Generational Myths

Found this interesting observation at Duck of Minerva;

For members of generation X like myself, Star Wars is one of the constitutive myths of our childhoods. The Force, lightsaber duels, the Millennium Falcon, "I am your father," "he's my brother," "I've got a bad feeling about this," and so on . . . this is what we grew up with.

...For members of the next generation, the "millennial" generation, I'd wager that a principal constitutive myth is the Harry Potter series.

For many old fogies like me, born shortly after mid-century, coming into adolescence around 1970, the central cultural myth was J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings.

This got me thinking about how, if indeed these mythic structures define their generations, how they might differ. Part of the difference lies in the medium, which another boomer idol, Marshall McLuhan said "is the message." Lord of the Rings was a book (at least back then, it was only a book), Star Wars was a movie series and Harry Potter is really both (starting as a book but being translated to film very quickly) This in itself may say something about the three generations. Let's consider the three central myths (and all three are quite mythic in tone and content) according to how several key elements are dealt with. It might give a glimpse into future social history to see what the emerging generation resonates with compared to those that have gone before.

One of the most striking differences between the three mythologies is in their attitude toward technology. While Tolkien has a decidedly negative attitude toward machinery, calling it "orcish," he shows great love and respect for handicrafts and artwork. While Saruman, the evil wizard, builds huge ugly noisy machine-works at Isengard, the hobbits live in a rustic idyll and make things that are homely and useful; pleasant if not beautiful. The elves and dwarves make objects of great beauty. The comparison also shows in the races of men. The clean-living folk of Rohan, even their kings, live in wooden halls. The men of Gondor, whose near downfall comes about in part through arrogance and pride, pile up massive cities of stone.

There is no such nuanced attitude in the Star Wars universe. The series manifests an abiding fascination with technology, and a faith that it can work near-miracles (faster than light travel, artificial intelligence, etc.) Many of the most striking visual sequences in the films involve battles between space-ships; technological artifacts as eye candy. Both the good and the evil sides make use of these technologies, so in that way they are seen as value-neutral.

The Harry Potter books have another, and quite curious, attitude from either of the older myths. To the wizards of Rowling's world (with the eccentric exception of Arthur Weasely) muggle technology is neither an object of fear nor of fascination. It is generally just ignored as beneath notice. One of the characters dismisses our technology as "those gadgets muggles make because they can't do magic." There is, it is true, a whole alternate wizard technology of flying broomsticks, animated portraits and the like but none of this is strictly speaking technological in the usual sense. These things are not animated by a clever contrivance of their internal parts, but by an infusion of magical power. It may be significant that in the Potter world, only the goblins, rather nasty creatures, seem to actually make things in the ordinary way. When Hermione knits socks and hats for the Elves by hand, the others regard her as slightly dotty.

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If we define spirituality as seeking the numinous and/or the transcendent, and religion as the organized and institutionalized manifestation of that seeking, we can see some degree of spirituality in all three myths, but a striking lack of religion.

This lack of a formal religion is especially odd in Tolkien, and has been pointed out by his critics. Tolkien himself was a rather conservative Catholic, but there seems to be no mention of any religions in Middle Earth. There is no temple in Minas Tirith that we hear of, nor priests anywhere. However, Frodo does call out to the Valar (gods) in moments of peril; "O Elbereth! Githoniel!" and Denethor in his madness makes mention of the "heathen kings of old." (Presumably the Gondor of the Third Age was not heathen, what then was it?)

The spiritual aspect of Middle Earth is alluded to in LOTR but we need to go to the Silmarillion to see it clearly. Tolkien's religious vision was monotheistic; all things emanating from the creator Eru Illuvatar. His manifestation in the earth was primarily through light, particularly the light of the two sacred trees that once stood in Aman. The light of these trees is reflected in the eyes of the High Elves. It may be that Tolkien felt that in his world the numinous was readily manifest through the Elves particularly, and that an organized religion would be superfluous.

There is certainly a metaphorical transcendence in Tolkien's world; passage to the Uttermost West as taken by Frodo and several other characters at the end of the book. The longing of the Elves for the West is a poignant allusion to the spiritual longing for transcendence, which sometimes feels like heart-break. "This shore and the other shore" is a symbol often found in Buddhist literature as well.

Much has been made of the spiritual side of Star Wars, in particular the numerous references to the Force. I think too much has been made of this, just as too little attention has been given to the spiritual aspect of Tolkien. The Force may be a quasi-religious concept, borrowed somewhat from Taoism but coloured by Manicheanism (the good and the dark sides) but it is hard to see much of the really numinous about it, much less transcendence. The Force is an integral part of the weave of this world, it is not separate or other. If the Force is a religion, it is a religion without any transcendence. It is really physics rather than metaphysics and Lucas' universe is more materialist than either of the other two myths.

In spite of this, or perhaps because of it, the Star Wars world has the closest thing to an organized religion in the quasi-monastic Jedi Order. But the battles of the Jedi are entirely of and for this world, and they do not seek any "further shore."

Harry Potter's world has little of overt spirituality, and avoids any religious allusions at all. Nevertheless, what the Zen people call the "Great Matter" of life and death is a major theme running throughout the series. The post-mortem state is deliberately left mysterious. When Harry has his near death experience at the climax of the last book, Dumbledore meets him in the anteroom of the after-life and tells him he has the choice to go back, or to go on. When Harry asks what he means by "going on" Dumbledore just shrugs and says, "going on." Likewise Sirius's death is portrayed as falling through a veiled doorway.

This side of death, however, there is no real transcendence in Potter's world. On the other hand, there is a clear sense of distinction between the ordinary (muggle) world and the magical realm of the wizards. This concept of a magical realm invisible to us, but at the same time penetrating our world with occasional visitations both ways, is more shamanic than anything else. While the transcendent is almost (but not quite) missing, Rowling's world is full of the numinous.

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Turning now to the question of the politics underlying the three myths, we again find marked differences. When asked about his politics, Tolkien once described himself as an "Anarcho-Monarchist." The anarchist side shows itself in the rustic utopia of the Shire, which doesn't seem to have any real government at all (the Mayor being a mostly honorific post, and the Shire-Reeves being a tiny border patrol) and yet they seem to get along quite happily.

The monarchist side is evident in the major theme of the return of the rightful king. The king's right comes from his blood-line, particularly the infusion of Elvish and even Valar (divine) blood in Aragorn. Tolkien's politics is an odd synthesis totally out of harmony with any of the major trends of his own time, or ours. It is essentially an idealized medieval view. (Another close analogue, but one of which Tolkien probably knew nothing, would be the Buddhist ideal of the Wheel-Turning Monarch who rules by righteousness not by force.)

Certainly Tolkien was viscerally opposed to any kind of totalitarianism (one or another form of which seduced so many of his generation) as can be clearly seen in the "Scouring of the Shire," his most overtly political chapter. (Unfortunately missing from the film version.)

The Star War series is the most political of the three myths. The whole story is essentially a political one, the struggle for freedom against tyranny. In the prequel movies the politics even seems to allude to contemporary events, with Palpatine standing in for Bush, although Lucas denies that was his intention.

The politics in Star Wars has a very American flavour, with the ideal being a free republic. There is a strong valuation of the rugged individual against the overbearing collectivist Empire.

However, it also needs to be said that the politics in Star Wars are not really consistent or even coherent. The struggle for the republic includes a princess, and the robots being portrayed as autonomous, conscious and sensitive, represent a kind of slavery.

The politics in Harry Potter is not so overt but there is a constant theme of anti-authoritarianism running throughout the series. The Ministry of Magic is portrayed mostly in a negative light as ineffectual at best, compromised at worst. The only authority figure in the whole series who is portrayed positively is Dumbledore, and he actually does very little governing and even winks at the students' transgressions of the rules.

There is even a strong positive valuation of rebellion, as in the constant mischief of the Weasley twins, and even more powerfully in the student revolt of Dumbledore's Army against the strict regime of Headmistress Umbridge. Certainly Harry Potter, the hero of the books, is constantly in trouble of one sort or another with the wizarding powers-that-be. It could also be noted that in the prologue to Half Blood Prince, the muggle prime-minister is characterized in a rather comic way. But beyond this negative portrayal of authority, Rowling gives no hint as to what might be a desirable political arrangement. And how are the Ministers of Magic selected anyway? Politics in Potter's world is mostly an irrelevance, an annoyance whenever it imposes itself on everyday life.

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Considering next how the three myths deal with that very human preoccupation, love and sexuality. Turning first to Tolkien, there is little to say because he mostly avoids the topic. In the whole trilogy you can count the love stories on one hand; Sam and Rosie, the Aragorn-Arwen-Eowyn triangle, Eowyen and Faramir and Gimli's distant admiration of Galadriel. All of these are treated very cursorily, and with the exception of the first, in a very formal and courtly manner. (Of course I'm speaking of the books here, not the movies)

There is more passion in Star Wars with the Luke-Leia-Hans triangle and even incest (albeit unwitting) with Luke and Leia being siblings. Nevertheless, the love stories remain a minor theme taking second place to the action of galactic war and the machinations of the various factions.

It is only when we come to Harry Potter that erotic relationships between the characters become a major theme. (After the first few books, of course, when the characters reach an appropriate age) It is one of the strengths of Rowling's writing that she portrays realistically and sensitively the adolescents angst of coming to terms with sexual desire. Harry's first date is a disaster (wasn't everyone's?), Ron and Hermione find each other with painful slowness and many detours, Ginny's hopeless crush on Harry finds fulfilment at last. It is all very real, and a very important part of the appeal of the books. The dominant tone is certainly not courtly like in Tolkien, nor even passionate as in Star Wars, but anxiety ridden and problematic.

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The treatment of Gender Roles shows a gradual evolution through the three myths, paralleling what was going on in society. Tolkien's Middle Earth is very much a man's world (or perhaps we should say a male world to avoid offending the elves and dwarves!) There are very few female characters at all, and the only really strong ones are Galadriel and Eowyn, and the latter chafed at being restricted to a "woman's place." (We ought, I suppose, add Shelob to the list!) The only time a woman, Eowyn, does any fighting it is by disguising herself as a man. Women are not unsympathetically portrayed in Tolkien, they're mostly just not portrayed at all. It is not surprising that for the film version the role of Arwen, a very sketchy character in the books, was greatly enhanced.

Star Wars, too, is a mostly male adventure with the very important exception, of course, of Princess Leia. (And in the prequels, Padme Amidala.) Princess Leia does play a more autonomous and dynamic role than any of Tolkien's women, but she is greatly outnumbered.

It is only when we come to the Harry Potter world that we see something approaching a gender equality. There are many strongly defined, and powerful, witches in the series; Hermione, Tonks, McGonagall, Luna to name just a few, and also some on the side of evil such as Bellatrix. Nevertheless, even here, the three most powerful characters; Harry, Dumbledore and Voldemort are all wizards.

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The attitudes toward Nature in the three myths is markedly different. Tolkien has the most empathy with the natural world, and he lavishes a great deal of descriptive prose on the varied landscapes the hobbits pass through. He, like his hobbits, obviously had a great affection and affinity for the natural world, the earth and the vegetation that grows on it. His most sympathetic characters, the hobbits and the elves, are those closest to nature. The most beautiful place on Middle Earth is not the stone city of MInas Tirith but the Golden Wood of Lothlorien. Most of the story takes place out of doors.

Likewise, the foulest deed of his evil characters is the way that they destroy the environment. Orcs are described as "hacking and hewing" and Mordor is of course a polluted waste-land. The revolt of the Ents against Saruman depicts the wrath of nature against human spoilage. It is also not with out importance that Sam, whom Tolkien himself called "the true hero of the book" was a gardener by trade.

The depiction of nature in Star Wars on the other hand is almost entirely either absent or negative. Most of the action takes place in the artificial and antiseptic environment of space-ships or technologically sophisticated buildings, and the planets the characters visit seem mostly to be either barren deserts or hostile volcanic worlds. The one healthy and natural eco-system portrayed, the forest world of the Ewoks, serves mostly as a backdrop for an action sequence involving flying motorcycles darting among the trees. This is a universe of men and machines, with nature playing very little part.

Harry Potter falls somewhere in the middle. Most of the story takes place indoors, but an important secondary locale is the Forbidden Forest and the students of Hogwarts are never too far from the weather, with the ceiling of the great hall magically reflecting the sky outside. Rowling also pays some attention to the changing seasons, and the major character of Hagrid is pretty close to the earth.

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Just to touch briefly on a few more points of comparison;

Violence is a factor in all three myths, sword or light-saber or death-dealing wand but interestingly enough, in all three the protaganist saves the world by at one point abstaining from harm. Frodo spares Smeagol, Luke Skywalker refuses to kill Darth Vader when he learns his true identity and Harry Potter destroys the last horocrux by letting Voldemort curse him.

If we could define the highest ideals of each myth, for LOTR it would be peace and domesticity in a rightly ordered world (very Canadian that, "Peace Order and Good Government" when Aragorn comes back!) In Star Wars it would be Freedom. In Harry Potter it would be the values of friendship and family; loyalty, devotion, sharing and self-sacrifice.

Evil in all three myths is in some manner faceless. Sauron was portrayed as a disembodied eye for the movies, but in the books not even that much is shown. He remains hidden throughout. Darth Vader was of course masked and Voldemort is described as being rather hideously featureless; a slit for a nose and eyes like a snake. He is also in a sense nameless; "He Who Must Not Be Named."

The cosmology in Tolkien is very medieval; all things emanating in ordered layers from the divine in an orderly chain of being. In Star Wars, the cosmology is modern; scientific and even materialist. In the Harry Potter books it is a dualism of the ordinary world and the magical, numinous other realm of the wizards and witches.

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In some ways Tolkien seems an odd choice for a generation stereotyped as radical, self-indulgent and anti-authoritarian. In revolt against the claustrophobic world of the fifties, the children of the sixties ended up idealizing hobbit holes! Primarily I think the appeal was the return of an ancient mythic vision to the sterile landscape of the "Leave it to Beaver" world. It was a time when people wanted to break out of rigid structures, and a quest into Wilderland hit just the right note.

Even Tolkien's somewhat reactionary political vision resonated at some level. It was a generation in revolt against modernity, and "back to the land" is really a deeply conservative impulse.

Tolkien, too, could be called a romantic (in the nineteenth century sense) and there was a strongly romantic or anti-classical bent to hippie sensibilities in everything from clothing styles to spiritual seeking.

It is not hard to see Star Wars in Generation X. They are the ones who can't go out the door without an iPod jammed into their ear, who carry cell-phones everywhere, who make computer hacking into high art. Politically too, they tend toward libertarianism, the Republic against the Empire. Reagan in the 'eighties used allusions to Star Wars quite often; the Soviet Union as Evil Empire.

The Star Wars stories were not romantic in the same was as were Tolkien's tales, but didn't really represent a reversion to classicism either. There's something of the Heroic Age about them; a tone akin in some ways to the Illiad. The heroic individual at centre stage. There was certainly something individualistic about 'eighties culture, even if it seldom arose to heroism. It was, like Star Wars, also quite materialistic.

What of the Potter kids? It is too early to know for sure, but some guesses might be ventured from the tone of the books. If they develop into adults still resonating with this myth the culture of the twenty-teens may be marked by a strong emphasis on family and friendship bonds, a more balanced approach to technology and a seeking for the magic around the next bend.

Facing Facts

A few more thoughts about the climate crisis;

First, the situation is beyond serious. Check out this article in the New Scientist for some hard science about polar melting.

In the article James Hansen (head of NASA's Goddard Institute) extrapolates our current situation based on geological history;

There is strong evidence that the Earth now is within 1 °C of its highest temperature in the past million years. Oxygen isotopes in the deep-ocean fossil plankton known as foraminifera reveal that the Earth was last 2 °C to 3 °C warmer around 3 million years ago, with carbon dioxide levels of perhaps 350 to 450 parts per million. It was a dramatically different planet then, with no Arctic sea ice in the warm seasons and sea level about 25 metres higher, give or take 10 metres.

And

...the palaeoclimate record contains numerous examples of ice sheets yielding sea level rises of several metres per century when forcings were smaller than that of the business-as-usual scenario. For example, about 14,000 years ago, sea level rose approximately 20 metres in 400 years, or about 1 metre every 20 years.

Second, even now there is a huge amount of denial. I'm not thinking here primarily of the dwindling breed of outright nay-sayers, but of the tendency to imagine things won't get that bad, or the gormless hope that some technological fix will save the day.

Hansen addresses one aspect of this, the strong economic pressure on researchers to downplay the data;

I was dismayed, because in conversations and email exchanges with relevant scientists I sensed a deep concern about the stability of ice sheets in the face of "business as usual" global warming scenarios, which assume that emissions of greenhouse gases will continue to increase. Why might scientists be reticent to express concerns about something so important?

...It seems to me that scientists downplaying the dangers of climate change fare better when it comes to getting funding. Drawing attention to the dangers of global warming may or may not have helped increase funding for the relevant scientific areas, but it surely did not help individuals like Mercer who stuck their heads out.

Of course there are powerful economic interests opposed to any restraint on burning carbon fuels. (Check out this two videos, both produced by public relations arms of the oil industry - Al Gore's Penguin Army and We Call it Life. ) But I suspect there is also something deeper going on. I think that many people who may intellectually accept the concept of anthropic climate change don't really believe in it on a gut level, because they are missing the idea of inevitable change, familiar to Buddhists as anicca. They find it difficult to imagine that things won't always be much the same as they are now.

Obviously, there is no justification for this erroneous assumption. Geology tells us that the earth has had many different climates, many different arrays of flora and fauna. It is only a scant fifteen thousand years since the end of the last ice age. Even on the scale of human affairs, history tells us that nations, races and civilizations rise and fall continually.

What may contribute to the inability to really imagine global change is the long era of peace and prosperity enjoyed by the developed countries since 1945. This is now coming to an end. In reality the only surefire prediction about the future is that it won't be anything like the present.

Third, there is almost no willingness to face up to what needs to be done. George Monbiot says it better than in could in a recent post, Eco-Junk;

Uncomfortable as this is for both the media and its advertisers, giving things up is an essential component of going green. A section on ethical shopping in Goldsmith’s book advises us to buy organic, buy seasonal, buy local, buy sustainable, buy recycled. But it says nothing about buying less.

Green consumerism is becoming a pox on the planet. If it merely swapped the damaging goods we buy for less damaging ones, I would champion it. But two parallel markets are developing: one for unethical products and one for ethical products, and the expansion of the second does little to hinder the growth of the first. I am now drowning in a tide of ecojunk. Over the past six months, our coatpegs have become clogged with organic cotton bags, which – filled with packets of ginseng tea and jojoba oil bath salts – are now the obligatory gift at every environmental event. I have several lifetimes’ supply of ballpoint pens made with recycled paper and about half a dozen miniature solar chargers for gadgets I don’t possess.

... Ethical shopping is in danger of becoming another signifier of social status. I have met people who have bought solar panels and mini-wind turbines before they have insulated their lofts: partly because they love gadgets, but partly, I suspect, because everyone can then see how conscientious (and how rich) they are. We are often told that buying such products encourages us to think more widely about environmental challenges, but it is just as likely to be depoliticising. Green consumerism is another form of atomisation – a substitute for collective action. No political challenge can be met by shopping.

This aspect of the crisis has bothered me for some time now. There is a growing trend to want to do the right thing, the "green" thing. But only if it means no real sacrifices. Let's face the hard truth; switching to flourescent bulbs, putting your tins in the blue-box and buying bags made of hemp is not about saving the planet. It's about making you feel good. (The absurdity of off-setting carbon credits is an extreme example.)

I've said it before, the only thing that will work is a massive roll-back of consumerism. Never mind "green," the catchword should be "less."

And I have to respectfully disagree with fellow Buddhist blogger Cliff of Everyday Zazen who says, regarding the climate crisis;

as in all things,it comes down to individual effort. concern is not enough. it’s what i do that matters.

Given the scale of the problem, this kind of voluntarism is not merely disingenuous, it is actually dangerous. The damage to the environment is too massive to be met by the kind of paltry tinkering that individuals can accomplish. I agree with Monbiot that the only thing that would have a hope in hell of succeeding would be a strict regime of carbon rationing. Politically, there doesn't seem to be much chance of this happening.

However, people were willing to accept quite draconian rationing schemes during World War Two. Odd creatures that we are, we only seem to be willing to make real sacrifices in the interest of beating up on another tribe, not on securing the future for everyone.

Fourthly, The Prognosis is Not Good. Given the last point, it seems unlikely that anything significant enough to make a difference will be done in time. And to make matters worse, there is another consideration. Even if one or even several nations come to their senses and institute a Monbiot carbon rationing scheme, it still won't work. The problem is global and there is no global authority capable of addressing the problem. All the major carbon producing nations would have to get on board, and in the current state of the world, the chance of that happening before it is too late is between slim and nil.

It's just barely possible to imagine that some of the Europeans might be up to the challenge. But the largest single producer is the USA and 'nuff said about that. Also China and India are industrializing at a rapid clip and the middle classes are just beginning to taste the dubious joys of a consumer life-style. And there are an awful lot of them.

I'm sorry I couldn't end this post on a hopeful note. If it makes you feel better, sort the cans from the bottles until the endorphins kick in.

Saving the Earth with Rock and Roll

Well yesterday was 7/7/07 and the big Live Earth Concert which has saved us all just in the nick of time. By the middle of Madonna's second number, the Greenland Ice Sheet had started to refreeze and what with Al Gore's enormous investment in carbon offsets, we should all be laying in extra firewood for the cold winters ahead. Polar bears are celebrating.

Sarcasm aside, this whole event is quite depressing in the way it typifies our pathetic response to the very real climate crisis. Scientists like Monbiot and Lovelock are painting a very grim picture; according to the latter, we may already have passed the critical "tipping point" where the earth system is going into positive feedback through reduced albedo and released methane from the melting of the Canadian and Siberian permafrost. People at all levels, even the thickest of politicians, are finally facing the facts, about twenty years too late.

But what are we doing about it? Putting in flourescent bulbs mostly. And on the political level, setting ambitious "targets" decades in the future, targets without concrete plans in most cases.

And, oh yeah, holding rock concerts. A really good article from the online Daily Mail has the following snippet;

A Daily Mail investigation has revealed that far from saving the planet, the extravaganza will generate a huge fuel bill, acres of garbage, thousands of tonnes of carbon emissions, and a mileage total equal to the movement of an army.

The most conservative assessment of the flights being taken by its superstars is that they are flying an extraordinary 222,623.63 miles between them to get to the various concerts - nearly nine times the circumference of the world. The true environmental cost, as they transport their technicians, dancers and support staff, is likely to be far higher.

The total carbon footprint of the event, taking into account the artists' and spectators' travel to the concert, and the energy consumption on the day, is likely to be at least 31,500 tonnes of carbon emissions, according to John Buckley of Carbonfootprint.com, who specialises in such calculations.

But take solace in the fact that they've bought all kinds of guilt removing "carbon offsets."

The hard fact is that if we can stop this warming at all (which is doubtful, curly light bulbs or no) it can only be done by massively scaling back our (meaning the rich countries) lifestyles. Use less power, travel less, consume less. In many cases it may not hurt to eat less. Nobody wants to face up to that yet, and probably won't until Mother Nature scales back our lifestyles for us, the hard way.

We Have Returned

No postings this last three weeks because I've been travelling, with Samenera Paramito, on a teaching trip to Peterborough and Ottawa. We also took the opportunity to visit Tisarana Monastery for a few days, that is the new establishment near Ottawa of which Ajahn Viradhammo is abbot. Very heartening to see how well it is getting off the ground.

Commenting on Comments

From the comments to my post on Rebirth, Apichato Bhikkhu says;

The three lifetime idea, along with the ‘relative truth’ of rebirth, is Brahmanism, eternalism. Buddhagosa was originally a Brahman, and along with the eternalist view of Paticcasamuppada he also ‘endorsed’ other Vedic practices as part of Buddhism, e.g. meditative practices that are totally irrelevant to the cessation of suffering, and quite a few other ideas (although he was not the first to endorse such a view and such ideas).

No, he wasn't the first. The Buddha beat him to it by about a millenium.

Those who wish to characterize rebirth as a brahminical import into the pure Buddhadhamma would have to account for the numerous times the Buddha explicitly teaches it. Likewise, the strongest case for the "three-lifetimes" model is found in the suttas themselves, where the factors of "birth" and "death" are routinely defined in the literal terms of actual birth and death of beings, not in the metaphorical sense necessary for the momentary model, which is rather contrived for this part of the cycle.

As for the various practices described in the Vissudhimagga "totally irrelevant to the cessation of suffering" I can only infer Apichato is referring to the forty samatha meditations, such as mindfulness of breathing and kasina work. As far as I know, there is no practice in the Vissudhimagga that isn't found previously in the words of the Buddha himself. This is not surprising, as the VM was written as a commentorial encyclopedia, a precis of the canonical teachings. And while samatha meditation does not lead by itself to cessation of suffering, it is far from irrelevant to that endeavour. You have to practice your scales if you want to play at Carnegie Hall.

Lastly, dismissing a teaching as a "relative truth" implies a basic misunderstanding of that term. A relative truth is not a falsehood. In the case of rebirth or kamma, these teachings may be called "relative" because they are stated in terms of individual beings which in the ultimate sense are only conventional names. However, this does not mean they do not actually happen!

POSTSCRIPT ON COMMENTING POLICY

I've fiddled with the settings for the comments again, here is the new deal;

1. I've left on word verification. I know it's slightly annoying but less than having the comments fill up with spam for great stock tips and male enhancement products.
2. I've taken off moderation, we seem to have lost the nasties. If they come back, moderation will go back on.
3. Lastly, I've enabled the requirement that you register. We've got a lot of anonymous postings and it makes it impossible to follow any discussion in the threads. Registration with Google seems to be the only way to require posters to use a name (doesn't have to be your real name.) If you have a blog, or use other personalized Google services, you're already registered. If not, it's free and easier than most on-line registrations. We may lose a few posters doing this, but I think it will make the comments more readable for everyone.

Three Lifetimes or One Moment?

Picking up on a theme in several of the comments, I'd like to jump into the very hot water of the perennial debate about dependent origination. I like to say that when I was in Thailand, I saw only two topics that would be sure to generate heated debate among the monks; the correct interpretation of the dependent origination and the allowability of cheese in the afternoon.

(Not wanting to get lost in the legalistic minutiae of vinaya, we'll leave the latter aside for now.)

The twelve-fold dependent origination is a cornerstone of the Buddhist teaching, essentially a detailed elaboration of first and second noble truth, or in the scriptural phrase, "an explanation of how this whole mass of suffering comes to be."

The teaching itself is a subtle and difficult one, and as so often, the original texts are quite terse and formulaic. These factors have led to various attempts at detailed elaboration. Two of these have gained prominence in the Theravada world.

The traditional model, sometimes called the "three lifetime model," is the one established in the orthodox tradition by Buddhaghosa in the 5th century A.D. (The explanation of dependent origination on my web-site is based on this model.) The term "three lifetimes" is a bit of a misnomer, it should really be "many lifetimes." The model supposes that some of the factors refer to events from previous lifetimes, some to this lifetime, and others to future lifetimes. For example, the crucial link sankhara -> vinnana (formations to consciousness) is interpreted as past karmic formations causing rebirth-linking consciousness.

The other popular model is sometimes called the "momentary" model. Although some version of this interpretation was known to Buddhaghosa, as he mentions it in passing, it has only come into prominence in recent decades through the work of the great Thai teacher Ajahn Buddhadasa. This model prefers to see the dependent origination as occurring in it's full cycle in every single moment of consciousness. Thus, the links of birth and death are interpreted metaphorically, rather than literally. (Here is a site dealing with Buddhadasa's interpretation.)

Without coming to any definite conclusion (although in the interests of full disclosure I'll say that I lean toward the traditional model) I'll make the following observations;

1. I don't think the two models are mutually exclusive, despite what some partisans on both sides would have us believe. The process of cause-and-effect detailed by the dependent origination can, and probably do, occur on several time scales. We are coming into birth every moment as we take new objects of consciousness and run the gamut of feeling, craving and clinging. But we also go through the processes of actual physical death followed by rebirth periodically. The dependent origination serves as an explanation for both inter-related processes.

2. While some of Ajahn Buddhadasa's disciples have gone so far as to actually deny that there is any rebirth in the traditional sense, this does not appear to have been the Ajahn's view. I don't believe there is any place in his writings where he categorically denied the reality of physical rebirth. He did say something like "rebirth has nothing to do with Buddhism" but what he may have meant is that Buddhism should be about attaining nibbana (and thereby ending rebirth) rather than seeking a fortunate rebirth. This may have had a lot to do with the milieu of Thai Buddhism at the time, which in his view was neglecting the higher teachings.

I have also heard that when he was asked point-blank about this, he would say "What do the suttas say?" When the reply came back that the suttas clearly teach the actuality of rebirth (as they indisputably do) he would say, "Well, we musn't go against what the Buddha said." Make of this what you will.

3. From my reading of Ajahn Buddhadasa's writing (not comprehensive) it seems that the main reason he taught the momentary view was it's utility for practice. It is no simple matter to practice with factors spanning several lifetimes, but we can all watch the mind go through it's changes in the here and now. There is a lot to be said for this way of looking at it. In particular, watching the mind go through the sequence contact to feeling to craving to clinging to becoming is a very important aspect of developing insight.

4. Finally, whatever the merit of the two models practically or theoretically, it is quite clear which one is closer to the original texts. Whenever the Buddha gave detailed descriptions of the twelve factors, he always described birth and death in literal, not metaphorical language. Birth is coming into existence in one of the six realms, through one of the four modes of generation etc. and death is the failing of the faculties, the destruction of the body, the passing out of this realm of being etc.

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POSTSCRIPT on Rebirth;

A correspondent alerted me to another web-site dedicated to promulgating Buddhism without Rebirth. Without getting into a detailed critique, it should be enough that this character quotes "the Buddha" using Paul Carus' Buddhist Gospel as a source. I've dealt with the dubious influence of this book before.

The Importance of Rebirth

Barry writes;

could you post on 'rebirth' re your comments agreeing with 'onemind' at 'thebuddhawaswrong.com' I would be interested to read more of your view on this matter since you place a particular emphasis on it and it is a seeming point of agreement between you and the owner of the anti-Buddhist website.

To recap; OneMind had said that without rebirth, the whole structure of Buddhist teaching falls apart. Phrased a little strongly, but essentially he is correct. (The only correct statement on the web-site perhaps)

There have been many attempts to cobble together some kind of Buddhism that leaves rebirth out of the picture. I can't really understand why anyone would try. The result is either stoicism or existentialism with an optional dash of vegetarianism perhaps, but it sure isn't any Buddhism that the old teachers would recognize. I guess the motivation comes from a misguided impulse to make the Dhamma more palatable to modern people by pandering to their delusions.

Actually, and I've said this before, rebirth per se isn't the most important issue. Denial of rebirth means a total misunderstanding of the First Noble Truth. But the real damage in these bastardized materialist/agnostic/existential "Buddhisms" is to the Third Noble Truth. I'll go into this in a little detail, bear with me here.

The First Noble Truth is the statement of the problem. It implies dukkha, annica, anatta in every moment of consciousness. But it implies something much more profound than this; it teaches that there is no way out within the confines of samsaric existence. At each moment there is just mind vainly seeking satisfaction from the ten thousand objects. This is repeated ad infinitum. The only way out is to stop doing that.

Now, it is vitally important for the full grasping of this situation to realize that this process has been going on for an indefinitely long period in the past, and has the potential to go on for an indefinitely long period in the future. The true hollowness of samsaric satisfaction can only be fully understood in the context of manifold lifetimes.

This makes a crucial difference in the depth of meditation. If one is to realize the unconditioned, then there has to be a complete and radical relinquishment of the conditioned. No half measures will do. Every arising object, and every potential object, must be seen as completely empty, vain and undesirable. This is possible if one has really internalized the reality of multiple lifetimes. Whatever fantastic desirable thing may be out there is essentially just more of the same. Been there, done that, billions of times.

If however, one is working from the concept of one life-time only, this level of relinquishment is not possible. The experiences of the senses take on a different flavour, a greater importance or perhaps one should say, piquancy, if this is the only shot at the can. In fact, it would be fair to ask if relinquishment is even a worthwhile goal in this context.

So awakening is simply not possible if one adheres to miccha-ditthi (erroneous views.) Sorry to all the "agnostic Buddhist" but the Unconditioned is one place that particular eel is unable to wriggle to.

This brings us to the Third Noble Truth. Nibbana has to be written out of materialist or agnostic reworkings of the Dhamma. This is for both philosophic and experential reasons. Philosophically, there is no possible place for a transcendental reality in a materialist world. Experentially, Nibbana cannot be realized by adherents of false view, so none of them deal with it their writings. Or they redefine it into something that "fits" onto the flat-land of their impoverished world-view. And if one of them ever did attain the path and fruit, he would immediately and forever cease to be a materialist thereby.

Loose Ends

OK, I've got the log-in problem solved. Blogger now wants me to use my email address as my user name instead of my user name. I don't remember when they changed that; certainly seems counter-intuitive and the error messages they give when you do it wrong are particularly useless even by the low standards of computer error messages. Grumble, gripe.

Now, onto a philosophic issue. A couple of comments have questioned my assertion that chess ability is culturally specific.

There is nothing special about chess. It takes the average person 5 minutes to learn how each peice moves and the objective of the game. The game is completely mechanical and a persons skill at it is determined by how many variables a persons short term memory can keep track of via thinking about moves in advanced and that is completely determined by dna. Otherwise computers would not be unable to beat grandmasters at the game. There is nothing cultural about algorithms or memory and these human traits are completely genetic.

Oh dear. I can only assume the writer of that has never played serious chess. There are so many misconceptions in the above paragraph, it's hard to know where to begin.

Of course, chess is highly algorithmic, but only at a very deep level. The complexity of the game is such that it is only very recently that the most powerful computers have been able to play at a grandmaster level. Even now, they can't consistently beat the top human players.

There is more, a lot more, to the skill of a top player than being able to think ahead several moves. The algorithms needed to work ahead more than a half dozen moves are so complicated, and the number of possible scenarios so literally astronomical, (there are more possible chess games than there are atoms in the universe) that no human, or even any current computer, can play the game by brute force analysis alone.

For human players, there is a great deal of intuition involved; a mental faculty that can't be quantified (another hole in the swiss cheese of the materialist's world-view). The computer uses very clever algorithms that try to maximize factors like control of the centre-board, or conservation of pawn structure. There simply isn't the computer power in the world to play a purely brute force game.

The actual playing of the game by masters is as much an art as a skill. The fact that the grandmasters can hold their own against these powerful computers when no human can possibly hold so many variables in memory demonstrates this.

There is a lot more to learning chess than just knowing how the pieces move.

Housekeeping

I'm still having trouble logging in here; I need to "recover my password" every single time. Something is screwed up and I don't know what. I got some advice in an email from one of the readers here, a reference to a web-site that talks about Blogspot's software is incorrectly flagging some blogs as spam. I don't think that's the problem. Anyway, I'm working on it.

BTW, I hadn't heard of spam blogs before.

On another issue, one of the comments took mild umbrage at my decision to go to moderated posting. Sorry about that, I don't particularly like it either, but we had a serious problem here a while back with extremely nasty posts and even threats. To re-iterate, I will only ban posts that are abusive or obscene, never just because they disagree with me. (Otherwise known as "being wrong.")

What's up with Google?

Last couple of times I tried to log in to this blog to post, I had to go through the password verification rigamorale; anyone else have this problem lately?

Back to You

Regarding my posted critique of "The Buddha Was Wrong"; the site author (a chap known by the handle OneMind) has posted his reply over on his forum (a copy can be found in the comments here also.) I've posted a riposte to that reply on his forum. You can follow the dueling dialectic here; FreeSpeech Forum.

Actually, he was spot on

A friend sent me an email suggesting I have a look at a website whose author has apparently been making a lot of noise over at the e-Sangha discussion board. The site has the deliberately cheeky name "The Buddha Was Wrong." There's nothing really new here, it's the same tired old retreads of the materialist/skeptic position.

Take his article on Rebirth as an example; he states that "there are literally hundreds of scientific studies of brain death which proves the mind does not exist when the last neuron in the brain fires." This is the kind of zero content statement materialists love to throw around. What studies, where and by whom? Obviously there are no such studies, nor ever could be even in principle. How can you prove that mind does not exist?

On the contrary, materialist science is quite unable to account for what philosopher of mind David J. Chalmers calls "The Hard Problem." That is, the simple reality of knowing; consciousness or in Pali citta. Consider the difference between facial recognition software looking at your face and your best friend doing the same. In both cases, there is an initial impact of light waves on a sensitive mechanism (eyes, camera) then the signal is converted and sent to a processor (fibre-optics to a computer, nerves to a brain) where further parsing and decoding occurs. In both cases the output is a "recognition" of your face. But only in the case of your friend is there a subjective, first-person singular experience of seeing.

This end-point of knowing is so perfectly immediate and simple that it cannot, even in theory, be reduced to an algorithmic explanation. There is either a knowing (in the case of your friend) or there is not (in the case of the facial-recognition system.) Everything else in the system can be explicated algorithmically, at least in theory. This last and crucial step cannot.

Why is this important? Because if mind were a physical process, depending on neurons, then it would have to be capable of an algorithmic explanation. "Neuron A fires and sets off neuron B which constitutes knowing." Even to put it in these terms demonstrates the absurdity of it. No, the Buddha was right after all.

Incidentally, perhaps the only statement on this web-site that I agree with is this; "Without the concept of rebirth, the rest of Buddhist philosophy breaks down and becomes irrelevant." I've been saying that for years.

Fortunately, we don't have to abandon rebirth or accept materialism. There is really zero evidence for the latter and quite a bit for the former. The author of the site mentions the recently deceased Ian Stevenson, just to dismiss his meticulous case-studies as "anecdotal." Really, by the nature of the problem, how could there be definitive evidence that isn't of an anecdotal nature? Anyone who has taken the trouble to look into Dr. Stevenson's work will know that he has collected hundreds of cases where a child's past life memories have been objectively verified, even to the remembering of specific names and details of someone's life in another town.

But there are other indicators of rebirth in the common domain. For instance, the remarkable cases of child prodigies. Someone like Mozart learning to play the piano at seven, or Morphy learning chess even earlier simply by watching adults play. The remarkable thing about these individuals is the culturally specific nature of their precocious ability. It isn't a case of strong general intelligence, but of coming into the world with a narrowly specific skill already there, taking only a little nudge to recover.

Furthermore, any parent will tell you that children come into this world with strong personal traits. And the case of identical twins proves that there is something other than either nature or nurture at play. Twins who came from the same zygote, with the same DNA down to the last base pair, and raised by the same parents, can still manifest different personalities.

I could go on. There is the odd phenomenon of people developing strong affinities to a particular foreign culture or historical period. There is love (or aversion!) at first sight. A totally irrational sense that I already know this person, this person is important to me.

None of this this will convince the "skeptic" (in quotes because most of them aren't sceptical at all, in the real sense). Their minds are already made up and they don't want to be bothered with what they dismiss as anomalies. And admittedly, none of this should count as final definitive evidence. But it is fair to say that all of these things are more easily explained with rebirth than without it.

Back to the Buddha Was Wrong website; the author's strong bias shows through in many spots. In his entry for "The Buddha" he shows a picture of a mud shack and claims that this is what the prince Gotama's famous palace must have looked like. I'm not sure what he was trying to prove with this, but it just shows the typical ahistorical prejudice of the modern materialist. Ancient India was quite a bit more advanced than this, as both archaelogy and literary sources attest. Nor is there any justice to his snide comment that "There were no tooth brushes in those days and human hygiene wasn’t much better." Even a cursory reading of the Vinaya texts demonstrates that there was meticulous attention to personal hygeniene not excluding oral. There are numerous passages about the proper manufacture and use of "tooth-sticks." The author doesn't serve the credibility of his cause with such ludicrous historical errors.

I won't go into his very protestant diatribes against the monastic order, for fear of sounding partisan, except to note that like many of the "skeptic" critics who denounce cultural baggage, he quite fails to notice the enormous pile he is dragging around himself.

Finally, for a really good web-site with numerous articles dealing with all the issues involved in the confrontation of Buddhism and materialism you can't do better than "Buddhism vs. Materialism."

Evolution of Consciousness?

Many, if not most, people nowadays are pretty sensitive to the various kinds of chauvinism; national, gender, religion, age and so forth. One pretty big one that goes unremarked is what might be called historical chauvinism or prejudice against the past. This goes hand in hand with what I've called The Myth of Progress, the casual assumption that things are continually getting better, and we're getter smarter, more moral and probably better looking.

I've doubted this for some time, and I'm not the only one apparently. Here's a thought-provoking essay by Jared Diamond about The Worst Mistake in Human History. (spoiler: it was the invention of agriculture.) I've often thought that the high point in human history was the Cro-Magnon period. By high point, I mean the time when people were happiest. Who wouldn't rather be out hunting wooly rhinoceros with the boys than digging in the dirt for your over-lord in Sumer?

Something I've often wondered is how different our minds are from those of our ancestors. Various writers have broached this subject, but most like Julian Jaynes with his Bi-Cameral Mind theory, begin by assuming that the present model is more correct and interpreting ancient ways of knowing in a manner that makes them equivalent to pathologies.

Some time ago I read an article by a Christian writer about angels (sorry no reference, I'm winging it here, no pun intended.) He had one quirky idea that stuck with me. He suggested that the invention of perspective in the Renaissance wasn't really an invention at all. The odd flat scenes in Medieval painting wasn't a lack of technique. It was, he said, a faithful representation of the way people actually saw things.

Then came a shift in human consciousness around the middle of the 15th century and suddenly we were seeing things in 3-D. We had entered fully into the material plane and while gaining a better perception of that realm, we lost contact with the spirit realm.

I'm not sure I buy this theory, it sounds too much like a classic Calvin and Hobbes routine. But in a broader sense, I think he's on to something. Something did change around then, and arguably not for the better. The religious hysteria that gripped Europe for two centuries was perhaps a symptom of a loss of contact with higher consciousness, and a desperate attempt to refind it. When the dust settled from the Reformation, there followed the Scientific Revolution and the increasing knowledge and mastery of the arena left to human consciousness, the realm of matter and form.

In my more optimistic moods, I think this may be a phase we as a species needed to go through. Perhaps we needed to work out a deeper relationship with matter before we could return to spirit with fresh insights; an upward turn of a spiral. In my pessimistic moods, I think it was the beginning of the great crash of our species.

In no case do I buy the view that we are wiser than our ancestors. Nothing comes without a price, and our culture's descent into materialism has cost us dearly.

Signs of Spring

Footnote to "Mind and Body"

Anonymous posted this on the "Mind and Body" thread;

check out the work of the late professor Dr. John Lorber on the student without a brain who went on to graduate with an honours B.A in Maths at the university of Cambridge.
Most of current knowledge is simply the 'party line' cross it at your peril.

You can read about this case here: Is Your Brain Really Necessary?

An excerpt;

This case is by no means as rare as it seems. In 1970, a New Yorker died at the age of 35. He had left school with no academic achievements, but had worked at manual jobs such as building janitor, and was a popular figure in his neighbourhood. Tenants of the building where he worked described him as passing the days performing his routine chores, such as tending the boiler, and reading the tabloid newspapers. When an autopsy was performed to determine the cause of his premature death he, too, was found to have practically no brain at all. Professor Lorber has identified several hundred people who have very small cerebral hemispheres but who appear to be normal intelligent individuals. Some of them he describes as having ‘no detectable brain’, yet they have scored up to 120 on IQ tests.

This comes from a web-site with a lot of fascinating and strange stuff, Alternative Science.

Mind and Body

From the comments, Doug Rogers said;

Mind is what the Universe does. All the causes and conditions come together to birth consciousness. In my understanding then, Consciousness is just a consequence of having a form to contain it. This is rather like Pinker's radio, tuned to a frequency and capable of receiving, like Brain/Body --> Mind. Really there isn't a difference between Brain/Body/Mind. We're bound by the language to make the distinction, and as such, there really isn't a distinct edge we can draw -as to self- between the fingers, the fingers on the keyboard, and the keyboard while in the act.

As far as Mind is concerned, Body is just a filter for sensation. Until a whole lot of neurons come together, there just isn't consciousness. Is there Mind before then? What exactly is reborn? Isn't this anthropomorphization a dangerous and misleading trap? How otherwise to say it? Is this some mal-understanding between English and Pali?

Is mind an effect, spontaneously generated with each sentient form? Or does Mind find form to birth into?

Let me try and clarify the Buddhist position on the mind-body problem, as I understand it (the last clause is an important caveat!)

I think the assumption made in the sentence "Until a whole lot of neurons come together, there just isn't consciousness" is unwarranted. The very first verse of the Dhammapada states that "mind is the forerunner" and it seems to me preferable to say "until mind enters the womb, there just isn't a structured network of neurons."

There isn't any strong a priori reason why one of those formulations is more logical than the other. The first is the default assumption of modern thought, but that doesn't make it either correct or logical.

The latter is the formulation that is in accord with the dependent origination, one of the cornerstones of Buddhist teaching. "Because of consciousness, there arises name-and-form." According to the dependent origination, mind does not arise out of matter (neurons), rather the reverse. If not strictly speaking matter, certainly form (organized matter) does arise out of mind. Brain is something mind does, not the reverse.

This is an odd way of thinking for most moderns, but there may be a theoretical basis in science to explain it. The biologist Rupert Sheldrake raises the serious problem of morphogenesis, i.e. when all the cells in a body have the same DNA, how do the embryonic stem cells "know" how to turn into liver cells or brain cells and organize themselves into complex organs?

This problem is profound, and is quite insoluble if you start with the ordinary materialist assumptions. With everything we know now about DNA the only mechanism we can demonstrate is coding for protein sequences. That seems to be all the DNA is capable of doing. And the problem cuts deep. Once a string of amino acids are combined into a protein string, this string must then fold itself into a workable shape. A given string can fold into a very large number of possible configurations, but only one will do the job intended. How does this bit of insensate matter "know" what is required? A purely physical explanation is impossible. And this only the lowest tier in a long hierarchy of increasingly complex maneuvres required to create an organism.

Sheldrake's explanation is something he calls "morphogenetic fields." These are pure information fields, without any physical location in space (non-local). This sounds vanishingly close to the Buddhist idea of Mind. Mind has no physical characteristics such as size, shape or location. It is everywhere (boundless) and nowhere (void). Thinking about Mind using physical concepts is to make a grotesque category error.

It's quite possible that in a hundred years time the philosophy of materialism will be just a quaint foot-note in the history of science, alongside the phlogiston theory of combustion and phrenology. It's easy to see how it arose in the first place; in the first three centuries of the modern scientific revolution (roughly starting with Newton's Principia) it has provided an enormously powerful explanatory matrix. This only started to get wobbly in the first half of the twentieth century, with quantum physics.

Nevertheless, nineteenth century habits of thought die hard and the materialist view remains strong. What is harder to understand is why it is so much taken for granted. It is really a quite unnatural way of thinking. Consider; mind is what we know directly. Matter (and the external universe) we only know second-hand, strictly speaking as an inference. Is it natural to assume that that which is immediately and surely known is derived from that which is only inferred?

Don't we ever learn?

After mad cow and chicken fever, you'd think people would be thinking twice about the wisdom of our industrial agricultural methods. But you'd be wrong.

The latest crisis is the massive die-off of honey-bees. This is becoming a serious threat to our food supplies, which depend on the bees for pollinations.

A number of possible factors are being considered; cell-phone radiation, GM crops, new pesticides, immune collapse due to stress.

Some of these may be partial explanations. I don't buy the idea of cell-phones having a major effect; we've saturated the ether with RF radiation for decades now and the picayune amount added by cell-phone towers shouldn't make that big a difference. (Pity though, it would be grand to have an excuse to ban the damned things)

GM crops seem to be a more likely causal agent; these weird genetic brews have been unleashed haphazardly on the environment and we are just beginning to see the fall-out.

But it seems that there is an over-arching systemic issue here; same one that was behind the mad-cow and crazy-chicken episodes - the greedy capitalist itch to wrack more and more out of Mother Nature.

Bee-keeping has gone industrial. The same intemperate use of chemical inputs that characterize the keeping of larger stock also goes into the bee-hives. Honey is just a side-line for modern bee-keepers, the big bucks is in trucking the bees around the countryside to perform crop pollination services, a highly unnatural life for the bees to say the least. What's more, some bright bulb thought of the idea of making pre-formed combs larger than nature's to force the bees to grow bigger.

The really telling detail is that organic bee-keepers who use natural sized combs and no chemical inputs are not experiencing bee death.

Just Plain Silly

He told them not to go to warp nine.
When you get old.
Blue screen of death, no one hears your scream.
World's most perfect map ever.
Green Lama saves America (don't ask me)

Coming Soon

Hello all, I've been away from the monastery on a teaching trip and have had spotty access to internet. That is my excuse for neglecting the blog; I should be back by the weekend and will try to get something new up then. Thanks for your patience. In the meantime, we continue to get some interesting comments from readers to check out.

Desire Continued

Barry wrote (in the comments)

What is wrong with enjoying one's food or a householder enjoying their marriage bed or any of the many beautiful and wonderful things in this human life? Surely they all belong?

This is exactly what I mean by wanting to have your cake and eat it too. Phrasing the rhetorical question in terms of right and wrong is misleading. Of course, there is nothing "wrong" with sensual enjoyment per se. That is not the issue.

The issue is one of results. The realization of the Unconditioned, nibbana, is only to be had by a disengagement with the Conditioned, samsara. All the "beautiful and wonderful things" are still marked by dukkha and anicca (misery and impermanence) and engagement in even the most refined objects of the senses lead only to rebirth in the sensual desire sphere. A moral life but one still enmeshed in sensuality can, at best, lead only to the heavenly realms.

The middle path as defined in the Dhammacakkapavattana Sutta is between the ignoble extremes of sensuality and ascetism. It doesn't mean a moderate enjoyment of sensuality, but a contented non-seeking after either pleasure or pain.

The realization of nibbana only comes from disenchantment and dispassion towards the conditioned objects of sense. You simply cannot have your cake and eat it too.