Kitsch and Buddhist Imagery and What It All Might Mean

It's been a few weeks since I've had a blog post.  This has been for a variety of reasons, not the least of which has to do with the strange internet conditions in the People's Republic of China, the fact that I was doing something creative at work, and that creative thing was sorely needed.

In my travels to NY this year my siblings and I were involved in settling my mother's estate.   Evidently my mother was a rather avid collector of something called "Precious Moments."

She was, I think, under the impression that these things would increase in value, kind of like the way some people would have bought Thomas Kinkade "paintings" for the same reason.   Like Thomas Kinkade, these things ooze what is commonly called "kitsch."  The Wikipedia article on kitsch describes Milan Kundera's view on the subject:

The Czech writer Milan Kundera, in his book The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984), defined it as "the absolute denial of shit". He wrote that kitsch functions by excluding from view everything that humans find difficult with which to come to terms, offering instead a sanitized view of the world, in which "all answers are given in advance and preclude any questions".

In its desire to paper over the complexities and contradictions of real life, kitsch, Kundera suggested, is intimately linked with totalitarianism. In a healthy democracy, diverse interest groups compete and negotiate with one another to produce a generally acceptableconsensus; by contrast, "everything that infringes on kitsch," including individualism, doubt, and irony, "must be banished for life" in order for kitsch to survive. Therefore, Kundera wrote, "Whenever a single political movement corners power we find ourselves in the realm of totalitarian kitsch."

For Kundera, "Kitsch causes two tears to flow in quick succession. The first tear says: How nice to see children running on the grass!The second tear says: How nice to be moved, together with all mankind, by children running on the grass! It is the second tear that makes kitsch kitsch."

And this led me to the question: is Buddhist imagery kitsch? I think some imagery can be considered this way,  but not all of it can, just as some Christian imagery is definitely not kitsch, but some is.  

It is kind of interesting to me though that some aspects of Buddhist inspired arts, notably those Zen-derived, strive to incorporate some aspects of "real life," or emptiness, or wabisabi (侘寂).   

Coincidentally, there's been some discussion in the Buddhist blogosphere of something called "near enemies." 

I'll go out on a limb here and say I'm not sure there are such things as "near enemies."  There are, of course ways of being that are not conducive to the transcendence of suffering, to be sure.  And those ways of being are ways of being that just won't go - you cannot expect to be entirely rid of attachments, envy,  hatred, greed, etc. 

That's not the point, of course, the point is to transcend them.

But there is also talk of pity, indifference,  and something that is substituted for true feelings (which makes them, what, false feelings?).

I'm not sure there are such things...take pity for example.  Pity might not be the best of all possible worlds - that is pity as kindly sorrow for another, which, I'd submit recognizes a difference between the pitier and the pitied.  And it is a motivator of charity in which there is still a gaining idea (the problem with much of so-called "Christian charity.")

But I think it may be more of a continuum than a set of discrete and separate states. Pity might lead to compassion, if the pitier realizes his separateness from the pitied. 

I agree with Barbara, that it's good to have a relationship with a teacher to help. 

But one still shoulders the responsibility here. 

I may have more to say on this later. 

Acting according to someone else's "revelation" is violent and blasphemous

I am a Buddhist because, among other things, appeals to supernatural have never seemed particularly effective to me, nor have I seen any convincing evidence that it was effective for anyone else.   I don't claim to be a metaphysical naturalist (too idealistic in my view, especially with regard to the limitations of language, thought and perception).   However, I'm sure I seem damned close to one if the person doing the seeming is a monotheistic "believer" of some sort.  I put quote marks around "believer" because I think there is a whole entire question of whether or not a anyone can "believe" anything in the sense of what a writer in the bible said; that is faith is the "evidence of things not seen."  Is this "belief" delusion by another name?

It is a question I will not get to here, because for now I have a larger question in mind.  Some  people I know are perfectly content to attempt to convert others to Christianity, and otherwise talk as though it is natural and appropriate to presume the existence of Christian belief in polite conversation.  People with whom I am a little less familiar think there's no problem at all in attempting to convert others to Christianity, particularly children and adolescents.

I say this is a kind of violence, in the sense of an unjust or unwarranted exercise of force or power.  This view, I'll admit, owes a bit to R. D. Laing's brilliant case for how much of what we call "love" in Western "civilization" is really a form of violence as found in The Politics of Experience.

It is not enough to destroy one's own and other people's experience. One must overlay this devastation by a false consciousness inured, as Marcuse puts it, to its own falsity.  

Exploitation must not be seen as such. It must be seen as benevolence. Persecution preferably should not need to be invalidated as the figment of a paranoid imagination; it should be experienced as kindness. Marx described mystification and showed its function in his day. Orwell's time is already with us. The colonists not only mystify the natives, in the wasy that Fanon so clearly shows, they have to mystify themselves. We in Europe and North America are the colonists, and in order to sustain our amazing images of ourselves as God's gift to the vast majority of the starving human species, we have to interiorize our violence upon ourselves and our children and to employ the rhetoric of morality to describe this process. 

In order to rationalize our industrial-military complex, we have to destroy our capacity to see clearly any more what is in front of, and to imagine what is beyond, our noses. Long before a thermonuclear war can come about, we have had to lay waste to our own sanity. We begin with the children. It is imperative to catch them in time. Without the most thorough and rapid brainwashing their dirty minds would see through our dirty tricks. Children are not yet fools, but we shall turn them into imbeciles like ourselves, with high I.Q.'s, if possible. 

From the moment of birth, when the Stone Age baby confronts the twentieth-century mother, the baby is subjected to those forces of violence, called love, as its mother and father, and their parents and their parents before them, have been. These forces are mainly concerned with destroying most of its potentialities, and on the whole this enterprise is successful. By the time the new human being is fifteen or so, we are left with a being like ourselves, a half-crazed creature more or less adjusted to a mad world. This is normality in our present age. 

Love and violence, properly speaking, are polar opposites. Love lets the other be, but with affection and concern. Violence attempts to constrain the other's freedom, to force him to act in the way we desire, but with ultimate lack of concern, with indifference to the other's own existence or destiny. 

We are effectively destroying ourselves by violence masquerading as love. 

It is an obscenity and blasphemous to say that one person has been deigned lucky enough or good enough or sacred enough or holy enough to have had the Great Holy Truth Revealed to Him and Those Who Say the Same Things He Does And No One Else Does.

It's not "love" or "compassion" talking when one wants to "share the good news," but rather it is pride and narcissism. 

And it should be pointed out to be such.  Look, if you want to talk about such things, and "believe" such things, fine, good for you.  But do not be so rude and arrogant as to assume that people who don't "believe" such things should be "brought around to your way of thinking."  You are just as existentially unlucky as anyone else.  You cannot escape.  You can only try to help others without the religiosity, and if you have another way and it's not empirically demonstrable, don't waste anyone's time most of all your own.

I was recently on a flight to Washington D.C., and I was sitting next a wonderful woman who worked for World Vision, a Christian charity. We discussed quite a few things related to charity (such as why the heck a lawyer was needed for that charity and why they needed government grants - I never actually got an answer to those questions).   But the issue of charity came up.  She said people helped others in World Vision "because they wanted to recognize that God loved them." (Actually I think at first she said, "Because we want to show God's love in the world" - that really is the kind of  issue I'm talking about.)

This struck me as odd, and out of reasons of sparing the woman's feelings, I did not  tell the woman that if you're not helping people because people are hurting or will hurt, and for those reasons alone - that is, to alleviate suffering now and in the future - then you're not helping them as effectively as you could. 

It is a kind of narcissistic blasphemy to think you're "showing God's love in the world" by thinking you're "doing unto others as you would have others do unto you."  You may be helping fellow human beings.   But if somebody's dying of cancer maybe the last thing they need is someone to preach to them with an affect of religiosity and instead they need someone to care for them without a first or second or third or n-th thought as to the "goodness" of this in the eyes of any real or imagined deities.   Maybe if they're religious,  and dying of cancer they may want some religious comfort.  Good for them, and for you if you both want to pray together.


In some cases, even a dying person can be attempting to manipulate others in religion talk, even to the point of attempting to get people to say things they don't believe in just to make the dying person "feel better."  Again, nobody's "revelation," even a dying person's, is of any greater value than anyone else's and regardless of who does it, it is violence to act otherwise, and should be stated as such.  And I don't really think many dying people are actually any more comforted (and perhaps less - there's that whole damnation thing)  by appeal to a monotheist deity than anyone else.  In the cases where I've seen this type of manipulation of the family by the dying, it certainly wasn't the case.

So hopefully that sets a few things straight here.

One more thing: you're still responsible.  You can't blame "faith" for hate and narcissistic arrogance disguised as care and love.  This is partly my Buddhist/existentialist answer to the question of where morality comes from. But it is, here, ultimately my entire point: we're responsible. I'm responsible for what I do, and for what I do in response to whatever behavior I encounter.  If you're going to act "in God's name" to me, you better damn well do it as though God doesn't exist  (in which case why are you saying you're doing it in God's name?)  You better damn well do it as though God doesn't exist, because whether or not a monotheistic deity exists, you're still responsible.

OK, that's it for today.

What's in your mind?

In doing my day-to-day practice, I've been noticing that indeed my mind doesn't do anything I know about except for the "5 Aggregates."

This is fascinating to me.  But even  more so, it is the fact that my mind does this and "mediates things" in such a way that a heck of a lot of wants tend to come up. It seems that so much  of my day-to-day awareness is driven by the "Oh, no I'm going to die under a bridge" kind of feeling arising from me not liking that I may not "get" what "I" want.

But it's all empty, void of substance anyway.  Everything "I" want is impermanent, imagined, a thought construct.

Isn't that strange? And yet, I'd bed most people are exactly the same way much of the time.

Is there any wonder then that this wanting, wanting, wanting, leads to suffering, suffering, suffering, and why one might want to transcend it?

A couple of responses to Buddhist blog posts of late...

• Regarding Jordan's post on morals and Zen,  I must remonstrate slightly, though I share his overall sentiment.  Jordan writes:

Zen, an abbreviated term for Zazen: Sitting upright with legs crossed. Zen is the practice of all the Buddha ancestors. You might even say zen is a yoga posture. You might call it Cha'an, or Sitting Dhyāna. Everything else is not zen. 

Zen is not an agenda.
Zen is not a doctrine
Zen is not some idea of the true way.
Zen is not a religion despite dictionary entries and many views to the contrary.
Zen is not writing a long intellectual blog post.

I remonstrate slightly because "everything else" can be Zen.  The mindset/orientation/disposition of koan practice or shikantaza can be brought into everyday activity.  But yeah, morals have no Zen in what he's saying.

• Regarding Danny Fisher's interview Heshima Kenya’s Alisa Roadcup, I'm very sure she's dong great things for people who really need it, and encourage support for Heshima Kenya.  Still, I could not help to have done other than to have been reminded of the Blue Cliff Record, Case 1.  And one need not necessarily go far to do good for all beings.

I don't work in Silicon Valley, but if I did...

I'd find the idea of hard-partying 20-30 something year olds indeed a ridiculous stereotype.  I'd find it a ridiculous stereotype anyway a) because there's lots of people my age over there... that is they're "grownups," and b) every engineer in the course of their work knows or should try to know how they're going to change the world...unless you're an engineer in the defense industry (where it's kinda sorta obvious how you're going to change the world).

"Zen" "has" no morals?

Via NellaLou, and Wonderwheel,  I am informed of yet another critique of Zen Buddhism based on the behavior of Eido Shimano and one Klaus Zernickow.  My first reaction though was basically a consideration of what it might possibly mean that "Zen" "has" no morals: does the universe have morals?  Does a dog have Buddha-nature?

Missing from the discussion overall, I feel (though NellaLou and Wonderwheel go in the direction) is that the sangha has a responsibility to act to see that no one is harmed (and in fact, much, much more than that - to see that the suffering of all beings is transcended).  That's your "morality" of "Zen" right there.

Wonderwheel writes of the critique, by one Christopher Hammacher:

In Section 4, Hammacher suggests six potential causes leading to the phenomenon of otherwise intelligent or reasonable Zen students accepting such flagrant misconduct: a) Lack of morality; b) Japanese authoritarianism; c) Impossible ideals; d) The Absolute vs. the Relative; e) The institution of dharma transmission; f) Emphasis on enlightenment; and g) Cultic tendencies.  Hammacher discussion of these six points is conclusory and based on superficial presumptions and analysis.  

Wonderwheel does a good job of discussing these items, though when it comes to "Japanese authoritarianism," well, I haven't read Hammacher's paper, but I'd suspect that he hasn't actually been that exposed to Japanese culture as some of us - and I frankly don't have time to delve into a detailed rebuttal other than to say anyone that doesn't get the concept of wa (和) was it relates to Japanese organizational dynamics won't be a big hit in the Japanese business world, let alone a Japanese-descended sangha. Finally, yes, I suppose "Zen" does lack a "morality," in the sense of a lack of monotheistic notions of "sin."  But that's a feature, not a bug: its purpose is to avoid moral failures by attachment to one's falling short of ideal behavior.


I repeat: I did not read the article in question.  Enough at this point is being said and done re: Eido Shimano, at the very least, not to mention Genpo Merzel et al.  But to take these institutional failures and then claim "Zen" has a "lack of morality" is based on an ignorance of what Zen Buddhist practice actually is.

I've been very lucky, perhaps, to have had guides who were upstanding in their treatment of me, and because of that, it's easy to see what they did right when others did not do right.  It could, of course, also be related to the fact that I've advocated a "kick the tires" approach to selecting and interacting with a potential "teacher."

What do you value? What do you keep? What do you get rid of? How?

As I stated below, I recently returned from NY;  I was with most of my large family going over details of the "personalty" from my mother's estate.

My parents were hoarders.

They had a lot of stuff,  much of it with very little value at all, although some of it had great value.  Don't ask though about the really valuable stuff - diamond rings and such.  That's the subject for another koan. 

There are some items that appear to be made of jade.  The price of jade has gone up in value astronomically, as China's fortunes have gone on the upturn in recent decades.

There's also silver coin, and maybe-not-silver-but-definitely-stuff not made anymore. Like the above coin that (forgive the poor photography) in real life sports 2 swastikas.

There's other things, too, some of which might have gone up in value a great deal, some of which was wisely sought after by my parents, and some of which even now seems hideous to me. 

My parents were the sort of people who had certain ideas about "fashion" and "style."  That is, they wore whatever they wanted to however they wanted to (or was available? on sale?) and they simply did not care how it looked.  Oftentimes it seemed the idea was calculated to shock, if you can imagine how extremely conservative 2nd generation East European late middle age/elderly folks might shock one.

My wife tells me some of this stuff has gone up in value - there is apparently a strong market in China for bolos, inter alia. 

All of this brings up a few interesting koans, i.e., the title of this post.  Does one keep a Nazi era coin? Does one sell it? Throw it out? What about my father's idiosyncratic clothing/accessory tastes? 

One item was a no-brainer: My parents had saved - like many Americans do - about $45.00 in pennies in jars.  They went right to Coinstar. The silver was heavy enough, thank you.

But back to the koan. We "inherit" a lot of things from a lot of people.  Some things we can profitably give away to other people. Some things we can use to our benefit and enjoyment and the benefit and enjoyment of others. Some things we can sell, because the economic value of the thing sold is worth more than keeping the thing.

Among the items I received was a 硯 (suzuri, or yàn) that was apparently purchased in China back in the 80s.  It is very close in size to the kind that I had seen a Japanese master use, though this one has a minor flaw.  I am told it may be valuable to sell, but if I used it it would have less value.  But I do wish to continue a practice of 書道.   But I also am quite an amateur.  It's not quite but sort of in the same direction as if you were to give an 11 year old kid a vintage Gibson guitar...of course you don't give an 11 year old kid a vintage Gibson.  Or if you do you make sure he damn well knows how to use it.  Then again my kid has a rather pricey violin.

I'm keeping the 硯, of course, and know enough about 書道 to be able to understand how to take care of it. 

Much of the problems we have both with ourselves and with our families/communities can be attributed, I'd suspect, to a lack of understanding of what should be valued, what should be kept, what should be disposed of, and how things should be disposed. 

A couple or three of Buddhist temples in NY

Near the house I've inherited part of,  there are deer, vultures, turkeys, wildcats, wolves, and a couple of  Buddhist temples within an hour's drive or so.  First, there is the Mahayana Temple (大乗寺) temple, one of the oldest Buddhist temples located in a rural area in the Northeast. (It's one of those things you may or may not have read in "American" Buddhist media. I don't know. ) They will be shortly observing their 50th anniversary; if you are in the area, stop by.  They are by no means well known, but should be more well known.  Here are some photos of the temple, as it's expanding in preparation for its 50th:

And also within 1 hour's drive is Zen Mountain Monastery:

Finally, every lay person's home should be a temple in the sense that everything done in there should be done with great care and attention and, of course, all the other human aspects. Home is an important place.   I am very lucky; here is the view from my NY home:

"Westernizing" versus "Mutating" Buddhism

James Ford and Barbara have written posts about "Westernizing" the Dharma, and more specifically Zen Buddhism in the West.

I figured I'd put my two cents in...

• Barbara and James talk about how Zen training was at first primarily a Zen training in monasteries.  They're right as far as they go, but what I wonder about is if they get the historical context correctly.  As I've said repeatedly, the degree to which Zen training was "laicized" in Asian cultures depended on the degree to which people had free time, and in the societies in which Chan/Zen flourished, most people had very little time on their hands.  The degree to which Chan/Zen flourishes amongst non-monastics is quite highly correlated with economic status. Thus, samurai and nobility could study Zen, but peasants could not unless they became monastics.  That fact can't really be ignored, and should be taken into account.
• James Ford writes:

Most people, however, who practice Zen, do not live in a controlled rule based environment beyond regular or occasional retreats. The average Zen practitioner today sits with a group that meets maybe once a week, perhaps a bit more regularly. And hits a retreat once in a while, maybe once or twice a year.

  I think that most Americans who practice Zen are in fact living highly structured lives by default because lives today are that structured, and there is "surplus" time in which to do meditation.  That's partially because of the class of folks practicing it.  The challenge for Chan/Zen is to bring this practice to those who have more hours of physical labor in the week and are poorer than those who do not.

• There are similar problems of Chan/Zen going on throughout the Western world; there is a significantly larger lay practice in Japan than there was centuries ago, because the movement to bring Zen to the laity actually started first in Japan, with Japanese organizations.
• Even amongst the less economically well off (and especially amongst the better off) Chan/Zen "offshoots" have been around for centuries with much the same spirit of Chan/Zen.  When James was writing about how there is much criticism in traditional monastics, I was thinking about martial arts training.  Teachers who are worthwhile in this endeavor aim constantly for perfection in their students.  Any practitioner of the so-called "Zen arts" will be challenged by one's continual need to improve skill.  And Barbara's right of course, communities of practitioners of any discipline will make for a better group of practitioners.
• Finally, I'd take a small issue with Barbara's characterization of "Western" versus "Eastern" philosophy.  My take on how professional philosophers do this is not that they intend to denigrate Eastern narratives of Buddhism, but rather that they wish to contextualize Buddhism in terms that have proven useful to Western philosophy.  To me, this is kind of like how mathematics has developed over the world.  Much of Western philosophy is concerned with matters about how to consistently, logically, describe aspects of human existence, just as mathematics attempts to consistently and logically describe numeric and computational aspects of our existence. The fact that much of probability theory has come to us through Soviet era mathematicians doesn't imply that probability theory is in any way "Communist," though I can imagine some know-nothings might assert that for political reasons.  Thus,   I can't imagine a serious professional Western philosopher saying there's no need for reading Nagarjuna when one has Sartre, but my viewpoint is shaped by what I've read on the subject.  But I'm talking about folks like the late William Barrett, whose writing was very respectful of D. T. Suzuki, (not to mention D.T. Suzuki himself) rather than knock-offs like Ken Wilber.
• So from a "Western philosophical" point of view I don't think there's a big problem.  I do think there's a big problem when "Western Buddhism" makes fetishes out of political figures, particularly when those figures have their own agendas.  I also think there's a big problem when "Western Buddhism" is really someone's projection of what they'd like  Buddhism to be, when it's a Buddhism laden with their own psychological or political or gender biases. But that's what I'd call a mutation of Buddhism.  It's all well and good to support political action and have that political action to be informed by one's Buddhist ethics.  It's another thing entirely to say that a particular movement is "Buddhist" and therefore that "Buddhism" should re-make the entire world.  You better free your mind instead, as John Lennon sang.
• Finally, I'd note that "traditional Buddhism" can indeed learn something from the West, and that something is professional ethics.  We in the West really did do that; it's a legacy of a Roman system of law.  All religious personnel should have notions of conflict of interest areas in what they do, and to be on guard for them.  The notions of professional ethics is of course still evolving, but let's give credit where credit is due.

Seriously, though I don't think the subject is so important to think about concerned with the day-to-day practice itself.

More on Martial Arts, 功夫, and "spirituality."

I think there is a place for what, for want of a better term, might be considered "the sacred."   I tend to denigrate the word "spirituality" though because it is hard to pin down a unique meaning for this.  It's not to say that I denigrate things that are conducive to life, harmony, compassion, wisdom,  and generosity, and in that sense I would agree that a "spiritual" practice that would encompass those attributes would be beneficial.  But I think, as the Buddha suggested, it's a good idea generally to deprecate usages and appeals regarding the supernatural.

This post is in response to a video I saw of one Matt Thornton, which I posted here.  I've been meaning to communicate with Mr. Thornton, but haven't had the opportunity yet, though he lives in the Portland area.  I think we'd get on quite well. But I think he hasn't met someone quite like me, a person who engages in what some might call "spiritual" practices, and gets what he's saying about the psychological /"spiritual" aspects of martial arts.

In the video above Mr. Thornton makes a convincing appeal for knowledge of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, though I understand his school also teaches Jeet Kun Do, which is a descendent martial art of Wing Chun (詠春券).  He also makes a very good point or two or three regarding how unprepared many "martial arts" schools leave their trainees when it comes to a real confrontation.  (See also Sam Harris's blog post on the subject here.)

But the thing I wanted to get recorded here is that what Mr. Thornton denigrates in his video, is the idea that what are commonly called "spiritual" practices (see around 18:34 and following in the video.) "Cultural superstition" is one thing that Mr. Thornton associates with Buddhism, and that "Buddhists" pretend to know things they do not know, e.g., what happens after death.  But Mr. Thornton should be aware that many Buddhists do not go to that point.  That said, I'm sure Mr. Thornton doesn't get the proper function of a Buddhist chanting service for example.  When we chant about Buddha nature pervading the universe, it is not necessarily a supernatural statement.   An awareness that transcends our own awareness may or may not exist in a vacuum, but it undeniably appears to be ubiquitous amongst sentient beings, for starters.  And that what I call "I" is a construct of my mind is pretty near empirically verified.  But also, our awakened nature does pervade the universe; as it is in the universe and the universe pervades itself and is interdependent with/in all phenomena. Where does it end?

Still, Mr. Thornton gets that a martial arts practice has a profound effect on one's sense of self. One has to get quite humble to learn about one's self, and useful martial arts are a good vehicle for that. And there are variations of Buddhism, real Buddhism, that are overly supernatural.  That's unfortunate, but such supernaturalism is not the entirety, it is not even the essence of Buddhism.   And Mr. Thornton should be aware that there are practitioners of Buddhism, such as myself, who abjure spiritual hucksterism, yet still find the practices of Buddhism do seem to benefit myriad beings.

But yeah, if hucksters advertise on my site (and some hucksters do), and you click on their links everyone involved is responsible to the extent that they choose to involve themselves.  You pays your money and you takes your chances. So it goes.

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).

Yes, it seems June is now officially "American Buddhists" month...

There's yet another article on this topic, this time in the Mormon-connected Deseret News.  This one is actually a reproduction of the article in the Washington Post though, except for this paragraph:

Our take: Although surveys have found that the number of Americans who practice the Buddhist religion is rapidly growing, the practice of the Eastern faith doesn't necessarily reflect the traditional path. In fact, a "North American sacred tradition" has sprung up that is somewhat different from "wholesale" Buddhism, but, according to some Buddhists, this is possible because of the simplicity of the faith, its broad applicability to all cultures and types of people, and because it does not rely on the belief in any deity.

Naturally, I hardly ever look at the Deseret News - the last time I looked at it, it was to see if there had been any recent coverage of a couple of Mormon Fundamentalist murderers of late, who were the subject of a book I'd been reading on a plane ("Under the Banner of Heaven," by Jon Krakauer).

The Deseret News (or these days, the Washington Post) are not particularly reliable news sources to me, or perhaps I should say they are reliable to behave certain ways given their ownership and editorial policy.  

How the Deseret News can talk about a "traditional path" of Buddhism, a "North American sacred tradition" that is "somewhat different" than a "'wholesale' Buddhism" (as opposed to retail?) I just don't know.  I realize that news media is dying because its business model is collapsing, but to stick a paragraph like the above on top of a "Sally Quinn's brother who is a scholar of Buddhism" link-bait simply reveals the utter irresponsibility of some "religion" reporters, and, as Arun would note, the invisibility of Asian-connected Buddhists in the US.

To the Deseret News: Just because Genpo Merzel married someone well-connected to the Mormons doesn't mean we're at all like him. 

What is this, Western Buddhism month in the major media?

Via Arun, I see the Washington Post is weighing in on the subject of "Western Buddhism" and the "future" of Buddhism in the West.

This article has so many issues, it's not even wrong, as the physicist said:

• Yes, William Wilson Quinn, there is a historic North American Buddhist tradition: it is compiled of the aggregate of Buddhist traditions that immigrants brought to North America.  It includes nasty things that were done to the Chinese, the Japanese, etc.  It includes the folks who first greeted and sheltered Soen Shaku, Nyogen Senzaki, and many others.  It predates by decades many of the fundamentalist Christian sects in America, for example, the Foursquare Church, the Vineyard, and many other such sects.
• "Some North American authors have suggested that North Americans might consider foregoing any such wholesale adoptions of Eastern traditions in deference to gradually developing their own. " Others, including this author, have suggested that keeping the Eastern traditions is useful in the way that it's important to have a "skill set" developed around a form of cultivation, much as one learns to play a musical instrument. 
• "Expansion of consciousness????" Really, who talks like that in Buddhist circles anywhere?  Does the author think this is some kind of highest good or something?
• It's not all meditation. There's a whole 8-fold path that includes lots of other things too! And in the Zen tradition, most recorded accounts of enlightenment most assuredly do not recount it being achieved when in meditation.  So there's that.
• "North American Buddhists are likely to create their own traditions and schools of thought, but they should do so with the awareness that they are forging a new Buddhist culture, not the ‘true’ Buddhist culture."  I'm not sure what this sentence means. I'm not even sure the author knows what it means.

What's going on in Myanmar?

I think it's important as a guy who calls himself Buddhist to try to make sure that nasty things that are done in the name of this religion are not swept under the rug. It's no more appropriate for Buddhists to remain silent when Buddhists are perpetrators of nasty acts than it is to remain silent when some other group's members are perpetrators of horrific acts.  And this time it seems the persecuted group is the Rohingya, a primarily Muslim minority living near Bangladesh.

And so there's been news lately about Myanmar, and it's not been pretty.  Although Aung San Suu Kyi is being treated like a pop star while she's on tour,  tensions between Buddhists and Muslims is increasing, according to this article published June 10th.

Tensions in the area had been building for several months, said Chris Lewa, an expert on the Rohingya who has championed their cause. Myanmar’s government has not proposed a solution for the 800,000 Rohingya, who live in desperate conditions that resemble refugee camps and make up one of the largest groups of stateless people in Asia. There are fears inside Myanmar that the clashes could widen into a broader religious conflict. In recent days, Buddhist and Muslim groups have held relatively small separate protests in Myanmar’s main city, Yangon. In one sign that passions are running high, the Web site of the Eleven Media Group, a publisher of one of the country’s leading weekly newspapers, displayed a string of hateful comments about Muslims from readers. “Terrorist is terrorist,” wrote one reader who signed in as Maungpho. “Just kill them.” U Ko Ko Gyi, a former political prisoner who is helping lead efforts to ease religious tensions, said he was concerned by the “emotional response” to the clashes. “We have to calm down and find an intellectual solution to the problem,” he said. Muslims leaders have urged calm in recent days, and the National League for Democracy, the party of the Nobel laureate Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, issued a statement on Saturday calling on the government to restore order. About 90 percent of Myanmar’s population is Buddhist; Muslims account for about 4 percent.

Another disturbing article appeared two days ago:

In online forums, Rohingya are referred to as dogs, thieves, terrorists and various expletives. Commenters urge the government to “make them disappear” and seem particularly enraged that Western countries and the United Nations are highlighting their plight. 

The violence in Rakhine State, which borders Bangladesh, has left 29 people dead and more than 2,500 houses burned during the past week, according to officials quoted in the Burmese news media. About 30,000 people have been displaced by the violence, according to the United Nations. 

Harder to measure has been damage to Myanmar’s complex multiethnic fabric as the government of President Thein Sein tries to steer the country toward reconciliation between the military and the people, and between the Bamar majority and the dozens of smaller ethnic groups. 

So far, the violence has been limited to Rakhine, which is relatively isolated from the rest of the country by a mountain range. But many among those who have posted angry comments on Internet sites have equated the Rohingya with other Muslims scattered around Myanmar. In Yangon, Myanmar’s main city, worshipers at mosques reported that prayer services left out traditional Friday sermons as a precaution against widening the sectarian conflict. 

The issue of the Rohingya is so delicate that even Myanmar’s leading defender of human rights and democracy, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, has been oblique and evasive about the situation. Asked at a news conference on Thursday whether the estimated 800,000 Rohingyas in Myanmar should be given citizenship, Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi was equivocal. “We have to be very clear about what the laws of citizenship are and who are entitled to them,” she said in Geneva, which she was visiting as part of a European tour. “All those who are entitled to citizenship should be treated as full citizens deserving all the rights that must be given to them.”

While I haven't been a guy favoring distraction by causes in quite a while, and haven't been a big fan of the Dalai Lama, I was never in doubt about the nastiness of the dictatorship in Myanmar. I'm glad Aung San Suu Kyi is out of prison and running the country and getting a Nobel prize and all that. But this racist hatred must be spoken against; the perpetrators of such violence, regardless of their class or religion, are still perpetrators of violence, and achieve no merit from doing so as Buddhists.

Technology and our use of it as a reflection of who we are...

Because various computers in my house have aged, and because there's still things you can't readily do on a PC that you can do on a Mac after nearly 3 decades of Macs, I am the new recipient of an Apple iMac, so if this post isn't coming out the way to which you're accustomed to reading, let's just say I still don't have a few things figured out yet.  But they're not the important things to me.

There are things a PC does better today, but that's mostly because Microsoft still does things to privilege use of their machines. These are things like access of the Microsoft webmail client in Safari - though the "mail" application on the Mac handles it without incident.

But PC versus Mac isn't the whole point of this post, but it illustrates a recurring theme of this post, which is a continuation of my continuing musings on this article that appeared in February of last year about how Steve Jobs was able to capture the initiative in the consumer electronics market.

Other companies fail to do things because they've overlooked potential openings or are cutting corners to save money; under Jobs, however, every spurned opportunity is a conscious, measured statement. It's why the pundits who give Apple products poor reviews for not including industry-standard components -- for instance, the iMac's lack of a floppy drive -- just aren't getting it: Apple products are as defined by what they're missing as much as by what they contain.

To understand why, one has to remember that Jobs spent much of the 1970s at the Los Altos Zen Center (alongside then-and-current Gov. Jerry Brown) and later studied extensively under the late Zen roshi Kobun Chino Otogawa -- whom he designated as the official "spiritual advisor" for NeXT, the company he founded after being ejected as Apple's CEO in 1986, and who served as officiant when he wed his wife Laurene in 1991.

Jobs's immersion in Zen and passion for design almost certainly exposed him to the concept of ma, a central pillar of traditional Japanese aesthetics. Like many idioms relating to the intimate aspects of how a culture sees the world, it's nearly impossible to accurately explain -- it's variously translated as "void," "space" or "interval" -- but it essentially describes how emptiness interacts with form, and how absence shapes substance. If someone were to ask you what makes a ring a meaningful object -- the circle of metal it consists of, or the emptiness that that metal encompasses? -- and you were to respond "both," you've gotten as close to ma as the clumsy instrument of English allows.

While Jobs has never invoked the term in public -- one of the aspects of his genius is the ability to keep even his most esoteric assertions in the realm of the instantly accessible -- ma is at the core of the Jobsian way. And Jobs' single-minded adherence to this idiosyncratically Japanese principle is, ironically, what has allowed Apple to compete with and beat Japan's technology titans -- most notably the company that for the past four decades dominated the world of consumer electronics: Sony.

What let me into further considerations of this was a blog post of a tech writer who wanted certain iPhone apps to go away, and news that Microsoft is announcing its own version of the iPad.

The author of the blog and Microsoft likely still don't get it. 

They don't get that a successful technology product is adapted to the way people are, and is useful to them where they are.  And it's not overly hostile to the environment.  It's deeper than that, too but I won't go further there.  What I will say is that so much problems are created by not taking these kinds of things into account in all aspects of product design.  The PC and the Mac are metaphors for how our society has approached things: the Mac, a "socialist" (or if that's too politically loaded for you "communitarian") version of the Way Things Could Be is highly integrated, (mostly) much easier to use than a PC, and works better.   A PC is made by outsourcing, and throws more power and Gigaflops at problems that result in mostly unappealing compromises for performance. 

On the Mac, if you open an ftp site, you know what happens? Folders appear on the screen.  Like they should. Try that with Internet Explorer, if you've never opened an ftp site.  To download and install Open Office on a Mac, it takes maybe 15 minutes with a decent wireless internet connection. Have you tried installing a new version of Microsoft Office lately?  Oh, and one is free and the other is what...$150 or $300 or something like that?

So it's a metaphor for how we should structure and unstructured, and interact with each other, which like many things is probably applicable in aspects of our life and families and communities beyond Stuff You Do With a Computer.

Well, I suppose I'll have to talk about the NY Times & Buddhism in the West

Here.

Dr. Paul D. Numrich, a professor of world religions and interreligious relations, conjectured that there may be as many Buddhists as Muslims in the United States by now.Professor Numrich’s claim is startling, but statistics (some, anyway) support it: Buddhism is the fourth largest religion in the United States. More Americans convert to Buddhism than to Mormonism. (Think about it, Mitt.)Many converts are what Thomas A. Tweed, in “The American Encounter With Buddhism,” refers to as “nightstand Buddhists” — mostly Catholics, Jews (yeah, I know, “Juddhists”) and refugees from other religions who keep a stack of Pema Chödrön books beside their beds.So who are these — dare I coin the term? — Newddhists? Burned-out BlackBerry addicts attracted to its emphasis on quieting the “monkey mind”? Casual acolytes rattled by the fiscal and identity crises of a nation that even Jeb Bush suggests is “in decline”? Placard-carrying doomsayers out of a New Yorker cartoon? Uncertain times make us susceptible to collective catastrophic thinking — the conditions in which religious movements flourish.Or perhaps Buddhism speaks to our current mind-body obsession...

Or it could be...it could be that there's a heck of a lot of suffering and people have figured out that Buddhism helps.  Or it could be that Buddhism is one of the few major world religions (is there any other?) where skeptical brains aren't not only not checked at the door, but encouraged.

Mr. Atlas kind of gets to that latter point, but it's kind of buried in the studied trendiness of the article.