Progressive Buddhism

Kalachakra Ceremony 2012, a guest post by Lisa Tully

noreply@blogger.com (Buddhist_philosopher) — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 01:24:00 +0000

Lisa runs spiritual group tours to India which her two Tibetan friends Lama Buga & Lama Kalden co-host with her. Taking people to attend teachings by the Dalai Lama & learn meditation, she does this work to open hearts and expand minds way beyond norm! And who better to help do that than the Dalai Lama himself? www.spiritualbackpackersindia.com

Kalachakra 2012 – How The Dalai Lama Raised The Spiritual Roof In India!

Ever dreamed of experiencing the power of Tibetan Buddhism at its peak? Or thought of fully letting go of all physical comforts and attachments in search of the ultimate comfort, that of the mind and heart?

Upon hearing about the Kalachakra initiation happening in Bodhgaya India, the place where Buddha achieved enlightenment whilst sitting under the Bodhi tree, I just knew I had to be there. However I will put my hands up straight away and say I didn’t fully understand what it would entail. What I did know was that Tibetans travel from far and wide, including from Chinese occupied Tibet to get to this special 10-day tantric initiation. All sects of Tibetan Buddhism are represented, so it really is one big ol’ Tibetan party and one that the Dalai Lama does not do on a regular basis. In 2011 there was one held in Washington D.C but previous to that it was as far back as 2006 since the last one held at Amarvati in India.

As I began to share with people both Tibetans and Westerners that I really wanted to go the overall response was don’t do it! It will be filthy dirty, totally chaotic and you will most definitely fall ill. The reasons for their concerns were Bodhgaya is situated in Bihar one of the poorest states in India and is filled with beggars, sickness and a understandable culture of get what you can from whoever you can. Add 300,000 Kalachakra pilgrims to that and the picture definitely starts to look somewhat daunting.

When I actually arrived in India I had no hotel or transport booked for the Kalachakra which others had done up to a year previous. Hotel prices were through the roof at an escalated price that was fifteen times the norm! However somehow a room manifested at a fraction of the cost others were paying at the last minute in a Burmese monastery affording me a peaceful escape from the Kalachakra crowds. Having been there a good two weeks before the event itself I got to witness the build up to it including the assembly of the breathtaking chair for His Holiness and the raising of colourful thankas all around it. In general Tibetans wait till the last minute to arrive because of the inflated costs but when they did finally arrive they did so by the busload and that in itself was a sight to see. Armed with pots, pans and bedding of all sorts it was not unusual to hear of up to 12 of them sleeping in one double sized room. Friends of mine from Gyumed monastery were sleeping in a hall with no less than 500 monks with barely enough room to turn over.

So what is it that drives the Tibetans to take on such physical challenges without a second thought? The Kalachakra initiation was given over 10 days and is considered to be the one of the most auspicious initiations within the world of Tibetan Buddhism. There was eight days of preparation rituals during which the Dalai Lama and his monks made the incredible Kalachkra sand mandala. In the morning time we could go into the grounds and listen to their chants and watch them prepare. Sitting there in the energy of the proceedings was a blessing in itself as meditations ran so so deep. In the afternoon the place would fill to bursting and beyond with steadfast devotees from around the globe eager to listen to teachings by His Holiness. Outside the same numbers of people were blocking the streets as they watched the event on the big screens. It was an all time record for the number of devotees attending a Kalachakra. After the teachings and preparations were done, the initiation itself happened over the final two days.

I feel it is important to mention that at the end of the day we fell into our rock hard beds exhausted, crashing out immediately. Yet the Dalai Lama was getting up at three in the morning most mornings to prepare, followed by giving teachings and all the while holding us in his big heart. The energy of this wonderful 76-year-old monk as he calls himself, is indeed endless. On the night of the first day of initiations something really special occurred which I will never forget. I was sitting meditating under the Bodhi tree in the Mahabodhi temple as around the perimeter devotees walked uttering their mantras and prayers. It was totally packed with people shuffling and prostrating their way around. In the distance I heard singing and I couldn’t figure out where it was coming from. Then sure enough as the crowd continued to circle around the ancient melody got louder and louder. A throng of Tibetan monks were signing their hearts out and as they flowed past it did not falter. It was as if the song had spread around the perimeter like a flame to petrol. In that moment I felt like I had the chance to witness the true beauty of Tibetan Buddhism. The Dalai Lama had worked so hard for eight solid days, had given us the initiation and we were as high as spiritual kites. It was totally electric and my initial thought was the Chinese government will never ever dampen this spirit and I hoped so much that the 200 Chinese spies reported to be at this event were witnessing that moment.

The Dalai Lama then finished by giving us the White Tara initiation for long life. When he was leaving Bodhgaya people were understandably running after his car crying and I was grateful I didn’t have to witness him going for I know I would have been right there with them. The sand mandala remained for 3 days to allow us to go and have a closer look. According to a book distributed at the Kalachakra in Washington D.C, just by looking at the mandala you remove all negative karma from countless eons previously. A wonderful sight it was, the feeling from it was one of inner beauty. The ceremony then ended by monks releasing the positive energy of the mandala into the everyday world by a final ritual. The Kalachakra is for world peace and I have no doubts whatsoever it has the deepest of impacts.

As Bodhgaya is quite a small town many people had to camp and tents were rented out ranging from $3 to $100 per night. However it rained severely on the first day which is apparently normal for when high Lamas arrive and start cleansing the place. But that meant conditions on the campsites were pretty awful and only went downhill from there due to poor organisation and sanitation. Towards the end of the initiation the Dalai Lama asked why should people pay to stay in those awful tents when we have received so much in donations? So he requested that all tent dwellers get a refund and so they did. Then he left not taking one remaining Rupee of donation with him; instead he gave it to the local schools and hospitals of Bodhgaya. This man has the power to change the world…so why won’t we let him?

If you're interested in finding out more or contacting Lisa,

Click here to watch our video clip to learn more, or visit www.spiritualbackpackersindia.com

An Apologist For Meditation

noreply@blogger.com (SFlanigan) — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 03:08:00 +0000

This is a proposition that meditation can be a part of realizing our interconnectedness and that it remains a mission critical practice for our global welfare. Even if our world or our personal consciousness is transformed, it will remain a critical discipline to maintain. While some ways of knowing and social systems may seem far advanced, these systems exist in a web. Viewing this web from only one point of view where the other threads seem to intersect will mislead some of us into reasoning that what is good for one intersection of the web is good for all intersections. A meditative practice can help us transcend the local nature of our observations.

Part of my discovery of Buddhism and Eastern mysticism came through a teen-age curiosity of subatomic sciences and their parallels to Eastern thought through the Tao of Physics. The book certainly provided a broader point of view than the comparative religion studies in my parochial school. The advances in physics are so profound that the experimental outcomes regarding the existence of Higgs particles have stadium side seating in the press. Their existence and implications have even received preemptive denialism in fundamentalist circles. I persist in hope that scientific advancements will somehow lead to a transformation in a global way of thinking that eliminates warfare and oppression, but I find myself in the here and now where that is not the case.

While advancement in any field can be exciting, we still have the task of advancing a sound moral philosophy through how we treat others and ourselves and achieving balance. The implications of fanaticism not only impact our global welfare, but our well being as individuals. We have countless examples of how advances in science have not lead to spiritual revolutions, but are more readily adopted in warfare, marketed technology and economic systems. We even have a recent proposition from an AMA publication that vaccinations be made mandatory for the greater good. Some propose that the publication of this point of view reveals a fanaticism coming from scientific circles and that its implications should be thoroughly examined within the context of the Nazi movement and it’s use of science. Whether or not one considers this a valid point, it is possible for extremism to arise from any school of thought.

There will continually emerge countless calls to action for each of us to find non-violent ways of defending our selves and balancing out oppression, fanaticism, and the social systems from which they emerge. These systems exist either formally, informally, or as an unintended by product of our social constructs. We are faced with formulating non-violent responses to our current and immediate circumstances. This sometimes means eliminating fear, the influence of propaganda, our preoccupations with the material world, and our ideas of the self. Achieving a sate where we can focus on our interconnectedness can highlight the role of meditation.

It is often stated that meditation can bypass critical thinking. Some of us, like myself, can see this as a healthy thing in a constructive context. There are others who propose that it is dangerous. Meditation has been studied by science, marketed by business, and has been preached against in some religious circles. There is a lot that plays into the mythology surrounding meditation and those who engage in the practice. It is a remarkable way of knowing accessible for anyone and is a practice I would encourage even for non-Buddhists, but there is no universal perception on what meditation actually accomplishes or what it should accomplish. So I have to clearly affirm that this is only based on my personal experience.

Our institutionalized science, based on critical thinking, has made profound discoveries but has methodological limits. Philosophy, sometimes institutionalized in law, is rooted in critical thinking, but alas, a review of philosophy can reveal that deductive reasoning can result in radically contradictory outcomes on paper and in real life. These are just examples and not a condemnation or catalog of ways of knowing. Each of those referenced have made tremendous contributions, but we are still left with our individual roles in this world as interconnected beings and how we engage.

I began meditating as part of a mindfulness practice. To my beginning mind, the outcomes of mindfulness outweigh any other consideration as to how to behave in a society. In spite of what I had been told growing up in the South, I wasn’t worshiping idols or a god or a historical figure. I was on a long way to recognizing that I had the potential to escape the cycle of suffering that I identified with the self. Once I connected the ripple effect of my own actions in my little pond to my personal suffering, I was able to realize that all of our ponds are connected and the ripple effects of our actions have global consequences. As I am only restating conclusions thousands of years old, this is just an example of how a meditative practice came to influence me and helped me realize the impact of clinging and craving.

Our collective craving and clinging are indeed interconnected and our personal actions have a global impact. This idea was implanted in me intellectually many years before today by Buddhist thought, but in recent time it became a personal experience. What was once an ancient idea to me has resulted in a personal call to action not only to transform how I treat my body, mind and spirit, but also to carefully examine my impact on the greater world and transform my behavior accordingly. I concluded that I did not exist in isolation and that patterns of self-defeating behavior resonated beyond the self. The discovery of one spoke of the wheel through personal experience can indeed be related to the personal discovery and realization of the others.

Across civilizations there was a point where science, religion and philosophy were intertwined. In some cultures they still are. Consider the cosmological implications of Darwin, Copernicus, and Galileo that some traditions refute even today. While the debate on the root cause on climate change is in progress, there are even perplexing claims that the climate is not really changing at all. This is merely an acknowledgement that we are in a modern era where many view these three threads that often intersect, as separate and conflicting truths, but were once imperceptible as different and seemingly one-dimensional. One defense of some schools of thought arising from these threads is to deny the evidence arising other schools of thought and to enforce a one-dimensional state. To deny any thread is to deny the web.

Given that absolute clinging to one way of knowing seems to result in denying the other ways of knowing, I can only reference Thich Nhat Hanh to effect reconciliation, “For a Buddhist to be attached to any doctrine, even a Buddhist one, is to betray the Buddha”. I have to note to non-Buddhist readers that this betrayal doesn’t necessarily point to only the historical Buddha, but also to the Buddha that is in all of us including non-Buddhists. This therefore extends the behavioral manifestations of our beliefs and knowledge to all people today and future generations.

We are at on odd point in space time as observers in the universe, to where our material observations have lead us to understand that all the galaxies are moving away from each other at an ever increasing rate. We have propositions that the net energy of the universe is zero. This has lead for some to further propose that the universe could have indeed come from nothing. There are popular views as to our current cosmology that include propositions of dark energy and dark matter, but there are also opposing views in scientific circles that our fundamental assumptions of gravity may lead us to errant conclusions about this. These are truly exciting debates that reflect advancement in knowledge, but alas, we are still in the here and now.

There may be a point in the future where an intelligent species, equipped with our scientific methods and technology could possibly conclude that the only galaxy in existence is the one they live in. This is because the light from all other galaxies will never reach their observatories while the unrevealed galaxies continue to hurtle away faster and faster. The implications of this on any theory of everything would be profound.

This illustrates a point. No matter how rigorous we are in methodology and reasoning, there are limits to both philosophy and science based on our senses. We must include the here and now from our meditations and our interconnectedness in any revelation for global action. When reasoning exclusively depends on observations from our five senses and instrumentation to extend these senses, it brings to light that other ways of knowing which bypass critical thinking of material observations are either of great value, or a threat to a point of view.

It is quite possible that a future society could come up with a mathematical abstraction that does explain their observations and predictions to their satisfaction. They would have a unified theory. The conclusions nonetheless will simply be incomplete because they are unable to falsify the idea that they are the only galaxy in existence. I would invite the proposition that we are beholden to the same limitations because we are in many ways this future society. Adoption of a single construct, be it social, economic, religious, scientific, or philosophical, even if it appears thorough, predictive and comprehensive to our five senses, will inevitably result in a denial of the entire web. It is understandable that meditation is perceived as a threat to those who exclusively subscribe to one point of view because the outcomes transcend our local and material observations.

While I tend to embed many calls to social action that do not involve sitting, I want to balance out these calls to action. Meditation is critical and it is equally a valid call to action. It can give a context to our material observations that govern our social world and personal reality. It is a way of knowing that has been utilized for an unknown period of time and it is sometimes challenged and diminished in modern times. For me, the goal is to have this way of knowing not only in a sitting position, but as I go about in the world, to have a balance between the electronic signals my senses transmit to the brain and what arises when these signals are diminished. There is not only hope for our future, but for the here and now. One way for a complete beginner like myself is to strive to touch the here and now and to be driven by compassion. This can be facilitated through meditation.

We have to maintain and pass on a practice and tradition that connects the inward world with the outward world. Even if the outward world achieves some perceived state of unification, we are still left with the nature of clinging and craving in an individual level that will manifest between individuals and institutions. It is easy to look through history and find that many social catastrophes have been rooted in greed, lust for power, and fanaticism.

Some seem to be so perplexed by the persistent impact of personal craving and clinging, that they can only explain its cumulative impact in terms of a persistent, global, and intentional social conspiracy. I more readily accept the explanation of the cumulative impact of karma out of balance. It can sometimes seem overwhelming as if it to approach us like a tidal wave or an upcoming asteroid. We can sometimes feel paralyzed by the impact of our personal or social decisions. Even if we feel annihilated by cause and effect, personally or socially, we are still left with the task of escaping the cycle of suffering for others and ourselves. To feed craving and clinging, our awareness is the subject of competition, not only by the natural world and addictions, but also media, technology, and propaganda. What is the reward for devoting our consciousness to these things but more clinging and craving? Again, I am only restating ideas thousands of years old, but now it is personal experience and meditation has helped me shape those experiences. This is why I am sharing this proposition.

There are many resources that we are all familiar with on the secular benefits of meditation. I leave you with a few artifacts of some schools of thought. You might conclude that these are meant to capitalize on fear. Their presentation seems to be constructed to make people fearful of some forms of practice by selectively quoting science to advance their point of view without a constructive balance.

Progressive Buddhism is Engaged Buddhism

noreply@blogger.com (Hae In Sunim Ernest Lissabet) — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 14:34:00 +0000

Happy New Year! On behalf of the Taego Order Overseas Parish, and with the explicit permission of my honored Teacher the Venerable Dr. Jongmae Kenneth Park, Bishop of the Overseas Parish, it is my pleasure and honor to post up my first entry on this blog site. I hope in the year to come, I can post up some interesting topics for the audience that follows this blog, and I thank the blog moderator for accepting me as a writer here.

Please kindly note, that any opinions I post on this site, are my own opinion only, and must NOT be construed as the official position of the Taego Order.

When I first came across this blog site, I was immediately intrigued. The notion of 'Progressive Buddhism' is interesting to me because, I feel it describes my own perspective on the Buddha-Dharma. In our times, the word 'Progressive' has become synonomous with left-leaning political action, so the integration of my political inclinations with my spiritual practice, seems natural and appropriate to me.

But if we consider the teachings of the Buddha-Dharma carefully, it seems very clear that the Buddha discouraged political affiliation or factionalism. The Buddha taught that when we support a particular political agenda, we are plunged straightaway into the world of false views and dualism: Hot and cold, good and evil, up and down, left and right, Democrat and Republican. For this reason, many Buddhist practitioners are wary of political engagement.

However, not all practitioners feel as though these injunctions must be dogmatically and narrowly interpreted, myself among them. Like some aspects of the Dharma, the teachings of the Buddha were a product of his time and place. For example, I am a married monk, and the Order I serve-- the Taego Zen Order of Korea-- is one of the few Buddhist Orders in the world that permits married clergy. Here is one aspect of the teaching that has been updated for our times. Another example might be the Precept for monks not to sit on high chairs, which is obviously less relevant in Western culture than in Asian culture. And so forth. There are other examples as well.

Buddhism emerged in a time and place where our modern notions of participatory democracy simply did not exist. 'Politics' in the Buddha's time meant 'Monarchy' and 'dynastic factionalism.' The Buddha could not imagine a political system where common folk could vote. Therefore, if one is to strictly and literally interpret the Dharma-- like some Christians do with the Bible-- then we end up with a belief system that would basically require Buddhists to drop out of participatory democracy.

But most Buddhists I know are not literalists (that would not be 'Upaya' or 'Skillful Teaching'), and as anyone who has spent any time in a western Zen center will tell you, a majority of western Buddhists seem to be political progressives.

Yet this is certainly not the case in Asia. In many Asian societies, the Buddha-Sangha is decidedly conservative in their social and political affiliations. Likewise, these are societies with little historical tradition of democracy, until fairly recently (in the 20th century). If the truth be told, the Asians are just as new at this business of integrating Buddhism with Democracy, as the westerners are.

So if we look closely at the Asian Buddhist experience with democracy, what we find is a fairly high level of political engagment. In fact, the very concept of 'Engaged Buddhism' emerged from the anti-war and politically active career of Thich Nhat Hanh. He was protesting the Vietnam War and the destruction of his country. "You cannot meditate when bombs are falling outside" he once said. Likewise, in Tibet a substantial number of monks have been arrested by the authorities for protesting Chinese rule, and in Burma the Buddha-Sangha has emerged as the primary nexus of resistance against the brutal military junta that rules the nation. So even in the Asian experience, we find that Buddhist monks, laymen and women are resisting oppression in our times.

It is therefore clear that in Asia, Buddhists stand against injustice and (more importantly) are willing to take action against it. This is why I find the idea that Buddhists must not be politically engaged to be incomprehensible, the equvalent of saying that we must not respond to the injustices around us. I did not sign up to ignore injustice.

This is also the reason why most western Buddhists seem to be politically left-leaning. Buddhism teaches us to see clearly, without delusion, so naturally many Buddhists apply this to the democratic political landscape around them. And what do we see? Here in the States, we see that both principal political parties are beholden to Wall Street; but it is also clear that one party has an agenda that is anti-science, anti-immigrant, anti-gay, nursing greivances and favoring policies that re-distributes income and wealth upwards. This looks like injustice to me.

So can a Buddhist be a political conservative? If by 'conservative' we merely mean someone who subscribes to market economics, the answer is yes. But increasingly, in our times simple market economics are also associated with the ugly agenda noted above, so my sense is that a politically conservative Buddhist, would have to engage in some amazing mental gymnastics in order to reconcile that agenda, with the compassionate nature of the Buddha-Dharma.

In the end, that is what attracts so many westerners to Buddhism: the compassionate nature of the Buddha's teachings. And that is why the notion of 'Progressive Buddhism' is NOT an oxymoron, because at its core the concept of 'Progressive Buddhism' is really just 'Engaged Buddhism,' which in turn is-- in my opinion-- inherent in the teachings of the Buddha-Dharma.

The Greek philosopher Plato once said, "Those who are too smart to engage in politics are punished by being governed by those who are dumber." And less compassionate, I might add. Is this not clear by now to every Buddhist?

I am a Progressive Buddhist, and I am not alone. I look forward to being part of this blog in the year to come, and once again I wish you all Happy New Year.

Let the New Year’s Resolution Be the New Year’s Revolution

noreply@blogger.com (SFlanigan) — Sun, 25 Dec 2011 04:40:00 +0000

I know that if you are reading this that chances are that compassion is in your daily meditations and that living a good life is the first thing you think about when waking up in the morning. This is a reminder that each time you act on the compassion you meditate upon you are participating in a revolution.

The war on poverty, the social movement on poverty, does not have to start at the steps of the capital in Washington and we don’t need to wait for our next trip to the voting booth to do anything about it. We can engage today.

Below are some popular 2012 new year's resolutions from USA.GOV. Most of them I would probably fail at, as my friends and family would tell you, but I try.

• Drink Less Alcohol
• Eat Healthy Food
• Get a Better Education
• Get a Better Job
• Get Fit
• Lose Weight
• Manage Debt
• Manage Stress
• Quit Smoking
• Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle
• Save Money
• Take a Trip
• Volunteer to Help Others

For today, I will focus on doing a better job of helping others in 2012 than I did in 2011.

In recent years for me, before a deeper change in perspective, this meant giving a few hours for a cause and maybe even a whole overnight weekend at a homeless shelter here and there, but as I began to dig in to what others were doing around the modern world from the comfort of my climate controlled living space in front of a modern laptop computer my perspective widened even more.

This might mean different things to different people here in the United States but what has it meant for Buddhists around the world in recent pasts to help others?

For some of our brothers and sisters it meant and does mean:

Owning only a bowl and a robe
Sacrifice of Freedom
Sacrifice of Life

Let’s start with an economic catastrophe in 2007 that was induced by a military controlled government in Burma / Myanmar. Here the government was oppressing through taxation and giving a little bit back through fuel subsidies. The economy adapted this and suddenly subsidies went away. This, of course, wrecked the livelihood of the common people and started a non-violent movement known as the Saffron Revolution in Myanmar, where the proportion of military spending to the overall economy cannot be overstated.

Even though the populous revolution was non violent, people died and monks continue to be imprisoned and tortured.

People are equally suffering here in the United States outside of our front doors. When I look out my window I can see people sifting through the dumpsters and occasionally someone sits in the window seal outside of the Salvation Army operating hours to put their head in their hands.

We are in the midst of an economic catastrophe and we are empowered to change the impact. When I am short on money I try to invest in kindness.

Can I do more with my hands that fish for spare change to hand out on the streets after a walk to the grocery store? What can we do here in the United States between going to retreats and reading our quarterly journals?

The revolution has already started in kitchens and on doorsteps; it can move into our closets, our basements and garages. You might be shocked that it can even be started with your neighbors and co workers who are doing everything they can to keep from living on the streets when the next month’s housing cost is due.

We may not know each other, but we can do this together. Living by example, in unison, in the coming year can have a powerful impact and we may not even have to be in the same place at the same time to do it.

Consuming less and giving more can produce a social transition with the right numbers. For me, giving more also means also overcoming my fear of strangers so I can more effectively put in to practice what I put into blog posts.

----------------------
Sean E Flanigan
Evanston, IL

Engaged Means Engaged. Need Some Inspiration?

noreply@blogger.com (SFlanigan) — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 04:31:00 +0000

The human body is limited in time and space, but the human spirit may be another matter.

The point is, that a Buddhist need not only look to those that self identify as other Buddhists as a source for how enlightened and compassionate people behave. We can sit with our legs crossed and meditate, which is very good habit indeed, but we can always use our hands if our bodies are able. My hands are not well trained so I have to look at others no matter what their religious tradition for how to use them.

Need some Inspiration?

Here is the current mission statement for the Inspiration Café and a short history of who founded it:

“Located in Uptown on Chicago's north side, Inspiration Cafe provides restaurant-style meals, case management, support groups, life-skills training, financial assistance and other services to homeless men and women in a therapeutic community that promotes dignity and respect.

Guests of the Cafe have access to the full range of Inspiration Corporation's programs, including employment training and career services, voice mail, and subsidized housing. Inspiration Cafe's goal is to help men and women overcome the causes of their homelessness and find stability by securing income and affordable housing.

Inspiration Cafe was founded in 1989 by Lisa Nigro, a Chicago police officer who began searching for a personal response to the homelessness she encountered in Uptown. She began by loading up a red wagon with sandwiches and coffee to distribute to homeless individuals on the streets.”

I am a consumer of the Café, not in the sense that I frequent as a customer, but in the sense that I will use the lessons learned from selflessness in my own life. I am, in a sense, a consumer of the inspiration.

There is certainly suffering from the illusions of separateness we all embrace, and one way to relieve this suffering is certainly through our peaceful processes.

Make no bones about it, this is a call to action for self identified Buddhists to arise from the Zafu and get to work. If you can’t think of anything contact me because I know of a certain someone that is founding another mission based organization.

Here is a video (as requested from the moderator to liven things up) from Lisa’s blog http://www.lisanigrospeaks.com/

Sean E Flanigan

Evanston, IL

Mantra Meditation

noreply@blogger.com (Buddhist_philosopher) — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 12:00:00 +0000

In this guest post, Allison Brooks explores the history and power or mantra meditation. As always, we encourage your feedback. What is your experience with mantras? Do you think the science holds up?

A connected whole offers healing

Meditation is an old tradition that has many roots and many different types. It is way for a person to look within, concentrate, and reflect on oneself to relax the body and ease the mind. This type of self-hypnosis/medication helps one to de-stress and connect with the mind and spirit to achieve self-healing and balance the chakras, or energy points of the body. Meditation encompasses a broad spectrum of relaxation techniques spanning from clearing the mind of all conscious thoughts, to visual imagery, or focusing on one particular word. While typical meditation requires stillness, some like Tai Chi or Qigong involve various movements.

Mantra is a form of mediation that focuses on single thought. A continuous repetition of a word, phrase, or sound prevents any distracting thought to disturb the mind. Other forms of meditation allow the mind to flutter, acknowledging every thought without judging its importance.

The definition of mantra comes from a saying the Vedas which states that “Speech is the essence of humanity”. During a Mantra session, words and/or phrases are chanted thoughtfully and with attention to bring a physical effect. Mantra meditation can be used to help ease the mind for any matter. For example, it can affect change to a certain incident, to regain a healthy state of well-being, or to improve health and healing. They are specifically created to produce a certain vibration and intent to promote a certain state of meditation. They are normally chanted until the mind, body, and emotions are transcended and the subconscious is revealed.

This form of meditation is used to bring the mind and soul for their wandering states to a more focused and relaxed one. Many people have sworn by the effects of Mantra meditation bringing the body back to normal and reviving the connection with mind, body, and spirit. People not only use this form to reconnect, but also to heal. Many people with a cancer prognosis use mantra to focus the body on healing and unblock an energy that would inhibit the healing process. Many have claimed to recover faster or that the symptoms of treatments are alleviated from these techniques.

Allison Brooks is a recent college graduate and a holistic health nut, aiming to enlighten people about the benefits of natural and integrative therapies.

Transmigration – Rebirth Reconsidered

noreply@blogger.com (Buddhist_philosopher) — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 14:30:00 +0000

At the request of the author, this post has been removed.

The Role of Engaged Buddhism In Victimization

noreply@blogger.com (SFlanigan) — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 00:17:00 +0000

This is not a koan, which is designed to bypass lateral thinking. This is a reasoning process given the long tradition of rational thinking in Buddhism. Siddhartha Gutama was a proponent of critical thinking.

The implied call to action of this post may not be to simply occupy Wall Street but to also abandon it by changing the way we consume, not only literally by what we buy, but also what we buy into. Recursively, we can change what we buy into by changing what we consume as Engaged Buddhists.

There has been a lot of talk about corporations and their role in our economic crisis. Corporations are social constructs. They exist as a result of social agreement, much like laws and money. This establishes corporations as objects in our thinking.

A lot of people give objects in their thinking, such as corporations, human characteristics. This is an example of anthropomorphism, where we take something and assign it human characteristics. We can give a deity a white beard and a robe, but in terms of the current economic crisis we assign corporations the characteristics of being evil. Once this begins, people can identify themselves as victims and certain corporations as oppressors.

How did it happen that a mere social agreement became anthropomorphized into an oppressor? Is this an example of a Mahayana illusion?

This begins the dialogue of how corporate leaders establish oppression in democratic societies without the use of the military force. One of the main arguments of this post is that unmindful consumption helped feed the economic crisis. Without unmindful consumption, at least some corporate greed is powerless.

“Aware of the suffering caused by unmindful consumption, I vow to cultivate good health, both physical and mental, for myself, my family, and my society by practicing mindful eating, drinking and consuming. I vow to ingest only items that preserve peace, well-being and joy in my body, in my consciousness, and in the collective body and consciousness of my family and society. I am determined not to use alcohol or any other intoxicant or to ingest foods or other items that contain toxins, such as certain TV programs, magazines, books, films and conversations. I am aware that to damage my body or my consciousness with these poisons is to betray my ancestors, my parents, my society and future generations. I will work to transform violence, fear, anger and confusion in myself and in society by practicing a diet for myself and for society. I understand that a proper diet is crucial for self-transformation and for the transformation of society.” - Thich Nhat Hanh

Some companies that are profit driven have to generate demand; not only by influencing us to buy, but also by influencing how we think and live through propaganda and advertising. Other companies, like the ones that control the water supply in third world countries, only have to enforce their control through the government via the military. Is the United States a third world country or are we in a powerless democracy?

The mortgage crisis may have been aggravated by a lack of compliance with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act by individuals, which is certainly not being followed up with the Justice Department, but it may also have the result of consumer demand and even fraud among mortgage applicants.

Unmindful consumption not only refers to what we put into our bodies but also what we put into our minds which inevitably plays into how we live our lives. When some people purchase a mortgage they are not only purchasing an interest rate, but a lifestyle. Others may be purchasing a farm to grow food but since farmers only consist of 1% of the population that may not be the 1% we are concerned about.

The American lifestyle is promoted in all forms of media, some which did not even exist at the time that Thay wrote this precept.

This is not an argument that there are no victims and that there is no evil. Once we recognize certain economic dynamics, as the anthropomorphism of a social construction, understanding the role that consumerism plays into our own victimology can help us regain our own participation in the dialogue of how to recover from and avoid an economic disaster and allow us not to participate in our own oppression in a democratic society.

Sometimes the difference between the victim and the oppressor is a mere illusion. It enforces the illusion that we are separate from one another, yet we are all one. This is not an argument that there is no greed or excess, but the excess may also lie within us. At least part of this crisis is may be a projection of what was inside of us and what was placed there from unmindful consumption to advance consumer demand.

Sean E Flanigan
Evanston, IL

New Life for Progressive Buddhism

noreply@blogger.com (Buddhist_philosopher) — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 13:09:00 +0000

This blog needs some help. Over the past year it has been kept on life support by the great Tom Armstrong. He has now (re)started Thoughts Chase Thoughts, a blog that will hopefully be a good conversation partner for Progressive Buddhism. That leaves the rest of us, recently whittled down to four, to breathe new life into this once mighty blog.

Like me, though, the other three writers here are very busy and can't promise too much in the immediate future. So I'd like to extend an invitation to other aspiring writers/bloggers to join us.

If you can't join, please do what you can to spread the word - invite your favorite Progressive Buddhist out there to join the discussion here.

My contact info is on the right sidebar. Don't be shy.

Fair Taxation

noreply@blogger.com (Thomas Armstrong) — Sat, 24 Sep 2011 16:40:00 +0000

We all inter-are [as Thích Nhất Hạnh famously teaches] and as Elizabeth Warren eloquently demonstrates in an impromptu talk in an amateur's video of her on the campaign trail for a Massachusetts senate seat now held by Scott Brown.

The viddy was kiped from Buddhist_philosopher's solo blog American Buddhist Perspective.

Confessions of a Skyhooks Buddhist

noreply@blogger.com (Thomas Armstrong) — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 17:53:00 +0000


	A Skyhooks Buddhist insists that there is something pulling us upward. It is all not just that we are pushing up from the soil. [Pic is of a 56-foot-high statue in Trafford Park, in the metropolis of Greater Manchester, England.]

The Buddha famously instructed that we not waylay our practice by engaging in vain speculations about matters metaphysical, which can endlessly, pointlessly spin the wheels in our heads.

But people are a curious lot, who nose into everything. And a lot of progress has been made in the two-dozen-plus centuries since Buddha walked the rocky soil. We have absolute understanding, today, about things Buddha, if it had been his inclination, could not have guessed about. Matters abstruse have a way of yielding under the microscope of an eons’-long gaze. Data accumulates. Facts fall into our laps like ripe apples loosed from trees. We chip away at the mountain of things hither-to-now unknown and add precious stone to the pile of that which we have become certain.

Still, our very existence, and matters surrounding it, remain a peculiar and near-absolute mystery. Why are we here and how is life even possible?

The reductionist and the physicalists are now having their day. We are getting ever-better at understanding molecules and their behaviors, the keys to chemical reactions and what manifests from many “phrases” in our DNA. It’s as if the puzzle pieces are beginning to fit to explain life as a wholly physical process. We are all just these soft, squishy replicating robots that sprang up from the ground From a bounty of mistakes and seeming flaws we became ever better at sustaining ourselves and replicating ourselves until we, pretty much, have taken over the earth. And here we now are: Billions of buttheads, the winners of a grand interspecies game of King of the Hill.

But I abstain from accepting that ready conclusion. There is something else; I don’t know what.

Perhaps it is somewhere in altruism at fullest bloom -- when some of us act discordantly with the rush of self interest that supposedly propels our species -- where something other, better, higher can be found. The latest RSA viddy has Oren Harman talking about Radical Altruism in other species and in us.

There is also the mystery of consciousness. The physicalists think that the brain is the mind; that that hunk of cheese in our skull is of such amazing capability that it creates our world for us -- or the connection with the world outside.

But for me, and for the Dalai Lama, there is the puzzle of color to contend with and other matters of what we experience that must be "something else." We know -- we think we know, anyway -- that color is just wavelength that we interpret as a field of hues. But if color isn't color outside of us, where does it come from? How does the hunk of cheese stir red -- or any other color -- into being?

Philosopher Frank Jackson made an argument that is famous in the 'philosophy of mind.' He supposed there was this woman, Mary, who had never experienced the color red. She's fully brilliant; experiences everything else, but is "locked out" of knowing "red." Indeed, she becomes a pre-eminent neurologist and comes to know everything knowable about the physical side of what there is in the world. Suddenly, the doors of perception are flung open and red is made available to Mary. Doesn't this show that red is outside of the physical world and is pure perception, or qualia as it's called -- something of a different order of existence/experience/being.

Indeed, I would say that Jackson is right. I "buy" this demonstration/proof of dualism. Hooray, Frank Jackson -- only, Jackson, the creator of "What Mary Knew" has come to disagree with his proof and has, now, fallen in with the damn materialists/physicalists/reductionist bastards!!

You can hear Jackson, interviewed by the boys of Philosophy Bites, in a fifteen-minute audio podcast, explaining "What Mary Knew" and why he has abandoned dear dualism: "Philosophy Bites: Frank Jackson on What Mary Knew."

Despite the frustrations, I know -- I just KNOW -- there is something UP there. Something vaster and meaningful. We are greatness, that added extra to our hunk of cheese.

Tom Armstrong lives in Sacramento, California, where he is a member of the homeless community there, roots for the River Cats and blogs the counter-revolutionary Sacramento Homeless blog.

How to talk about Authentic Buddhism?

noreply@blogger.com (Buddhist_philosopher) — Sat, 27 Aug 2011 13:21:00 +0000

I posted this at my blog a couple days ago and had some interesting comments. I'd be interested in the input/feedback of all you Progressive Buddhism readers as well. (I've pasted in the comments from my blog and a short response - for the original post, see here.)

We've just finished our intensive Pali course. My next stop is the Oxford Buddhist Vihar, where I will remain in a semi-lazy individual retreat for one week. I should have time then for more updates, book reviews, and all that jazz. But for now I'll just leave you with a pithy meta-realization I had over our time here discussing Buddhism, language, culture and the rest for two wonderful weeks. And that is that we might think of three kinds of "authenticity" in our discussions of Buddhism:

Spiritual: which is not really a matter for scholars to think about.
Historical: which asks if a text or practice really does come from where it is claimed to be from. Here scholars have plenty to say, much of it 'debunking' traditional views.
Philosophical: which looks at the general 'coherence' of ideas or themes in Buddhism, perhaps in terms of the context of early Buddhism, or the development of the idea of emptiness. Here too, scholars can be extremely helpful in bridging traditional narratives and drawing on diverse disciplines to shed new light Buddhism.

So when we talk about the Heart Sutra not being an "authentic" teaching of the Buddha, for instance, we have to specify that we're speaking in the historical sense, based on our best evidence. Whether the text is perfectly authentic Spiritually is more a concern of traditions and individual practitioners. And the question of its philosophical authenticity is well worth debating, both within traditions and the academy.

Just a little thought. I'd be happy to hear/read yours.

Arun said...

You present a very nice breakdown here. Just as much as we talk about different types of “authenticity,” we often flip this rhetoric around to suggest different types of “inauthenticity.” So your post got me thinking about a separate question just now, perhaps the next step beyond inauthenticity—where do different people draw the lines of “heresy”?

25/8/11 7:17 PM

James Roberts said...

I'm probably a little more extreme than most in asserting that history is not objective. The only thing that history has to say about authenticity is the subtext of your individual perspective on the narrative of the world. As far as things actually happening or not, well, a lot of people like to use history to make such statements, and all this really says is that the person making the statement wants to put forth some kind of authoritative ideology. This has happened as much in the history created by Buddhist traditions as it happens in modern scholarship, and as far as reality is concerned, the stories are just different stories. Which one is more authentic? Everyone has to choose their terms.

25/8/11 9:00 PM

Pete Hoge said...

Yes I like the "breakdown" as well.

The 1st criteria of judgement
that I have for wisdom teachings
is:

"Does it work"?

The last teacher/coordinator of
the sangha I had said:

"Does it cause suffering"?

25/8/11 11:35 PM

--

Arun - Yea, I haven't thought much about "heresy" in Buddhism to be honest. I've always been taught that what you believe and say might be unskillful, but charges of heresy would seem to fit into broader philosophical polemics. I suppose monks having wildly differing views of what the Vinaya really means could be charged with "defeats" requiring expulsion along the lines of possibly causing a split in the sangha. That might be the closest actual case of "heresy" I can think of - back in the 1st/2nd Council days. I think also about the famous "Samye Debate" in Tibet, when Hoshen Mahayana was expelled from Tibet for teaching the doctrine of sudden enlightenment. No doubt similar cases abound in history. But importantly, the fatal flaw of both of those - and likely others - is that the wrong view is associated with wrong behavior. In the case of sudden enlightenment, Hoshen's opponent, Kamalashila, argued that without the gradual path, acts of morality and meditation would be useless.

James - yes, you're definitely in a bit of an extreme there. I would go so far as to say that history is always 'open' but that certain facts of history, such as the holocaust, are about as close to objectivity as we can get. Likewise with the history of Tibet as an independent nation. Well meaning people searching for the truth of the matter hopefully do not just create further ideologies, but rather evidence and understanding, plain and simple.

Pete - Yes, suffering and the path from suffering. If you get a grasp on these, you don't need much else.

---

You are the music while the music lasts

noreply@blogger.com (Thomas Armstrong) — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 05:41:00 +0000

If you have the time, it is great fun to investigate into the delicious quotes found at that roaring Niagara of quotes that come to us from deep-flowing whiskey river.

The first three delicious lines of the following T.S.Eliot snippet were posted in whiskey on January 21, 2006. I’ve extended it another four lines from text found in T.S.Eliot and American Philosophy by Manju Jain, a book found via a Google Book search.

For most of us, there is only the unattended

Moment, the moment in and out of time,

The distraction fit, lost in a shaft of sunlight,

The wild thyme unseen, or the winter lightning

Or the waterfall, or music heard so deeply

That it is not heard at all, but you are the music

While the music lasts.

The seven-line snip above is from the middle of the fifth element in the third of Eliot's FOUR QUARTETS, a series of long poems he wrote over a period of seven years. The third "quartet" is titled The Dry Salvages, written in 1941.

Here are words from Jain's book that relate to Eliot and mystical poems, like the one above:

The problem that the rendering of mystical experience in poetry poses for Eliot is that of sincerity, of distinguishing between the genuine and the false, between what one actually experiences and what one would like to experience; and the consequent difficulty of mediating moments that are essentially incommunicable through what he terms ‘the natural sin of language.’ Eliot’s views on the subtle discriminations to be made between the genuine and the false in religious and mystical experience are expressed in his comments on Herbert:

Above that level of attainment of the spiritual life, below which there is no desire to write religious verse, it becomes extremely difficult not to confuse accomplishment with intention, a condition at which one merely aims with the conditions in which one actually lives, what one would be with what one is: and verse which represents only good intentions is worthless – on that plane, indeed, a betrayal. The greater the elevation, the finer becomes the difference between sincerity and insincerity, between the reality and the unattained aspiration.

And so. It is fair to ask: For all his virtuosity in spinning words into delicious tapestries, are T.S.Eliot's words really just the worst of stinking crap? or an inkling of the sublime brought down to us?

Plucked out of the Cosmos by a Sympathetic Ear

noreply@blogger.com (Thomas Armstrong) — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 05:21:00 +0000

Einstein once said that while Beethoven created his music, Mozart's "was so pure that it seemed to have been ever-present in the universe, waiting to be discovered by the master." Einstein believed much the same of physics, that beyond observations and theory lay the music of the spheres — which, he wrote, revealed a "pre-established harmony" exhibiting stunning symmetries. The laws of nature, such as those of relativity theory, were waiting to be plucked out of the cosmos by someone with a sympathetic ear.

Thus it was less laborious calculation, but "pure thought" to which Einstein attributed his theories.

-- from an Arthur I. Miller essay, dated 1/31/06,“A Genius Finds Inspiration in the Music of Another” in NYTimes Online.

Aspects of People I Find Interesting

noreply@blogger.com (Thomas Armstrong) — Sun, 31 Jul 2011 19:19:00 +0000

Buddhists and Integralists, like me, tend to be people watchers -- interested in others‘ thinking and behavior. Now, there are a large number of Buddhists who specifically are not interested in all of this amateur psychoanalysis crap; they think that study of all this hoo-hah is very much the ilk of confusion and calamity we should step away from.

But me, I’m rather fascinated by how strange the best and the worst of us are. And l love trying to formulate a kind of “behavior set” or logic matrix that might explain the wondrous [or goofy or inane] behaviors of others.

An aspect that I sometimes see in people that I find admirable I call “situation saving.” These are people who step in to save people when they make an unfortunate faux pau or otherwise say something ignorant or inappropriate or goofy. Now, I don’t mean any of this in a kind of meta-sense. Most of the transactions that I observe are small; they happen, are forgotten and life moves on.

AN EXAMPLE: This morning I stopped in a one-man clock-repair shop, just as it opened, to get a new battery for a watch. [Yes, I’m a dinosaur. I wear a watch. Leave me alone!] While waiting for my watch to get taken care of [Which should have taken just a scant minute!], other customers came in with minor problems that the repair guy tended to without charge: straightening a numeral on a lady‘s clock; removing a link from a fellow‘s watch; then, directing the lady, who’d returned, to a cell-phone store she was eager to find. When my battery-replacement thing was done, and the guy had told me the charges, a very reasonable five bucks, I said, “Boy, you’re very busy this morning, but not making much money. Hopefully some good-paying business will come in -- a guy with a busted cuckoo clock or something.” The repair guy was flummoxed on how to respond to the odd thing I said! I was sticking my jerky nose into his business! The repair guy FAILED to save the situation.

Now, I know what you’re thinking, kind reader: I was a jerk and the repair guy was basically kind-hearted. This is true; this is so very true, but it misses the point. The repair guy did not have the presence of mind to save my sorry ass when I said something stupid. He didn’t have “situation saving” moxie.

He could have said “Yeah, hopefully either an expensive cuckoo clock will come in for me to overhaul, or a grandfather clock that had fallen down a long flight of stairs.” And then my point wouldn’t have seemed so crass, and me and the repair guy could’ve smacked palms in a high-five and gone about our happy days

Now, again, here, I know what you’re thinking, kind reader: Maybe -- even probably -- the guy takes his job quite seriously, loved clocks, got into his business because he admired well-made, perfectly performing clocks and he would be in pain to see a busted cuckoo clock or a badly damaged grandfather clock. He’s sort of a clock physician: His mission in life is to restore timepieces to good health.

Oh, all right. Sheesh. I have to admit your point, dammit, reader. You are probably quite right. Indeed having observed the repair guy for the many minutes I was cooling my heels in a chair waiting for my battery thing to get taken care of, I could see he was extraordinarily pleasant and thoughtful. Just the type of fellow who is likely to admire the excellence of well-constructed clock innards. Probably, yes, he would grieve to see any badly damaged exquisite timekeeping machine. Indeed, the walls of his small shop had interesting and downright lovely clocks of different sorts all about. He did give off clock-loving vibes.

So, how about this: The repair guy could have changed the subject abruptly to save my embarrassment. He could have said, “Why, Tom, I’m having a great day, so far! Don’t you fret about me! And I must say, this Fossil Avenger you wear is quite nice. What a joy for me to handle it. It’s an heirloom!”

Oh Kay. Oh Kay. I know what it is you’re thinking. Reader. A Fossil Avenger is crap. If the watch guy delights in fine timepieces, he cannot, with any integrity, say anything nice about my beat-up old watch. The guy should have been flummoxed, you’re thinking. There simply is no way to save a jerk like me in the hairy situation I’d gotten myself into.

You know, reader: You are no damn help AT ALL. I go to all this trouble just to tell you a little bit about my day and I have this list of many, many aspects of people’s personalities I find interesting and want to share and HERE YOU’VE GONE AND SPOILED EVERYTHING!

You can just take your nitpicky little mind and point your beady eyes at SOMEBODY ELSE’S BLOG. I’VE HAD IT. I QUIT THIS POST. IT‘S OVER. Why couldn’t I have imagined you saying nice, soothing things, Reader? What's wrong with you!? GET OUTTA HERE!

Buddhist Economics: Then and Today

noreply@blogger.com (Thomas Armstrong) — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 01:10:00 +0000


	Picture of Schumacher from the 1973 edition of Small is Beautiful.

Economist E. F. “Fritz” Schumacher wrote a book that became a sensation in 1973, Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered, most of which is a compilation of lectures and articles he’d written in the 60s. The book was not only a fresh breeze in its day, its insights about where the world was quickly headed are prophetic, predicting the waste of resources and the drudgery modern society imposes on people with its view of the meaning of labor and the headlong rush to 'bigger, more, mightier.' Of inspiration to Schumacher was society in the nation of Burma in the 1950s.

The book is also important as insight into what has been lost in Burma for the last 45 years. We have learned in the last few years of the Orwellian horror that is the life imposed on average Burmese citizens, but, truly a harsh existence has been endured there by average citizens for four-and-a-half decades, since a military junta took control. Soon the dimming light on Burma may move elsewhere and the Burmese will, again, be forgotten, to languish in misery for further decades under the thumb of a cruel regime. [See Bertil Lintner's "The Burmese Way to Fascism," an essay from 2007 on how things have been and pretty much now are in Burma.]

George McRobie, who worked with Schumacher for twenty years, and with him founded Intermediate Technology Group and in the 80s taught Appropriate Technology at the University of Pennsylvania, writes this of Schumacher’s experience in Burma:

Fritz spent all his free time in Burma studying Buddhism. He spent his weekends in a monastery and studied under Buddhist scholars. “I then began to ask myself,” he said, “What would a Buddhist economics look like? And I concluded that it would be the exact opposite of our Western economics.”

First, he argued, a Buddhist approach to economics would distinguish between misery, sufficiency and surfeit. Economic growth would be good only to the point of sufficiency. Limitless growth and consumption would be disastrous. Secondly, a Buddhist economics would be based squarely on renewable resources: an economics of permanence In contrast, Western economics is based on the ruthless exploitation of nonrenewable resources, and recognizes no limits to production and consumption -- a nonsustainable system.

Schumacher had been enchanted by Burma and the happy society he’d witnessed there on visits in the 50s. In 1955, he wrote about how its society functioned in a paper, published in Rangoon, Burma, “The Economics of Buddhists.” In 1966, four years after the military took control of the country, he wrote a paper called “Buddhist Economics” that was published as part of Schumacher’s first book, A Handbook of Asia. It also appears as the fourth chapter in Small is Beautiful and can now be found many places online, including here [at the E.F. Schumacher Society].

It’s only about six pages long. Go read it!

Truly, the whole of Schumacher’s work as an economist, from the mid-50s until his death at age 66 in 1977 is his “Buddhist Economics,” a sustainable system to support happy lives. It is sad that Schumacher’s enduring message made it to the world stage when he was already 62 and so shortly before his death. But his message ― so clarion now with climate change and economic retreat in the offing ― is still disregarded by our gutless leaders who pander to corporations that survive wholly on ‘growth, more, bigger.’

While it is true that Schumacher did not anticipate the rush of technologies that have promised to make work increasingly interesting and challenging and life less wasteful ["might have promise," I should say. Who knows where technological advancement might take us?], he did recognize the rat race that modern life has become. Instead of making life less stressful, it has become more competative with the price of messing up more severe. Instead of bringing more economic balance to societies, it has ushered in a new Gilded Age of wide disparities.

This from Manas Journal [which is associated with the EF Schumacher Society] in a piece titled "Limitation is Liberation" [Nov 1985]:

What, Schumacher asked, is wrong with Western economics? Thinking about how to make a living cannot be a mistake, but Western economics, he held, is founded on a mistake—the failure to establish limits. As he said:

Because Economics, up to a point, can rightly claim universal validity, it has been accepted as possessing universal validity throughout. What do I mean by up to a point? The essence of materialism is not its concern with material wants, but the total absence of any idea of Limit or Measure. The materialist's idea of progress is an idea of progress without limit. . . .

Is this compatible with Buddhism or Christianity or with anything the Great Teachers of mankind have proclaimed? Of course not. It is compatible only with the most naked form of Materialism.

As I write this the Democrats [with Obama being the leading voice] and the Republicans [with the Tea Party holding sway] are locking horns. But, truly, both sides want the same thing to 'cure' America's economic woes: A surge of consumerism! A pox on both their houses, I say. It is exactly what Schumacher inveighed against: Materialism run amok. The cure to all our ills becomes more work, more stuff, bigger houses to hold it all. Our judgments become one of how much stuff we have in comparison to how much stuff the neighbors -- the Joneses -- have. More, more, more, unsustainably till everything bursts.

I don't know that Schumacher would approve, but we need to do something other than what both the Democrats and Republicans are contemplating as fixes for our economy.

My suggestions: Let us remove ALL payroll taxes, and tax in other ways to cover workers' benefits. Why? To make things such that having an employee is as cheap as possible in the US. That way, workers here can compete against labor elsewhere in the world and against technologies that replace humans as workers.

Let us shorten the workweek from 40 hours to 30 hours before overtime kicks in. Thus, businesses will be encouraged to enlarge their workforce.

Let us forestall foreclosures on homeowners by allowing homeowners to keep their house if they make mortgage payments that are 40% or more of their income. That way, we might be able to stabilize the housing market more quickly. And, we take the intense stress that has descended on as many as 30% of the people in the US.

We need a more compassionate economics in the West. And, most importantly, one that is sustainable and allows us to escape the pointless, life-robbing circumstance where we all become chasing-our-own-tail Consumerists.

Fantastic blogposts that, from their content, relate to this one: "Buddhist Economics." from The Buddhist Blog. James Ure bemoans the lost interconnectivity in society in light of the worldwide economic plunge. And, from Integral Options Cafe, there's "Adbusters - E.F. Schumacher (Thought Control in Economics)" wherein PB's William Harryman writes about a more-compassionate economics, based on Schumacher's insights, and then presents a piece from Adbusters that gives some background to Schumacher's life and thoughts.

I am a Buddhist who has no wish to see suffering eradicated

noreply@blogger.com (Thomas Armstrong) — Fri, 15 Jul 2011 23:15:00 +0000

I am a existential Buddhist who has no wish to see suffering eradicated in the world.

This is so because I cannot see how existence without challenges [or with only make-work challenges] would be satisfying.

And if I (just, just!) perfect myself and eradicate my own suffering, I get booted to parinirvana [that is, unless I aggressively fight off the promotion], which doesn’t sound like much fun.

I cannot see how the loneliness of parinirvana is appealing. A universe of just me, the Adibuddha, and — what? — a stack of peanutbutter-and-jelly sandwiches and some quarts of milk until I can figure out what next to do? [Are there video games in parinirvana? Does anybody know? Internet access?]

Heaven, as described in the New Testament, or spoken/written about by suppositionist Christians, or mused about colloquially, doesn’t sound all that spiffy. Mind you, I am a wee bit fearful of death, and wouldn’t mind an escape clause, but whiling away centuries, eons, or for-fucking-ever on a cloud, playing a harp and eating perfect fruit to fill my body-made-of-light sounds like the kind of paradise where I would join the Rebel Underground [the Stormy Black Clouds is what I imagine their name is].

Jimmy Roughton, my favorite preacher, imagines himself in heaven planning a garden after death. But with God there, what work wouldn’t be “make work?” I mean, God, as He's conceived to be, can do anything, perfectly (and if “perfectly” isn’t the appropriate concept, then to the utmost of brilliant) and it’s done instantly. Why have Jimmy labor to create a garden when God can make a better one with a snap of His fingers, or just by saying a word?

The Zennists say that samsara IS nirvana, which, in Christian terms, means that heaven is earth, as it is. We just don’t see it. The Kingdom of Heaven is HERE. The land where improvements in people’s lives can be made is all around us.

My problem is I don’t want nothing, yet I don’t want a perfect [i.e., jolly] and crowded and eternal place, either — perhaps because there could be no compassion there. Wherever a better place is — on this world or on the next one — it mustn’t be static; there have to be challenges. And I require that these challenges be real and meaningful. So, is there an ultimate and excellent “this life” or afterlife place for me? Somehow, someday, somewhere?¹ Or, even a good conception of one?

I, of course, ask because if there isn’t a Utopia in store for me (or, for all of us, really), then the obvious alternative is for us all to make where we’re at, here on the third planet from the sun, Utopia. But if we do that, then it automatically isn’t a utopia.

So what’s to do!? Improve life, for others, in the circumstance and environs we find ourselves, now, and hope that that is a satisfactory way to be and thing to do until something unexpected and better falls in our lap.

And during this long, long, long meanwhile, until the tickets to Disney World come in the mail (or what-the-fuck-ever) we can hope — just hope — we’re doing our teeniest part for the good of the whole. I mean, like, what else do any of us have going for us? You dig?
---
¹ Sneaking lyrics into this essay from the song “Somewhere (A Place for Us)” from West Side Story.

How is novelty possible?

noreply@blogger.com (Thomas Armstrong) — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 15:25:00 +0000

written by Tom Armstrong

“The aspects of things that are most important for us are hidden because of their simplicity and familiarity. (One is unable to notice something - because it is always before one's eyes.) The real foundations of his enquiry do not strike a man at all. Unless that fact has at some time struck him. - And this means: we fail to be struck by what, once seen, is most striking and most powerful.”
~Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, 1953, No. 125

A meatspace friend of mine, with the online moniker Nagarjuna, is greatly interested in the philosophical faceoff of Free Will v Determinism.

He greatly believes that the Determinist [or, termed in the manner he sees it all: Inevitablist] side has the better argument, his logic being that whatever we decide is the determined result of a chain of outcomes, without there being any evidence of an agent [a homulculus, e.g.] intervening.

Mark Johnson in his 2007 book The Meaning of the Body comes down on Nagarjuna’s side in this essential philosophical debate, it seems, but he raises a novel issue: that of novelty. If the universe is determined wholly by chains of causes and effects, how does something new arise?

Johnson writes:

Our ability to make new meaning, to enlarge our concepts, and to arrive at new ways of making sense of things must be explained without reference to miracles, irrational leaps of thought, or blind impulse. We have to explain how our experience can grow and how the new can emerge from the old, yet without merely replicating what has gone before.

As it turns out, this may be one of the most difficult problems in all of philosophy, psychology, and science: how is novelty possible? As far as I can see, nobody has yet been able to explain how new experience emerges. The problem is that if we try to give a causal explanation of novel experience or novel thought, these come out looking causally determined, rather than creative and imaginative. An embodied theory¹ of meaning will suggest only that new meaning is not a miracle but rather arises from, and remains connected to, preexisting patterns, qualities, and feelings.

Most people believe that human will possesses absolute freedom, which is why we think we can hold people responsible for their actions. But if there is no transcendent self, no disembodied ego, to serve as the agent of free choice, then what sense can we make of real choice, or of moral responsibility for our actions? This problem has plagued all naturalistic accounts of mind, from David Hume to William James to Antonio Damasio. We need a view of choice that is consistent with cognitive neuroscience and its insistence on the embodiment of mind and yet which doesn’t make a shambles of our notions of moral responsibility.

I raise this topic in this Buddhism blog because of Buddha’s Enlightenment and insight into the essential problems of the human condition. Buddha’s Awakening was “new” -- for him, at least, if we posit that former buddhas Awoke in ages past.

Thanissaro Bikkhu writes in an essay online, “The Meaning of the Buddha's Awakening":

… Buddha says at one point in describing his Awakening, "Ignorance was destroyed; knowledge arose; darkness was destroyed; light arose — as happens in one who is heedful, ardent, and resolute." In other words, he gained liberating knowledge through qualities that we can all develop: heedfulness, ardency, resolution. If we are willing to face the implications of this fact, we realize that the Buddha's Awakening is a challenge to our entire set of values. The fact that the Unconditioned can be attained forces us to re-evaluate any other goals we may set for ourselves, whatever worlds we want to create, in our lives.

“The Unconditioned can be attained”!! Something new coming from nowhere? But coming to us only if we are heedful, ardent and resolute?

In a paper called “The Unconditioned: In Buddhism, Zen and Our Own Lives",” Jeff Shore explains the path and implications of the reality of losing ourself.

What is Buddhism? Simply put, it could be called a practical way of emancipation or liberation. Liberation from what? From everything. From all conditions. …

You might think that we somehow transcend the conditions. Buddhism, however, affirms no such transcendental, supernatural reality. …

Buddhism uses terms like ignorance, craving, and attachment to describe the relative cause of our dis-ease. This may not satisfy someone seeking a simple, either-or answer. If we look under the surface, however, we can see that these causes are, indeed, intertwined and pointing to different dimensions of the problem. Ignorant of who we really are, we crave fulfillment in something else. We can never come to rest that way, so we go on, blindly entangled in craving and attachment.

Attached to something, we become possessive and afraid to lose it. Rather than finding fulfillment, our dis-ease only seems to increase. Why do we crave? Because we don't know who we really are. If we truly knew ourselves, we would not crave to be or to have something. And that craving in turn keeps us from seeing who we really are, thus perpetuating the vicious, painful cycle of ignorance-craving-attachment.

Practically speaking, here is the core of the problem: this tiny, literally insubstantial — yet damned tenacious — knot of deluded self-attachment. It's really nothing at all, but through conditions entwining, a tight knot of "I-ness" emerges. And we all know how painful this can be. That's what impels us to begin religious or spiritual practice. That's what drives us to sit zazen.

… zazen is freedom from all conditions, without eliminating any of them. More than that, genuine zazen is the fulfillment of all conditions … First, by actually giving ourselves up to concentrated zazen and sitting through to the end of ourselves, the tangled knot of deluded selfness naturally comes undone. There is nothing holding it together. In a sense, it is only our delusive craving to be a certain way — even to be "enlightened" — that holds the painful snarl together.

------------------
1 the nature of the human mind is largely determined by the form of the human body. They argue that all aspects of cognition, such as ideas, thoughts, concepts and categories are shaped by aspects of the body. These aspects include the perceptual system, the intuitions that underlie the ability to move, activities and interactions with our environment and the native understanding of the world that is built into the body and the brain.
The embodied mind thesis is opposed to other theories of cognition such as cognitivism, computationalism and Cartesian dualism.[1] The idea has roots in Kant and 20th century continental philosophy (such as Merleau-Ponty). The modern version depends on insights drawn from recent research in in linguistics, cognitive science, artificial intelligence, robotics and neurobiology.

The LIGHT in EnLIGHTenment

noreply@blogger.com (Thomas Armstrong) — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 05:35:00 +0000

written by Tom Armstrong

"I can die happily. I did not hold one single teaching in a closed hand. Everything that may benefit you I have already given. Now, don't believe my words because a Buddha told you, but examine them well. Be a light onto yourselves." — Buddha

Le Principe du Plaisir
(Portrait of Edward James), 1937.
Oil on canvas. René Magritte
Edward James Foundation, UK

During my early days as an impressionable Internet Buddhist, circa 1996, I recall a discussion in an AOL chatroom where the most sapient among us insisted that the notion of light being an important part of enlightenment was folly. Other sagacious sutra readers in the room were insistant that the term enlightenment should be abandoned altogether because it planted in our minds misdirecting ideas of what enlightenment/satori/awakening was. For years thereafter, I clung to that appraisement: Enlightenment is ineffable. For us to impose preceptions of it that give it flavor or color or feel would cause us to misidentify markers in our spiritual advancement, sending us off on muddy time-wasting slogs through the barren marshes of error.

Today, I have come to think that light is important: its rays filling the room; its beams serving as a guide to anyone's quest to eliminate suffering in the adventure of life. Hui-neng, the great C'han master, said in what his disciples would record in the Platform Sutra, "Learned audience, to what are meditation and wisdom analogous? They are analogous to a lamp and its light. With the lamp, there is light. Without it, it would be dark. The lamp is the quintessence of the light and the light is the expression of the lamp. In name they are two things, but in substance they are the same. It is the same case with meditation and wisdom."

Let us simply consider the obvious importance of nature's light to life. It seems less important to us nowadays, living in our incandescent- and florescent-lit buildings, warmed by heat coming up to us from vents in the floor, living our lives vicariously through people pretending to be real on television shows, but the sun, this round disc in the sky, regulates and is necessary for all life known to us in the universe. Its warmth and its light make the day, and when it dips below the horizon, there is nothing but life-draining night and hope for the next day's dawn, when the streets and the trees and the sky will become fully visible, again. When that eastern star pushes into view, nature wriggles from its slumber; the birds start chattering; and all the creatures come to action to feast and fly and frolic. And Shakyamuni Buddha, persistant and willful, sitting beside that Bodhi tree, realized enlightenment on seeing that morning star and thought "I and all beings on earth together attain enlightenment at the same time."

Zen Master Ejo, Dogen's disciple, in the chapter "Absorption in the Treasury of Light" in his Shobo Genzo Zuimonki wrote "Buddha said, 'This light of lights is not blue, yellow, red, white, or black. It is not matter, not mind. It is not existent, nor nonexistent. It is not a phenomenon resulting from causes. It is the source of all Buddhas, the basis of practicing the Way of enlightening beings, fundamental for all Buddhists.'"

It is only in the last one hundred years, thanks to the creative intelligence of Albert Einstein, that we have come to better understand this light whatever-it-is that pervades the universe -- Buddha's remark, quoted by Ejo, being intuitively correct, but far, far ahead of science!

People commonly misunderstand light, thinking it this hybrid thing -- part wave, part matter -- that travels at an incredible velocity, the so-called Speed of Light. But light doesn't dawdle at the Speed of Light; unimpeded, it traverses the universe instantly. It is untouched by time. It is only from the perspective of lumpy, time-bound humans that light travels at 186,000 miles/second. If it were possible to chain our wrist to a beam of light, we would be everywhere in the smallest segment of a moment. Light is indeed as Buddha described it, "not matter, not mind. It is not existent, nor nonexistent. It is not a phenomenon resulting from causes."

[From a description of a discussion/instruction coming online in Fall 2011, "From Science to God," it says "Peter Russell and Jeffrey Mishlove continue a conversation about consciousness in the material world. Russell provides a clear summary and implications of the Theory of Relativity. He explains that as mass speeds up, space and time decrease, but also the mass increases. That is why it is impossible for mass to move at the speed of light. If that were to happen, the mass would reach infinity, requiring an infinite amount of energy to move it, which doesn't exist. However, light moves at the speed of light. Therefore, from light's perspective, there is no space or time. He argues consciousness is not matter and has no mass. Thus, consciousness does not exist in space or time, and is more like light."]

According to currently configured theory of everything, M Theory, a photon of light is a non-looping vibrating string, atuned to the laws of harmonics, bounded, as sentient beings are, between two impassible membranes [that bar us from other dimensions we cannot perceive], leaving us in the universe we know, existing in the three dimensions of space. While sentient beings travel a life's journey on an arrow of time, light does not. Light is not subject to time; a beam of light is immutable.

From the Tibetan Book of the Dead we are told that the first stage of the Bardo -- the Chikai, the bardo of dying -- begins at death and lasts from a half a day to four days. During this period, the dead person realizes he no longer has a body. An ecstatic experience pervades the consciousness of the departed, called the "Clear White Light." It is written that everyone gets at least a glimpse of this light, but that the more spiritually advanced will see it longer and go beyond to a higher level. An average person will drop into a lesser state, the secondary "clear light."

It is believed that the "Clear White Light" is the light from all enlightened ones, indistinguishable from everyone's true essence. Ejo wrote something parallel regarding the treasury of light: "[It] is the root source of all Buddhas, the inherent being of all living creatures, the total substance of all phenomena, the treasury of the great light of spiritual powers of complete awareness. The three bodies [mind belonging to the Arhats, Pratyekabuddhas, and Bodhisattvas], four knowledges [realizing their liberation], and states of absorption [in mystic or meditative union with ecstacy] numerous as atoms in every aspect of reality, all appear from within this."

Those who have had a near-death experience describe something just like the "Clear White Light," and have other experiences which track and seem to validate the stages of the bardo described in the Book of the Dead.

This is written about Amitabha Buddha: "The splendor of His brilliant light is beyond mind. The light of His brows illuminates a hundred worlds. His eyes are pure brilliant light, limitless like the oceans. In Amitabha's realm of infinite light, all beings are transformed And Enlightened into countless Bodhisattvas and Buddhas. His Forty Eight Vows ensure our liberation In Nine Lotus Stages we reach the ultimate shore of Enlightenment. Homage to the Buddha of the Pure Land, Compassionate Amitabha Buddha."

Near the end of "Absorption in the Treasury of the Light," Ejo wrote:

This is the light in which the ordinary and the sage, the deluded and the enlightened, are one suchness. Even in the midst of activity, it is not hindered by activity. The forest and the flowers, the grasses and the leaves, people and animals, great and small, long and short, square and round, all appear at once, without depending on the discrimination of your thoughts and attention.. This is manifest proof that the light is not obstructed by activity. It is empty luminosity spontaneously shining without exerting mental energy.

This light has never had any place of abode. Even when buddhas appear in the world, it does not appear in the world. Even though they enter nirvana, it does not enter nirvana. When you are born, the light is not born. When you die, the light is not extinguished. It is not more in Buddhas and not less in ordinary beings. It is not lost in confusion, not awakened by enlightenment. It has no location, no appearance, no name. It is the totality of everything. It cannot be grasped, cannot be rejected, cannot be attained. While unattainable, it is in effect throughout the entire being. From the highest heaven above to the lowest hell below, it is thus completely clear, a wondrously inconceivable spiritual light.

If you believe and accept this mystic message, you do not need to ask anyone else whether it is true or false; it will be like meeting your father in the middle of town. Do not petition other teachers for a seal of approval, and do not be eager to be given a prediction and realize fruition.

Finally, this from Ken Wilber in Boomeritis [in a riff on the Genjōkōan]:

To study enlightenment is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be one with all things. To be one with all things is timeless enlightenment. And this timeless enlightenment continues forever, it is a ceaseless process, absolutely perfect, and fully complete at every moment of its being, yet also unfolding endlessly ...

[Most of this first appeared in Zen Unbound emagazine, six years ago.]

newish mindfulness blog

noreply@blogger.com (elaine4queen) — Fri, 08 Jul 2011 09:03:00 +0000

hi there buddhists.

so, i started this new blog, following the direct path

i thought i would wait a bit before telling people about it because i wasn't at all sure i could really blog regularly about mindfulness. i still don't really, know, that is. i had been doing a bit of teaching, which went okay except that i am not really well enough to travel to teach, so having had a personal blog for about 10 years, i thought i would try to blog what i would teach.

so far it's been interesting. a bit of feedback, not as much as i would like, but still. and also, it is a bit like teaching, in that once i have posted i start thinking about the next one, and in this way i have found that mindfulness has been very much on my mind. though whether that is actually me being mindful is another matter.

i made a GIANT tech blunder at the beginning as well, i misspelled satipatthanna in my URL - missed out the 'h', and when i thought it was too late i didn't worry about it, but when i realised i could change the URL i did it, and promptly lost followers. teething trouble.

there is also this issue of 'how much buddhism' when you teach mindfulness... oddly, or perversely, i am personally getting more buddhisty myself, while trying to keep the blog as free from jargon as possible. i don't know if that's sustainable...

anyway, i would be grateful for any feed back - either here or on the blog.

Lincoln was a buddha

noreply@blogger.com (Thomas Armstrong) — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 04:45:00 +0000

by Tom Armstrong

Writing in 1880, John Caird, looking back at the man's life, wrote these eloquent summarizing words

…[My overall impression] is that of a man who combined with intellectual originality other and not less essential elements of greatness, such as magnanimity and moral elevation of nature, superiority to vulgar passions, and absorption of mind with larger objects, such as rendered him absolutely insensible to personal ambition, also self-reliance and strength of will – the confidence that comes from consciousness of power and resource – the quiet, patient, unflinching resolution which wavers not from its purpose in the face of dangers and difficulties that baffle or wear out men of meaner mould. Along with these, we must ascribe to him other qualities not always or often combined with them, such as sweetness, gentleness, quickness and width of sympathy.

Caird's words are about Gautama Buddha, but can very much be said of Abraham Lincoln, as well – a person no less extraordinary and no less different from the people all about him such that his impact was astonishing. Events, time and place all had overwhelming influence in making Buddha Gautama and Abraham Lincoln immortal persons. But both had buddhaseeds sprouting when they were children. And both acted in ways that baffle ordinary men.

Buddha Gautama is a whole other story. He decided to try to let others in on what propelled him. Abraham Lincoln's strange life's journey led him to center stage during America's most trying time, just at that pivotal moment when the baton of the presidency needed to be passed … to that rare diamond, a buddha.

Caird's assessment is interesting in that he didn't apprehend Gautama Buddha as being a buddha. His opinion was what he came to know of Guatama as a man, from what documents he read, compared to ordinary men. Likewise, persons who knew Abraham Lincoln, most all of whom appraised him as an astonishing human being, did not have the wherewithal to assess his high spiritual attainment directly.

Young Mr. Lincoln

The shorthand for Lincoln's boyhood days are that his mother died when he was quite young, but, happily, a wonderful, loving stepmother took her place in his life; he lived in a log cabin; he was naturally athletic, but he was inclined to turn his head toward the pages of a book; and in all ways, even as a youngster, he was honest and wholesome.

All of the above is true. What is not understood is that it is true to an outrageous extreme. Furthermore, it is not understood, except by scholars, that Lincoln was very much not the pastoral, ah-shucks Huckleberry of legend and as portrayed in old movies, but was instead an outlandish alien freakazoid! If he had had a single eye in the middle of his forehead, pointy ears and the ability to fly he would have been a more natural citizen of placid rural Indiana & Illinois than the gawky, two-eyed, big-eared, non-flying Abe Lincoln reality who was born in 1809 and died from an assassin's bullet.

Rural Indiana and Illinois of the 1810s and 20s was the edge of the wild, uncivilized West. The land was rustic and primal as were the isolated homesteading inhabitants. Boys were supposed to be especially ornery and mean and scarred up and smelly. They would torture animals and torture each other and had distain for learning much more than how to shoe a horse or slaughter a pig. Constant hard physical labor was required of all members of a family to stave off death in the boggy, cold, isolated areas where Lincoln grew up. Poisoned milk killed Lincoln's mother, his maternal grandparents and others. A harsh winter killed scores of neighbors – some found only after the spring thaw.

One thing remembered by many who knew him as a small child was his love of animals. One schoolmate remembered that he quite seriously lectured others about ants' right to life; another, that he broke up a gang of 'mates that were torturing terrapin turtles for entertainment and that he composed essays against cruelty toward animals on multiple occasions.

Though hunting was one of the few pleasures for men and boys of the rural Midwest, Lincoln would not hunt. And though his farming background could have been of great advantage to him politically, he didn't speak of it – most probably since memories of it were admixed with the pain of having been hired out by his father to help slaughter pigs.

William Lee Miller, author of the book “Lincoln's Virtues” wrote “Throughout the life of that extraordinary hired hand whose name was Abraham Lincoln, there would be a recurrent pattern: an initial impression of the boy or the lad or the man, derived from externals and superficialities, would then be overthrown by the shock of recognition of this intellectual power.” Miller, it seems to me, has it mostly right, but from (my interpretation of) the words of others in his book and other books [and of these, most-especially William Herndon's “The Hidden Lincoln”] it is not “intellectual power” that throws people for a loop – rather it's Lincoln's emptiness of guile and ineffable Buddha glow that might find expression through his intellect, but might also shine from his compassion, humanity or just the way he held an ax.

A Religious Man

Mary Todd Lincoln said, after her husband's death, “He never joined a church; but still, as I believe, he was a religious man by nature.”

As a young man Lincoln would engage in discussions advocating a “doctrine of necessity,” that opposed unfettered free will. I think this is very much a young person's insight into the interconnectedness of all things and beings and the chain of causes that seem to determine all events. A less magnificent person than Lincoln is likely to develop from this beginning, a religious sensibility grounded in scientism. Compassion toward others then becomes just a wildly romantic indulgence. But Lincoln, above everything was vividly compassionate and it was through this lens that he increasingly sought wisdom.

The beauty of his character was its entire simplicity. … True to nature, true to himself, he was true to everybody and everything about and around him. When he was ignorant on any subject, no matter how simple it might make him appear he was always willing to acknowledge it. His whole aim in life was to be true to himself and being true to himself he would be false to no one. – Joshua Speed, one of Lincoln's closest friends.

Speed's statement is as clarion a depiction of authenticity as you might find. Authenticity is a requirement for spiritual advancement.

In his mid-20s, Lincoln wrote a manuscript showing that the Bible was false. He did not believe that Jesus was God and could not believe that a true God would bring punishment to his 'children' when the laws of cause and effect that he saw in the world were pre-eminent forces. His friends were shocked by his beliefs that his law partner, William Herndon, contends he maintained throughout his life. Fearing for his political future, one friend burned the manuscript to keep it from being published. Still, Lincoln – who continued to be forthright and outspoken on the subject – was dogged by a reputation thereafter for being an infidel which was politically damaging.

With Malice toward none …

Leonard Swett, a close friend of Lincoln's, said in an interview, a year after the assassination, “He was certainly a very poor hater. He never judged men by his like, or dislike for them. If any given act was to be performed, he could understand that his enemy could do it just as well as any one. If a man had maligned him, or been guilty of personal ill-treatment and abuse, and was the fittest man for the place, he would put him in his Cabinet just as soon as he would his friend. I do not think he ever removed a man because he was his enemy, or because he disliked him.”

Indeed, Swett's words are a gross understatement; Lincoln was incapable of hate. Lincoln included on his initial Cabinet men who were his rivals for the Republican nomination in 1860 -- and he was especially gracious to guarantee the acceptance of his chief rival, William Seward, to the post of Secretary of State.

Edwin M. Stanton, who was Lincoln's second Secretary of War, is a particularly curious case. Stanton (of whom Fredrick Douglass would observe, “Politeness was not one of his weaknesses”) had ignored Lincoln, utterly, when – many years before he became president -- they were two of three lawyers chosen to represent a company for a particularly important civil suit. Lincoln was not a well-educated East Coast attorney, like the others. Judged from the fact that Lincoln was a rural Illinois lawyer, gangly and not well dressed, he was kept silent at the lawyers' table and the closing argument which he had prepared went unheard and was curtly ignored: The text, that Lincoln had passed on to his colleagues in a sealed letter, was returned to him unopened.

In the first years of the Lincoln administration, there are public records of Stanton referring to Lincoln as an imbecile (twice) and a baboon, yet Lincoln was undeterred in his selection of Stanton as his Secretary of War. He selected the best person for the position and ignored all else.

Observes William Lee Miller, “[Lincoln's] 'ego,' as we call it now, did not distort his good mind's working. His considerable self-confidence notwithstanding, he would achieve a detached and proportionate sense of himself in relation to an unflinching measure of the scope and meaning of the enormous human drama that confronted him. His self did not get in the way.”

Ambition

The biggest character flaw that William Lee Miller tags Lincoln with is ambition. It would also be an overwhelming obstacle to the thesis that Lincoln is a Buddha, if one agrees with Miller that at times Lincoln pushed himself forward, instead of doing the right thing that might have been politically disadvantageous.

For Miller, Ambition first comes up when looking at Lincoln's vocational choices. Instead of remaining in his rural community, either as a farmer or businessman, Lincoln chose to become a lawyer and move to the city of Springfield.

Despite his wide-ranging, superlative skills, Lincoln may have had fewer options than Miller supposes. Saddled with deep compassion for the suffering of animals, he was not suited for farm work. Much as a Buddhist is indisposed to take up the profession of being a butcher, Lincoln was indisposed to make his life's work one that included the slaughtering of farm animals.

Entrepreneurs need to be of a character such that they are eager to profit, overgreatly at times, at the expense of unwitting customers in order to make their businesses thrive. Lincoln did not have the disposition required for him to be a successful businessman. Indeed, young Lincoln's business ventures failed, putting him in a deep debt that took years for him to extricate himself from.

Becoming a lawyer, and tossing himself into the political maelstrom of his time and place, seems to have been the vocational path (and spiritual challenge) that was left to him after crossing off others. His wasn't a fulsome, consuming ambition; rather, it was that last path available that was suitable to his blend of talents and weaknesses.

Lincoln's Face

“At first glance, some thought him grotesque, even ugly, and almost all considered him homely. When preoccupied or in repose he certainly was far from handsome. At times he looked unutterably sad, as if every sorrow were his own, or he looked merely dull, with a vacant gaze,” one observer wrote. Still, as even the caustic Englishman Dicey observed, there was for all his grotesqueness, "an air of strength, physical as well as moral, and a strange look of dignity" about him. And when he spoke a miracle occurred. "The dull, listless features dropped like a mask." according to Horace White, an editor of the "Chicago Tribune". "The eyes began to sparkle, the mouth to smile, the whole countenance was wreathed in animation, so that a stranger would have to say, "Why this face, so angular and somber a moment ago, is really handsome!" He was the homeliest man I ever saw." said Donn Piatt, and yet there was something about the face that Piatt never forgot. "It brightened, like a lit lantern, when animated."

The poet Walt Whitman commented after getting a close-up view: "None of the artists or pictures have caught the subtle and indirect expression of this man's face." And again, some years after Lincoln's death: "Though hundreds of portraits have been made, by painters and photographers (many to pass on, by copies, to future times), I have never seen one yet that in my opinion deserved to be called a perfectly good likeness: nor do I believe there is really such a one in existence."

"Beyond a certain point Lincoln's appearance not only defied description; it also baffled interpretation. "There is something in the face which I cannot understand." said Congressman Henry L. Dawes of Massachusetts. And the leader of the German-Americans in Illinois, Gustave Koerner, remarked: "Something about the man, the face is unfathomable. In his looks there were hints of mysteries within."

Buddha as a Man; Lincoln as a Man

In the middle of the 19th Century, when Lincoln was being assessed as a heroic and tragic figure, Buddha was being introduced and examined by Victorian England. Since others' assessments of Lincoln are colored by culture, time and place, I think it is interesting to see how similarly Buddha Gautama was viewed.

From the book “The British Discovery of Buddhism,” comes this quote:

Of all the qualities praised, it is the Buddha's compassion and sympathy that was most often remarked upon. Millions were won by his intense sympathy for suffering, observed Joseph Edkins [quoted in Remarks on Budhism (sic)]. According to The Westminster Review in 1878, his was 'the example of a life in which the loftiest morality was softened and beautified by unbounded charity and devotion to the good of his fellow-men'; and The Church Quarterly Review for 1882 viewed him as one 'who, born a prince, sympathized with the sorrows and the moral struggles of the meanest; who … opened his arms to receive as a brother every one who pursued goodness, truth, unselfishness, and his ideal …' George Grant remarked in 1895 that, after making all allowances for accretions, the picture remains of an extraordinary man 'the memory of whose unselfish life, thirst for truth, and love for humanity ought to be honoured to the latest generations.'

Fittingly, the last year of the century, William Rattigan drew together the Victorian assessment of the Buddha:

Having regard to the intellectual and religious darkness of the period, it is impossible not to accord a high degree of admiration to Gautama for the lofty percepts he enunciated, for the gentleness and sereneness which pervade his utterances, for the deeply sympathetic and profoundly humanitarian spirit which underlie his doctrines, and for the manly endeavour he made to arouse a true feeling of self-reliance amoungst a people prone to lean for support upon others.

In league with this, Lincoln concluded his second inaugural with these famous words:

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

Conclusion

Yes, we exhaust ourselves on the legend of Lincoln in the fifth grade, and for us he becomes a tired relic, like Mickey Mouse and Lady GaGa and Harry Potter's glasses. His face – unanimated and serene – stares out at us from pennies and five-dollar bills. His wise words are just etchings on bronze somewhere -- the life that once was in his words has been expelled. “Fourscore and seven years …” sounds like a tiresome history lesson to us today, not the beginning of a speech, rich and eloquence, that brought chills and tears to Americans for decades after the speech was spoken.

If you pull together all the assessments of Lincoln, it is a remarkable record. He was greatly beloved by all in the communities he lived in. He was the dazzling, pre-eminent person – giving, loving and vividly authentic. Absolutely honest. Absolutely dependable. Fully in touch with the pain of others'. He held no grudges and condemned no one. He believed there was clarion truth in the notion that created America – that all had equal rights to live and equivalent right to live in liberty and pursue happiness. No one could be a master since no one should be a slave. And no one could be a slave since no one should be a master.

Somewhere back in misty time, one of the buddhas that walked this earthy earth became president of the United States. And it made a difference.

[Versions of this post were put up previously in Zen Unbound and the blog Homeless Tom.]

Was the Buddha Black?

noreply@blogger.com (Buddhist_philosopher) — Tue, 10 May 2011 17:29:00 +0000

Close your eyes.* Imagine Buddha seated in front of you. Spend a moment scanning the scene. What features does your Buddha have?

This is an interesting practice not only because it is a very common traditional practice of Buddhism, the recollection or visualization of the Buddha, but also for what it tells us about our conditioning, cultural or otherwise.

Odds are, you're not visualizing Keanu Reeves, from his role as the Buddha in "Little Buddha." But perhaps something close? With the tree, yellow robe, fair skin, and black, curled hair (flower petals optional).

Or perhaps something a bit more 'Vajrayana'? Perhaps a blue-skinned Medicine Buddha, sitting upon a lotus throne with red, yellow, and green aureolas. (painting courtesy my friends at Osel Shen Phen Ling, Missoula, MT.)

My own little office shrine, with an Indian-carved wooden Buddha in meditation posture and a Tibetan thanka with Buddha in earth-touching posture.

Or another computer-generated or enhanced, but slightly more traditional version... The above is from my time in Yangon (Rangoon), Myanmar (Burma). I call it my "Jesus-Buddha-Bieber" photo.

Other possibilities abound.

There's the still quite traditional SE Asian form of Buddha found at Borobudur, Indonesia.

And the ever-cute but not correct "Buddha" from Chinese folk mythology, better known as Hotei or Butai. This guy didn't become a or the Buddha as far as I know until some unknowing Westerners started seeing him in Chinese food restaurants (I worked in one such restaurant in high school, and still remember the "Buddha fountain" in the entrance).

And then there's the also incorrect and surely-offensive-to-someone golden Hotei costume... I'm reminded of a post from a bit over a year ago by John over at Zendirtzendust, where he posted a picture of Gollum (From Lord of the Rings) and suggested that the famous "32 Marks" of the Buddha would have left him looking a bit gollumish if he in fact had them. The title, "Buddha, Sex Symbol for the Ages" was a bit irreverent (as was the post) and the discussion quickly went to the appropriateness (or lack thereof) of certain levels or kinds of humor. Nathan, over at Dangerous Harvests, picks up on that whole conversation.

Obviously from all of that, how we imagine the Buddha, given the plethora of scriptural descriptions, paintings, and statues, matters. So it was with some interest today when I came across a very intriguing article simply called, "The Buddha was Bald." The author, Eisel Mazard, cites numerous instances in the Pali Canon supporting the idea that the Buddha was bald and/or undifferentiated from his male companions (who are always depicted as bald).

Mazard makes some headway into exploring how and why later sūtras (mainly from the Mahāyāna) and statues, which began in Gandhara, depict the Buddha with hair. And while I don't agree with all of his conclusions -see the comments in the article- I appreciate the piece for opening new and perhaps more historically correct windows into our imaginations about the historical Buddha. Some suttas even depict the Buddha as being "black" - a culturally loaded term, then as now - usually referring to someone of lower caste and/or with heritage coming from southern India where people were, and are, mostly much darker in skin tone than in the north.

We might then even wonder if we should imagine the Buddha as both bald and black. The great DVD series, Story of India, begins with the story of early human inhabitants in India coming right across the Arabian peninsula and into western and south-western India. And, if I remember correctly, these people remained largely isolated over thousands of years while humanity spread out across the globe, slowly changing their morphology (appearance) as they did so - those going further north generally becoming paler. Then, as we learn in an India or Buddhism 101 course, a warrior/herder/horse-riding people calling themselves the Aryans ("Nobles") moved down from somewhere in the Caucases and into north India.

In Buddhism 201 we could talk about Indo-European languages, noting that the same people who went into India also spread out throughout Europe, as far flung as Ireland. The name "Ireland" itself derives from the word "Aryan." So does the name of another country. Any guesses which one? In any case, these people, along with laying the foundations of a broad variety of languages, were paler than either the people of Africa or those in southern India. Perhaps due to the dynamics of power as the Aryans made their way into India, or due to disease (a thesis powerfully defended by William McNeill in Plagues and Peoples), darker skin came to be seen as inferior or unclean there.

So here the use of the term "black" (kaṇhā), may fall into the category of a general insult, rather than a literal description. On the other hand, the Buddha may well have been much darker skinned than we are accustomed to seeing him depicted as. Shock. If he were, it might also make sense for later Buddhists to overlook this detail, depicting him in the most ideal form conceivable. We already know for instance that the name "Siddhārtha," meaning one who's goal is accomplished, was not 'given' to him in the earliest strata of textual evidence, but only appears later. Likewise, the story of his father as a powerful king has been shown to be greatly exaggerated, if holding any truth at all. So perhaps the myth of a fair and 'golden skinned' Buddha is just that, a myth.

As a scholar, I would appreciate more attention to this issue. And I'm sure those with anti/post-colonialist tendencies can find further directions to take this. As for practitioners - it seems that Buddhism, both in many doctrines and art, has taken on many different shapes as it has progressed through time and geography. So perhaps whatever way you imagine your Buddha is just fine as it is.

* This was also posted at americanbuddhist.blogspot.com a bit back, but I figured it has relevance amongst Progressive Buddhist folks, so here it is.

Is life a roller coaster ride?

noreply@blogger.com (Thomas Armstrong) — Sun, 01 May 2011 22:34:00 +0000

I don't know what life is, but I do hope that quickly after death we will each find out.

An answer you can find in old movies [for example, "Heaven Can Wait" or "The Horn Blows at Midnight"] is that after life you are on a cloud, in a long line, waiting for Angel Gabriel to let you in His gate -- or not.

Another possiblity is that you are deleted. There is less than nothing after life; you are as much not around as the memory you don't have of yourself before you were born.

It can be that you pass through the Bardo, a spooky old place, dream-like and filled with potential terrors, on your way to a next birth, as a human or some other sentient being on this or some other planet or somewhere or somehow in some other universe that you could never imagine. And it can be, that your reborn self comes tagged with lessons that you need to learn from all your prior lives, bringing you pains and pleasures that you deserve.

Many of us Buddhists pull out text from some sutra and say that Buddha told us not to speculate on those things be cannot know. And what might happen to us after death is just the kind of time-wasting speculation he was talking about. But Buddha also told us to use our own judgment of what we should think or do, and I think that considering the possibilities of what death might mean is a good use of a modest chunk of our life's time.

My hope is that we find out that a life is just a crazy old roller coaster ride.

At the end of life, you find yourself in a roller coaster car, passing out of a dark tunnel. The track takes you up and down a few modest bumps, splashing through water, then your car is brought to a halt. You then remember before you were born when you embarked on the ride. And unless you had a remarkable life, in an instant you see how silly you were in life, misjudging what was important and what was unimportant.

Just as with rollercoasters in amusement parks throughout the world, there is no lesson to be learned from a ride, and you disembark at the same place where you got on. Life, it turns out, is just a stunning experience, playing with that magical substance Ignorance. We are all of us, really, this single great Cosmic Self, frozen with absolute knowledge of everything and thus incapable of laughter, love, terror or hope. It is only through Ignorance that Cosmic Self can have adventures and experience the myriad feelings that Ignorance make possible.

While life isn't a land of lessons, we do learn things about it: It turns out that chasing after money and status is not only life's biggest time waster, it is as destructive as living a life of crime. There is nothing that one can achieve by being well off financially and being respected by others. Indeed, by taking more than your share of earth's bounty and putting yourself above others, you add to the collective pool of misery. It is only from a deeply felt compassion for others, and having modest possessions, that a life is profoundly satisfying.

But life is not a lesson. And whether we live as a seriel killer or an ego-free saint, there are no rewards nor punishments to receive or endure after life's passing. There is only this: Certain knowledge about everything, and the opportunity to ride again.

Funny thing -- or, I should say, seriously, that it is not so funny a thing -- the Roller Coaster Theory does not pick up much religious support. I think the reason for this is that religions thrive when obedience to the religion is rewarded with prizes and benefits after death. The Twin Towers suicide terrorists each had twenty submissive virgins waiting for them after their murderous crashes. Good Christians have an eternity in Heaven. Well behaved Hindus and Buddhists have karmic rewards, which might include a next life graced with prosperity, health, and attractive physical features. And, of course, for Buddhists there is Paranirvana, an absolute end to all suffering.

The Roller Coaster Theory comes then with marketting problems. The afterlife of the major religions promise a Parential [usually, Fatherly] Approval, and with it, happiness and security. So, there is a reason for us to be Good; our life has meaning. Be Good to make the Great Cosmic Dad proud.

In the Roller Coaster Theory, you are not still a child -- one of God's children -- you are a grown up. And while dangers and terrors and random acts of violence are for the most part outside what you can control or influence, there is no one more in charge than you are. Your life can go wonderfully or horribly, despite your will, effort and talents; there is no guardian angel to guide or protect you. And so it is hard to feel that there is ultimately any meaning to being alive.

Why be good if there is no eventual reward? At the first level of understanding, it is because you can only really be good if there is no reward. At the second level of understanding -- which trumps the first, obliterating it -- we should be good for its own sake: Good for Goodness' sake. That's all. There's nothing else.

But what is Good? And what is Goodness' sake? There is no one outside yourself to tell you. As our heart/mind matures, the ideal of good becomes less treacly and rule-bound. We do the right thing outside the call of reasons for what feels like [and is] a growing abundance of wisdom and compassion.
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* This was also posted to Homeless Tom a bit back, but I figured it has relevance amongst Progressive Buddhist folks, so here it is.

Book Review: Living as a River

noreply@blogger.com (Buddhist_philosopher) — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 06:16:00 +0000

*For full disclosure I’ll mention that Bodhipaksa was my first meditation teacher, “way back in the day,” as they say (in the fall of 2000 in Missoula, MT). However, since he got his business degree and his website became wildly successful, he’s managed to avoid me well for quite some time and even waited for me to be safely in India before returning to Missoula on his recent book tour.

That said, his recent book, “Living As a River: Finding Fearlessness in the Face of Change,” is a marvelous piece of work. It is, in essence, a call to reflection for each of us, to reflect on our lives and our potential, and to reflect on the fact that we too often (nearly always) squander that potential by seeking happiness in all the wrong places.

The book unfolds as an offering (dāna). What is offered is an alternative to our unhappiness, our mere fleeting happiness, and our chasing of ever more happiness. The alternative is framed around the Buddhist Six Element Practice. But as Bodhipaksa says, this is not “a ‘Buddhist book.’” While the traditional Buddhist Six Element Practice forms the spine of the book, the heart is as fresh and modern as the many psychology experiments and quantum physics theories you will read about in its pages. It consists of fifteen chapters, plus an introduction, filled with philosophy, mythology, science, poetry, and the author’s own experiences, all winding a common path toward the destruction of our habitual, and false, idea that we have an unchanging self.

In fact “Living Like a River” begins with a psychology experiement in which a professor asked subjects to imagine the death of their partner. The result? The subjects, “reported feeling more positive about their relationships and less troubled by their significant others’ annoying quirks.” This makes the point that, more often than not, the things that we think will make us happy, do not – and the things that we think might make us unhappy – or be simply morbid, like imagining death – can actually improve our lives.

For the Buddhist, this can be an obvious fact. Most philosophers as well, East and West, have noted that human suffering is rooted in our incorrect understanding of ourselves and the world. But these days, neither Buddhist teachings nor philosophy have managed to penetrate deeply into the Western psyche. That is why Bodhipaksa’s use of psychology and other sciences so important. Science, especially the natural sciences such as physics, chemistry, and biology (all discussed in the book), has a special place in the minds of educated Westeners as the major, if not final, arbiter of truth. So if science can “catch up,” so to speak, with these important truths of the Buddha and certain other philosophers, there’s a chance that the rest of us also might get it.

And so the book marches forth, beginning at times with a bit of poetry, a story from Bodhipaksa’s life, or an interesting fact from recent scientific research, all woven together around the key insights first elucidated by the Buddha, Siddhartha Gautama, some 2500 years ago. The purpose of the book isn’t to be “about Buddhism” as the quote mentioned above makes clear. It is about a way of thinking, a way of seeing clearly (or cultivating “insight” as the Buddhist meditation vipassanā is commonly translated) ourselves and the world. For all readers, it should be a joyful jorney through a hand-picked series of scientific articles and discoveries, poetry, and anecdotes. It is lucidly written, and even consistently funny (a nice change of pace for some of us!).

As I re-skim it now to write this, I find quote after quote and story after story that I’d love to recount for their simple and direct teaching power. But alas, I’ll spare you all of that and just suggest you get the book yourself. You’ll be glad you did. (available at Soundstrue or Amazon)

Cross-posted at American Buddhist Perspective.

Sky

noreply@blogger.com (Adam Miller) — Mon, 21 Feb 2011 14:00:00 +0000

I’d forgotten about the sky. For how long, I’m not sure. Months? Years?

When I remembered, it felt like waking from a cramped dream.

A few weeks ago, early in the morning, I was running. The sun climbed bright in the east. The moon, chalk white, lapsed in the west. And I was running beneath them – on the ground, next to water, up a hill, and around a bend.

I had been worried, anxious, impatient. But, beneath this sky, I couldn’t remember what about. So I wiped my brow and leaned into the wind.

Tolstoy remembered this sky. Here’s Prince Andrei, in War and Peace, just struck on the head by one of Napoleon’s men:

“What is it? am I falling? are my legs giving way under me?” he thought, and fell on his back. He opened his eyes, hoping to see how the fight between the French and the artillerists ended, and wishing to know whether or not the red-haired artillerist had been killed, whether the cannon had been taken or saved. But he did not see anything. There was nothing over him now except the sky – the lofty sky, not clear, but still immeasurably lofty, with gray clouds slowly creeping across it.
“How quiet, calm, and solemn, not at all like when I was running,” thought Prince Andrei, “not like when we were running, shouting, and fighting; not at all like when the Frenchman and the artillerist, with angry and frightened faces, were pulling at the swab – it’s quite different the way clouds creep across this lofty, infinite sky.
“How is it I haven’t seen this lofty sky before? And how happy I am that I’ve finally come to know it. Yes! everything is empty, everything is a deception, except this infinite sky. There is nothing, nothing except that. But there is not even that, there is nothing except silence, tranquility. And thank God!” (281)
[Photo by Herman Bustamante]