Coming soon: Buddhism and Technology: The Convergence...

In doing an admittedly not too deep dive on Buddhist Geeks, the name of one Jerry Colonna, "Yoda of Silicon Valley" came up.

And I thought...this guy gets money for this? 

And I realized that maybe a post or two on Buddhist approaches to technology and business might be useful.  And if you want that I should profit from this, well, I promise I'll make less money than that guy from this, and I won't object.  But it's not really my point, which is that this information should be available, and it's not magic, and besides you can, if you wish, compare Yoda's wisdom to mine. 

It might save folks a bunch of money.  

Heck open-sourcing some information on that topic might accelerate better quality content and services from other Yodas. (I assume that's the plural of Yoda.)  But as a minimum it might de-mystify how a  Buddhist might approach those issues that come up day to day in businesses, especially technology companies.  Those issues need not - and won't - have me deal with any specific information related to my current work, of course.   But there's some general things I've learned over the years that could probably be of use to others.

Here's some ideas bouncing around in my head:

• Your project/proposal : what is the reality and what to do about "No."
• The impermanence of technology, dreams, existence
• The right time to do something.
• The right people with whom to work.
• Resources are finite.  Just do your best.
• Every organization is dysfunctional and that's OK.

I could go on...but I think this is a good example of what I might be able to provide in this area. 

On Buddhist Geekery, Gravitas and Ageism

Barbara, of all people, seems to have initiated a  bit of an animated conversation in the Buddhist blogosphere of late, with a post on the Buddhist Geeks conference, and  noting Arun's expected response to its cultural homogeneity.  Barabara thought that the people involved didn't really have that much to say, because of the fact that there wasn't a lot of age and experience. Maybe it's age, maybe it's ageism, but it seems to be something deeper.

Vince Horn remonstrated to Barbara, as you can see in the comments.

I then had a rather lengthy Twitter discussion with him.

Anyway, I think a point of difference exists at least between myself and Mr. Horn, on the point raised here:

1. 無門　Mumon7 ‏@Mumon723h

   @VincentHorn RE: @mahabarbara 's latest post maybe you should interview her or me for that increasing demographic of older Buddhists.

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2. Vincent Horn ‏@VincentHorn16h

   @Mumon7 @mahabarbara : In my experience there are already plenty of older Buddhists engaging with #buddhistgeeks.

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無門　Mumon7‏@Mumon7

@VincentHorn @mahabarbara Do you think #buddhistgeeks is already culturally broad enough?

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2:48 PM - 30 Aug 13

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Reply to @VincentHorn @mahabarbara 

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1. Vincent Horn ‏@VincentHorn15h

   @Mumon7 @mahabarbara : broad enough for who?

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2. 無門　Mumon7 ‏@Mumon715h

   @VincentHorn @mahabarbara How 's "broad enough to contain what/how/why Buddhism is, will be, and needs to be practiced?" No pronoun there.

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3. Vincent Horn ‏@VincentHorn14h

   @Mumon7 : I don't assume to know how Buddhism "needs" to be practiced, nor would I take personal responsibility for all that. #jeez

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4. 無門　Mumon7 ‏@Mumon714h

   @VincentHorn Me, I took vows to save all beings, end all delusions, understand the Dharma, attain the unattainable . But that's just me.

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5. Vincent Horn ‏@VincentHorn14h

   @Mumon7 : I'd call that a "literalist" interpretation of the bodhisattva vows. I'd also call it grandiose and potentially arrogant.

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6. 無門　Mumon7 ‏@Mumon714h

   @VincentHorn When you start to try to get it into the marrow of your life, you find it's terribly difficult; it's humbling, until you relax

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Before I begin, I'd like to point out that Mr. Horn's exchange with Genpo Merzel a few years ago was extremely valuable, as it unintentionally exhibited those aspects of Mr. Merzel that showed who he was.  Western Buddhism actually owes Mr. Horn a debt of gratitude for that.

If I had a place called Buddhist Geeks, I'd endeavor to use it as a vehicle to rightly communicate Buddhism, including its practice in day to day life, in the Mahayana flavor in which I practice.

If I understand Mr. Horn correctly he doesn't know how Buddhism needs to be practiced, and moreover an attempt to pointedly endeavor to practice the Boddhisattva vows, to cultivate it into the marrow of one's bones is grandiose and potentially arrogant.

I think this is indeed the point of difference between at least he and I, and it speaks as well to Barbara's, and probably Arun's points made before.

Not that it really matters that much.  But there really is a significant cultural difference here. And it's not, I submit, due to any kind of "literalism" or fundamentalism.

Way back in college I had a professor, Professor Y.  He was almost unique in my school's faculty in that he was one of the few faculty members who lacked a Ph.D.; it was said when asked he would say "Who would teach me?" It was also said that he once did try to do a Ph.D., but he wound up telling his advisor to go f*ck himself. (Nobody knew for sure if that was true. I doubt it, but wouldn't be surprised if it was true.) His manner of teaching was to manically fill up the two long blackboards in the classrooms with equations, completely from memory. None of that Powerpoint stuff they do nowadays.  His manner of expression was pure Brooklyn gangster, albeit with a knowledge of mathematics you could only aspire to have one day.  He never used the faculty recommended textbook,  and instead always handed out Xeroxed notes, written in beautiful cursive handwriting.  He wasn't above saying (literally) "I'll kill you" to someone who might have been in a position to be cheating (but wasn't).

If you didn't know him well, he came across as arrogant, and pretentiously authoritative to the point of being somewhat insane.  You'd think that, except he was the  goddamned smartest, most exacting, most thorough, most fair (in his own failing 2/3 of the class way) professor I had in all my years of schooling, and that was true of anyone who had him and passed his class as well.  My own thesis advisor was less pressure-inducing,  but even he knew, for example those "pictures" of white noise processes in books were not, and detracted from the beauty of what the process was.  Oh yeah, Professor Y. wrote several - only several - fundamental papers in communication systems theory. He wrote no other papers.   But those he did write were fundamental; they revolutionized the areas about which they were written. He didn't cultivate many graduate students, and those he had were better than I am.  And those of his undergraduate students who got C's knew the material better than other professors' students who got A's.   Professor Y. told me a few years ago that he had more respect for someone that took his class and failed in than someone who deliberately avoided trying to take his class. Professor Y's was well known as a very difficult teacher, but regardless of your grade, if you passed his class you knew the material well.

I go on that little diversion to mention one other aspect of Professor Y.: His exactingness and his attention to getting it right made a profound impression on me.   "It's got to be in your blood!!!" he used to say, because people's livelihoods (and in many cases, lives) depended on your ability to come forward with the right answer.

Now do you see why I'm mentioning Professor Y.?  In some ways he was kind of my first Zen teacher, except that he taught Electrical Engineering courses, and his EE Zen still informs my engineering and zen. He taught me the spirit with which you have to approach an engineering problem,  which was the spirit of a ferocious Beginner's Mind, in fact.  You gotta question everything to make sure it's right, for right livelihood.

That, I submit is the convergence of Buddhism and technology.  It really freakin' is.  Thanks to Professor Y., I got to be around to do a few fundamental things that enabled the wireless internet to take off.  It might be why I often get the feeling that Mr. Horn, and some of the other folks re: Buddhist Geeks,  just don't get it.

Mr. Horn, in his reply to Barbara was mentioning there was nothing about the actual content of the Buddhist Geeks conference. Well, as one of those folks who was otherwise engaged during the time that conference went on (limited to 300 folks as it were), I wasn't there. 

But thanks to Mr. Horn, there's content galore related from Buddhist Geeks from which to comment.

Here's an episode called Meditating to Get Ahead.  I will wait for the transcript, since I generally don't have time to sit through an entire podcast.   Let me point out that as a technologist manager (yep, a real flesh and blood one, with about 50 patents to his name),  I need an elevator speech to devote my time to something. I really am a busy man.   MEDITATING TO GET AHEAD?????  Why would one even ask that question, because going in a direction of a "Yes, and it does because..." answer from a Buddhist perspective it's about as Buddhist as Frederick Lenz.

OK, maybe there was substance in that podcast I missed.   Maybe there might have been stuff in there with which I agreed at some level.  But I still don't have time to listen to an entire podcast.  Especially since I've seen the Way conveyed with a gesture.  Well, let's consider a transcript.  But after I consider this elevator pitch: "Truth is a Red Herring."

I'll just say about that, nobody needs a Mr. Ken McLeod to tell you that  "truth" in the context of "true practice" means  you've got to live your life. You sign on the dotted line.  Your practice truly practiced is carried out, it is your "project" as Sartre would say. There's no good words in English for the right verb, but 行なうis a pretty good word in Japanese for what's meant here. To not try to keep the question of whether one is practicing or not...well...Mr. Ken McLeod might not be teaching a Dharma that should be cultivated in the marrow of one's bones, I guess.  I don't know, I saw his site, and there's lots of theory there it seems. But I don't get not much sense of who he might be as a person who has accomplished his project of being who he is as a person of the  Way (法), or why I might see what he has to say on it, and unfortunately in Mr. Horn's exchange with me, I got no sense of that either. 

Again, I'll wait for the transcript.  But I will point out that we're all in 参禅 (sanzen) with each other all the time.  I know as I write this very post I'm failing many people who might be observing my understanding of the 法, but one must keep trying...

Here's a transcript between Vince Horn and Rohan Gunatillake. 

Vincent:    Well Buddhism is interesting from my perspective cause it is conceived in many different ways. The way that I’ve approached it is as more as sort of an inner technology, a way of transforming the mind. Now that’s a very western and modern understanding of Buddhism. Of course, the roots in the tradition that point to that and yet practicing it in a way where its sort of a little bit removed from those some of the historical cultural pieces is a new thing in a lot of ways.
So I basically approach Buddhism as a model which supports one in transforming certain patterns of mind. So it’s fundamentally focused on the interior subjective experience of the individual. And there are some very important ethical pointers toward how does one live a meaningful life, how does one interact without causing harm to other beings, to other people. And then in a modern context, there’s all sorts of question around how does one interact with the environment, the world, the ecology, etc. And those are big questions as a modern Buddhist I ponder.
Rohan:    I guess Buddhism is interesting as a religion in contrast to some other of the major religions around the world in that there’s always sort an open question. Is Buddhism a religion, a philosophy, a way of life, a practice? Whereas for Islam and Christianity, there’s never a debate whether it’s a religion because of what have been said. It has this focus of this inner work, inner practice which can be, doesn’t necessarily have to come with the more religious trappings but it can do as well. And so it has that flexibility which makes it, the other religion, traditions do that, but Buddhism is one of the most significant which has that flexibility. So it’s totally feasible to say that one is a Jew or Christian or an atheist and have a Buddhist practice of sort and that’s quite interesting.

Huh? Buddhism is a model of an "inner technology?"  With "ethical pointers" to help one live a "meaningful life?"

I realize that with things like podcasts (like this blog) there's things one's said or written that one might have gone beyond.  But if Mr. Horn (and Mr. Gunatillake) subscribe to the views above, I'd submit they really aren't getting anywhere near what Buddhism, as most Buddhists understand it,  is.  They are conflating artificial strawberry flavor with that of a wild strawberry, the kind you can't get except at those higher end food stores we well-off  proto-hipsters keep in business these days.

And it's not a red herring.  People's livelihoods, and in some cases lives, might be depending on it.  I'm going to use a metaphor from the president of the place in which I work though the context is different.  If you had 5,000 years to live, such an approach might be OK.  But you probably don't have much more than 50 years on this planet. In that case you have to move quickly and sedulously to practice the Way, if it is the Way you think has benefit.  

Maybe some folks don't think the Way has benefit.  But if they call "not the Way" the Way, it will confuse folks at best, and at worst?

Your mileage may vary. Thanks for reading this post.

We're all either doing McMindfulness or 功夫

Another Tricycle interview mentioning McMindfulness, if not by explicitly by name...this time via an interview  with Hozan Alan Senuake.

When you worked at the Buddhist Peace Fellowship you had a sign with a quote from Thich Nhat Hanh, “Mindfulness must be engaged.” Mindfulness has now been brought into many different realms of our culture, and that seems generally beneficial. But I recently saw an article about mindfulness being used by the US military. This seems like an odd combination. It is true that all Buddhism is engaged because the precepts and teachings are all about how we are all in relation to everyone and in relation to everything around us. That by definition is “engaged.”

When the Buddha was teaching in North India 2500 years ago, the reality of peoples lives was almost completely socially determined by gender, caste, occupation, and the tribe they were born into. Basically, where you were born was where you stayed, in a geographic as well as social sense. In that context, what the Buddha taught was something that could be seen as a kind of radical individualism. He taught that your actual position in the world and your value in it was not to be based on your birth but on your actions, and that you had to take responsibility as an individual for your actions. Fast-forward to what we have today in the West, a terribly individualist ideology. The greatest threat to Buddhism, or any progressive movement, is that it can be turned into a commodity that is sold back to you. We are constantly being sold this commodity of individualism. I believe that if the Buddha were teaching today he would be teaching a more explicitly social doctrine. He would recognize that we have created systems and structures of suffering and that the suffering is not just about individuals experiencing racism, sexism, and various kinds of oppression; what we have are structures of suffering that also have to be addressed. Engaged Buddhism addresses exactly that intersection of our individual responsibility and individual involvement in the creation of systems of suffering.

The problem that you point out about mindfulness is important. I feel there is a risk of mindfulness being seen as a technology, presented as a technique, which is sold back to us. What I’m concerned about in terms of this increasingly popular approach is that it’s being psychologized and marketed.

Certainly a lot of it is very good. Mindfulness is now happening in schools and prisons, in settings where it is truly useful. But I worry about it being brought into a corporate context and a military context. In those contexts people are being helped to find ease and suffer less within systems that are causing suffering. Right Mindfulness would be looking at the actual function of that system as well as the freedom that an individual within that system feels. I don’t wish ill to people working in corporations or people in the military; everyone has the right to be at ease and to live without oppression. On the other hand, I think that an Engaged Buddhist perspective looks at the function of that system. That’s the larger, often neglected view of mindfulness.

Well, first of all, what about them samurai?  As I've written before, Zen as we know it would not have existed but for official patronage of governments, including but not limited to their cultivation by militaries.

Secondly,  having militaries practice Buddhist precepts is not entirely wrong.  It gets substantially more than problematic of course when it's used to justify atrocities, as was done in Japan during its militarist period.  I think Senuake gets that ultimately, but it's kind of odd to bring this up at all, I think.  We get that. 

Secondly, it is in part a technique, and there's nothing really wrong with that. 

In fact, cultivation of skill and technique is part and parcel of the practice. You can't get "good" at mindfulness - like martial arts, yes, like martial arts - without seeing its practice in all areas of your life. 

While I share many of the political positions of so-called engaged Buddhism, I remain skeptical of the attempt to fit Buddhism into a political ideology, any political ideology, because the political ideology is usually a shiny object we're using to distract ourselves from something far more important.

So when I see someone go in the direction of political Buddhism,  I tend to be skeptical of the depth and quality of their practice,  given how hard it is to deeply cultivate an authentic practice.

Some of the best practitioners might not be Buddhists...

For Too Much of My Sitting...

I worried over getting it right.   I really did. I would read something...something of the order of roshi so-and-so saying that you had to practice 無 like Christ dying on the cross...and I would berate myself in thought for not being 無  with all the attendant pain and anguish that goes with being crucified.

That's the sort of thing ... like how this blog hasn't been updated in a while...it's supposed to be, right?

The convergence of my Wing Chun with my 公案 practice has helped with that. And I've always been the kind of guy that says "Don't do stuff just because the 'authorities' want you to!" That is, I always subscribed to the Gandhi thing, being revolutionary as a good thing, and so on. 

I just never realized how much we're conditioned to get nervous about it.  We've got lots of nasty stuff conditioned into us that we're not even aware of.

So,  yeah, stuff matters...but don't kill yourself over it.

For example...there's a lot of people who (obviously to you) don't quite get it. (Like this?)  But ...we're all doing to perish eventually,  and genuine practice will continue anyway, and all that will sort itself out...nobody made me judge jury and executioner.  (I sympathize with Arun, on the point made here, and would up him one by saying it's also quite Western-centric too.)  However...

It is not exactly a matter of life and death.  It is not the Great Matter of Life and Death.  Or to put it better, the matter of life and death is realized in how you approach the endless sewage stream thrown your way every day of stuff is mildly (or severely) frustrating, annoying,  often patently obviously wrong, immoral, dangerous, etc. but is not, in and of itself anything but an opportunity for calm, relaxed practice. That's true even if we're angry and have every right to be.

Thanks for reading this. 

Zen and the Vultures of Anxiety

Not enough is said, at least in the Buddhist blogosphere, at least as far as I can perceive, about the role of relaxation in Zen practice.

It's a very important part of a practice that is life itself.


I'll be having more to say about it in the very near future.

Sometimes I think some of these Buddhist teachers really don't get it.

Via Tricycle (I was bored ) I found a link to that David Loy and Ron Purser article decrying "McMindfulness."  (It was also the one mentioned by Justin Whitaker.)  I normally don't cite either Tricycle or the Huffington Post in my blog, but in this case I'll make an exception, and you'll see why as you read through this.

First, having had the time to read what Loy and Purser wrote I have to say they just don't get it.  Really. 

I'll explain.

I've been doing some math lately as part of my work.  I have to set up a problem in math to verify that an algorithm we're designing will work. If I run the output of my problem through the algorithm, the algorithm should identify the problem. 

The problem involves generating a type of "coin flipping" process.  Now you can't use just any coin flipping process because there are cases where different coin flipping processes are statistically the same.  But if you tweak the problem just a little and put in some "memory" into the process (future flips depend on past flips) the problem becomes quite easy to solve.

In other words, if you introduce just enough structure and complexity into a problem representing reality, reality becomes easy to represent.  But if you don't have enough structure and complexity,  you're stuck.

That's what David Loy and Ron Purser don't get.  They're worried about "mindfulness" being used to promote consumer capitalism,  commoditize something, blah blah blah. It can't happen, because mindfulness alone is self limiting in its effects, and thus won't in any way marginalize the rest of Buddhism.

This is because existence, being so densely interdependent as it is, needs the other parts of Buddhism to go along with it. While Purser and Loy indicate that this is the case, they don't seem to get the implications of it.  Mindful murderers will still be murderers AND will be all the more aware of their suffering.  Mindful minimally regulated production for profit will still be inherently unstable economically and disruptive to millions of people. 

And besides all that we've seen this before! And ironically  the "spiritual mentor" of the founder of the Huffington Post is a case in point for what we've seen before!

Remember the "human potential" movement? Esalen Institute and est and its derivatives? One of  them was I think called Insight Seminars, led by a rumpled looking guy who later founded something called MSIA who had meetings of a sort that were later attended by Arianna Huffington, who became a righty scold and now is some kind of a pseudo-progressive media baroness who doesn't pay her bloggers, at least as of the last time I checked.  The MSIA - Arianna Huffington thing was documented in something called "Life 102," by one Peter McWilliams, which led to what McWilliams might have termed a SLAPP suit by the founder of MSIA (who would have characterized it differently no doubt, probably with lawyers), ...but that's all history. 

Existence is pretty dense and it's difficult or nearly impossible and often useless to isolate one part of it from another (then again there's science but I digress). But I read "Gestalt Therapy" by Frederick Perls back in my teens, and I have to say it was that which led to my interest in Buddhism, via existentialism.

Point is, McMindfulness is probably a gateway to the real thing; its predecessors were too.   But I think it's sort of ironic that 2 guys are using the Huffington Post, in part enabled by Arianna Huffington, whose experiences were shaped by MSIA, which was informed by the Human Potential Movement, which is based on Zen Buddhism, to decry the secularization of Buddhism!

I wonder if they were paid by Huffington. 

"Life"

What *is* American Buddhism anyway?

Justin Whitaker writes,

The story of Buddhism has always been one of adaptation and transformation. This month I am inviting a discussion about how Buddhism has adapted to and transformed America (that is, the Americas) with optional special attention to climate and climate change. 

Given the ongoing heatwave in the southwestern United States and the tragic consequences of a fire in Arizona yesterday, it only seems appropriate that as we reflect on our nations and Buddhism here, that we also consider how Buddhist principles and practices can go toward solving this growing crisis.

I'll be honest: I'm not sure what exactly is the discussion here.  Yeah, there's certain trendy things in psychology based on mindfulness bouncing around...that's a Western-besides-the-Americas thing, no? And regarding climate change and other political/environmental issues, I think American Buddhism is no less marginally useful per se in defining one political stance contra another.   Really, what do you think Edward Snowden's allegedly espoused Buddhism is why he's sort of stateless right now?  Isn't that a bit grandiose? How about Ted Kaczynski's brother's Buddhism? 

If I give you a testimonial about how "Buddhist practice helped me with X, and it can help the world with Y," I'll be doing a disservice to all concerned, despite the fact that yeah, it is a better path than the alternative, and worthy of dedicated practice.

I'm doing American Buddhism not-as-well-as-I'd-like in my own life, and those in my sangha are doing their own American Buddhism, and those in related sanghas are doing their own American Buddhism.

But maybe I ought to get to a comment that Thomas Armstrong wrote on my blog in response to the post on authenticity, because I think it bears examination, especially in regards to the above questions.   There's people in American Buddhism who are  nice.  They can be rather blissful.  There's also people in American Buddhism who aren't always nice.  Both groups of people though are certainly wounded, and perhaps like all of humanity, wounded deeply and condemned to be mortally wounded, whether it be through violence, sickness, or old age. 

I don't want bliss, or  nice in my practice.  It would be, um, nice, though,  in the midst of seeing into the nature of self that there was  just some authentic improvement relaxation and equanimity in the face of the inevitable.   And actually, "American" Buddhism didn't go there that much in that aspect (I had to learn some of that via other means that aren't strictly "Buddhist" at all, but not at all incompatible with it.) American or not, I, myself, had and have  to learn how to not give a hoot so much despite the Big Wound (whatever it is, and regardless of whether it merits the name, it's there).  But regardless of my degree of relaxation and equanimity or lack thereof, regarding practice, it is indeed what it is. 

But yet, yeah, that's American Buddhism.  One of many. Including "the Asians'" American Buddhism.

To return briefly to the climate change topic: humanity might or might not respond appropriately, and I'm not sure Buddhism has so much to do to with it potentially as the exercise of naked political power.   Japan, Buddhist and Shinto, reforested itself because it had a powerful aristocracy that could do so.  Spain did not, despite another powerful aristocracy.  Was it because Japan was Buddhist and Shinto and Spain was not? 

I doubt it, but what I don't doubt is that as the orders went out to reforest, the guys who transmitted the orders weren't nice and peaceful and blissful. I also don't think the orders to to deal decisively with Christian missionary imperialists were transmitted in a nice, peaceful and blisssful way either. 

Authenticity and Buddhism

Another article was recently published in the NY Times op-ed section on line that deserves an appropriate response, at least from a Zen Buddhist/existentialist perspective. This article is entitled "The Gospel According to Me," by two guys, on of which is a professor of philosophy at the New School for Social Research, and the other is a psychoanalyst.   That should kind of tell you the direction they're going in ...but  let me put some stuff in here to give some context:

The booming self-help industry, not to mention the cash cow of New Age spirituality, has one message: be authentic! Charming as American optimism may be, its 21st-century incarnation as the search for authenticity deserves pause. The power of this new version of the American dream can be felt through the stridency of its imperatives: Live fully! Realize yourself! Be connected! Achieve well-being! 

Despite the frequent claim that we are living in a secular age defined by the death of God, many citizens in rich Western democracies have merely switched one notion of God for another — abandoning their singular, omnipotent (Christian or Judaic or whatever) deity reigning over all humankind and replacing it with a weak but all-pervasive idea of spirituality tied to a personal ethic of authenticity and a liturgy of inwardness. The latter does not make the exorbitant moral demands of traditional religions, which impose bad conscience, guilt, sin, sexual inhibition and the rest. 

Unlike the conversions that transfigure the born-again’s experience of the world in a lightning strike, this one occurred in stages: a postwar existentialist philosophy of personal liberation and “becoming who you are” fed into a 1960s counterculture that mutated into the most selfish conformism, disguising acquisitiveness under a patina of personal growth, mindfulness and compassion. Traditional forms of morality that required extensive social cooperation in relation to a hard reality defined by scarcity have largely collapsed and been replaced with this New Age therapeutic culture of well-being that does not require obedience or even faith — and certainly not feelings of guilt. Guilt must be shed; alienation, both of body and mind, must be eliminated, most notably through yoga practice after a long day of mind-numbing work. 

Whereas the American dream used to be tied to external reality — say, America as the place where one can openly practice any religion, America as a safe haven from political oppression or America as the land of opportunity where one need not struggle as hard as one’s parents — now, the dream is one of pure psychological transformation. 

This is the phenomenon that one might call, with an appreciative nod to Nietzsche, passive nihilism. Authenticity is its dominant contemporary expression. In a seemingly meaningless, inauthentic world awash in nonstop media reports of war, violence and inequality, we close our eyes and turn ourselves into islands. We may even say a little prayer to an obscure but benign Eastern goddess and feel some weak spiritual energy connecting everything as we listen to some tastefully selected ambient music. Authenticity, needing no reference to anything outside itself, is an evacuation of history. The power of now.

This seems to be written by two guys, two intellectuals, who are so detached from themselves that they don't even realize they are writing about themselves here! (Like much of this type of moral scold literature, it's written in the first person plural, but of course isn't meant to be understood to apply to the authors themselves.)  But yes, it applies obviously to them. I mean, they decry a drive towards authenticity as it leads to a breakdown of the "classical distinction between work and nonwork." Do they expect their readers to put in effort into trying to understand them,  with the hopes of profiting from their efforts? 

But that's not why I'm writing this; I'm not really writing this because these guys don't realize that this stuff applies to them. 

To the guys who wrote the article: I try to practice mindfulness and yes, to be authentic at work not because I expect to succeed as a result of that practice, but because the alternative tends to create greater despair, suffering, and intractability.  I may or may not succeed in what I do; "success" per se is not the issue, any more than mindful practice to help me deal with idiotically created traffic light patterns (or lack thereof) won't do anything to reset the traffic light patterns to give everyone all green lights.

So the rest of their argument to the extent it's coherent, falls apart from there. 

And it's not about a search for authenticity or "becoming who you are," it's about understanding  (悟り) who/what/X is authentically (or, less deeply, seeing one's True Nature)  and then appropriately acting and responding.

There are other critiques that can be made of this article, in particular, that it is absurdly indifferent to millions of underemployed Americans, it's absurdly indifferent to what are global trends in this regard, spanning the globe with the exception of Africa and some of the Islamic regions. 

It's really why media such as the Times seems to be falling on hard times.  Once this stuff could be done credibly; nowadays any ol' blogger who's read a smattering of Buddhist literature can see through this type of stuff.

Let me close with this: if you're not acting according to your conscience, acting authentically what then? You don't evade responsibility, that's for sure. People figured that out in the West kinda sorta after World War II.  You can't use the Nuremberg defense against acting according to your conscience, i.e., acting authentically.

Fantasy in Buddhism (or the lack of it) and the role of "inventive pretend" in children's activity

There is a strange op-ed by T. M. Luhrmann in yesterday's NY Times about C. S. Lewis, religious belief, and the role of fantasy, at least from a Western perspective. Here's a bit of it:

In “Mere Christianity,” Lewis wrote that to pretend helps one to experience God a real. In “Narnia” he offered a way to pretend — by depicting a God who is so explicitly not a God from an ordinary human church. Aslan keeps God safe from human clumsiness and error. 

What does it mean that our society places such a premium on fantasy and imagination? “No culture,” observes the child psychologist Suzanne Gaskins, “comes close to the level of resources for play provided by middle-class Euro-American parents.” In many traditional societies, children play by imitating adults. They pretend to cook, marry, plant, fish, hunt. 

“Inventive pretend,” in which children pretend the fantastic or impossible (enchanted princesses, dragon hunters) “is rarely — if ever — observed in non-industrialized or traditional cultures,” Gaskins says. That may be because inventive play often requires adult involvement. Observing the lack of fantasy play among the Manus children in New Guinea, Margaret Mead noted that “the great majority of children will not even imagine bears under the bed unless the adult provides the bear.” 

Westerners, by contrast, not only tolerate fantasy play but actively encourage it, for adults as well as for children. We are novel readers, movie watchers and game players. We have made J. K. Rowling very wealthy. 

This suggests that we imagine a complex reality in which things might be true — materially, spiritually, psychologically. Science leads us to draw a sharp line between what is real and what is unreal. At the same time, we live in an age in which we are exquisitely aware that there are many theories, both religious and scientific, to explain the world, and many ways to be human.

Much has been written about the role of ritual in Buddhism, and that might be where it comes closest to the "role of fantasy" described here, but I think it's a false analogy nonetheless. I think it's a false analogy because, at least in my experience, the role of ritual is performative.  The chants are chants, and to put anything more into the chant other than the chant itself is to make it into something it's not and to distract from it.  Chanting the Heart Sutra  - especially in the way it's been given to us via China and Japan and Viet Nam - is to put its "meaning" into a different category than what we in the West might commonly give it.  It is not pretending by any stretch of the imagination, nor is it strictly speaking any kind of literalist assertion - but it winds up being true nonetheless.  Maybe I'll get back to this regular blogging thing by writing 10 posts or so just on the Heart Sutra, because it could be done.  But I digress.

No, I don't think Buddhism has any kind of this fantasy stuff at all; in some forms of Buddhism, there are some particularly elaborate metaphors, and yes, there are Buddhists that take Bodhisattvas and Buddhas to be actual beings, and at least some are.  But we don't "pretend" this to experience something as real, but rather we try to experience experience on its own terms, I think. 

So that brings into question this whole "inventive pretend" thing for kids, because clearly it's not needed for any kind of religious or moral or skillful training in and of itself.  Inventive pretend probably is some kind of double edged sword - inventive pretend might be useful for children incorporating social memes into their consciousness, but it might also be that the social memes which are inculcated also exclude certain unpleasant aspects of the culture, and that these aspects might be excluded to the detriment of the children and society at large. What sort and degree of "inventive pretend" is needed to create a suicide bomber?

My son did not spend long in this phase of life.  Though he did watch Barney too much, until, like every other kid, he was repulsed by that kind of media. 

Lost in the forest

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I've not been blogging a lot lately because of extreme business, both with work and with other activities.  

But yesterday something interesting happened, and it's worth, um, noting.

I was going running; lately the weather in the Pacific Northwest has been spectacularly good, which is somewhat odd for this time of year.  It seems summer has come early, and I'm making the most of it.  

As is my habit when I go running, I run outside on trails not far from my home. Yesterday, I chose one in Lacamas Lake Park, whose "map" is pictured above.  Note that the trails' signage isn't well laid out.

I got lost.

It's only a couple of miles or so on each side, but after running 40 minutes, about 3.5 miles, well, you can imagine how I viewed the prospect of another 2-3 miles of walking before I found my car.  I was not happy with the signage, to illustrate dishonestly how I deal with frustration sometimes. And all the Middle European folktales came to mind.  Hansel and Gretel. Ah! So that's why they have these tales,  I thought; it's a bit unnerving to be lost in the forest, and if it's a big one you could get dead.  And in fact every year in the Pacific Northwest it happens to at least one or two people.

And after a while, with my legs aching, I realized there was nothing I could do except continue on to try to get out; asking people I saw for the right path out (who said, not particularly helpfully, "There's signs.")  So I kept trying, and luckily had a practice that I kept as I kept trying.

And I realized it was a metaphor for life; we're all lost in the forest, and trying to get out, and there's nothing we can do but keep trying.  We don't want to be there, and it's not entirely "our" fault, but  we're there and we have an honest to goodness plight.  We all have a plight. And the signage may or may not be reliable. Even when it says "YOU ARE HERE" you may still not be where you think you are, and may not know where you're going.  But you've got to keep on the path.

I don't know if there's a koan about this but there really ought to be.  Sometimes it's amazing how existence just has these nice scenarios laid out so you can assign a metaphor to it related to practice, you know? They're there so you can remember to practice.