were obtained, and all charges were dropped in 1990. When the trial ended in 1990 it had been the longest and most expensive criminal trial in American history.^[1] The case was part of day care sex abuse hysteria, a moral panic over alleged Satanic ritual abuse in the 1980s and early 1990s.

Read the whole thing...people had their lives destroyed over false testimony.  IT HAPPENS.  I, for one do not want that to happen to anyone.  More to come...

Online harassment and precepts...

I was pretty repulsed reading this piece on Talkingpointsmemo.com about the online harassment and hate speech directed against Jill Filipovic. 

And I thought... how could people be this way?  How ignorant or wounded or what could these people be to stalk someone like this?

And then I thought of the situation of  the inability of people to deal with some of the issues affecting the Buddhist community in their on-line presence; some of these incapable people are said to be teachers of Zen, too! 

I would hope that all beings experience relief and transcendence from any wrongful actions towards them, including wrongful speech.

Money, Bitcoin, and bad economics

To walk in money through the night crowd, protected by money, lulled by money, dulled by money, the crowd itself a money, the breath money, no least single object anywhere that is not money, money, money everywhere and still not enough, and then no money or a little money or less money or more money, but money, always money, and if you have money or you don't have money it is the money that counts and money makes money, but what makes money make money? - Henry Miller

This post is hopefully an attempt at a well-mannered response to C4Chaos's pro-Bitcoin post here.  I say "hopefuly" an attempt at well-mannered but I'm not especially optimistic, because somewhere percolating through all this Bitcoin ideology is a lot of libertarian junk, and Austrian School libertarian junk at that.  C4Chaos's post featured about 40 minutes worth of video as a response to Paul Krugman, who I'm sure knows better than to respond to that sort of thing.  I, myself, have no patience for video responses on pretty much anything that's not intended at least partially for entertainment (yeah, I include academic lectures as well - they should be entertaining).  Anyway, I replied to C4Chaos by asking for text links which he dutifully supplied...and so here we go...

First of all, let me start out by saying that Ludwig von Mises was worse than a crackpot.  Don't believe me?  Check out the man in his own words.  Von Mises seems to be intimately related to these so-called "Bitcoin theorists," and that should raise a warning flag pretty much immediately.  Von Mises was an apologist for laissez-faire capitalism, funded lock, stock and barrel by the 1%.   Anyone who's had a basic course in Macro-ecomomics  can refute such clap-trap standing on 1 foot. 

The key point I'd like to make, as long as C4Chaos indirectly referenced von Mises in re: Bitcoin, is that one of the von Mises points is that somehow money is  "good money" if people want to hold money "as cash," as a "store" of value. But, given the nature of capitalism to generate more and more goods and services of value, that "store" doesn't remain constant, and so that position is a political position inherently favoring deflation,  And the political position inherently favoring deflation is in fact a position inherently against labor in favor of capital, and in these times such a position is not ethically defensible.

Another class of objects has recently been touted as a "store" of value as well, and that class of objects are precious metals.  Precious medals experienced a very nice bubble in the last decade or so, which popped in 2012.  You can still hear hucksters on AM right-wing talk radio pushing gold as a store of value.  And yes, I made a few bucks on that bubble.  But that doesn't mean that the bubble was good.  But the capitalism in which we currently dwell requires we all participate to some extent in the Prisoner's Dilemma, and hopefully we do that skillfully towards helping people rather than exploiting them

There was yet another class of objects in the last decade that sort of was a "store" of value though that class wasn't touted as a "store" of value.  That store of value was ... drumroll... US government securities, despite (actually due to) the fact that deficit hawks reigned supreme after 2009.

In the case of precious metals  and  Bitcoin, a "store" of value was touted as a bulwark against some perceived "threat" from central banks, yada yada yada, but in the Greater Fool theory fueled speculative bubbles.

Bitcoin will be accepted as a medium of exchange in barter long as people accept it, of course, but Bitcoin will never really be money unless, ironically for Bitcoin believers,  at least one government can mandate settlement of transactions in Bitcoin.  But then the Bitcoin believers tend to be suspicious of governments.  While it is true that governments commit many crimes and atrocities, their existence is still preferable to crimes and atrocities committed in failed states whether you're talking about Somalia or that libertarian paradise of yore, the Roman Republic.

Yeah, C4Chaos is right that Bitcoin is more than an object of "value", it's a protocol, but so what? Really, so what? It's not going to replace commerce that exists now, including internet commerce.  And the end of the day you're going to want to have dollars and yen and krona and euros and pounds and yuan, because that's what the rest of the world will take to buy bread and rice and vegetables.  Moreover,  Bitcoin will almost certainly be exploited maliciously.  Unlike robbing a bank (which compromises the bank, not the medium of exchange), if Bitcoin is compromised it does compromise the medium of exchange.

It's really a tremendous waste of time and energy and labor, in my view.   And not particularly useful from a Buddhist ethics standpoint...

I'm uninterested in Zen scandals given the profound uniqueness of existence

I realize that this may be somewhat contrarian to the mode of where the Buddhist blogosphere is, not to mention previous posts I've done myself, but I'm less interested than I might have been previously regarding scandals in the Buddhist blogosphere and what-not.

Not to say the scandals didn't happen, not to say they didn't arise in part from "teachers" pretending they had more authority and power than that to which they were entitled, not to say all the points that have already been made time and time and time again on this.   But all of those points might be crowding out from our awareness the point.

I'm thinking of that Chechen young man, and the terrible stupid things in which he and his brother seem to have been involved.  I have had business at Building 32 of MIT, where the campus police officer was murdered.   If these reports are true, and I'd bet today that there's more than a grain of truth to them, these men have harmed and destroyed so much. 

Like politics, life ain't beanbag.  It's serious stuff, and freakishly random things can, do, and will continue to happen.  It is deeply imbued into the fabric of our existence.   That even a flawed human being can offer anyone at least a chance of succor, even in the midst of that helper's flawed motives, and even given the helper's flawed subsequent actions.

I read somewhere that Blaise Pascal had some kind of a carriage incident that profoundly influenced his view on life.  I think I know a little something like what that's about from the recent accident I had.   We're weak, often lonely, and sentenced to death as a result of our birth, and there's going to be things happening to us we just don't want.  Our personal physical pain is our personal physical pain, and others can feel compassion and empathy for us, but they literally cannot feel our pain.

I was reading the Twitter feed of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev; and the responses to them once that feed was identified as his.  I found it interesting that he gained thousands of "followers" once that feed was identified as his - did these people expect him to actually put for another Tweet in his life? Really? And most of those "followers" were just Americans it seems.  Moreover the responses to his Tweets, like the responses from some others, were not reeking of wisdom, to say the least.

Is this so?

Besides, I read the extracts from Brian Victoria's stuff years ago.  And even in the original edition Rick Fields' book on the history of Buddhism in America Sokei An doesn't appear to be completely a saint.

So, pleas for the sake of all, let's get past the mystification, exploitation, and condemnation.  Life's too damn short and we're all in need, some way more profoundly so than others.

On Bombings and Buddhism and 武道

I have a take on this horrible terrorist act that is in response to posts by  Nathan and Brad.

Nathan's responding to Brad, but I read his piece first, so here goes. Nathan wrote:

[I]t's a little too easy to go there. To make the leap from soft interpretations of the first precept to "we should kill people who commit terrorist acts." [Brad's]  desire for punishment is, again, understandable. A pretty human impulse certainly. And yet it's also so Old Testament God. Or a really raw and unprocessed sense of karmic justice that screams Buddhist fundamentalism.

In addition, this who thing about having powerful militaries and police forces so "we" (whomever we are) can practice seems like a nice excuse for fascism. For "just" wars in "terrorist" nations. And for continued oppression of anyone here, in the U.S., who is deemed to be "disruptive" or "potentially" disruptive. Our government, regardless of the political party in power, is quite fond of pre-emptive strikes, "precautionary" measures, and the like. Not that they give a shit about meditation practitioners really. That's really not what they're concerned with. And it wasn't what the governments in medieval Japan were concerned with, nor the various royal factions in India during Buddha's time. Whatever space they "provided" for "safe" meditation practice and Buddhist study was a byproduct of power and resource control. Of oppression of one group by another. Of bloodshed and ecological destruction.

 I don't like parts of what Warner wrote there; in particular the idea that Buddhism only flourished because of strong military power.  I'll have more to say on that shortly. 

I think that's not historically true in general, and WWII era Japan is a case in point: while it's true that there was Yasutani, it's ALSO true that this had pretty much zilch to do with Buddhism. And State Shinto was favored over Buddhism.

It is undeniable though that religion prospers to the extent the powerful allow it to do so.   That's true of all culture that is the dominant "culture" of a "society."  It does no good to be fixed on decrying it, though; because that's being attached to the culture and to power by different means.  Let me put it plainly: decrying the power structures or the use of force or to advocate the use of force with a Dharma justification is the same thing: attachment.

Moreover...

It's not about "Omigod we need fascism!" The true spirit of 武道  - or if you like Western paradigms, military science - really does involve the cessation of violence - it's about, when attacked, doing as little damage as possible to create a peace as deep and long as possible.

And my response to Brad:

You wrote:

Our societies have to be stable before we can engage in our practice. This is an absolutely necessary prerequisite. That means we have to be able and willing to defend our societies against those who would disrupt them. There have to be very strong penalties against doing things like blowing up the Boston Marathon. In his comedy special broadcast this weekend, Louis C.K. made jokes about how great it is that there are laws against murder. “Because if there weren’t, everybody would murder at least one person.” Those who hadn’t murdered anyone, he said, would be seen as weirdos in a society where murder was legal. It was funnier when he said it. 

So I, for one, hope they find the piece of shit who did this and rip him to shreds. He deserves it. Whether they find him or not, his own actions will be his undoing. It can’t happen any other way. And yes, this news makes me angry. I wouldn’t be a real human being if it didn’t.

Still, society needs to make efforts to resolve matters like this without anger. Because an angry response leads to further tragedies, like the angry response of the people West Memphis, Arkansas that led to the wrongful conviction of the “West Memphis Three.” Still, one can expect anger as a response to something like this. I suppose the worthless motherfucker who perpetrated this bombing intended it that way. In the end, it doesn’t matter. Society has every right to remove him from its midst in any way it sees fit.

No Brad "society" does not have the right to remove the perpetrator from its midst in any way it sees fit; in fact it has the obligation to respond to this even in a way that creates as much of a stable, peaceful, caring and harmonious environment as possible, even if it requires a certain degree of violence to achieve that end.   But it should require absolutely no more than is necessary, and it should be understood that this act has meant that we, as a society, have failed in what Sun Tzu would have called the supreme excellence of achieving that peaceful, caring, harmonious, stable society without violence.  We have failed.  But we are not absolved of the responsibilities that come with our existence.

"Pro-Life" and the Great Matter of Life and Death

The anniversary of Roe v. Wade has been seized on by conservative Christians as a day to muster support for the overturning of the decision that legalized abortion.

From a Buddhist perspective, the idea that a zygote is a human being - the reductio ad absurdum of this position of "human life begins at conception" that conservative Christians tend to take - is rather troubling, to say the least, on a number of grounds.

It is true there is the precept not to kill, and that precept is Number One on the Buddhist charts, so to speak.  But killing takes many forms.

Moreover, particularly within the Zen traditions...life and death are not so separated.

In fact, the more we learn, the more it seems that science has things to say on this as well in agreement with the premise that life and death are not so separated; historically it hasn't always been easy to tell - hence wakes.

But we've brought back people who've flatlined, as I understand it.  Not many. According to RadioLab, most people who get CPR aren't resuscitated, and many die with broken ribcages, to boot.

But the fact that we've brought a few back is enough to demonstrate the point.

From the Zen perspective, the important project is the resolution of The Great Matter of Life and Death.  It is this very project which - whether one's a Buddhist or not - gives our lives their raison d'être.   Or, if you don't like that, maybe Carl Sagan's "We are a way for the cosmos to know itself" might better suit you.

My point there is not religious sectarianism per se, but the fact that the pro-life movement, not only in equating born people with zygotes, but with the very premise of the pro-life movement trivializes life and death.  It trivializes life and death by the very reduction of life and death to a relatively small number of  phenomena.  Is the being's heart beating? Is there an EEG? Is the being "viable?" 

Those questions miss The Point by light years.  And the actions taken by some folks in the the anti-abortion, pro-women's death crowd, are, in a certain sense also violations of the First Precept, as is their reliance on those brain functions closer to the limbic system, um, to make their points. 

It is also a violation of the First Precept to cause or prolong another's suffering.  Much of what what we do to incarcerated people  could be considered a violation of the First Precept.

So to  reduce Life and Death to a set of rules to be followed No Matter What guarantees a morally repugnant solution.   I realize that many people sincerely adhere to positions that lead them to dictate what others should do with their bodies.   I would counsel such people to go more deeply into the question. 

The real issue with guns

I don't often get political, but every now and then there's a right wing person who makes comments that are more public than they ought to be, at least for the sake of said winger.

I think a lot of this mentality of guns in America is too tied into attachments to things, and the gun does this at a fundamental level for many - as far as I'm concerned, unless the threat to someone is more than plausible, they probably don't need a gun.

Now, I'm not against gun ownership, and frankly, if one is out in the country it is more than plausible that one might be threatened by any number of beasts.  Moreover, as I've written elsewhere I cannot but have an esthetic appreciation for the design of something like a  357 Magnum, not to mention a 日本刀, a real Japanese sword.  I myself don't own one; I don't have any plausible threats and despite my esthetic sensibilities, I do realize these are rather dangerous things to keep around us when we're mired in greed hatred and ignorance more than we need to be.

But this idea of "bad guys" versus "good guys" and that "we" "good guys" "need" guns to protect us and "our stuff" against the "bad guys," well, that's just reeks of poisons.

I'm actually embarrassed for folks who make such arguments.  They just don't know how they appear.  

They appear as fearful.  And fearful of death more than anything.

Admittedly, death's a biggie. But it's something with which we all need to come to terms.  And one cannot come to terms with death with a gun.  It's impossible.

Reflections on the Time of the Year and all the Shootings

It's that magical time of year... "the most wonderful time of the year,"  so it is said. This wonderful time of the year has been the time in which there have been a number of high profile shootings, including the horrific story at Newtown Connecticut.

There have been the obligatory calls for can't we get along.  A nephew in law mentioned that it's been 13 years since Columbine, and the state of our mental health and the state of our violence have not changed in any way.  He's right.  Nobody made it a priority.

It does make the Zen blogosphere sex scandal situation ridiculously irrelevant by comparison. 

People tend to get wigged out during high stress times.  Yeah, love each other.   But relax, too. Stop. Relax.

It is crazy, but being relaxed and keeping composure help cause peace.  Being stressful to the point of loss of composure is hazardous to peace.

The stupid...sometimes it's hard to take...

It may be down the memory hole pay wall by now, but the New Yorker had an article up last week about college kids taking speed...only they weren't calling it speed, and they were couching it an updated version of the language that was use in the 60s to describe physician prescribed pep pills. 

Not long ago, I met with Anjan Chatterjee, a neurologist at the University of Pennsylvania, in his office, which is tucked inside the labyrinthine Penn hospital complex. Chatterjee’s main research interests are in subjects like the neurological basis of spatial understanding, but in the past few years, as he has heard more about students taking cognitive enhancers, he has begun writing about the ethical implications of such behavior. In 2004, he coined the term “cosmetic neurology” to describe the practice of using drugs developed for recognized medical conditions to strengthen ordinary cognition. Chatterjee worries about cosmetic neurology, but he thinks that it will eventually become as acceptable as cosmetic surgery has; in fact, with neuroenhancement it’s harder to argue that it’s frivolous. As he notes in a 2007 paper, “Many sectors of society have winner-take-all conditions in which small advantages produce disproportionate rewards.” At school and at work, the usefulness of being “smarter,” needing less sleep, and learning more quickly are all “abundantly clear.” In the near future, he predicts, some neurologists will refashion themselves as “quality-of-life consultants,” whose role will be “to provide information while abrogating final responsibility for these decisions to patients.” The demand is certainly there: from an aging population that won’t put up with memory loss; from overwrought parents bent on giving their children every possible edge; from anxious employees in an efficiency-obsessed, BlackBerry-equipped office culture, where work never really ends.

Chatterjee told me that many people who come to his clinic are cognitively preoccupied versions of what doctors call the “worried well.” The day I visited his office, he had just seen a middle-aged woman, a successful Philadelphia lawyer, who mentioned having to struggle a bit to come up with certain names. “Here’s an example of someone who by most measures is doing perfectly fine,” Chatterjee said. “She’s not having any trouble at work. But she notices she’s having some problems, and it’s very hard to know how much of that is just getting older.” Of course, people in her position could strive to get regular exercise and plenty of intellectual stimulation, both of which have been shown to help maintain cognitive function. But maybe they’re already doing so and want a bigger mental rev-up, or maybe they want something easier than sweaty workouts and Russian novels: a pill.

Recently, I spoke on the phone with Barbara Sahakian, a clinical neuropsychologist at Cambridge University, and the co-author of a December, 2007, article in Nature, “Professor’s Little Helper.” Sahakian, who also consults for several pharmaceutical companies, and her co-author, Sharon Morein-Zamir, reported that a number of their colleagues were using prescription drugs like Adderall and Provigil. Because the drugs are easy to buy online, they wrote, it would be difficult to stop their spread: “The drive for self-enhancement of cognition is likely to be as strong if not stronger than in the realms of ‘enhancement’ of beauty and sexual function.” (In places like Cambridge, at least.)

See what I mean? Take a pill to make yourself "more."  Now I happen to be in the camp that would say it is possible to use technology to alter our behavior - this is in some ways self-evident: a pair of running shoes makes it easier to run.  A Wing Chun dummy enables one to practice Wing Chun without a partner.   A swimming pool helps one practice swimming. 

There are limits to this though.  Technology will extract a kind of "karmic debt" with everything else - it then becomes a question of one's willingness to use the technology at the price of the karmic debt.  I'm having a cup of coffee. If I want coffee in the future I'll have to make more soon - and the whole host of behaviors of having coffee come with the coffee.  If I have it late at night I can't sleep.   A technology that makes us feel happy all the time robs us of honing the skill of using depression, sadness and grief to benefit all.  The same goes for other kinds of technologies besides the chemical. 

You get the point. Speed kills now just as it did then.  Taking that crap won't make us all John McAfee, but we might be something repugnant anyway.

南無, Translations, Worship, Buddhism and Being Stuck

Over at The Worst Horse, there's an interesting exchange arising from a fundamentalist Christian pastor with a geriatric congregation who applauds the pastor's acting out of his anger management issues.  As Rod/Worst Horse points out,

“We don’t worship Buddha,” says pastor Dennis Terry, introducing Rick Santorum while preaching to the choir in the newly posted video... Well, that’s not something most Buddhists say they do, either — at least not many Western Buddhists; rather, it’s more often the case that we look at the historical Buddha as an example of a real human being who proved that liberation from suffering was possible.

I noted that

This is a very interesting point, but actually more than a few Western Buddhists do express worship to the Buddha when they chant the Vandana  

To which Rod/Worst Horse replies

Well, that’s true, except for some this is a vocalisation of recognizing a quality inherent in ourselves and in others.

Yah, you got that right.  But Neal in the comments says,

@Mumon It is my understanding that the English translation of the Vandana is “I venerate the Sacred One, the Great Sage, the Truly Enlightened One.”
It is also my understanding that the word “venerate” means to revere or respect. Not quite the same as worship.
Please correct me if I’m wrong.

 I want to explore Neal's comment a bit, especially in regard to how it reflects Western Buddhist thinking, but first I'm afraid we'll have to go on a language excursion.  OK, well, let's go to the dictionary:

wor·ship

 [wur-ship] Show IPA noun, verb, -shiped, -ship·ing or ( especially British ) -shipped, -ship·ping.

noun

1. reverent honor and homage paid to God or a sacred personage, or to any object regarded as sacred.

2. formal or ceremonious rendering of such honor and homage: They attended worship this morning.

3. adoring reverence or regard: excessive worship of business success.

4. the object of adoring reverence or regard.

5. ( initial capital letter ) British . a title of honor used in addressing or mentioning certain magistrates and others of high rank or station (usually preceded by Your, His,  or Her ). 

 Since in many translations that I've seen of Buddhist liturgies the word "homage" is used, this might be enough, in my opinion, but just to be sure,  the definition of "veneration" does indeed list reverence as a synonym for veneration.

As I said, Rod/Worst Horse is right about this being a vocal expression of a quality that inheres to us. The operative word that is worship/homage/veneration here is 南無, expressed in Japanese chanting as "namu" (なむ）and Mandarin and Pali as "namo." That 南無 in Chinese and Japanese is obviously a transliteration of the Pali is evident from the meaning of the characters composing 南無; 南 means "South" and "無" is the mu meaning "not" or the prefix "un" as in "wireless" being 無線 ,  (musen) in Japanese.    Jeffrey's Japanese-English dictionary's definition of 南無 lists several uses the term, none of which use the term "worship," but all of which seem to be dancing around the word somehow.  I do think the case can be made that indeed, "worship," "homage to," and "venerate" can be used interchangeably for 南無 here, because of the uses of the term where we find it, and noted translations of it.

 For example, Jeffrey's Japanese-English Dictionary includes the Nichiren chant 南無妙法蓮華経 (namu myouhourengegyou) - oh, I should note the "ou" usage connotes an extended "oh" sound, in case you're interested.  南無妙法蓮華経 is translated as "Homage to the Lotus Sutra."

For us Zen folks,  many of us chant 延命十句觀音經 ("Emmei Jukku Kannon Gyou").  Hakuin scholar Philip Yampolsky translates that sutra as:

Kanzeon! Salutation and devotion to the Buddha!
We are one with the Buddha
In cause and effect related to all Buddhas
and to Buddha Dharma and Sangha.
Our true nature is
Eternal, Joyous, Selfless and Pure.
So let us chant every morning
Kanzeon with Nen (attention)
Every evening Kanzeon with Nen!
Nen Nen arises from Mind
Nen Nen is not separate from Mind.

(Note to Prof. Yampolsky: Please forgive my bad editing; I'm wrestling with Blogger.) The phrase "Salutation and devotion to the Buddha" is what is rendered from 南無佛, ("namu butsu") and yeah, 佛 means "the Buddha."

The most common expression of the use of 南無 would be the Pure Land use of it; which is rendered in Japanese as "阿弥陀仏," (namu amida butsu) or, evidently, 阿弥陀佛.  It's also the most common form of Buddhist homage in Chinese (where, to the best of my knowledge, it would be rendered in Mandarin as "namu amito fo.")  In Chan Buddhist temples in China you'll be greeted with 阿弥陀佛.

Ok, I think I've beaten that ...oh, I better not use that metaphor- as I said Rod/Worst Horse is right.


 I didn't want to write this because I wanted to bore anyone with my meager knowledge of comparative linguistics or whatever you call the stuff I wrote above. The real reason I wanted to write about this is because I think it  -and that rage filled pastor that Rod/Worst Horse referenced, underscores a kind of fault-line in Western convert Buddhism.  I first encountered it when my teacher, leading a ceremony honoring the Buddha's birth, invited us to engage in a ceremony by saying, "Let us worship the Buddha." I, myself, felt it right there: Hey, wait a second!  Nobody said anything about worshiping anything!  Later I read stuff such as the above and I became convinced: what we regard as "worship" is a "good" thing when we mean reverent honor, respect, and veneration, but we think it's a "bad" thing when we mean "bowing down before the other evil guy's false deity," or something like that.   We associate "worship" with what that hateful pastor does, whereas we venerate, reverently honor, etc. But they both mean the same thing!

Now I find that pastor's brand of fundamentalism repulsive; that is, I am viscerally repulsed by a crowd of angry people being stirred up by a person displaying anger conveniently speaking for a god who is only present as anger.  And he may not - he certainly is not worshiping, reverently honoring, or venerating that aspect of us which transcends suffering, greed, hatred and ignorance.  But I don't think I'm adequately doing my own transcendence if I let him - or rather my perception of him - if I let my perception of him  get to own the word "worship" as a bad thing in and of itself.  If we are venerating the separation of ourselves from others, if we are venerating our own greed, hatred and ignorance, if I am acting out of my own visceral repulsion, I find it very difficult to see past where that pastor is; I limit my own freedom to act out of generosity, compassion, and wisdom.

And that's why I wanted to mention this.