Sartre v. Kant: Who's More Mahayana?

Over at Justin Whitaker's blog, there's a post on Kant with a detour of Viktor Frankl.  Justin writes:

... Perhaps the Buddha, Kant, Frankl and others will exhort ideals that seem beyond the reach of ordinary people. But it is exactly that ideal, and the striving we ordinary beings undertake to attain it, that allows us to become fully human. Think a bit about the “cross-winds” of society toward complacency, sensual enjoyment, blame, etc…

 I think several things about this:

1. Of course it's kind of pointless to try to crow-bar Western philosophical constructs into  Eastern philosophical constructs, just as it is to say that Kant and Nietzche were saying the same thing.  But...
2. That said, clearly the Buddha did not subscribe the Western concept of the ideal.  He had bigger fish to fry.
3. If I were to map Western philosophers as "near" to Buddhist philosophy, I'd start with existentialists such as Sartre.   Sartre's concept of the human is void of an essence.  That is closer, I submit, to the Mahayana ideal of the aggregates being fundamentally empty than the presumption of an ideal to which one strives.  Striving's important, but not because there's a "goal" there, but because that's what we do.

All of that said, I think frankly that Viktor Frankl's kind of a poor metaphor for Buddhism for other reasons.  You can get a glint of why I might think so from a couple of  Amazon reviews of "Man's Search for Meaning."  The first:

I am a widow, and this book was recommended to me by a psychologist to help lift my spirits. I'm sorry, but I'm not sure how page after page of descriptions of life under the nazis is supposed to help anyone with anything. I was already aware that many people have had to go through even worse things than watching a beloved spouse die of cancer, awful as that is. Certainly Mr. Frankel's experience and response to it is a tribute to the human spirit -- proof that we are more resillient than we think. But uplifting? No, I don't think so. Depressing, with no new information, is my synopsis. More power to those who can comfort themselves with some "meaning" in suffering and get something out of this book. But if you don't, you won't be the only one. 

And the second:

What's proven here? That if you can convince youself you have something to live for: you will continue to live for it. So? If after getting hit on the head with a lead pipe 100x one is to receive ten million dollars, I suppose there are some who will endure that pain, too, in the hope they will survive. They won't.
Perhaps the real question is if there is *any* reward for enduring the brutality of life that is worth the suffering. Most, if not virtually all, love relationships are based on a thinly or not-so thinly disguised basis of psychology mercantilism, if not outright economic dealmaking. Other higher pursuits: art, philosophy, philanthropy, so-called spiritual attainment are arguably better, but, really, are little more than panaceas not much different, in their ultimate purpose, than devoting one's life to developing the perfect tennis game, for instance. They absorb one's attention and distract one's focus from the pain & dissolution to come, or even occuring, & keep one, perhaps, from ending it all at the very moment. In this manner, we all buoy each other up, but for what? The question remains unanswered. Life is a concentration camp and we are all going to the gas chamber in the end. What do we do in the meantime. Is it worth it?
Frankl, like any reasonably intelligent person, delineates the central problem well: Why live? But like every other professional philosopher or psychologist, he comes up with a reason (altho in this case the reason boils down to *find a reason*) because, well, what else is he going to do? The biological imperative compels us to go on with life at any price. The alternative: that there is no reason to do so--that is simply too terrifying to contemplate, would violate species survival, and be considered unpublishable. Just once I'd like to see a thinker have the courage to face the ultimate question and not flinch, escape to a flight of fancy, take a leap of *faith* or otherwise dissemble.
Life is not worth living. Don't blink. 

 These are two very good counters to the "living for the ideal/meaning" part.  Frankl's position is kind of an escape- the escape of turning one's life into some kind of essence.

Frankl got through the camps with this view.  But Sartre also got through his ordeals without that view. 

Moreover, you'll never develop the perfect tennis game by pursuing some kind of ideal, because it means you won't be doing it in the moment.

It is true that the things one tell's one's self can help or hinder their journey through or around or above obstacles and suffering.  But one is no less human for despairing.  It just is more suffering though.

Some folks don't strive and they do die. That is the reality, and that reality should be the seeds of great compassion and empathy.  Maybe that reality triggers a Sartrian "will to action" that helps those with that will help all beings. 

But when death is inevitable, when imperfection is inevitable, when the "goal" crumbles into dust, there are times when we must keep going even though it is painful and difficult, with no great likelihood of success. If death is our lot itself, regardless of the outcome, we can attempt to make our mark.

Comfort with impermanence or "novelty-seeking" gets revised.

It's now a measure of health.

“Novelty-seeking is one of the traits that keeps you healthy and happy and fosters personality growth as you age,” says C. Robert Cloninger, the psychiatrist who developed personality tests for measuring this trait. The problems with novelty-seeking showed up in his early research in the 1990s; the advantages have become apparent after he and his colleagues tested and tracked thousands of people in the United States, Israel and Finland.

“It can lead to antisocial behavior,” he says, “but if you combine this adventurousness and curiosity with persistence and a sense that it’s not all about you, then you get the kind of creativity that benefits society as a whole.”...

Fans of this trait are calling it “neophilia” and pointing to genetic evidence of its importance as humans migrated throughout the world. In her survey of the recent research, “New: Understanding Our Need for Novelty and Change,” the journalist Winifred Gallagher argues that neophilia has always been the quintessential human survival skill, whether adapting to climate change on the ancestral African savanna or coping with the latest digital toy from Silicon Valley.

“Nothing reveals your personality more succinctly than your characteristic emotional reaction to novelty and change over time and across many situations,” Ms. Gallagher says. “It’s also the most important behavioral difference among individuals.” Drawing on the work of Dr. Cloninger and other personality researchers, she classifies people as neophobes, neophiles and, at the most extreme, neophiliacs. (To classify yourself, you can take a quiz on the Well blog.) 

 The quiz is actually here. I scored in the "Curious" category myself.  Evidently I guess the practice pays off after a while, because otherwise I'd probably be in the "dangerous" category.

The Limits of Religious Liberties

The recent flap about the contraception issue & the Catholic hierarchy & the Obama folks is reaching new levels of absurdity - and the reduction of that absurdity to even greater absurdity is satirized in a comic in today's NY Times.

While this was going on I was on travel/returning from Japan on business.  My travel reading was "Under the Banner of Heaven" by Jon Krakauer, which intertwines the doings of Fundamentalist Mormons with the historical Mormons.  I have to say, after reading that book, that I would not be very likely to vote for someone very far up in the Mormon hierarchy for any political office.

If it offends anyone, well, not much can be done, but when religious figures seek to impose their viewpoints on the behavior of others, whether it's through the clumsy efforts of the Catholic hierarchy to complain about other people's sexual behavior, or the Mormon church's efforts to rein in criticism of it by their members efforts at honestly discussing that church's history, reasonable people should object.

The Catholic church still hasn't quite accepted its institutional complicity in the physical and sexual abuse of untold numbers of children and teens.  The Mormon church still denies any official responsibility for their role in the Mountain Meadows Massacre. And regarding the latter, if you read Krakauer's book you can't but come to the conclusion that the Mormon culture bears a great deal of responsibility for the right-wing fringe in this country.

The simple fact is, the hierarchies of such organizations are acting out of hubris, greed for power when they posit themselves as some kind of moral arbiters whose "morality" gives them license to run roughshod over the obvious public good.

People can believe what they will, but when it comes to public policy, we should be doing things that benefit all. 

A few areas for possible upcoming posts...or perhaps short takes...

I'll be on travel much of this week, but I wanted to sketch out a few ideas that might make interesting posts for the future:

• "Rights" - do they exist?  I'm remind of this by reading a post on Kos about the sexual agenda of the Religious Right. A passage appears there to the effect of "Maybe you don't believe in common descent or evolution. Even though I think that's a foolish belief, you are entitled to it, but common descent is nonetheless true."  While for the purposes of everyday social engagement and politesse it's useful to treat people with the respect the presumption of rights would entail, and while for legal purposes it's crucial, especially at present to act with the presumption of certain rights and powers arranged, the construction of such rights, to me, appears at odds with how the world is experienced.
• The Dalai Lama appeared on a Michael Palin travel documentary show.  (See here.) To be honest, the reactions of the Dalai Lama when he sat down with Palin were interesting to say the least. Two things stood out: Firstly, the Dalai Lama seemed to laugh a bit too much - I frankly couldn't figure out why, because the laughter seemed in some spots either forced or not exactly matching the tenor of the conversation.  But the other thing that stood out was a point where Palin noted that he was bound for Tibet after visiting Dharmsala.  It was strikingly clear that the Dalai Lama, like any of us, still deals with attachments.   The only other thing that stood out here - alluded to by Palin - was the degree to which the Dalai Lama/Tibet in exile thing is an enterprise.  The tragic implication is that people have quite a bit invested in this "in between" condition of Tibet/China/Dharmsala.  
• On doing things that are difficult: I have been meaning to address this.
• Interesting times: I'm living in them. Hopefully some mistakes will be profitable.

Offense

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Scientific and Technological Literacy and Western Buddhists

I make no secret of the fact that I've got a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering.    I am grateful to the teachers I've had who've been able to impart a way of thinking about the physical world in such a way that I am able to produce technology that can be used.

Because of my background and experience, and because of the state of others' background and experience, I'm more than a bit shocked at the level of scientific and technological ignorance that I find in the on-line writings of quite a few Western Buddhists.¹

If politics is the art of the possible, as Bismarck said, engineering might be said to be the study and practice of the technology of the possible. In order to be a competent engineer, it's useful at some point, in some area at least to be a competent scientist.

I really don't feel like naming names here, because it's just not too fruitful to do so, but, instead, let me present a series of bullet points.:

• The fact that many people are asserting that climate change is not anthropgenic is an indication of political factors in play in the discussion of technological issues.
• These political aspects of climate change are similar to political aspects that have driven the development (or exploitation) of the commons for centuries.  For example,  read this book on the Great Flood of 1927.  It is no more a "denial of an equivalent truth" of the physics of climate change than it is to deny an "equivalent truth" contrary to the fact that water in rivers flow because of gravity.
• Technological utopia or technological Armageddon are two sides of the same coin.  One of the "folk theorems" in engineering communities might be expressed compactly as "The Law of the Conservation of Badness."  Everything has a cost.  The trick is to understand what the cost is, and to use that cost to actually help things along, as far as our survival and alleviation of misery is concerned.
• The idea that "If we only understand X, then everything will be better..." is a form of grasping.  Sometimes a grasping for knowledge and understanding must be done to achieve a certain benefit - as in the understanding of some aspect of mathematics necessary for the design of a radio receiver, for example.  But that understanding simply is limited, and doesn't involve the understanding or considerations of the inevitable side-effects that the actual building and use of that radio receive might have, which have the capability to be both benevolent and malicious. 
• Having said all of the above, despite our ignorance of many fields of physics, biology, etc. the Scientific Method is still the best tool we have for understanding and predicting phenomena having to do with the physical world.  About other aspects beyond the measurable, science is silent.  If you acquire a knowledge of quantum physics,  it might help you to design semiconductor-based devices, but studying how to cook with garlic might give you more insight into the nature of your consciousness.

Chances are that with only greed, hatred and ignorance driving things, we'll be driven to extinction.  I hope not. As an engineer,  I have no interest therefore in how technology can help propagate Buddhism (per se).  I'm more interested in how the Way can find its way into the technology of the possible.

_____________________________________________ 

1. Then again, I'm also appalled at the state of some so-called writers of science who don't have much idea about what engineering is all about. But I'm used to that. Many scientists are not very good engineers, just as many engineers might be good at one area of science, but tend to miss the big picture when it comes to applying science (or not being able to) in other areas.

C. 3000 Posts on: The Impermanence and Irrelevance of Authoritative Narratives

The Blogger thing tells me that this is the 3000th post - which, with a profile post written probably means it's the 2,999th post.  I'm not sure why that's particularly relevant, but quite a few bloggers do post such kind of milestones.  Very few celebrate their 567th blog post. But with millions of blogs out there, you can't rule it out entirely.

As I surveyed the info-sphere this morning to jog my memory into what I was going to write about, I came across a few articles, as I often do.  Two articles of the "authoritative business genre" really spoke to me this morning (here, and here).  Actually they didn't; they didn't speak to me metaphorically; neither did they speak to me literally.  In fact, they whelmed with with their evident irrelevance.  Woe is us - which I think is the right way to say it, but I'm not entirely sure.

One of the articles deals with the "Yin-Yang of Corporate Innovation" or something like that.  The other deals with Wired UK's "smart list" of "people who will change the world."  Let me present additional data to make your day.

Ever hear of the "magazine cover indicator?"  It's what investment market players call a "contrary indicator." That is, in a mainstream (not specialized) business publication, there's a concept well understood by "those in the know" that's being propagated to a mass market of information consumers, that's made people money. Like the famous cab-driver that gave the millionaire stock tips on the eve of the Crash of '29, that's an indicator to cash out, because the "last buyers" in the market are being told of what the Big Play is, and after the last buyers, there are no more buyers.  As you can see from that last link, sometimes the cover's pretty uncanny in its ability to predict the future by reversing the "plaintext narrative" of the cover.

Now considering the Wired UK's article...did you ever notice that the very name of Wired is a magazine cover indicator? I did, a bit more than 12 years ago. The name of the magazine first arose in connection with the wired internet. And if you regularly read this blog you can well understand why I view that as a contrary indicator come true, but even if you don't, the term "Dot Com Bubble" should remind you.  I do read Wired from time to time; it does tell me of things and people I might not normally be aware of.  But whether it's an issue of Wired or Fast Company (is that still around?) or the various industry fora I attend from time to time, my first instinct is to deconstruct the main narrative because that's exactly what the smarter minds than that possessed by me in the industry tend to do.   I've also had the benefit of knowing people who swore by those stories in mainstream publications, only to be found woefully overtaken by events.

Regarding the Times article on the "innovation" while the author of the article throws around a lot of buzzwords ("Open innovation" is a recent current favorite, now fading), the author - and his sources, in particular, it seems, John Kao - fail to express what that might actually mean in today's world, because it sure doesn't mean what's stated in the "plaintext meaning" of the article.

Many companies these days are thinking how to challenge Google or Apple.  And some of them are asking the wrong questions, because in part they don't "get" what how these companies got where they are and they don't at all see how to actually succeed in their endeavors despite what these companies are doing now.  Rather instead they - like the authors of that Times article - are taking away models of innovation from them as though somehow they were fixed narratives.  Well you heard it here first: Google and Apple will each stumble big, and in different ways.    And so will you and I if we continue a cookie-cutter prescription for the way things will be.

There's that exchange from the movie The Matrix whose "capping phrase" has entered our discourse:

Spoon boy: Do not try and bend the spoon. That's impossible. Instead only try to realize the truth.
Neo: What truth?
Spoon boy: There is no spoon.
Neo: There is no spoon?
Spoon boy: Then you'll see that it is not the spoon that bends, it is only yourself.

There are no hard and fast formulas to the way one lives one's life, carries out one's endeavors and enterprises, etc. There's only what we can do with ourselves.  You can get a good view of this through a mindfulness practice - after a while you realize that your preconceived notions are just in your head, and sooner or later, what you thought was "impossible" is in fact possible.

I'll (almost)  finish this post with something I did yesterday - a 書道 of "cloud."   I started doing this a while back with no talent, no knowledge of innate ability and no experience, like everyone who starts anything for the first time.  This one is not my worst ...hopefully I'll get better.   But if I had clung to the thought that I'd never be able to do this at all, I wouldn't have been able to do even this at all.  So there it is...

Now let me finish this post with a final thought for you: Does the narrative of "there is no narrative" apply to this blog post or not?

The degree that it does or does not I don't think can be known at this time.

A couple of confluent responses from me to responses from others...

• You can read the back and forth with Rev. Fisher and in comments on the Rev. Fisher's blog.  I think I overstated it by at least implying that Amnesty International's works are symbolic only. But not by much. The response I got was interesting to me; I'd think it'd be easy for Buddhists to get the gist of Christopher Hitchens' polemics against Mother Theresa and the Dalai Lama, even if some of Hitchens' other words and behavior were contemptible.  Or at least  some Buddhists would have read Nietzche.  That is they'd read that there's often unskillful selfish motives behind what we like to call charity.  In the case of the death penalty, far more mileage has gone to ending it in the US by lawyers and legislators cleverly chipping away at the way in which it's enacted than by people with stickers.  And I completely stand by what I wrote about Amnesty International and Stalin.  To be caught up with the case of the single individual as a series of "victories" without support of a strategy to extinguish the death penalty is not too far, metaphorically speaking, from sctraching one's foot through one's shoe.  In short, I'd cut a check to the ACLU before I'd cut one to Amnesty, but I could see people of good will doing both.  Just don't confuse one with the other and consider both "effective" at ending the death penalty.  One, remember, is demonized by the right wing in this country for a reason.  The other is not, also for a reason.
• I don't get certain things in the new improved "Western" Buddhist world.  The generally friendly Twitter exchange with Hokai Sobol (here, here,  here, and  here)  still reverberates in my head. I'm sorry Hokai; the Asian forms are like musical instruments or musical arrangements. Moreover, "Asian" and "Western," as I noted as well (and the link that  Hokai re-propagated), are not separate categories.  Geez, "Thank" and "Zen" share the same proto-Indo-European root as far as I know based on at least some relatively recent linguistic work somebody's done.  Now naturally styles of forms evolve and adapt culturally and regionally.  Nobody would say that Cajun cuisine is a maladaption of (a) French cuisine, though.  And I didn't even begin to get into the points of: what about Asian immigrants to the West? Their children? The mixed children of Asians and Westerners?  Admittedly Sobol's coming from the Shingon tradition, one in which I know less about than Zen.  But I do know this: with the exceptions of the Pure Land - derived (and to a lesser extent Nichiren and Zen) schools, most Japanese Buddhists know very little about these other sects of Buddhism. The temples in Nara are all related to sects that have very little presence in Japan today.  The idea that  forms and concepts of these older schools are "Asian" today doesn't even work in Asia.

Some wise guy or gal once wrote or said "Things are not as they seem. And just the opposite is true."  I admit I'm in a somewhat strange situation in that my contact with "Asia" - whatever that means - is far greater than most Westerners.  All of us are improvising as we go along.  Cultural categories are fluid. If one doesn't get it, one may become unintentionally funny, especially in regards to Buddhism.

Effective Action

Some stood at the window cried "One tear

  I thought that would stop the war 

But someone is killing me"

That's the last hour to think anymore... 

                                                                                                                                    - Jefferson Airplane

I might have been a bit too critical in indirectly referring to the Reverend Danny Fisher as a "cause junkie,"  but I did have to take issue with his line "It occurs to me that I didn’t do anything about the late Troy Davis and his case at this blog, largely because I was so incredibly busy at the time of his execution by the state of Georgia." 

While it's true that SOPA & PIPA were recently shelved (not out of the minds of lobbyists yet - lobbyists are still being handsomely compensated for trying to resurrect this assault on the internet), it is not "because" any one individual "at his blog" "did" anything.

Symbolic gestures against something or for a cause are just that. Symbolic. Amnesty International has had the success it has because they stumbled upon the same thing that Joseph Stalin did: one death, one atrocity is horrible, but a million deaths are just a statistic.  

I could see giving them money.  But the nuts and bolts of effective action is actually organizing, planning, preparation, and execution. (Though not the kind that Amnesty International opposes, of course)  That takes work, whether it's action to do your j-o-b or action to make that utopia on earth you've always dreamed about.

Yeah, the Reverend Fisher is sometimes a cause billboard. And I'm just a guy writing the blog at the moment, inter alia.  There's bigger work to be done.

Natural Unnaturalness

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

On Chanting

I generally don't do that many posts about practice in the Zendo.  I generally don't do it because I've found others' material to be sufficient for me. 

But oddly enough for the life of me, I can't find right now exactly what I'm looking for.

I recently finally read one of Brad Warner's books, Sit Down and Shut Up.  I also don't read a lot of so-called modern teachers' books, for the simple reason that I haven't gotten through the older teachers' books first, and most of what I'd read of modern teachers seems, um...recycled?  I don't mean that in an accusative way, but rather it more or less duplicates what's already there.  Consider this the review of the book I'd been meaning to do for a while: Sit Down and Shut Up is, despite its meanderings, in many ways a better book than Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind. Yeah, it is, for what both purport to do: explain Zen in the Soto flavor to a modern audience.  By that I mean that its linear structure, humor, use of the Japanese language characters, etc. make the practice for more well explained than Suzuki did.  It also benefits from the lack of a section of how the poor author had died and was such a great master that...yada yada yada.  Warner's a "slob like one of us,"  who had the  fortune of being from a part of Ohio I'd bet people in Ohio joke about.

It also occurs to me that a Rinzai version of this genre ought to exist too.   Maybe it already does; maybe it might need to exist in some form on this blog, but from a lay person's perspective.  Seriously though if you want to read about what Zen (Soto-flavored) Buddhism is, Warner's book is pretty good and pretty knowledgeable.  I've some differences with him here, and there, but they're relatively minor.  So consider this an endorsement of that book from yours truly.

 Anyhow, where was I? Oh yeah, chanting. Barbara of the White Plum tradition has this to say on ritual:

Rituals in Buddhism are a upaya, which is Sanskrit for "skillful means." Rituals are performed because they are helpful for those who participate.

Of course, if you are new to Buddhism you may feel awkward and self-conscious as you try to mimic what others around you are doing. Feeling awkward and self-conscious means you are bumping into your delusional ideas about yourself. Acknowledging those feelings and getting beyond them is vital spiritual practice.

We all come into practice with issues and buttons and tender spots that hurt when something pushes them. Usually we go through our lives wrapped in ego armor to protect the tender spots. But the ego armor causes its own pain, because it cuts us off from ourselves and everyone else. Much Buddhist practice, including ritual, is about peeling off the armor. Usually this is a gradual and gentle process that you do at your own pace, but you will be challenged to step out of your comfort zone at times.

She then points to James Ford, (from within the Soto/Sambo Kyodan traditions) who says:

These rites are the family form of this community. Daido Loori, our cousin in the dharma, tells us how "generally defined, liturgy can be considered an affirmation or restatement of the common experience of a community." He explains how "all of Zen’s rites and rituals are constantly pointing to the same place, to the realization of no separation between the self and the ten thousand things. Zen liturgy is upaya, skillful means. Like zazen and all the other areas of our training, it functions as a way of uncovering the truth which is the life of each one of us."... It is our tradition to chant it in a Sino-Japanese form, a liturgical language created by pronouncing Chinese words in the Japanese manner. Here we find ourselves letting go of the meaning, and just chanting. Taizan Maezumi explains something of this. This quote is a little long, but it's helpful. Maezumi Roshi tells us:

Chanting is an effective means of harmonizing body and mind. Chant with your ears, not with your mouth. When chanting, be aware of the others who are also chanting. Blend your voice with their voices. Make one voice, all together. Chant not too high, not too low, not too fast, not too slow. Take your pace from the senior practitioner, who will take the initiative. Chanting should not be shouting. When a person chants like that, he chants as if only he exists and no one else, which is not so. Always adjust yourself to the others, rather than expecting them to adjust to you. Then there is harmony. Chant as though each syllable were a drop of rain in a steady shower. It is very mild, consistent, and sustained.

Chanting functions the same as all of our practices in Zen. On one level, we can see that the sutras we chant have their own content; they mean something. Some, like the Heart Sutra for example, are especially concise and packed with deep meaning. But again, apart from the texts, the act of chanting is in itself an absolute practice, simultaneously expressing and creating an inner state of consciousness. And as we chant together and hear each other chanting, we are helped further in joining our minds. This is harmony. This is practice together.

See what I mean about existing authors being "sufficient?" Well, I take that back, because I think there's things to add to this:

• In this chanting, it is not, despite appearances, an invocation to anyone or anything separated from those chanting. It is not like a Christian invocation to a deity "out there" but rather to that which is far more immediate.
• That being said, the chanting does point to a metaphysical assumption, namely that the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas and ancestors being invoked are immediate, and are not entities entirely separate from those doing the chanting.   This assumption I do not find unreasonable however.   These chants and rituals came from somewhere, conditioned by conditions that brought about their arising.  My hearing and my chanting of myself with others, brings us at least in part with the mind of many ancestors of my lineage in exactly the same way as a good chi sau ( 黐手, or "sticky hands") presents to my consciousness the mind of my sifu and his ancestors.  That's pretty damned intimate.
• Rinzai chanting is different somewhat from the Soto flavor, as I touched briefly upon in this post a while back. In particular, there's more ki (qi, or 気) emphasis through breath in our chanting. It makes it more physical.  It's actually one reason I'm more drawn to Rinzai practice, at least as it exists in the US.
• It need not be said, but I'll say it anyway: Korean, Vietnamese and Chinese chanting are different than the Japanese forms, and tend to be more "musical" than the Japanese forms.  That sort of fits with those temples' approach to Buddhism (even Zen/Chan Buddhism) as being more rococo, or more colorful than the Japanese counterparts.
• Much of what's been written in this regard might seem to be an apology for That Which Clearly Has Supernaturalist Origins, as a way to bring in the supernatural through a back door, so to speak. I'm sure PZ Myers thinks that way.  But if Myers has been to the theatre (or a movie) or a musical performance, I wonder if he seriously thinks that those performative acts are invoking the Muses. No actually I don't; nobody save for a few out beyond the fringes fundamentalist monotheists seriously thinks that performance is "demonic."  
• More to the point, Myers would do well to read at least some modern language theorists, who are sort of pointing in the right direction here. One J. L. Austin said, according to Wikipedia, that

  A "performative utterance," Austin argued in How to Do Things With Words, cannot be said to be either true or false, as a constative utterance might be. It can only be judged either "happy" or "infelicitous" depending upon whether the conditions required for it to succeed have been met. In this sense performativity can be said to investigate the pragmatics of language.

  Now I take some issue with the "happy" or "infelicitous" part of that (that's pretty limiting, isn't it?), but the basic direction here seems right: the point of the performance as performance is not necessarily to be "right" in the same sense as a physics lecture's content is correct (though a good physics professor is quite a performer). But even a lousy physic professor's teaching performance in no way invalidates his content. The purpose of the content of Zen Buddhist chanting is to point to the Fundamental Point, the Original Face, and the performance as chanting is to realize and express that.
• Finally, there's a point that I think every teacher I've read has simply not seen, or forgotten, or perhaps they're inherently for more enlightened than I can ever hope to be and don't even need to make the pont.  When chanting in this foreign "language" the syllables don't have the cadence and structure of English (or for that matter, Japanese or Chinese, or even Pali, now that the Chinese Japanese ancestors have had their way with these things).  It takes real mindfulness to focus to Chant the East Asian forms of the Great Compassionate Dharani correctly just as it takes takes a great deal of mindfulness to use a sharp knife correctly.  I remember the first time I chanted it, now over 20 years ago- the thought that popped into my head was, "Ah, it's a  tongue-twister! How clever!" It brings about a more mindful state because you'll trip over yourself, vocally, that is, if you're not paying attention.

OK, that's my bit on chanting. It's just my few words; again, do your own homework.

Upcoming blog post on chanting

It's about time I wrote a post on chanting. It probably is one of the more off-putting things about Buddhist services to some people - though I don't quite get why, other than it's "strange" to those who are more familiar with Christian religious services, perhaps.


Also too is the issue of what the chants mean. Why chant? Isn't the content of the chanting invocation of supernatural thing or other?

My answer of "maybe" , and "maybe not" - might not please atheists such as PZ Myers, but then again perhaps Mr. Myers has been to a movie or a play.

But it's worth exploring in greater depth than I can give it time at this moment. Probably around Tuesday though I should have something more meaty on this.

Re-thinking our positions

(In honor of the SOPA blackout, this blog post won't contain any hyperlinks. While I'm confident what  I put here will stand on its own merits without hyperlinking, I think hyperlinking really does enhance the internet's "pinball effect," to use a term I encountered in one of James Burke's books. On the other hand,  I could, of course be telling you any ol' kind of crap, and you'd just have to take my word just as right wing extremists  take Ron Paul's word that he authored every word of his Survival Report because it said so at the time,  and everyone should just wink and nod about that stuff when Ron Paul's trying to get elected president.  Or something like that. Do your homework.  If you want to know what SOPA and PIPA  is - besides the latter being a naughty word in Greek -then look up SOPA & PIPA on the Google and  also please vent on the Facebook page of "Remove Jaime Herrera Beutler,"  or on her own Facebook page because the latter Congressperson is falling way behind in her job performance.  And that's it for today's PSA.)

I recently finally decided to try out Pandora radio's "comedians" feature, possibly as a result of seeing a recent PBS episode of "Make 'em Laugh."  I have been listening, in particular, to Lenny Bruce (described, delicately, by Pandora's "artist info" as having a "Northeastern" sensibility or such.)  I think Mr. Bruce would have demurred: He was a Jew, I think he would have pointed out more accurately.

Mr. Bruce is widely respected by today's comedians, because he was such an artist with his voice; his style was heavily influenced by jazz.  That much you can get from the old Dustin Hoffman movie "Lenny," and from that movie you also get he died of a heroin overdose and that he was hounded by the government for saying naughty words.  The last bit wasn't quite true. He was hounded by the government because he was such an acute critic of their authoritarianism.  One bit left out of the movie was a bit where Bruce is doing a dead-on caricature of a Southern/Southwestern used car salesman, who was selling a WWII era German car that was only used "to drive to the furnace."

You can't say that on TV today.

I bring up this incident - my exposure to Lenny Bruce via Pandora, that is - because it is re-thinking my view of Lenny Bruce, most of whose recorded material I still probably haven't heard, and because it will (eventually) get to a point about Buddhism and everyday life. My "original opinions" about Bruce were largely formed by the aforementioned movie and a Simon and Garfunkel song ("A Simple Desultory Philippic, or How I was Robert McNamara'd into Submission") which contained the line "I learned the truth from Lenny Bruce" sung in sarcasm. My original opinions were formed this way because throught the 60s and early 70s Mr. Bruce's material was effectively blacklisted from mass media, except for whatever LPs were in print at the time.

Simon should repent of that song.  History has shown that he couldn't hold a candle to Bob Dylan, despite Mr. Simon's own considerable talents. 

Lenny Bruce, despite his personal failings, was a craftsman with his voice, and influenced the following generations of comics.  If you go to Sarah Silverman's Youtube website, there's a video of her giving a "confession" which is both hilarious and G-rated. If you think her thing is easy to do, try it; it's not.

Barbara on her Buddhism blog mentioned the fact that the brain "source codes" its information when it stores it, to bring up the fact that we should constantly question what we experience (and memory is an experience).  I thought of this when I was hearing Lenny Bruce and the used car salesman bit. It's amazing how our preconceiving notions and biases seep into everything we do and think and experience.

Paul Simon probably won't read this blog, but it's interesting how I used to have a higher opinion of him than I do now, and for "the other two Jewish folksingers of the era," namely Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen, well, the latter two have eclipsed him.

History and perception are funny that way.

Buddhify

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Augment? 

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

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

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

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

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

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

So it is with many traditions of practice. 

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

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

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

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

A confluence of things leads to a pretty sober conclusion...

• Yoga is really, really popular.  It's so popular that the NY Times has to go all Judith Miller about the whole thing.  It also requires conveniently very little overhead and capital investment relative to many other enterprises. (Would you get sued for Warm Yoga?)
• An iOS app on meditation is selling well.  I mean, it's very popular.
• The economy, and its effects especially on younger people.

 The fish don't see the water in which they swim...I read that in Dogen somewhere, so it must be true. Now  I'm mashing up critics of Dogen with Sarah Silverman now. Go figure.

No seriously, my point is it's amazing how many people with influence in the world are not quite devoting ourselves to making real, tangible things, and all the skills that flow from that; even in the Zen-inflected sub-culture in which we live.  I mean, my whole career has been directed toward the monetezation of ideas...though in my case the do wind up in products that make the other stuff possible.  But it seems we're not quite aware of that odd position in which we find ourselves, kind of like city-dwellers of ancient times who'd forgotten how to hunt.

"Somebody else" is doing the farming, the tool-making, the hunting, the defense, the medicine prescription and administration, the educating of the young and the whole host of other things that actually make life feasible in this world as we know it.  Or at least that seems to be the case, if you'd read what is generally considered in the Buddhist blogosphere.  It's not overall true of course, but umm...living the way is not 80% of what you find written and talked about in the Buddhist blogosphere.  It's there in bits and pieces, though...military Buddhist bloggers, Barbara's occasional forays into everyday living as a Buddhist, Shokai's exploits,  etc.  But like I said, what's written about is largely what's not lived and done and made: the expression of being born as suffering, growing is suffering, growing old is suffering, dying is suffering, and there's a cause to all that suffering, and its transcendence and its way of transcendence.

Forgive my impudence, but I think there's no app for that.

I don't know if that's winter blues talking, but it's interesting to me that the dearth of opportunity itself in the economy and our unwillingness to discuss it is manifesting itself this way that removes the real everyday from the agenda for discussion.

 I'm no survivalist by any means, but I think it's important that people know how to do some basic things: like cook and clean, teach their kid math and science and some kind of art (I am woefully inadequate and fall short in the art department), how to take care of their body, etc., and perhaps even to make tangible things, and grow vegetables or something like that.  

Everything of course can be taken away, and will be eventually, but even so, given the resources we have, maybe we as a society are becoming too dependent on stuff other people make.  I mean, somewhere in that is the "Right Livelihood" ethic, right?

What is"Zen" anyway?

And, is Zen the same thing as zen?  Ah, I won't touch the second question here - I'll use both interchangeably.   As for the first question, I suppose you could go to Wikipedia or Google or something and get a variety of answers.   But I thought on this blog it might be a good idea to explore the question here.

There's a blog - The Worst Horse - that devotes quite a few bits of storage to the notion of finding examples where Buddhist terms and imagery, including "Dharma," "Zen" (or is it zen?),  Buddhas, etc. are used for commercial gain or pop culture. (His latest entry on electric butter lamps, though, is an amusing misfire: There's a whole host of Chinese and Vietnamese (and probably other ethnic groups') temples that actually use electric lighting as "candles" and other lighting on the altar.) 

There's also - I found this out this week - a foundation called "Urban Zen" which is apparently associated with charitable activities, and some forms of meditation and yoga. 

Is that Zen?

As a guy who's been doing this for a few years, I'll quote from a link that is apparently writing  from the (now scandal-retired) Eido Shimano Roshi:

A special transmission outside the scriptures;
No dependence on words and letters;
Direct pointing to the mind of man;
Seeing into one's nature and attaining Buddhahood.
Bodhidharma

The special transmission of Zen is the realization of the Buddha's enlightenment itself, in one's own life, in one's own time. This experience has been realized by Zen students and confirmed by their teachers for over 2500 years.

Central and indispensable to Zen is daily Zazen practice. It is this practice that is the "direct pointing to the mind of man." Zazen melts away the mind-forged distances that separate man from himself; leads one beyond himself as knower, to himself as known. In Zazen, there is no reality outside what exists here and now. Each moment, each act is inherently Buddha-nature. While sorrow and joy, anxiety and imperturbability cannot be avoided, by not clinging to them we find ourselves free of them, no longer pulled this way and that. With this self-mastery comes composure and tranquility of mind, but these are by-products of Zazen rather than its goals.

Zazen is a Japanese term consisting of two characters: za, "to sit (cross-legged)," and zen, from the Sanscrit dhyana, meaning at once concentration, dynamic stillness, and contemplation. The means toward the realization of one's original nature as well as the realization itself, Zazen is both something one does - sitting cross-legged, with proper posture and correct breathing - and something one essentially is. To emphasize one aspect at the expense of the other is to misunderstand this subtle and profound practice.

It's kind of interesting to me that Shimano (presumably) phrased it this way, especially since folks like Hakuin, Suzuki Shosan and others (I'm Rinzai, mostly) emphasized that the practice should take place in the midst of activity as well as on the zafu.

And in that activity - whatever the activity - if "done right" there is practice.  Though I would profer that being a corporate raider and causing suffering, or being a mass murderer or (insert any other time of person who does a heinous act) and such can't be practicing when they're being greedy, hateful or ignorant.

This "special transmission outside the scriptures" of which Bodhidharma (presumably) wrote is the transmission of this activity - in the same way that  詠春 (Wing Chun) or 書道 (shodou - Asian calligraphy) or yoga or playing the violin or learning to live peacefully with people who grate on your nerves is transmitted via experience outside of writing and words.  And this "direct pointing  to the mind of man" is the mind that just does these things, and does them for the benefit of all beings.

I've no idea whether or not the realization of the mission of the  Urban Zen Foundation really is that kind of Zen or not.  But I do know practice is bigger than that.  And that practice is realized by the cultivation of skill required to actually help all beings.  Their heart seems to be in the right place (that's a lousy phrase, but you get my drift), but I must admit that my reaction on seeing some of their stuff is "Nice charity work...some New Age oddness...but is this trivializing Zen practice?"

I could be wrong.

I'm not really in Donna Karan (benefactor of the foundation)'s target demographic (must avoid linking to a Bill Hicks video on marketers...oops too late).  As an engineer who's now in his 50s, I've developed an esthetic about clothes that kind of excludes that sort of thing, without getting into details.  OK, I'll put in one detail: clothes should fit, be easily maintained and last nearly forever.  They should be kind of a cross between whatever the heck the Shakers would produce if they were around to make clothes in these times and if you had your own tailor.  Oh, yeah, and they shouldn't look outrageously "different" in terms of matching one's social demographic.

Sorry for the digression.

I don't know if the kind of Zen done by "Urban Zen" is or is not the kind of Zen I aspire to incorporate into everything I do; neither do I know what kind of Zen or practice anybody else on the internet does/is or does/is not do/is.  Eventually I suppose it all points back to my practice - what kind of Zen am I practicing?

A lot of people will tell you a lot of things about a lot of topics on this here internet.  Kick the tires; do your homework...especially on yourself.

詠春 and non-violence; continued...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Or is it?

Quick quotes for the day...

I came across this; I think it's from Tropic of Capricorn, because I remember reading it before.  Henry Miller's writing might seem very politically incorrect today, but these words are just so what's good about being human:

 Every day we slaughter our finest impulses. That is why we get a heartache when we read those lines written by the hand of a master and recognize them as our own, as the tender shoots which we stifled because we lacked the faith to believe in our own powers, our own criterion of truth and beauty.

Then I came across this; a quote from Jack London, and it's really quite an expression of non-separation, and, uh, why I'm politically left of center.:

A bone to the dog is not charity. Charity is the bone shared with the dog, when you are just as hungry as the dog. 

That's it for today.

A true dialogue with "western science"

One the one hand, there's folks like PZ Myers.  On the other hand, there's the Zennist...

In the Dalai Lama’s continuing dialogue with Western science, I would not be surprised to read one day that neuroscientists have decided that Buddhism’s pure Mind or One Mind is not real.  In other words, Buddhists have been deluded for over twenty-five centuries!  Poor Buddhists, like the Dalai Lama, really don’t grasp the nature and function of mind/ consciousness that, in fact, mind is an epiphenomenon of the human brain.

The Scientific Method  is  what I presume the Zennist rails against, because "Western science" is a body of knowledge, and you can no more have a "dialogue" with a body of knowledge than you can have a war on drugs or terror.

And all the Scientific Method is good at is is measuring, observing, and testing hypotheses that are within the realm of that which can be verified by the Scientific Method. It's a closed system.  Anything beyond that is metaphysics, as most of us scientific or not, in the Buddhist blogosphere get.  While it's understandable why folks like Myers and Dawkins have the metaphysics they do - and as far as we can describe with words, there's always the possibility they're right¹, as far as their being right is important - the Scientific Method is still a closed system.

The only reason the Dalai Lama admires the West is because the West is good at a few things like inventing (I have in mind Thomas Edison).  Take the examples of fly screen, refrigerators, washing machines, radios, airplanes, ballpoint pens, to name just a few items among countless others.

The Zennist really ought to read my blog more.  Or at least he ought have a dialog  (Or is it dialogue? He ought to have at least one of them) with people who you know, respond and interact,  even if only online. And just 'cause he doesn't, and evidently doesn't read Matt Taibbi either...

I give credit to the Dalai Lama for  thinking a bit more about the West than refrigerators and such.  Not entirely good and rosy and all that, but then again, I don't think about the "East" that way, either.

Finally:

It is only the Buddhists who have dared to plumb the mystery of thought, itself, and behold its clear light substance.  By doing so, they have declared the universe is only Mind; what we are perceiving, in other words, is mind phenomena.  Unfortunately, the West has been derelict in this undertaking.  Westerners see no benefit in seeing the clear light substance from which our thoughts are made from.

 This is probably neither completely true or false, but it's the sort of statement that I'd hope Buddhists avoid making, because no matter how bone-headed a non-Buddhist can be, it detracts not one iota from the degree to which Buddhists can be bone-headed, including but not limited to yours truly.

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1. Note: In no way is this contradictory to my comments here, as I see it.  That there can be something transcending  and ecompassing my notion of "me" and "you"  in no way invalidates the very real point that folks like Myers and Dawkins would make about all the historical bits about me and you stored away in our brains don't really exist after our deaths, except insofar as the ripples of cause and effect (you know, karma) perpetrate throughout space, time, beings, nonbeings, form and emptiness after said  deaths.

If some is good, more must be better!

I'm sure others will say something about what the NY Times pronounces on yoga, but isn't the moral of the story sort of obvious?

Having said that, as a result of reading that article I'm inclined to sit a bit in though the 正座 position (vajrasana-like, but without twisted knees), though it might offend certain people.

I hope it's not a Buddhist Theme Park they have in mind...

This bit hasn't been picked up by the Western Buddhist blogosphere, probably because it's in the "other people's problem field" - or unless some folks can somehow tie the Dalai Lama in with it.

LUOYANG, Henan - "It's unusual to see exotic Buddhist buildings at such an ancient Chinese temple. They're so delicate and look so different from the traditional Chinese temples next to them," said Tang Chan, a 22-year-old college student, looking at the Indian shrine at Baima Temple.

The Baima Temple - White Horse Temple - aspires to be not only the oldest, but also the largest and most international Buddhist temple in China.

Henan province, in Central China, has approved a plan to expand and renovate the temple into a 1,300 mu (87 hectare) cultural park over eight years, the largest in China by then. It currently covers 20 hectares.

The almost 2,000-year-old temple is creating an International Temples Zone to showcase 10 exotic shrines from foreign countries, said Wang Xiaohui, director of the religious affairs bureau in Luoyang, where the temple is located.

The Indian shrine opened in May 2010. A Thai shrine built in the 1990s is being expanded and will open in April. 

In case you don't know, Baima temple -  白馬時 - or Hakubaji in Japanese- or White Horse Temple - is a famed temple that is said to be the first (or one of the first) Buddhist temple(s) in all of China.   When I had visited there last summer, I had actually seen the Thai and Burmese shrines there, but it was the "Chinese stuff" about the temple that kept my attention e.g., the place where the Sutra in Forty Two Sections - the first sutra said to have been translated into Chinese - was translated.  The Sutra in Forty Two Sections was also the first sutra translated into English by D.T. Suzuki around about the time when he went to the US with Soen Shaku.

Now in reality it won't be like Buddhist Disneyland - I mean, when you're there its obvious you're among antiquity that predates Hagia Sophia in Istanbul so anything they add will look pasted on. And probably they'll want to keep some kind of Chinese feel to the overall place anyway - it is China, after all.

But despite the impermanence of everything, I don't see the point of speeding up the inevitable.

Woo advertisers & this blog:

Google chooses them; I don't.  Just like when some weird righist ad appears on a lefty blog. If you choose to click through the advertiser, and buy what they're selling, that's your business.  Caveat emptor, and all that.  But unless I specifically endorse it (Feather razor products, why not advertise on my blog?) I don't vouch for it.