Christian Apologetics and the need to turn it down a notch

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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.

Evangelical Churches and ...Cognitive Behavioral Therapy?

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is somewhat related to Buddhist practice because in certain forms of CBT the client is encouraged to be mindful of harmful thoughts and activities, and to replace them with better ones.

So it was kind of strange to read this article in the NY Times about evangelical churches and CBT like therapy...

One way to see this is that the books [evangelicals use] teaching someone how to pray read a lot like cognitive behavior therapy manuals. For instance, the Rev. Rick Warren’s “The Purpose Driven Life,” one of the best-selling books of all time, teaches you to identify your self-critical, self-demeaning thoughts, to interrupt them and recognize them as mistaken, and to replace them with different thoughts. Cognitive-behavioral therapists often ask their patients to write down the critical, debilitating thoughts that make their lives so difficult, and to practice using different ones. That is more or less what Warren invites readers to do. He spells out thoughts he thinks his readers have but don’t want, and then asks them to consider themselves from God’s point of view: not as the inadequate people they feel themselves to be, but as loved, as relevant and as having purpose. Does it work? In my own research, the more people affirmed, “I feel God’s love for me, directly,” the less stressed and lonely they were and the fewer psychiatric symptoms they reported.

Because these churches seem to market themselves like Coca Cola it seems they latch on to any trend and "Jesusify" it.

Obviously the NY Times author is rather shallow not to have seen this.  Obviously too the folks who need this "evangelical CBT" are themselves hurting. 

While a good part of me wants them to see the "real" ways in which suffering is transcended (not to mention a better way to deal with theodicy), it's good that they're being helped at all, to the extent they are.  

I just wish they were helped more to transcend the whole strange evangelical thing.

Remote Viewing is a Pseudo-Science

I see C4Chaos has another post up about TED/TEDx and its discouragement of certain forms of pseudo-science.  

I am generally not too fond of TED, because too much of what they put up - like that "Blink" stuff - I think is nonsense.  But as an applied scientist, I need to respond to C4Chaos's post, because I think its implication that there's something to "remote viewing" is pro-woo,  as is the anti-vaccination crowd.  In fact I was inspired to write this when I saw a story on RT News sneering about how much the Brits spent on a bird flu vaccine - and people didn't get sick! And drug companies made money! 

But I digress a bit.  I don't really follow these kind of woo things, but this one's a no-brainer, frankly.  Here's what Wikipedia says (emphasis added):

Remote viewing (RV) is the practice of seeking impressions about a distant or unseen target using subjective means, in particular,extra-sensory perception (ESP) or "sensing with mind". Unlike traditional psychic practices, remote viewers use physical models to organize their alleged extra-sensory perceptions and to stabilize the virtual umwelt. Scientific studies have been conducted; some earlier, less sophisticated experiments produced positive results but they had invalidating flaws,^[1] and none of the newer experiments had positive results when under properly controlled conditions.^{[2][3][4][5][6]} The scientific community rejects remote viewing due to the absence of an evidence base, the lack of a theory which would explain remote viewing, and the lack of experimental techniques which can provide reliably positive results.^[7] It is also considered a pseudoscience.^[8]Typically a remote viewer is expected to give information about an object that is hidden from physical view and separated at some distance.^[9][10] The term was coined in the 1970s by Russell Targ and Harold Puthoff, parapsychology researchers at Stanford Research Institute, to distinguish it from clairvoyance.^[2] [11]Remote viewing was popularized in the 1990s following the declassification of documents related to the Stargate Project, a $20 million research program sponsored by the US government to determine any potential military application of psychic phenomena. The program was terminated in 1995 after it failed to produce any useful intelligence information.^[3][4]

Note that bit: there's no theory that explains remote viewing and hence no thing that can be tested as to whether it works or not.  That means it's not a science.

I did see "Men Who Stare at Goats," by the way so I guess I'm not completely ignorant of "remote viewing."  Anyway C4Chaos writes:

I understand the remote viewing protocol — it’s double-blind. The late Ingo Swann was instrumental in designing the protocol. Then it was taught to a few intelligence personnels in the military (one of them is remote viewer #001 Joe McMoneagle). I’ve always focused my attention to the original people who started it all because they did solid research on the phenomenon and they’re the ones who designed the original protocol. Russell Targ and Hal Puthoff had a deal with the CIA and the Defense Department that in return for funding they helped the military with intelligence work (e.g. locating people and cites of interests). Another condition was that Targ and Puthoff were given free rein by the military to publish their work in scientific journals. The classified project — Stargate Project —  lasted for more than two decades. I don’t know about you but I don’t think Targ/Puthoff/Swann could’ve hoax the Defense Department, CIA, FBI, and even NASA for a long time, especially when millions of money were involved. The Defense Department might be wasteful in their spending but I don’t think the people running it were that stupid to be fooled for two decades without them getting valuable results. 

Well, first of all,  just because the Defense Department spends money doesn't mean that it's spending money for a good reason, so thinking that because the DoD kept a program around for 20 years doesn't mean anything.  Really.  In fact, let me name some of the other programs the DoD kept over the years:

• The military had a project for the better part of a decade  with multiple contractors to develop an air force voice communication system for conferencing.  It was started in the late 70s, and went at until at least 1986.  The system called for multiple antennas to be retrofitted onto tactical jets.  Tens of millions of dollars and years of R&D were spent to create a system to work.  The antenna subsystem was finally killed when one general said simply that he didn't want the antennas on his fighter jets.  And that was that.  There were actually really good reasons why the general didn't want antennas on his fighter jets, but nobody cared to discuss that with the engineers.  
• The Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicle.
• The original M16 rifle.  They could have just copied the AK47...but no...can't do that...
• The most completely, totally obvious example is the our nuclear weapons program.  We've been able to kill humanity many times over, yet we still have more of these warheads than we ever need.  True the Russians still have nuclear weapons, mutually assured destruction, yada yada yada, but we could reduce our stockpile by 1/2 and the same principles would apply.

Let me continue, quoting from C4Chaos's post again:

Here’s another comment left by Russell Targ on TED Conversations:

Remote viewing is an ability that many people can easily learn. It is a nonlocal ability, in that its accuracy and reliability are independent of distance. Dean of Engineering Robert Jahn has also published extensively on his experiments at Pronceton, (Proc. IEEE, Feb 1982). I am not claiming it is quantum anything. It appears to possibly make use of something like Minkowski’s (8 dimensional) complex space/time that he described to Einstein in the 1920s, and is now being re-examined by Roger Penrose. This is not necessarily The answer. But the answer will be some sort similar nonlocal space/time geometry. We taught remote viewing to 6 army intelligence officers in 1979. They then taught a dozen other officers, and created an operational army psychic corps at Ft. Meade, which lasted until the end of our program in 1995. You can see two examples of real remote viewing on my website, www.espresearch.com. One with Hella Hammid is double blind, live on camera for a 1983 BBC film, “The Case of ESP.” available on Google.

Again, how would you falsify this?  How can we predict whether someone will learn this easily? 

I have one more point I'd make: if this sort of thing existed it would have made its way to Wall Street, in a big way, a reliable way,  wouldn't you think? And Targ didn't do that. He claimed in the video  in  C4Chaos's post that the reason he failed to consistently make money was that greed got in the way.  Really?  Couldn't he have gotten much smaller stakes and done the thing himself and given the money to charity? He could do that today with Forex markets.  And, all other things being equal,  calling something correctly when the thing in question has a  probability 0.5 means that making money 9 times in a row is as equally likely as any other of the 512 outcomes. Claude Shannon, on the other not only made money in the stock market, but his theories have been expanded and have been adopted on Wall Street.  They also make cell phones, DVD players, and defense communication systems work as well; sometimes the DoD does get stuff right.   The number of technologies that were DoD funded that went to the private sector is ...well,  I can't name them all, but it's probably harder to think of technologies that weren't  developed with DoD funding.

Now about this non-locality thing: it's not needed for Buddhists.  The interconnectedness of existence follows from the very structure of existence itself, and the interconnectedness exists quite nicely within the framework of conventional, good ol' boring physics.   And if Targ was a competent physicist  I'd have to say he's got to know that he's not being honest with his audience: quantum effects happen on the microscopic level. And we can demonstrate how they work and test them in laboratories and these tests yield consistent results.

I watched about 17 minutes of Targ.  That's all I could take.   I don't need to spend an hour of my life with this subject. 

I find it sad that there's folks in our blogosphere writing favorable things about stuff like this.  There are legitimate criticisms of TED and TEDx.  Not giving a forum to the likes of Targ is not one of them.

Update:

Targ claims he published his results on remote viewing in the Proceedings of the IEEE.    I remember that issue in fact.  I'll be back with more of that.

Further Update:

Well, I perused Targ's article; and the first thing that came to me was "Are these results reproducible?" And the answer to that question is, no, they are not.  Targ I think would be ethical if he at least acknowledged that his "Proceedings" article was not the only article published on parapsychology, and Jay Hyman's critical approach to parapsychology (Parapsychological Research: A Tutorial Review and Critical Appraisal, Proc. IEEE, Vol. 74. No. 6 June 1986)  really ought to be read by anyone who wants to know what the IEEE editors later thought about such woo.

Junk gets published now and then. Targ's original article should not have been published, in my opinion, but probably was because he did have publications related to his laser work.   Hey, the IEEE  published my stuff, so that just shows you how low they might go sometimes!

So about that new pope and that "interreligious dialogue"...

I realize I'm very late to comment on this, but today is about as good as any day to comment given the new Roman Catholic pope (there's others; you know that, right?) and all that, and the fact that reportedly he's "reaching out" to the rest of the world for more "interreligious dialogue."

Yeah, whatever.

I am more or less a product of some of those institutions and attitudes that weighed so heavily on so many; I was fortunate, I suppose, in that the only abuse I suffered at the hands of these people was verbal and corporal.   But abuse it was nonetheless, and the Catholic Church's response in recent years to the sexual abuse doesn't give me hope for any kind of real possibility that anyone will be made whole in any of the other areas where abuse was pervasive anytime soon.

Nathan calls it patriarchy.  He's not wrong here, but I think it's way more than that.  Patriarchy has the connotation that somehow a few men are running things, and they're in control, have all the power, etc. etc.  I concede I'm oversimplifying here, but the reality is that the former Ratzinger and all the other Ratzingers were enabled by a network of clergy and laity.  The abuse many children in Catholic schools suffered was at the hands of some very distorted (pre-or anti-Vatican II) nuns; it's lampooned in movies like The Blues Brothers but it was taken for granted that you could physically assault children to get them to do what you wanted in those places, and in many places likely still is.  And there is a laity that enabled this, encouraged this, and funded this, and in many places likely still does. 

There is a reason the Catholic Church in East St. Louis is a highly attenuated version of itself, as another article in today's NY Times presents.   And it is precisely because all the crap that the Catholic Church perpetuated and all the "charity" it perpetuated came to nought.  Of course  a "deity" commanded the charity as did the "deity" put in place abusers, so what kind of charity is that if it's stained and sustained by greed and fear?

I became a Buddhist because Buddhism makes better sense of the world and has a more consistent ethic than Christianity.  In Christianity it's sort of verboten for mere mortals to go to hell to save another; in Buddhism you're in hell yourself as long as another is there.  That's why I think the two paths are ultimately incompatible, regardless of how friendly Thich Nhat Hanh gets with the liberal priests (assuming any survived John Paul II/Ratzinger).

And like Nathan, I'm hopeful for collapse; the sooner the better if people are disabused of notions that the charity means you have to support the abuse: they come as a package deal with the Catholic Church; they come as a package deal with humanity in fact.  The Catholic Church maintained that they were above it all.   Some folks in the American Buddhist community thought they were in Christian churches in the sense that they thought Buddhist sanghas were above petty politics, corruption and scandal.

It's a package deal in Buddhism too: the savory and the repulsive permeate each other, and the only hope Buddhism gives you is that there are means by which you can learn to transcend the repulsive as well as that which keeps us stuck or suffering.  It doesn't guarantee that those who prescribe the medicine will not themselves fall ill or aren't in fact already ill.  At least though Buddhism really does recognize this (and it's not to minimize harm when it happens...does every post that touches on this issue have to repeat that?).  And Buddhism has a path that recognizes that its path isn't trod by those who are vicars for deities.

Good luck to Francis; maybe he'll be another John XXIII.   But regardless,  suffering and dukkha are still inescapable, but can be transcended...

A Science versus "Spirituality" Brouhaha Again? With TED???

I was away on business when they elected a new pope.   I have an unwritten as of yet lengthy response in mind to my colleagues in the Buddhist blogosphere that were going in a sort of ecumenical direction regarding the new Pope, a.k.a. Francis.

But I saw something else come to my attention that I thought I'd set straight, though it promises to be at least as entertaining from a blogosphere food-fight perspective, and that has to do with the brouhaha regarding TED, two guys named Sheldrake and Hancock, P.Z. Myers and Jerry Coyne, if I've recalled all the names correctly.   

Apparently some folks don't like that P.Z. Myers and Jerry Coyne got Sheldrake's and Hancock's videos removed from a TED/TEDx site.    Apparently this is so because Myers and Coyne decried the pseudo-science in the Sheldrake and Hancock material.

I first got wind of this via C4Chaos (who has directed me to John Ratcliffe's blog ).

I myself am loathe to go into the details of Sheldrake /Hancock.  I've seen too many TED/TEDx videos in my lifetime.   However, I will make a few points...

• I don't have any inclination to view a talk called "The Science Delusion."   The very name of the talk suggests a desire to frame the term "science" as we know and use it today into something it is not.   There is no "materialist science," "alternative science" or "mainstream science" apart from a science that deals with observables and the scientific method. Period.   And I might add P.Z. Myers' one paragraph critique of Sheldrake's video is more or less enough for me.   The constants of the universe might be changing, but that's only observed if we observe it according to the scientific method!
• I have read a bit about Graham Hancock simply because that was most accessible in the time I had; if I had an inclination to produce TED/TEDx talks he'd be right up there with Ramtha in terms of my preferences for speakers...but I may be meaning that ironically on second thought. I might want to have a TED parody...but I digress...no I'm not...
• Let's get this out front and center: TED/TEDx talks are largely bunk.   They're always more about style than content anyway. They've had some rather questionable folk in the past on, who put on rather questionable material.  Too much Malcolm Gladwell. Too much fancy graphics.  Too entertaining.  But the "curators" of TED/TEDx have the right to define what they call TED/TEDx any way they deem fit.  When people complain about "censorship" they're assuming that TED should put just anything on. They don't have to. And they can still be ideas worth spreading, if only as cautionary tales.
• Actually I was digressing a bit.  While I haven't viewed the videos in question,  I have read this bit from Hancock to Chris Anderson who is the TED conference "curator."  Hancock quotes from his presentation:

 “What is death? Our materialist science reduces everything to matter. Materialist science in the West says that we are just meat, we’re just our bodies, so when the brain is dead that’s the end of consciousness. There is no life after death. There is no soul. We just rot and are gone. But actually any honest scientist should admit that consciousness is the greatest mystery of science and that we don’t know exactly how it works. The brain’s involved in it in some way, but we’re not sure how. Could be that the brain generates consciousness the way a generator makes electricity. If you hold to that paradigm then of course you can’t believe in life after death. When the generator’s broken consciousness is gone. But it’s equally possible that the relationship – and nothing in neuroscience rules it out – that the relationship is more like the relationship of the TV signal to the TV set and in that case when the TV set is broken of course the TV signal continues and this is the paradigm of all spiritual traditions – that we are immortal souls, temporarily incarnated in these physical forms to learn and to grow and to develop. And really if we want to know about this mystery the last people we should ask are materialist, reductionist scientists. They have nothing to say on the matter at all. Let’s go rather to the ancient Egyptians who put their best minds to work for three thousand years on the problem of death and on the problem of how we should live our lives to prepare for what we will confront after death…”

Now his second and third sentences create a straw-man.   And the "we just don't know" bit has its  own name as a logical fallacy: argumentum ad ignorantiam - the argument from ignorance.   There are models that deal with consciousness that deal with the relationship between what we observe and what is out there, but any of the useful ones, the ones we can talk about, exist in the structure of that which observable. 

I would find it interesting to say the least if Hancock were to litigate this thing.  He'd lose, if what he's quoted above is representative of the rest of his material.  Evidently he got his start pushing something that looks as well grounded scientifically as "the bible code," namely the Orion Correlation Theory.

I know some  people want their consciousness to be indicative of more than observables interacting with each other.  But the nature of observables are such that we can carry out useful things with the observables without any consideration, use or purpose of an underlying metaphysic.  That atheists pointed this out is immaterial to that point, and I'm sure P.Z. Myers and Jerry Coyne would agree on that - and even that their atheism is immaterial to the science itself.

We Buddhists of the Mahayana variety especially are fond of talking about non-duality, but I think some  do not get that non-duality does not mean that the structures of language and observation are somehow "false" in and of themselves. 事存函蓋合理應箭鋒拄 the Sandokai asserts.   Things exist, box and lid fit, principle responds, arrow points  meet.   The absolute doesn't trump the relative and vice versa.  Physical laws will be physical laws; observables being observed (and consequent measurable distortions therein) aren't trumped by anything "outside the system," because it's all here anyway.   And it's not as though we need to bend either Mahayana Buddhism or science to fit one another.  Our constraints are constraints one way or the other.

It Really IS a Very Useful Practice.

Recently there's been a bit of stuff I'd written & corresponded on re: disruption and setbacks.  

Well I've had a doozy recently; while not nearly as bad as some folks' disruptions, it has been disrupting.

In the course of returning home one night recently, while crossing an intersection, a car went through a red light...

Short story is: I'm OK,  they're OK, my car's totalled, theirs probably is not.  A few thousand dollars is lost.

It's disrupting.  A fraction of a second later and there would have been a much worse outcome.  The brain goes into Alternate Scenarios and What Ifs.

I had never thought about it, but evidently at least short term PTSD is a side effect of being an an auto accident, even if there's no physical injury.

Luckily after sitting for a few years it's possible to understand that the mind is letting thoughts wax and wane, or as Danny said in The Shining, "Remember what Mr. Hallorann said. It's just like pictures in a book, Danny. It isn't real."

Sometimes I realize I'd be completely bonkers if not for this practice.  

Yakuza Buddhist Priest in the News

Via Jake Adelstein (who wrote the article),  I wonder what American Zen Teachers' Association might make of this:

Takahiko Inoue, yakuza boss and Buddhist priest, died Feb. 10 at age 65. The police determined that he fell from the seventh story of the building where his office was located. When the ambulance arrived, Inoue told the crew: “I’m fine. Just take me to the hospital. I’ll walk to the car myself.” Those were his last words. There was no protracted investigation.

Those who knew him, in the underworld and in normal society, referred to Inoue as “Hotoke” or “The Buddha.” “Hotoke” is also police slang for “the dead.” One of his friends sadly joked after his death, “Well, he finally became a real Buddha, after all.”

It’s not uncommon for a disgraced yakuza boss to seek refuge by becoming a priest after banishment; but it’s usually just an exchange of Armani suits for robes and tax-exempt status. Sometimes, the robes double as a sort of bulletproof vest, because even in Japan, it’s bad PR to kill a priest. However, bosses who are practicing Buddhist priests? Rare... 

He reconciled the two realms as follows. Buddhism has its rules. The Inoue-gumi had its rules, taken from the Inagawa-kai Yokosuka-Ikka. Inoue worked to uphold them both. In some places, they actually overlap. The Inoue-gumi rules forbid: 1) using or selling drugs, 2) theft, 3) robbery, 4) sexual misconduct, 5) anything else that would be shameful underninkyodo, the humanitarian way.

To become a Buddhist priest like Inoue, you have to follow 10 grave precepts. Do not: kill, steal, engage in sexual misconduct, lie, drink or cloud the mind, criticize others, praise oneself and slander others, be greedy, give way to anger or disparage the noble path.

Sometimes I think we in the West can be more than a bit exclusionary in terms of who's a Buddhist and who's not a Buddhist.   That's why it's sort of taken for granted that some folks like the Dalai Lama and Aung San Suu Kyi are Buddhists - "real" Buddhists, but folks like Hotoke or member of the former Myanmar junta or people affiliated with the People's Republic of China are not, and we thereby fail to see all sorts of axes grinding, not to mention whole universes of other things.

Everyone wants to have child-like belief?

Brad Warner points out something that relates to something I'd said for years on this blog:  You have responsibilities as a "student" of a "teacher."   I've said you have to kick the tires to tell if the teacher's legit; you, the "student" have to authenticate the "teacher."

He says people don't like that in general; they want baby-like trust in their teachers.

He may have a point, though I'd put it more as child-like belief. 

What goes with that is a degree of a reluctance to question the teacher.   You can see some of that in the Buddhist blogosphere, particularly if the teacher in question has not had a personal scandal of some sort or another.  So it's OK to criticize Genpo Merzel, Eido Shimano, and even Trungpa Rinpoche for their personal failings (and Merzel for his "Big Mind" hoo-hah.)

But raise questions about the whole guru principle in Tibetan Buddhism?

Nah, can't do that.  Unless you are questioning the Chinese government's claim to hegemony in those matters of "reincarnation." That you can do (and why not?)  But questioning a former head of some government's claims to hegemony in the matters of reincarnation? No, that's off limits.

Furthermore: to what extent does publications like Tricycle even now influence the narratives we create of Buddhism?  And I'm not simply talking on matters of race or politics here.

To what extent are Catholic practitioners of Zen practicing Buddhism?  Can they be?  I have never seen  Suzuki Shosan's Ha Kirishitan (破切支丹) translated into English in its entirety, but from what snippets I've seen it makes Richard Dawkins seem like a Unitarian Universalist. 

To what extent are Rinzai and Soto claims against each other valid? To what extent have we in the West been deformed by the Yasutani tradition to avoid such questioning?  To what extent have we in the West been deformed by the Buddhisms that have been diffused to us?  

I think it's important to keep some of these questions rather than take stock answers we've gotten already from any Authorized Givers of Wisdom.  Maybe answers will come for a few that  are difficult.

On Disruption, Setbacks, Etc. in Life...

Barbara writes about disruption and untoward things happening in life.  So does Dosho Port.   Barbara quotes Pema Chodron that things falling apart is a kind of "test."

If you don't already know I'm sort of dissatisfied with both this "test" idea and that there's a notion of "God" behind all of this anyway, so it's all OK.

No it's not.

That's almost condescending to those who are deeply in suffering. 

That is not to say that suffering isn't transcended, that there is not the manifestation of compassion that with our acute hearing of the cries of the world, that we can't see the inherent emptiness of all phenomena,

But,  saying that suffering isn't transcended through a practice of compassionate seeing into the true nature of things is not to say that this is yet another narrative to be taped onto the one we are mourning as our lives are disrupted.

There is no "god" that disturbs us to our destiny by hard events, to use the first line of Dosho Port's post.  Disturbance, pain, suffering, death, decay, trauma, withering, and calamity are our birthright.  "YOU WILL DIE!" was the teaching of Suzuki Shosan.  That teaching puts all other teachings in perspective. 

To see this in a slightly different aspect, I'd recommend studying this bit from Hakuin.  

A long time ago San-sheng had the head monk Hsiu go to the Zen Master Tsen of Ch'ang-sha and ask him: "What happened to Nan-ch'uan after he passes away?"
Ch'ang-sha replied: "When Shih-t'ou became a novice monk he was seen by the Sixth Patriarch."
Hsiu replied: "I didn't ask you about when Shih-t'ou became a novice monk; I asked you what happened to Nan-ch'uan after he passed away."
Ch'ang-sha replied: "If I were you I would let Nan-ch'uan worry about it himself."
Hsiu replied: "Even though you had a thousand-foot winter pine, there is no bamboo shoot to rise above its branches."
Ch'ang had nothing to say. Hsiu returned and told the story of his conversation to San-sheng. San-sheng unconsciously stuck out his tongue [in surprise] and said: "He has surpassed Lin-chi by seven paces."

The workings of the universe will be the workings of the universe regardless of your personal preferences.   To try to apply on some metaphysical ointment onto the reality of your suffering and disruption and this moment might be avoidance from the very medicine you might need to see to develop the heart of compassion with which to transcend the damned existence of that pain and disruption and loss. You hurt.  Live it. Feel it.  Maybe that's the medicine.

Maybe.

What could possibly go wrong from investigating the matter to exhaustion anyway?

This is also not to say that we should only engage in a self-pity that doesn't realize the fundamental nature of this suffering.  That fundamental nature of this suffering is that it is common to all sentient beings!   But it's difficult for me to see how that compassion - that empathy for all beings is developed and cultivated without first realizing what it is, and that I'd submit comes about from the very experience of suffering, setback and disruption - and death, ultimately, itself.

Springtime is almost upon us. 

"Zen Habits..."

I only recently heard about a site called Zen Habits.  Its author claims it's one of the more popular blogs in the world.   It's author has a nice self-help story.   People like successful self-help stories, but, really - I can't emphasize this too much - failure  is pretty important.  The author's conflation of "Zen" with simple, organized living is a bit de trop for me, and obviously please take that point. But there's various nuances on that point I'd like to explore, though I'm happy the author of that stuff has found success, etc. etc.  "Zen" it ain't of course, at least not in any all-encompassing sense. 

I'd like to examine a few of the points I've found on that guy's site.

The guy boasts an uncluttered inbox.  My inbox is fairly cluttered - it's been intentionally that way for years.  I could unclutter it a bit, but that would mean the data equivalent of water filling up the bathtub somewhere.  But I've kept my inbox cluttered because that's why the universe gave us search engines, and ways to organize lists, even large ones.  I just go through and search and index my huge inbox every day around my key stakeholders.

Voila! I've simplifed simplifying. It invokes one of my rules for using computers: Never get a human to do something you can get a computer to do for you.   No, that does not include learning trigonometry- you'll have to learn that on your own.   But sorting? That's a computer's job.  Once you've learned what a sorting algorithm is, use it by having the computer do it.

At some point I will simplify further but really I'd use my inbox the same way anyway.  

I was inspired to write this by coming across this article on "How to Savor a Life."  It says there:

We procrastinate because we are uncomfortable doing something and want to do more comfortable (easier or more familiar) things instead. We don’t want to write that report/article/chapter, because it’s difficult, and it’s easier to check emails and take care of a bunch of little tasks. It’s easier to put off those dreaded tasks. 

But savoring can help. Let’s take writing as an example (the process is the same for anything, from cleaning your bathroom to doing taxes) … you have something to write and you know it’s important. The usual way is to say, “OK, I should write this, but first maybe I’ll check to see if anything important came into my email … and maybe my Twitter and Facebook too … oh, what’s this interesting article I found?” 

When we savor, we take this task of writing, and we slow down. We give the task some space — no switching quickly to the next thing. We pay attention to it and find the enjoyable aspects of it. And actually, there are enjoyable aspects to any activity, if we slow down and pay attention. When we savor, we notice these things, and fully enjoy them. We bask in the moment of doing, and let ourselves soak in its pleasure. 

So instead of switching to something else, we sit there with the writing. We notice our urge to switch and let it go — after all, we’re savoring this, so we can’t just switch! We think of other things we need to do, and let them go too. We’re savoring here.

This excerpt is why I started to feel a bit of remonstration in my gut about this guy, though his first bits were pretty good. 

First,  in terms of just working and creativity,  our brains are what they are.  A "Zen" "response" to procrastination might just be procrastination!  I learned this way way back in college: if a lab report kept me up all night before it was due, it did me no good to start it earlier; otherwise I'd spend the whole damn week doing the lab report and nothing but the lab report and it was only 2 out of something like 18 credits!  So sometimes "savoring" life means putting aside something unsavory with the intention of taking it up later.  It's a matter of having perspective.

Too, our brains being what they are, sometimes, it pays to put things down and take up something else. Our brains might continue to work on them in background mode.   I have to do this as a matter of course in my work anyway, since my workday typically involves at seeming random times, doing any one of several to a dozen separate activities, including some long-term but important creative activity.  For many of us that's how our jobs are structured, and if we work with that structure there will be some "procrastination." As long as a deadline's not missed,  there's no harm.  So I'd say work with yourself where you are (to be fair the Zen habits author would probably say the same thing)  but don't sweat at least some procrastination.

Moreover, "we" don't just procrastinate because there is something "bad" about being uncomfortable about doing something or we're "dreading" them.  Another thing I've learned is that sometimes you have to act like a low pass filter when it comes to requests from upper management, if you're in middle management.    This is because upper management's requests may not be fully coherently formed, and you'd only confuse things by acting on them. 

Finally, the unpleasant - like failure - has its place.  It is like sitting with great distress.  You've got to go past the distress by fully being open and accepting of the distress.   That is - not all tasks will have an element of enjoyment in them.  DO NOT expect that.  Maybe you'll be pleasantly surprised to find that it is there, but in any event consider the unpleasantness of the unpleasant task you must do a tiny, minuscule nanocosm of facing your own death.  OK?   While there are aspects of facing death that might bring forth the relief of pain for some, it's not something that most of us will find enjoyable as a general thing.  But it must be openly faced and accepted in order to be transcended in any kind of way.

A little brushwork...

I didn't realize there was something under that... oh well...

Practice and Going Medieval Legally

I could write about that Tibet stuff a lot.  I'm reminded of the movie Words of My Perfect Teacher It's valuable viewing; I highly recommend it, especially as it deconstructs- while upholds respectfully - certain notions in Tibetan Buddhism.

The movie has Steven Segall in it.

But that's not what I wanted to cover today...

I want to give a wag of the finger to a couple of things, in the parlance of Stephen Colbert, who, to my knowledge, is not a tulku. 

First, I'd like to give a wag of the finger to Eido Shimano.

Look, dude, you know the "brand" of the Zen Studies Society is inevitably bound up with the brand of "Eido Shimano," and that brand recognition has fallen on somewhat hard times, especially with Myoshinji's distancing itself from you. 

Brands have value whether it's Coca-Cola or Rinzai Buddhism. It would be great if Rinzai Buddhism  had an infinite value, but trust me, it can be valued, just as the assets of any other corporation can be valued.  So the "value" of the brand of the Zen Studies Society will directly affect its ability to, you know, pay you a "pension."

It's absurd for you, Shimano-san, to think that you or ZSS are "preeminent" or some such thing...if you've got to say that you know, ...you're not...

I would assume that legal folk wrote or vetted Shimano's letter, and I am concerned the Eido Shimano/ZSS affair is going to probably divert substantial assets to lawyers.  So a wag of the finger to them if they are not taking this case pro bono. 

More importantly than finger wagging though is the issue of practice.  It can be difficult to practice when subpoenas are flying about.  Is this what your Zen is about?  I remember you once said, that if you practiced and after 10 years there was no benefit "you could cut my head off." I don't remember that much else from the few times I went to the Zen Studies Society.  I do remember upstairs tea on a Saturday...but not much else, other than quite deep rigorous practice, as much provided by the sangha as by anything else. I remember your prostration. 

That said, I don't want,  don't need, and probably most everyone who's ever been to the ZSS/Dai Bosatsu centers don't want and don't need legal notices aimed at them.  My relationship to ZSS/Dai Bosatsu is tangential at best.  I don't expect a subpoena frankly...but having been subpoenaed about other issues, and having given a deposition, let me just say that it's very stressful, and unless I'm being compensated at the rate $175/hour or more, plus expenses, I don't want to be involved, and for $175/hour or more, plus expenses,  I'll likely testify that regarding the mid-1990s, when I attended ZSS/Dai Bosatsu a few times,  I've forgotten most everything.   So please don't drain the assets of the ZSS or Eido Shimano trying to get me to say something damnable. Everything that can be said by me is in this post. There you have it.

But there is one more thing I ought to add that I do remember: it wasn't widely known in the mid-1990s to anyone who walked in off the street to ZSS that Eido Shimano was the subject of scandal.  I didn't know it, and if I had I likely would have gone to another practice center...but I ultimately did go to another practice center anyway because the "teacher" was more accessible. 

I mean, a guy who attended ZSS a few times, such as myself, didn't get sanzen from Eido Shimano.  I did get sanzen from Shugen Arnold, but they were the guys downtown (at the time), not affiliated with ZSS.

All of which is to say that I don't wish to be contacted regarding any aspects of the Shimano affair, and I'd hate to have to lawyer up myself, to go to the mattresses legally speaking, to have my life interrupted by this.  I don't expect to be contacted, but things I didn't expect to happen have happened. 

And if going medieval legally is what Eido Shimano's practice is after all these years, I don't think it's worth even a cheap Yukio Mishima imitation.

What might a Buddhist response on Tibetan self-immolations look like? Part 2

I had started this post a couple of days ago, but have been sort of busy.  Evidently the post resulted in a a response from Barbara, who took issue with how I related events in Vietnam.  I still stand by my point, which was that the immolation of the Buddhist monk did not succeed, and certainly wasn't immediately causative in the removal of the Diem regime.  The Diem regime was horribly oppressive to Buddhists, and the non-violent mass protests by Buddhists did play a part in what unfolded. But what did unfold was simply that a religious extremist clique that was oppressing Buddhists was toppled from power by a corrupt clique, with a wink and a nod from the United States.   That is to say, the fall of the Diem regime happened because it could have, and if all of those things above were not in place, it would not have happened, at least that way.  In other words: non-violent mass protests by Buddhists + oppression by the Catholic Diem regime + corrupt junta-in-waiting + indifference of the US to the fate of the Ngos = coup d'état.  Notice you didn't necessarily need a self-immolation there. And the objective of ending violence in Vietnam and having a secure position for Buddhists in Vietnam wasn't part of the deal. 

Seriously, I think a point of disagreement here is one of how one views the world politically.

Barbara also takes a bit of issue with the immediate causes of the self-immolations, and in particular objecting to Beijing's rather direct management of official religions in that country.  I can understand her point, but there is a counter-argument to it as well.  It also goes to the issue of the Dalai Lama's rather unfortunate dealings with certain American agencies back in the last century, and why, as I said, the Chinese government doesn't exactly see him the way the "Free Tibet^®" crowd.  And yeah, he did say he "relinquished authority," but...well, I replied to that elsewhere.

But again, most  of that above is really not my point here.  Let me get to that point...

Another Buddhist blog recently,  perhaps in anticipation of this blog post, has a post that references ninjutsu (忍術) which,  oddly enough is in the service of something called "social action," to use that which is attractive and repulsive in the service of one's practice.

That's not horrible, actually.  But at the same time there's a blind spot.

And unfortunately I can't show that blind spot.  

But I can talk about 功夫.

Which is what this post is more-or-less about: a Buddhist response to the self-immolations in Tibet would be to encourage those monks who are challenging "ownership" of "Tibetan Buddhism" "in China" to instead lead lives that, through the practice of Buddhism, make the point irrelevant, in the same way that one can train one's self to use what one is physically capable of doing to make potential foe's strengths irrelevant as well.

That it may be problematic for the Dalai Lama to say this or to speak to stop the self-immolations I can understand.  But I do think these things ought to be said.  Finally, I do want one other point to be made regarding what Barbara wrote here:

Something I didn't appreciate until I did the research is that in Tibetan Buddhism, the reborn lamas are thought to play a mystical role in transmitting the dharma to succeeding generations. In Tibetan understanding, if the legitimate succession of lamas is broken, the dharma itself may be lost. As zennies we may choose to disbelieve this, but it's not our tradition. And I appreciate that the way high lamas were chosen in the past often smacked of political favoritism rather than mysticism. 

Even so, from a Tibetan perspective, for the government to choose high lamas from the sons of loyal party members is a bit like the government handing out Chan dharma transmissions to political cronies and not allowing authentic transmissions to be recognized. It irreparably screws up the tradition. For Gelugpa monks in China, including the Tibetan Autonomous Region, being cut off from the Dalai Lama is being cut off from full transmission of dharma. This is why it is a Big Deal; dismissing it as just not being allowed to carry a photo is callous.

Look,  we've just had the Sasaki affair on top of the Shimano affair, etc. etc. etc. I have to applaud the really trenchant posts that Brad Warner's been writing about this, especially, for purposes of reference here, this post.  To put it simply: Tibetan lamas are just people, or as Brad Warner puts it, overdeveloped apes just like you and me, or to put it in a Zen metaphor, we're all foxes living out a few hundred or so lives.

Certainly you can object to the Chinese government choosing religious officials based on political considerations if and when those officials are unqualified.  But contrary to what I've seen from some "Free Tibet^®" apologists, there are authentic Dharma practitioners amongst the clergy in China, but admittedly, I myself, have not been to Tibet (though I have been to the Lama temple in Beijing, where discussion about such events has been quite frank, at least to non-Chinese).

But...to my larger point here: I swear I'm not channeling Christopher Hitchens, but it's some kind of odd sort of Orientalism to   decry the guru syndrome in Westernized Zen Buddhism because of abuses of authority but to uphold the guru syndrome in Tibetan Buddhism!  The point may be taken "Yeah, that's what they believe," but it doesn't mean we should encourage it!

Some Catholics make similar points regarding the Pope (as do at least some Copts, some Greek Orthodox, etc.)  But Christianity hasn't been "lost" because of schisms, the Protestant Reformation, etc. and besides,  to take Barbara's point to its logical conclusion Barbara and I, and the folks in our respective lineages  may not be authentic practitioners of the Dharma, because our practice is not dependent on the Tibetans' lineage.  I can't buy that.

It may be upsetting to some for me to say that the Dalai Lama has a pretense of religious authority because of the above, but my own teacher is as much a human as I am and you are as well as the Dalai Lama.   Or for that matter, anybody in China.

What might a Buddhist response on Tibetan self-immolations look like? Part 1

Some time back in the 70s, the National Lampoon ran a cover with a man's hand pointing a loaded gun to a dog, with the caption "If you don't buy this magazine we'll shoot this dog."

Although admittedly in questionable taste, what made the cover funny was the utter absurdity of the situation- as though we might believe that someone would shoot a dog if we didn't buy the magazine.

And although it might be seen as in bad taste, that's the metaphor that went through my mind as I started to write on this topic. And it might be inappropriate because the difference between a "suicide for political cause" and a garden variety suicide (if there can be such a thing) might not be that big a difference. 

On the other hand, I think the idea of a web-site more-or-less promoting the "martyrdom" of self-immolating Buddhist monks in Tibet is in equally bad taste, especially when you consider that  the difference between a "suicide for political cause" and a garden variety suicide (if there can be such a thing) might not be that big a difference. It might be that the self-immolating Buddhist monks have a strong viewpoint and feel driven to their actions.   On the other hand, I do kind of get this feeling: "If you, Mr. Chinese Guard, don't give us a Free Tibet^® the monk gets it!"  

But does it follow that a) "the Chinese" are "at fault" here, and b) is there a more effective, ethical response possible?

First, "the Chinese" are a very diverse bunch of people; they are the one of the oldest continuing national entities composed of a multitude of ethnic groups.  True, they're 95% Han Chinese, but they comprise many minorities within them, with varying degrees of tranquility to be honest.  But one thing that's the case, most Chinese, except those that openly challenge the government do not feel repressed per se.  There are definite problems with the Chinese government, and they're not unlike the problems in the US - corruption, concentration of wealth, etc.  But the idea that, for example a group of Han Chinese might be (forcibly) "relocated" to Tibet - except for armed forces - is ridiculous.  The real answer is quite simple:  As Deep Throat said, "Follow the money."

Secondly, suppose much of what we've read about Tibet is true.  I say "much" because it is certainly true that at least some of what the Free Tibet^® crowd is saying is demonstrably false.  But I want to examine what the proper response is.

First, suppose that the Chinese are administering Tibet as though anyone of Chinese descent might move there, regardless of ethnic background.

 So what?

That alone shouldn't be cause to advocate to destabilize a political entity; if on the other hand you had a situation like Palestine, where the Palestinians were being denied basic services and rights, that would be a problem.

But what about the Dalai Lama? Nobody can carry pictures of the Dalai Lama! What a violation!

I have been to China quite a few times.   You know, you can talk about the Dalai Lama in China.   Of course, in the Chinese point of view a) China is a multiethnic state (which it is, whether folks in the West like it or not), and b) the Dalai Lama is kind of like Jefferson Davis or Huey Newton on the lam.  Governmental entities enjoy the supremacy of political power in their domains, in all senses of the word "enjoy."  Some might be worse than others, but this is a fact.  And because of that it means that the Dalai Lama is a challenge to the supremacy of the rule of law by the government of the People's Republic of China, and they will behave accordingly, just as the US government is over-stepping its boundaries with Wikileaks phenomena.  And just as I might add, the Dalai Lama is doing with his pretense of authority in Tibet (it being a pretense because he actually doesn't exercise authority in Tibet - and that's a fact.)

Now,  what would the response to outright oppression -again taking for granted that oppression indeed exists somehow - be from a Buddhist standpoint?  We in the West have been captivated by Gandhi and Martin Luther King and thanks to Thich Nhat Hanh, the Buddhist monk in Vietnam who self-immolated, but it seems to me that some input  from 功夫 might be in order here, or at least Sun Tzu.  I mean, after all, did the Buddhist monk in Vietnam who burnt himself achieve his objectives?

No, no he did not.  It took the NVA and the Vietcong to achieve their objectives, which weren't necessarily the monk's objectives.

I don't think violence on any side is the answer in Tibet, and I think the current immolations can't simply be put as the responsibility of the Chinese.  I'll explore the notion of more skillful responses later, but for now I will just say that such notions of action  would not aim to deprive people of loved ones as a necessary condition of their execution.  And I'll also say that I find the Dalai Lama's reticence to articulate what I see as a more  skillful response to this situation is troubling.

And needless to say, I find it also troubling that there are folks who call themselves Western Buddhists who aren't engaging in particularly effective means here, to say the least.