Strange Doings in Lhasa

This picture has been making the round. Something fishy is going on here. Of course, agentes provocateurs are a time honoured dirty cop trick.

Mind is the Forerunner

Every Sunday, we have a sutta study class that I lead. The other week we did the Agganna Sutta, the Sutta on "origins," and once again I was struck by this powerful mythic vision.

In this Buddhist version of Genesis, the earth in primordial times was dark and watery; an unformed primeval chaos. The first beings to appear by the force of their karma from previous world-systems were god-like entities, "self-luminous, feeding on bliss." As the earth congealed, a nutritious substance formed on it's surface ("oja") which intrigued the god-like entities and piqued their curiosity until some of them tried tasting it with a little on the ends of their fingers. Immediately upon ingesting gross matter, they fell from their high station and became gross material beings upon the surface of the earth.

In the history of our planet as reconstructed by modern science, there was a mysterious event called the "Cambrian Explosion." Prior to that time, some half-billion years ago, there were only algae and other simple one-celled organisms. Then, in the blink of a geological eye, the seas were suddenly filled with an astonishing array of complex life-forms. The lord of the world then was the trilobite.

These two visions describe the same event, which I suggest is the descent of mind into this gross material plane. The real explanation of evolution, it's hidden mechanism, may be the play of mind trying out new forms to manifest itself in this level of reality. Natural selection, as posited by Darwin, surely plays a part; unviable forms will be pruned ruthlessly. But it doesn't seem a complete explanation. Creationists love to point out anomalies like the impossibility of complex systems such as a working eye arising all at once. But why would a creator god stick us with an appendix, for instance?

I have argued before that the biggest single anomaly is human intelligence itself. Our hyper-trophied brains are a huge biological deficit; they consume an inordinate amount of the body's calories and our large-headed infants make childbirth more difficult and dangerous than in other mammals. Once our brains had reached the level where we could consistently outwit our prey species, strictly mechanistic Darwinian theory should have stopped further growth. Beautiful and haunting as they are, the Cro-Magnon cave paintings had no strictly survival value.

Materialists insist that brain generates mind. The truth may be quite the other way around. This would certainly be consistent with the teaching of the dependent origination, "because of consciousness, name-and-form (body and mind)" And the Dhammapada, "Mind is the chief, mind is the fore-runner."

I would venture a prediction. If we manage to get through the coming climate crisis with any kind of civilization intact (granted, a very big "if") the next big revolution is science will be the recognition of mind as a separate category independent of matter and energy. Materialism will come to be seen for what it really is, an out-moded superstitious way of thinking. Many of the mysteries of science will become clear. Quantum mechanics will begin to make sense once the mind is allowed as the observer which collapses the wave-function. We will realize that the universe is indeed, in a sense, created but that we ourselves are continually doing the creating. The initial breaking of the symmetry after the Big Bang, the arising of the trilobites, the emergence of homo sapiens all these are easier to explain when mind is taken into account than otherwise.

If that happens, it won't mean the end of human hubris. If we ever do get a technological fix on actual mind, perhaps in the form of Sheldrake's "morphogenetic fields," we might really get ourselves into trouble. The potentials for messing around are literally unimaginable now. Genetic engineering will seem like the crudest kind of tinkering if we can access the underlying informational fields that govern all living forms. It certainly won't mean the end of samsara, at best we may become something like the Nimannarati Deva, the "Gods Who Delight in Creation." Think of Q in Star Trek.

Mind has entangled itself in matter, in samsaric manifestation. Driven by desire ("that oja looks kind of tasty") it seeks always new experience, new manifestations, new forms of delight. The wisdom of the Buddha was to cut through all of that, to seek transcendence of all forms, all manifestations no matter how god-like. The trilobites were our first mistake.

Tibet

For a long time Tibetan civilization has had a powerful grip on the Western imagination. Alternately, it has been romanticized as a spiritual paradise, a Shangri-La or vilified as a last redoubt of superstitious obscurantism and feudalism. The truth, as usual, probably lies somewhere between the two extremes. While there is no denying that some of the social aspects of Old Tibet left somewhat to be desired, there is also no denying that the religious and cultural aspects were an astonishing human accomplishment.

Tibetan culture was unique. The religious background was an amalgam of several late forms of Buddhism coming from India just at the time when the Dharma there was sliding from brilliant cultural peak into the early stages of decadence. The various strands of classical Buddhist thought, together with brilliant philosophy (Nagarjuna), logic and epistemology (Dharmakirti), metaphysical speculation (the Cittamitra, "Mind-Only") and the quasi-magical practices of Tantra all these and more found there way across the Himalayas. Much of late classical Buddhist thought would be lost to us today if it had not been preserved in Tibet. And all these intellectual currents were stirred in with one of the most mature forms of Central Asian shamanism, the old Bon religion.

The result was something brand new, one of humankind's great achievements, Tibetan culture. While other societies put their physical and mental resources into conquest, industrialism and physical science Tibet put hers into spiritual exploration. The result was that although Tibet remained materially backward well into the twentieth century, she had developed spiritual "technologies" well beyond anything accomplished anywhere else. While Europe was busily sailing caravels across the oceans, conquering the world, Tibet set out on a much more important and difficult exploration, that of inner space.

Whatever else may be said about Tibet, the charge that it was a stagnant and backward culture is false. It is based on the myopic idea that the only progress that counts is the inventing of more and better machines to indulge more and better sense pleasures. Tibetans took little interest in that. There was very little material progress in Tibet for the millennium after the introduction of Buddhism. But the spiritual and religious texts and practices show a continual fruitful exploration and development. This is not surprising, in a way. The best and the brightest in Tibet didn't go into business or science but into the monasteries.

But the history of the rest of the world moved in other channels, driven by other forces. In the middle of that cruellest of all centuries, the terrible twentieth, Tibet was invaded and annexed by the rising power of the Chinese People's Republic. Tragically, the thousand year experiment was at an end.

Regarding the current situation, it is hard to see how any good will come of the riots in Lhasa and elsewhere. China will crack down with even greater ruthlessness. Nothing of consequence will come out of the rest of the world by way of help for the Tibetans. Nor could it, in practical terms. An Olympic boycott would end up dashing the hopes of young athletes, momentarily embarrassing China but do nothing for Tibet. An economic boycott of China might, just possibly, have some effect in forcing their hand. But that is not going to happen. China's huge pool of miserable labour provides all the worthless consumer crap that fills western economies. China uses the resulting cash to buy, among other things, U.S. Treasury Bills. The U.S. couldn't fund it's government for one week without China.

It's hard to take, but the situation of Tibet is nearly hopeless. In the short term, there will be a wave of arrests and executions and further restrictions on Tibetan culture. In the long term, the Tibetans will be swamped by demography as China moves in more and more Han Chinese settlers, reducing the Tibetans to a colourful minority in one province.

However, Tibetan culture survives with some vigour in the diaspora and much of it is now available to non-Tibetans in translation and through direct teaching. It may be that this cultural spread is a silver lining to the tragedy of the Chinese conquest.

A little earlier I said that Tibet's situation was "nearly hopeless." I put in the nearly because I can envisage one scenario that might yet save Tibet, although it is a long-shot. It may yet happen that the cultural spread of Tibetan Buddhism may wash over into China itself, infecting the youth of that land with ideas of harmlessness, contentment and transcendence.

It is not impossible. China is an ancient, sophisticated civilization; the oldest continual civilization on this planet. In previous times it went through phases of deep spirituality and cultural brilliance; one thinks principally of the Han Dynasty. Buddhism has deep roots there, although at present they are rather withered. China has been through some very rough times, the terrible twentieth wasn't kind to them either. Their traditional civilization had been seriously undermined by European colonialism in the nineteenth century, and their early attempts to modernize after the 1911 revolution ended badly, in anarchy and warlordism. Then there was the massive catastrophe of the Japanese invasion, with all it's attendant horrors.

The Chinese pulled themselves out of the abyss only by uniting under a tyrannical ideology. Mao's version of Communism was in reality a new and fanatical religion; secular humanism with bayonets. Like any fanatical reforming religion, they brooked no rivals and in the Cultural Revolution of the 'sixties much of China's remaining ties to their brilliant past were destroyed. Then the flame of the new religion, fed as it was on such tawdry fuel, sputtered and died. Now the Chinese don't believe even in their ersatz secular humanist religion anymore. Now the whole country is devoted only to the even more hollow capitalist enterprise of making money. China is now in a phase of deep spiritual winter.

But human beings need spiritual sustenance. The religious void in China cannot last forever, something will have to fill it. We can see the first fitful signs of the people's seeking in the rapid rise of the Falun Gong which so terrified the ruling technocrats. Maybe something that would help Tibet most would be for every tourist and journalist who goes to the games to carry along books about Tibet and Tibetan Buddhism in Chinese and pass them out to strangers or leave them in public places.

Deepak Chopra's Buddha

The recent bestseller "Buddha" by Deepak Chopra follows a long literary tradition of fictionalized accounts of the Buddha's life story which really go back at least to the Buddhacarita of Ashvaghosa. In modern times, the genre starts with Matthew Arnold's "Light of Asia" and continued through Hermann Hessa (Siddhartha) and Thich Nat Hanh (Old Path, White Clouds). No doubt there have been many others. It is not unusual for such authors to use the character of the Buddha to voice philosophical ideas of their own. Matthew Arnold's "dew drop slipping into the shining sea" owes more to the Upanishads, perhaps by way of the Theosophical Society, then anything found in the Buddhist canon. Even Thich Nat Hanh rewrites quite a bit of the story and teachings, for instance putting a somewhat laboured feminist slant onto the story of the founding of the bhikkhuni order.

Deepak Chopra is certainly no exception. The literary enterprise of crafting a fictional life of the Buddha is not in itself illegitimate. Of his early life, we really have very little solid information. Even the well-known account of the Siddhattha's life as a prince, with his father Suddhodana attempting to keep him hidden from the realities of sickness, old-age and death is mostly an early post-canonical gloss. Some elements of this story are improbable, for one thing we know from canonical sources that the Sakyans at that time had a republican government. The early and unknown teller of these tales should perhaps be credited with founding the genre of ficitional Buddha stories.

While we may grant Mr. Chopra and the other authors some literary license for inventing details, it is fair to take them to task when they distort the known history and especially the teachings. If the Buddha's early life is very sketchy, his subsequent career and doctrines are very well documented in the Pali Canon.

For example, for whatever reason Deepak Chopra seems intent on making one of the Buddha's principal teachings to be the freeing of Indian civilization from a superstitious belief in the gods. In the introduction, he says the Buddha "never mentioned miracles or the gods, and had a doubtful view of both." Oh my. To cite just one counter-example among many, when the Buddha was asked point blank whether there are gods he answered, "It is known by me to be the case, Bharadvaja, that there are gods." (Majjhima 100)

So, Deeprak Chopra writes out the moving story of the Brahma Sahampatti begging the newly enlightened Buddha on bended knee to teach for the benefit of "those with little dust in their eyes." Instead, the event which moves the Buddha to get up from his Bodhi seat is a vision of the face of his wife Yasodhara! In passing, it should be noted that Chopra is not the only modern author to diss poor Sahampatti. Stephen Batchelor writes him off as "the ancient way of saying, an idea." This sort of thing seems to me a shame. Our modern taste is quite coarse, and seems unable to appreciate grandeur and high tragedy.

Curiously though, while there are no gods in Deepak Chopra's book, there is one devil. Mara is quite definitely personified. But he seems to my taste to be modelled much more on the Christian Satan than on the Mara of the Pali Canon. It is an odd cosmology that admits the demonic while denying the divine.

There are a few other incidents that appear to show Christian influence. In the middle section of the book, corresponding the period of the Bodhisatta's austerities and quest, at one point he is travelling with another "monk" (the term Chopra uses for samana) when they come across a farmer's cart over-turned in the ditch. Siddhattha proceeds to help the farmer push it out and in his mind he is critical of the other monk who seems to "have forgotten the monk's vow of service." Service in that sense was never a part of the Indian yogic tradition, either pre- or post-Buddhist. In addition, Siddhattha in his wanderings heals the sick and at least apparently raises the dead.

It is the last section, the Buddha after his enlightenment, that represents the greatest distortion though. Deepak Chopra's Buddha bears more resemblance to Keanu Reeeves in the Matrix movies than to the Buddha of the Pali Canon. He ends a war by striding into the battlefield and snatching the flashing swords away with his bare hands. And in another telling episode, he returns a weeping woman's dead husband by turning back time time so that his murder never happened. (Didn't Christopher Reeve save Margot Kidder in one of the Superman movies this way?) Compare this to the canonical Buddha and the story of Kisagotami.

The philosophical underpinning of this New Age Buddha seems to be quite close to the ideas expressed in "What the Bleep Do I Know?" and other New Age sources; that this world is essentially a phantom or a dream and that enlightenment is a kind of lucid dreaming. It is not transcendence of the world, but mastery over it.

What is perhaps worse, is the scene where the Buddha is re-united with Suddhodana and they hug one another and weep like sensitive new age guys. Why is it that the modern taste seems to want a weeping Buddha? What part of making an end of suffering don't we get?

I also have some historical and literary criticisms of Chopra's "Buddha." Historically, I think his portrayal of the religion of the Brahmins is totally anachronistic. He has the head priest of the Sakyans sacrificing to Shiva, which belongs to much later period. The brahmins of the Buddha's time were still following the original Vedic Aryan religion and would have prayed to Indra. In general, his picture of Indian beliefs, customs and mores seems to be that of several centuries later than the time the book is ostensibly set in.

On the literary side, several of the characters in Deepak Chopra's book are much less interesting than the originals known from the canon and commentaries. Suddhodana, for example, is quite one-sided; a simple bloody-minded tyrant rather than a basically good figure with the one tragic flaw of ambition. The oldest sources are a rich mine of fascinating character studies, very human people with a mixture of noble qualities and vices. This seems to be lost in translation, and most of Chopra's characters are more like one-sided cartoons. Surely in a literary treatment with pretensions to the novelist's art, the complexities of the characters should have been enhanced and explored, rather than written out.

It should be said that Deepak Chopra in his last chapter does a reasonable job of summarizing some of the main points of the Buddhist teaching, including a fair summary of the Three Characteristics and of the Eightfold Path. However, he does end the book on a false note, in the very last sentence misrepresenting the goal of the path. "[the Buddha] promised that the end point would be eternity." This is no better, and perhaps worse, than "dewdrops slipping into shining seas."

Compassionate Homicide?

Recently the Robert Latimer case has gotten back in the news. Canadian readers will be well aware of the basic fact, but for others here is the bare-bones; On 24th Oct. of 1993 Saskatchewan farmer Robert Latimer killed his severely handicapped daughter Tracy, 12, by carbon-monoxide, running the exhaust of his truck into the cab. Tracy had cerebral palsy, was mentally retarded and paralyzed. She was also in a great deal of pain, although how severe and how constant it was seems to be in some dispute. Mr. Latimer was sentenced to life imprisonment for second-degree murder. In Dec. 2007, a parole board denied him early release because he "had failed to show proper remorse." Indeed, he has always held that he did the right thing, acting out of compassion for Tracy's suffering. Shortly after this, a review board over-turned the decision and Mr. Latimer is now on day-release parole in Ottawa.

(If you want more back-ground to the story;
A good neutral summary from the CBC web-site
A review of the court evidence with a pro-life slant
The official Robert Latimer support site.)

This case raises a number of important ethical and legal issues. On the legal side, it brings into question the wisdom of the policy of "mandatory minimum" sentencing, the rights of the disabled, euthanasia and probably several more.

On the ethical side, this case raises once again the whole problem of beginning and end of life problems that seem to be at the crux of what is called bio-ethics. Many people support Mr. Latimer's decision; they cite what they call "quality of life" as a criterion. Tracy could never have expected anything close to a normal life, and probably would have endured a lot of physical pain before dying naturally at a relatively young age. They argue that the motive of this killing was "compassion" and it should have been treated differently.

But is it really ever possible to kill with compassion? As a monk friend of mine pointed out, when someone "puts down" a sick dog, they say "I just couldn't stand to see that poor dog suffer." According to Buddhist abhidhamma, an act of destruction of life must involve a mind of hate, and is incompatible with compassion. This is not to say that Mr. Latimer hated his daughter, I am sure he loved her in his own way, but the suffering he was trying to end in that pick-up truck was really his own.

And that is worth thinking about too. The suffering endured by parents of a child like Tracy is no small thing. Another issue raised here is how the broader society could and should take up more of the care of the severely disabled and not leave the whole burden on the unfortunate parents. But this said, it doesn't make what Latimer did in any way acceptable.

The idea of giving anyone, doctors, bureaucrats or parents included, the right to make life-and-death decisions for someone else based on perceived "quality of life" is a scary one. The slippery slope could go down a long way.

These right-to-life versus right-to-choice (although in this case, not Tracy's) bring out a fundamental ethical divide between those who have some kind of religious or spiritual perspective and those who base their ethical thinking on purely secular or humanist grounds. I know some will call me a crank, but I am more and more convince that so-called secular humanism is fundamentally inhuman. The basis of the materialist view is that we are just meat-machines and the implication is that when the machine malfunctions to the point where it no longer provides pleasure (the only possible good in the materialist view) then it can, indeed, ought to be destroyed. A spiritual perspective that recognizes, in some way or other, that this life here and now is not all there is, is capable of accepting a higher dimension and granting an intrinsic dignity and worth to human beings far beyond anything the materialist can imagine.

All this said, and my bias is clear, I am not upset that Mr. Latimer is more or less free. I am no fan of the penal system (maybe a post for another day) and I have no desire to see him punished. My concern is only for the precedent set, and I would think it appalling if the legal system and society at large started to view parental or medical termination of the mentally and physically disabled as somehow acceptable.

Monbiot's Heat

I haven't blogged for a couple of months, I've been staying mostly away from the internet for the winter. I may start putting up the odd thing now and again.

Previously I've written about the climate crisis and expressed something close to hopelessness. I've just read something that gives me at least some small hope. This is George Monbiot's "Heat." If you want a very accessible over-view of the technical issues involved, you couldn't do better than that. I heartily recommend it. Monbiot is brutally realistic, very rigourous (he actually crunches the numbers for you) and even writes with a verve and flair that keeps you engaged, no mean feat given the technical nature of the subject matter.

Mr. Monbiot's programme in the book is an ambitious one. He starts by doing the math about just how much we need to cut carbon emissions and how soon if we are going to stabilize the climate. Granted, there is always some guesswork involved in this field where the scientific details, if not the big picture, are still being worked out. But he makes a solid case for some quite startling numbers. We need, says Mr. Monbiot, to cut planetary carbon emissions by 80% before 2030. What's more, this translates into a 90% cut in the industrial countries.

Mr. Monbiot spends the bulk of the book showing how Britain, where he resides, could do this. He covers all major areas of the economy; transport, aviation, housing and so forth. Although he uses the example of Britain, most of what he says could be applied, with some changes, to any industrial country. (Or are we post-industrial already?)

I learnt some surprising things in this book; cement is a huge producer of carbon dioxide in the manufacturing for instance. (Who knew?) Micro-power like home windmills is highly over-rated. (It only looks good if you believe the manufacturer's hype). Monbiot disagrees with my other eco-guru, Lovelock, in a couple of places. Notably, he is not an advocate for nuclear energy.

In the course of the book, Mr. Monbiot surprisingly lays out a plan that could just do it, a plan that is both technically and economically possible. He also does it in a way that incorporates social justice; carbon emissions should be rationed not taxed. Futhermore, he manages to do it without scaling back the lifestyle of the rich nations as much as I would have thought necessary. He tries, whenever possible, to preserve our standard of living. He does this, I am pretty sure, not out of a sympathy with consumerism, but to make the scheme as palatable as possible to the broad masses. Where necessary, though, he can suggest quite severe changes; most notably in aviation. He says long distance jet travel simply cannot be made green. People in the future, if there is to be one, must simply travel less and travel more slowly. I would think we could and should actually cut a lot more out of our lifestyles, but I appreciate Monbiot's realism.

I would like to address the issue of voluntarism. I don't see how we can possibly stop runaway climate change that way. It's the old problem of the "tragedy of the commons." If one person lives in voluntary simplicity, it makes absolutely no difference to the problem. Granted, as one comment to this blog notes, it may set an example. But imagine if fifty percent of the public voluntarily gave up automobile travel. (An impossible number) What would happen? The price of gas would go down due to low demand, and those who didn't care would simply drive more and drive bigger cars.

No, the only action that can work is political (and Monbiot makes the same point.) The problem is way too big for each individual to deal with as they think best. The very least that must happen is a strict system of rationing for all goods that produce carbon emissions.

British Columbia has just introduced a budget said to be the greenest in North America, which includes a gradually escalating carbon tax. This is better than nothing, quite a bit better, but the problem with a tax is that the poor will suffer while the rich will continue to squander. (The budget isn't perfect, it still includes subsidies to the oil and gas industry, an insane policy)

I said earlier that Monbiot's scheme, worked out in meticulous detail, is workable both economically and technically. But is it workable politically? I remain pessimistic on that front. The public may make green mouth noises, but when it comes down to a reduction in their standard of living, such as giving up winter holidays in the Caribbean, the middle classes will not vote for anyone proposing something like Monbiot's plan in Heat. By the time things get so bad that people are willing to face tough decisions, it may be too late. Greed and ignorance strike again.

Rahu strikes again!

Last night there was a full eclipse of the moon. A very eerie sight; as the shadow of the Earth moves across the face of the moon it doesn't disappear, but turns a dull melancholy red. One can well understand how this sight must have been regarded as a bad omen before the astronomy was understood.

In Thailand, the traditional belief, derived like much of Thai culture originally from India, was that in primeval times the monster Rahu swallowed the sun and moon, depriving the world of light. Vishnu saved the universe by slaying the monster, cutting off it's head. Or not quite slaying, because Rahu is an immortal and his severed head wanders around in space, being the eighth planet in Thai astrology. Occasionally it swallows the sun or moon and we experience an eclipse, but happily the luminous orb in a short while emerges from the monster's neck.

Three questions about lunar eclipses occur to me. Two I think I can answer from first principles. One; is a lunar eclipse visible from the whole night side of the planet Earth? I would think yes; it's different from a solar eclipse in that it is essentially the shadow of the Earth moving across the moon, whereas a solar eclipse is when the moon blocks the line of sight of the sun from the Earth, and given the astronomically close position of the moon, parallax makes a significant difference from different localities. Two; how would it look if you were standing on the surface of the moon? I think the Earth would eclipse the sun totally, but I imagine one would see some kind of diffuse "halo" around the rim due to atmospheric diffusion.

Three is not so easy to answer; what was the scientific explanation for eclipses given before the emergence of the heliocentric model? I mean in learned western thought. How did the Aristotelians with their spheres and epicycles explain that? How did Tycho Brahe with his mixed model (sun and moon orbit the Earth, all other planets orbit the sun)? I have no idea.

What Is Wrong With Us?

The tragic incident at Vancouver International airport, caught on video, highlights so much of how our society has gone wrong.

Readers outside of Canada may not be aware of this situation, so here is a brief recap of the facts. Mr.Dziekanski, a Polish citizen in the process of immigrating to Canada, was killed by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Mr. Dziekanski had never flown internationally before, was unused to procedures and spoke no English or French and had been wandering around the secure area prior to clearing customs for ten hours. He had grown increasingly agitated and at the end began to freak out and smash property, at one point tossing a computer monitor on the floor. There is no indication that he threatened violence against other people at any point. The airport security called for the RCMP. Four constables arrived and immediately used the taser on him, without any prior attempt to defuse the situation. As he lay writhing in the agony of the electric shock, the constables jumped on him, and one can be seen clearly forcing his knee into Mr. Dziekanski's throat. His breathing stopped almost immediately, but no attempt at resuscitation appears to have been made.

The reaction from the public has been outrage, but from the officials involved only the usual sad scurry to cover their rear ends. (Also, the company making the Taser is quick to scream "Ain't our fault!") The incident also has an international aspect, with the Polish ambassador publicly criticizing Canadian police procedure. This is also not an isolated incident, seventeen people in Canada have been killed by police taser. The difference this time is that the episode was caught on video, and posted on YouTube for all to see.

Truly our society has gone down a wrong path, a dark path. First, there is the evident lack of compassion towards a being in a state of suffering. The police and the airport officials clearly did not see this a person who desperately needed help. They saw this as an incident that needed to be resolved quickly, whatever the cost to Mr. Dziekanski. I once watched a truckload of cattle being driven into the slaughterhouse, and was shocked by the lack of compassion evidenced by the men wielding their vicious prods. We have fallen so low that we now use those prods on troublesome humans.

Second, we can also see how fearful we have become. Four constables against one distraught individual, and their first response is to use a potentially lethal jolt of electricity to incapacitate the man. I'm sorry but this is a cowardly response, and a sad falling away from the heroic history of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police force. We can see this whingeing fearfulness everywhere these days. We have become very risk adverse; just look at how our children are being raised. When I was a lad, back when rocks were soft, we played outside unsupervised until our mothers called us to dinner. Nowadays, you don't see kids playing in the street. They are kept locked indoors against unlikely dangers. Face it, folks, samsara is a dangerous place and no one gets out of here alive.

Third, and this relates to the last point, there is the theatre of the absurd atmosphere of high security especially at airports and border-crossings. There is a plethora of stories about security madness; from baby's sippy cup confiscated as a potential terrorist threat to panics over someone finding some marginal notes written in Farsi in an airline magazine. Just recently, there was an incident at the Windsor-Detroit crossing. A Windsor patient having a heart attack and needing immediate surgery was sent by ambulance to the nearest hospital equipped for the procedure, which happened to be on the US side. Everything was cleared by phone ahead of time, but the border guards still insisted on hauling the ambulance over for "secondary inspection" because it had the unlucky number for their daily quota of harassment. National Security, you know.

Fourth, the inhuman tyranny of bureaucratic procedure stifling all human initiative and even common sense and decency. The ambulance story also illustrates this point. Getting back to the Vancouver airport incident; how could Mr. Dziekanski have been allowed to wander around in a confused state for ten hours? Could not someone have tried to help him? I am guessing that any Canadian Customs staff who saw him felt it was not their responsibility. There were no guidelines for dealing with the situation, so it was ignored until it became "an incident" requiring police intervention.

On the positive side the reaction of the public has so far been healthy. Hopefully some good will come of this; some check will be made on the police's power to use this nasty thing with impunity and some shake up will happen at the airport authority and the customs. My fear is that one result will be a ban on video-taping police actions.

Is Buddhism Too Conservative?

Two people separately sent me a link to this Mark Morford column; Does your religion dance?

In it, Mr. Morford deplores the tendency of religions to become ossified, and he sees signs of this even in Buddhism (he is a Buddhist, by the way)

The idea is everywhere, and not just in the obvious, sour religious outhouses of evangelical Christianity and fundamentalist Islam and rigid Catholicism. It even popped up while I was in conversation with tattooed Buddhist and author of "Dharma Punx" Noah Levine at the Roxie theater during LitQuake '07, he and I chatting about the dangers of dogma and the problem of trying to adhere too closely, too severely, to classical Buddhist rules of behavior, concluding that even Buddhism has its dangers, its limits and its issues and general theological potholes.

Levine, a fairly conservative Theravadan Buddhist, admitted that even he had to seriously adjust some of those old rules to make them tolerable and digestible, particularly in regards to how poorly classical Buddhism valued women and the feminine principle (not to mention other rather impossible dietary and lifestyle restrictions), outmoded ideas that sort of make you wince and cringe and say no no no, Buddha couldn't really have meant that, could he?

I'm not sure what he means by "rather impossible dietary and lifestyle restrictions." True, some Mahayana sects require vegetarianism, but that is hardly "impossible" and Theravada Buddhism imposes no dietary restrictions on lay Buddhists at all. Even for the bhikkhus, the only practical restriction is to eat only between dawn and noon, which believe me, is quite possible. As for "lifestyle restrictions" could he be referring to the fifth precept? Certainly for lay Buddhists at least, there is very little of the regulation of the minutiae of daily life that can be found in, for example, orthodox Judaism.

The issue of gender bias in Buddhism is a more serious one, and the reader can follow Morford's link to an excellent summary by Mettanando Bhikkhu. I would add that in this regard, not unlike some other contentious points, we should separate at least four layers (possibly more) of teaching;

1. The actual Buddha-Vacana, "words of the Buddha." To a traditional Buddhist, Buddha-Vacana is equivalent to truth, because the Buddha was perfectly enlightened. There is no question of the Buddha being wrong, or misled by so-called cultural norms. Some modern Buddhists may differ on this point, but then they are changing the definition of Buddhahood and making the whole exercise rather trivial.

2. The canonical texts. This cannot always with certainty be equated with the first category. Scholarship by and large upholds the integrity of the scriptures pretty well for such ancient texts, but it is almost a given that some corruptions have crept in over the centuries. The passage most often cited as evidence of inherent sexism in Buddhism is the passage in the Vinaya texts concerning the founding of the nun's order. (This is discussed at some length in the article by Mettanando linked to above.) And this passage is also one which many textual scholars cite as a likely late addition, in other words, not Buddha-Vacana at all. (See also the study by Bhikkhu Gnanarama, "A Mission Accomplished.")

It should be noted that in the canonical texts we have ample evidence of the existence of female arahats, some of whom had male students. The spiritual potential of women is never stated to anything other than equal to that of men. Even in the troublesome Vinaya text cited above there is a categorical expression to this effect when Ananda asks the Buddha if women may become arahats and the Buddha answers in the affirmative.

A peripheral issue here; I don't think it is good enough to reject a text because of a feeling that the Buddha could not have said that. Who are we to judge the mind of a Tathagata? But we should be open to valid historical, linguistic and compartive studies.

3. The commentaries. In Theravada Buddhism, the orthodox position is defined by the commentaries. These texts have a complex provenance, which I won't go into here, but they are certainly several centuries later than the Buddha's time. They are best understood as the scholastic expression of mature institutional Buddhism. The commentaries tend to be rather more gender-biased than anything in the canon. (I would include the text portions of the Jatakas in the commentarial layer, and some of those are notoriously misogynist.)

4. The practice of actual living Buddhists at any given time and place. This has varied widely, and has not always been fully in accord with any of the above layers. It is important to remember always that Buddhism is not just a collection of old texts, but a living tradition. And as such it is not immune to the law of anicca (constant change.) In our own day, we are witnessing a great improvement in the role of women in the sangha, both in the West and in some parts of Asia.

Too often criticisms of some aspect of Buddhism fail to take these nuances into account, and take some point from one of the subsidiary layers to make a blanket statement.

This also bears on Mr. Morford's more general concern. Buddhism, or any other mature religion for that matter, is a constant interplay between various layers of teaching. There is the core expression, in our case the Buddha-Vacana, which may not be one hundred percent recoverable, there are all the various attempts to comment and explain the teachings, and there is the actual living expression. And Buddhism has always been in a state of change. A study of Buddhist history demonstrates this. For example, consider the twentieth century rise of the Forest Monk movement in Thailand. This is a good thing, but it can be taken too far, and westerners in particular are usually far too impatient. Useful, creative change must be cautious and guided by the core principles.

So, yes, Mr. Morford, my religion does dance, but it does so adagio.

------------------------------

POSTSCRIPT - (This is another comment from Morford's piece, but not related particularly to any of the above.)

Morford also says this;

A similar idea came up again as I was sharing the stage with the luminous Sera Beak, author of "The Red Book," a funky spirituality tome for fiery youngish women, she and I talking to the small crowd over at the Alameda Literati Festival about the hot ideological tongue baths that simply must take place between the divine feminine (her oeuvre) and the profane masculine (mine? Sort of?), the idea that you cannot have one without the other and they are both, in fact, required.....It's a decidedly Tantric principle

I'm not familiar with Sera Beak's work, and this paragraph may be an over-simplification, but I do object to the idea of a "divine feminine" set against a "profane masculine." In the attempt to give due place to the female, it is not necessary to slip over into a denigration of the male. Both the male and female principles have divine and profane aspects. Nor is the view stated above particularly tantric, which is all about a harmonious balance of the two sides. The tantric expression of transcendence is the lightning flash in the void. The flash alone is meaningless, and the void alone is barren.

Remember, Remember the Fifth of November

The Brits have an odd sense of fun. Someone tried to blow up Parliament four hundred years ago and it's still an occasion for merriment, bonfires and old-fashioned vandalism. And oh yes, religious bigotry;

Remember, remember, the 5th of November
The Gunpowder Treason and plot ;
I know of no reason why Gunpowder Treason
Should ever be forgot.

Guy Fawkes, Guy Fawkes,
'Twas his intent.
To blow up the King and the Parliament.
Three score barrels of powder below.
Poor old England to overthrow.
By God's providence he was catch'd,
With a dark lantern and burning match

Holloa boys, Holloa boys, let the bells ring
Holloa boys, Holloa boys, God save the King!

Hip hip Hoorah !
Hip hip Hoorah !

A penny loaf to feed ol'Pope,
A farthing cheese to choke him.
A pint of beer to rinse it down,
A faggot of sticks to burn him.
Burn him in a tub of tar,'
Burn him like a blazing star.
Burn his body from his head,
Then we'll say: ol'Pope is dead.

traditional British Guy Fawkes Day rhyme

And now the whole thing has been given a new cachet because of the movie, V for Vendetta, which was based on a chillingly prophetic graphic novel by Alan Moore and David Wright published in 1989. Here's a relevant page from the text;

Click on the image to see a full-sized version.

Then there's this angle; there has long been the suspicion that the Gunpowder Plot was an inside job, orchestrated by Chief Minister Lord Cecil to discredit the Catholics. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

Anyway, happy 5th Brits.

Does Capitalism Have No Shame?

Apparently not. Check out this column by SF Gate's Mark Morford, "Lets Get Drunk and Meditate." By the way, if you haven't discovered Morford's quirky writing yet, you are in for a treat.

"No, no, no!"

"...compassion for all beings most certainly includes evil-doers!"

Any Hope for Burma?

The mass protests in Burma, supported and led by the sangha, failed to topple the military regime. But for a brief moment they turned the attention of the world to the plight of that unhappy country. Given it's abundance of natural resources, Burma should be another Asian tiger, instead of an economic basket-case, near the bottom of all the UN rankings.

Burma is a beautiful country, and it has a rich tradition of Dhamma. Burmese bhikkhus have specialized in the two complementary fields of abhidhamma and vipassana. Some of the many insight meditation techniques developed in Burma are now practiced around the world. The modern western Buddhist tradition has strong roots there, particularly in the lineage of Mahasi Sayadaw.

Many western Buddhists have been to Burma to meditate in the large practice monasteries. This in itself requires an ethical decision that I know many Dhamma travellers have agonized over. Does traveling there on a meditation visa (yes, they have such a thing) constitute support of the regime? Certainly the traveler has to pay visa fees and so forth which gives the government much needed hard currency. But spending money inside the country also helps the people, who are very hard done by.

World opinion has been appalled at the sight of repression of peaceful protestors, especially the monks. There is an understandable urge to do something to help. But what can the outside world do?

The obvious answer is sanctions. We need to think carefully, however, about measures that could impose even more hardship on the Burmese. Sanctions as an international measure have a very spotty history. Certainly they helped a lot to bring down the apartheid regime in South Africa, but on the other hand we should recall the ugly story of the starvation sanctions imposed on Iraq which took hundreds of thousands of innocent lives through lack of medicine, hygiene and food. We would not want to do that to Burma.

Nor is the international system governed by humanitarian principles. Statesmen in America and Europe may make noises about sanctions, but what they come up with will most likely be cosmetic. They will not want to touch the quite significant corporate interests which are profiting from resource extraction in Burma. Nor will China, India or Thailand agree to any real measures.

Furthermore, petitions and appeals from the UN, protests outside Burmese embassies and speeches by European leaders are all certain to fall on deaf ears. The generals just don't give a tinker's damn about any of that.

The fact is that the salvation of Burma must come from inside Burma. It is difficult to see how this can happen when the junta has such an overwhelming monopoly of force and no scruples against using it.

It seems to me that the one factor which may tip the scale in the peoples favour is a revolt in the lower ranks of the army. There were a few indications of this starting to happen back at the end of September. It appears that the regime managed to put a lid on it, but with the press blacked out, we don't really know how widespread it was.

The common soldiers come from the common people. They must have brothers and cousins in the democracy movement, and in the sangha. Political conditioning of the ranks only goes so deep. And the regime has destroyed the basis of it's own legitimacy. By cracking down on the monks, it can no longer use Buddhist themes in its propaganda with even minimal credibility. The Burmese people, and that includes the common soldiers, are devout.

Maybe next time....

-------------------------------

On sanctions;

Here are two articles to read, pro and con.

Whatever Happened to....

Calvin and Hobbes?

Saffron Revolution

Everyone reading this is probably aware of the events in Burma. There is a massive uprising against the military junta. The sangha is playing a prominent, and even a leading role, in the massive, mostly peaceful protests.

Some of you may wonder how proper it is for bhikkhus to be engaged in political actions of this kind. When making your judgment, here are some things to bear in mind;

- The bhikkhus in Theravada countries are not isolated hermits but integral members of the society. They are the sons and brothers of the common people who are suffering under this horrid regime.
- The bhikkhus also have a natural leadership role, and are expected by the laity to give them guidance and moral support.
- There is a scriptural precedent, if not for political marches, at least for the monks to express strong disapproval of immoral laity. This is the Patam Nikkujana Kamma, the over-turned almsbowl. Sometimes called "buddhist excommunication" it is the symbolical cutting of a lay person by refusing to accept alms from him, physically manifested by turning the bowl upside-down. This has been done by the monks in Burma against the military rulers.
- The regime in Burma is one of the worst, if not the worst, in the world. Besides having all the marks of nasty regimes everywhere, brutal, corrupt, venal, oppressive it is also strikingly incompetent. Besides having abundant natural resources and a literate population, Burma languishes in poverty, near the bottom of the UN rankings.
- If all that wasn't enough, the leaders are quite mad, and have been for a long while. As far back as 1970, the then dictator Ne Win ordered the country to switch to driving on the right-hand side because of a dream he had. More recently, the capital was moved from Yangoon to a remote town in the jungle on the advice of an astrologer.
- Any reports in the media of bhikkhus being involved in violence should be taken with a grain of salt. It is not impossible that some monks may act improperly, of course, but it is much more likely that these incidents are perpetrated by government agents disguised as monks. (If even the Canadian police resort to these kind of tactics, why not the Burmese junta?)

The situation has the potential of turning very ugly. The long-suffering Burmese people have nothing left to lose, and the junta is not likely to show restraint. International pressure can do little, the regime is already very isolated and doesn't really care what outsiders say. Let us all hope this beautiful country, an important focus of the Dhamma, is able to come through the fire to peace, prosperity and freedom.

Some links -

Buddhist Channel - a source for Buddhist related news has very good ongoing coverage of the crisis.
Rule of Lords - an excellent blog of Burmese and Thai politics.
Info Please - their page with background on modern Burmese history.
Human Development Statistics - for Burma, if you like your data raw.

Freedom

What is freedom? The common view in the world is probably something like "the lack of restraint in doing what you want." Buddhism takes a higher view and sees the best freedom as the freedom from wants. The goal of the path is often referred to as vimutti, commonly translated as liberation and literally meaning "the breaking of chains." The arahant is one who is perfectly free, and the "master of the pathways of the mind, thinking only what he wants to think and not thinking what he doesn't want to think." This freedom from desire has the result of contentment in the here-and-now, and liberation from the painful process of repeated rebirth. It is, in the last analysis, freedom from the conditioned realm.

Moving down several notches, what if anything does Buddhism have to say about the practicalities of freedom within the conditioned realm, that is to say, political freedom? The Buddha was not primarily concerned with social and political questions, but he does address them here and there. The issue of political freedom does not appear directly. He probably was not a major concern, ancient states did not have the wherewithal to become truly absolute.

Unfortunately, this is no longer the case. The erosion of civil liberty has become a major concern of our time. Especially, but not only, as part of the ubiquitous "war on terror." Even before 9-11 there had long been a drift in western democracies toward a more regulated, surveilled and restricted interpretation of individual rights. This drift has now become a cascade. The United States has pretty much abandoned the fourth amendment as well as habeas corpus, and Canada is not far behind. The UK is probably ahead of the curve with CCTV tracking the citizens every move.

We can't find a definite statement about this in the Buddhist teachings, but we can approach the problem sideways by examining the Buddhist attitude toward the state. We can, I think, determine two separate strands in the scripture.

First, there is a sensible and practical view of the state as a necessary evil. This is evident in the Agganna Sutta and here and there elsewhere. The Agganna presents what modern theorists would call a "social contract" theory of government.

‘Then those beings came together and lamented the arising of these evil things among them: taking what was not given, censuring, lying, and punishment. And they thought: "Suppose we were to appoint a certain being who would show anger where anger was due, censure those who deserved it, and banish those who deserved banishment! And in return we would grant him a share of the rice." So they went to the one among them who was the handsomest, the best-looking, most pleasant and capable, and asked him to do this for them in return for a share of the rice, and he agreed.

This was a conscious retort to the brahminical view of government as divinely instituted. Not so, according to the Buddha, it was in the first instance a human contrivance to deal with human problems, specifically the lack of ethical restraint of some individuals. If everyone keep good morality, we wouldn't need a government at all. A nation of sotapannas would naturally adopt anarchism. It can't work for the rest of us, alas.

So consider what is happening here, exactly what the social contract entails. The populace surrenders some of it's liberty in return for a measure of security. Sound familiar? The practical question for our time is just this; where do we set the boundary between freedom and security?

To think about this clearly, it is important to understand one principle; the state never gave anyone, anywhere any liberty. By its nature, its origin and its very essence all it can ever do is take liberty away. The people give some of their inherent natural freedom away in exchange for an arrangement of peace and safety. This is a rational trade. For example, no sensible person would object to giving up their natural freedom to drive through a red light.

The problem is that if the state was instituted to protect and limit the nastiness of human nature, the rulers of the state are themselves flawed humans. If the state is instituted to protect us, the meta-question is, how can we be protected from the state?

There are two possible answers to this question. The first, which is the second strand of Buddhist political thought mentioned above, is that the rulers must be restrained by Dhamma. This is the central political myth of the Wheel-Turning Monarch, who rules by righteousness not force. It is, in a sense, a transcendence of ordinary politics to a new level. This was the ideal of Buddhist monarchs, often emulated, never achieved. The closest anyone anywhere ever came was probably Asoka, and his Dhamma regime passed away with him.

Other times and cultures have also had their myth of the "Good King;" from Arthur to Aragorn the "Return of the King" is a persistent motif.

The second answer is one of the really valuable contributions of European civilization to the world; the idea of restraining the King by laws. (A caveat here, this is not entirely European, the Buddhist texts mention how rulers should govern according to the ancient laws - but it was formalized and developed methodically in Greece, Rome and Europe) Thus, for an important example, we have the Magna Carta imposed on King John in 1215 (and blown away by Alberto Gonzales in 2006) whereby the King agreed to certain specified limits to his rule.

How does this apply to the social contract? The king (or the republican rulers) are not giving anyone freedom, they are simply agreeing not to take certain freedoms away. The American constitution seems to be cognizant of this distinction in it's wording; "...congress shall make no law etc." (Thus Gonzales assertion that the constitution gives "no grant" of habeas corpus is meaningless and deceitful. Either he doesn't understand the point, or he was being deliberately misleading. )

The bottom line is that if the people are to enjoy civil freedom, the rulers must be restrained somehow or they will naturally limit it more and more. If a way cannot be found to limit the rulers by having them behave morally, then they must be restrained by law and reminded that their authority comes from us, and is a limited exchange. No government can be trusted for long to set the limits of freedom.

How Old is the Suttapitaka?

A very interesting article making a scholarly case for the antiquity of the canon; How Old is the Suttapitaka by Alexander Wynn. He makes the argument that the Pali Canon was closed to new material at a very early date. One of his key arguments is that stories and doctrines that are found in other recensions are relegated to the Pali commentaries. This would indicate that the Theravadin sangha in Sri Lanka were unwilling to revise the canon, even though they were keeping abreast of developments in India.

Thanks Eisel for pointing this out to me.

Truth, a Rare Commodity

Truth is one of the ten paramitas (perfections) and the Buddha often stressed the importance of adherence to the truth. There are many stories in the commentaries about the power of a "truthful asservation." Telling a lie is really a grievous moral breach in the Buddhist world-view because it is a means of directly implanting delusion in another being's mind-stream, and delusion or ignorance can be called the ultimate root of all suffering.

The importance of this teaching is critical for many of the problems the world is facing today. We are saturated with streams of propaganda devised to befuddle our mind-streams. This is obnoxious enough if the goal is just to sell a new brand of shampoo, but it is diabolical if the goal is to promote war. Unfortunately, it is an old truism that the first casualty of war is truth. From Belgian babies on German bayonets, to Kuwaiti babies tossed out of incubators, from the explosion on the USS Maine through Tonkin Gulf to Weapons of Mass Destruction every war seems to generate its own awful atrocity lies. Before Hitler invaded Poland there was a month's long press campaign in Germany about Polish atrocities against innocent Germans in Pomerania. (Watch for stories about Iranian atrocities coming soon to a screen near you.)

A crucial part of making decisions in the present is to understand the past. That's why telling the truth about history matters. I was dismayed to hear the news this week that the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa has caved in to two years of steady pressure from conservative pressure groups and removed their factual display about the fire-bombing of Dresden (in which Canadian air-men were prominent) with something more "patriotic."

The display board which upset the patriotic element so much read;

The value and morality of the strategic bomber offensive against Germany remains bitterly contested. Bomber Command's aim was to crush civilian morale and force Germany to surrender by destroying its cities and industrial installations. Although Bomber Command and American attacks left 600,000 Germans dead, and more than five million homeless, the raids resulted in only small reductions in German war production until late in the war.

Every word a reasonable and balanced interpretation of history. Now gone. We don't know what they will replace it with. One doubts, somehow, it would be this quote from "Bomber" Harris, head of the RAF strategic bombing programme;

“That aim is the destruction of German cities, the killing of German workers
and the disruption of civilised community life throughout Germany. It should
be emphasised that the destruction of houses, public utilities, transport and
lives; the creation of a refugee problem on an unprecedented scale; and the
breakdown of morale both at home and at the battle fronts by fear of extended
and intensified bombing are accepted and intended aims of our bombing policy,
they are not by-products of attempts to hit factories."
Arthur Harris, October 25, 1943

And they also didn't like the photographs of charred civilians. Can't have that, quite ruins the reputation of a nice clean bombing run to show the actual effects on the ground.

This matters of course, because strategic bombing is still used today, and the aim of demoralizing the inhabitants is still with us. Why do you think they called it "Shock and Awe?"

Shame on the War Museum for this cowardly retreat.

Bhikkhu Bodhi Challenges Buddhists

Buddhadhamma Quarterly is possibly the finest Buddhist magazine available, always presenting thoughtful in-depth articles by leading teachers and scholars. In the current issue, Fall 2007, there is a thought provoking essay by Bhikkhu Bodhi (best known as translator of large chunks of the Sutta Pitaka.) You can read a long excerpt on the Buddhadhamma website; A Challenge to Buddhists. The gist of the piece is that Buddhists need to find ways to actively involve themselves in relieving the horrendous suffering experienced on this planet. As the Bhante puts it;

Seeing the immensity of the world’s anguish has raised in my mind questions about the future prospects for Buddhism in the West. I’ve been struck by how seldom the theme of global suffering—the palpable suffering of real human beings—is thematically explored... It seems to me that we Western Buddhists tend to dwell in a cognitive space that defines the first noble truth largely against the background of our middle-class lifestyles: as the gnawing of discontent; the ennui of over-satiation; the pain of unfulfilling relationships...our focus on these aspects of dukkha has made us oblivious to the vast, catastrophic suffering that daily overwhelms three-fourths of the world’s population.

Ah yes, the complacency of the "Upper Middle Path." While seeing some merit in the Engaged Buddhist movement, Bhikkhu Bodhi also sees some limitations;

while some Engaged Buddhists seek fresh perspectives from the dharma, for many Buddhism simply provides spiritual practices to use while simultaneously espousing socio-political causes not much different from those of the mainstream Left.

He goes on, in the remainder of the essay not yet posted on-line, to note how much more effective some organizations with Christian and Jewish roots have been (he cites World Vision and the Jewish World Service) than the much smaller Buddhist efforts. His conclusion;

The special challenge facing Buddhism in our age is to stand up as an advocate for justice in the world, a voice of conscience for those victims of social, economic nad political injustice who cannot stand up for themselves....This is, in my view, a deeply moral challenge...I believe it also points in a direction that Buddhism should take if it is to share in the Buddha's ongoing mission to humanity.

Bhikkhu Bodhi's essay raises two questions in my mind; why haven't Buddhists been more engaged in social and political action to relieve suffering? And how can we do better?

Bhikkhu Bodhi's critique mostly involves western Buddhists, and in the quotes above he cites the mostly middle class base and it's concern with purely personal manifestations of dukkha. That is a valid observation; most of the first or second generation converts to Buddhism in North America are above average in income and educational level. This is not in itself surprising or negative; the Buddha's own converts were disproportionately from the higher strata of Indian society. However, it has created a mind-set which finds it easier to relate to the dukkha of post-modern angst than to the dukkha of hunger.

It is also true that most new Buddhists are primarily drawn to the religion for the meditation, as a vehicle of self-help. Back in the 'sixties and 'seventies when various strands of Buddhism were first being imported to mainstream America, there was a conscious effort to avoid what were called disparagingly "cultural trappings" and to present the teachings in a form pretty much stripped down just to meditation. This was a tactical move that may have helped the initial early spread of the teaching, but led unfortunately to an unbalanced approach. I get the feeling that this trend has been turning around for at least ten years and that many western buddhists are looking for more than just a self-help practice.

It's not that western Buddhists are apolitical, on the contrary many are passionately committed to various causes, it is just that in most cases there isn't much intersection between their spiritual and political lives. Nor is there much of either community social work or political action coming from Buddhist institutional structures.

Is there a doctrinal aspect of Buddhism that hinders action in the world? Possibly. There is the underlying sense that this conditioned realm is inherently flawed and will always be so. However, there is also a very great emphasis on compassion for all beings caught in it. And there are plenty of scriptural references to the Buddha advising on how to live a comfortable and decent life within this world, and even commenting on what we would relate to as social or political questions.

Turning to the second question, what can we do about it? There may be many practical ways we can help relieve suffering, and some Buddhist groups are doing great work - the Sri Lankan Sarvodaya organization is a sterling example; founded way back in 1958. In the western countries, Buddhists have been active in hospice and prison work.

On the political side, I think we have to be wary of any organized "Buddhist Party." These have not always turned out happily in Asian countries. Better, in my opinion, to bring our Buddhist sensibilities to bear through existing structures.

But one thing I think would be very useful would be some attempt to formulate a coherent Buddhist vision of contemporary social issues and problems. (And we should acknowledge those who are working in that direction already, like the Buddhist Peace Fellowship)

Buddhism can have a lot to contribute to improving the dialogue. To begin with, we can try and transcend the us vs. them mentality that inflicts itself on so much political discourse, of the right and of the left. This is because the whole dichotomy of good and evil has no place in Buddhism. There is, instead, an analysis of actions into those which are skilful (relieving suffering) and unskilful (causing suffering.) This perspective alone, if widely disseminated, would improve both thought and action immensely.

The major issues of the early twenty-first century are the environment, war, poverty and liberty. All of these are closely related and need to be addressed holistically. Buddhism ultimately traces all of these problems to the three great roots of greed, hatred and delusion. This simple, but powerful, insight needs to be spun out and elaborated to define the various specific chains of causality, and to see where they can be effectively and compassionately addressed.

Hopefully I'll find time to spin out some of these ideas a bit more on this blog in the future. In the meanwhile, what do you think?

War is Madness

The Buddha condemned war and described it as motivated "by sensual desire, just by sensual desire." In the suttas, war is pictured as "men strapping on shield and armour and hacking one another with swords, causing death and painful wounds." Ancient warfare was horrible enough, and more horrible in reality than epic movies would lead one to believe. Most wounds in battle were in the lower body, because of constraints of human anatomy and the need for mobility the region from the belly to the knees was always the least protected by armour.

But modern warfare is much, much worse. Modern states have much more lethal means at their disposal than swords and arrows. What is more, in operations conducted by the most sophisticated military powers, there is always a higher rate of casualties among civilians than among warriors, either of the attacking or the defending force.

Modern warfare is nasty, cruel and cowardly. Pilots sitting safely in their cockpits, flying high enough to avoid ground-fire, are also too high to visually ascertain whether a target is civilian or military. The risk of war is not eliminated, it is simply transferred in a craven way from the warrior to the innocent. Aerial bombardment is a morally depraved tactic, no better or worse than terrorism. In fact, it is best called state terrorism. And they aren't "collateral damage," they are victims of war-crimes.

In recent years the biggest perpetrators of such crimes against humanity have been the Americans and their regional allies the Israelis. Are these nations somehow morally worse than any others? If only it were so, then it would be a special case. They are neither better nor worse than any others, in spite of their claims for exceptional status. They are merely the dogs currently on top in the scramble for scraps. They are killing the most civilians not because they are in any way worse than other nations, but only because they can.



In a recent action in Baghran province in Afghanistan;

United States Air Force (USAF) announced, "An Air Force B-1B Lancer dropped guided bomb unit-31s on enemies hiding in a tree line near Baghran. The bomb drop was reported to have good effects."

Of course, "deeply regretted by coalition authorities," there were some not so good effects;

On that fateful afternoon of August 2nd, hundreds of people had gathered for the traditional weekly market (or 'mela') in Bughni (or Bagh-e-Nahi) where local people trade everything from carpets, foods, clothes, to cows. Market day there falls on Thursday, the start of Afghanistan's weekend. Then, suddenly, the U.S. Boeing-made GBU-31, GPS-guided 2,000 pound bombs fell from the blue sky.

Panic erupted. Many villagers said they lost fathers, brothers, and children in the inferno.

This is by no means an unusual incident in any of the current theatres of war. In last year's invasion of Lebanon;

[Israel fired] at least a million cluster bombs, old munitions supplied by the US with a failure rate as high as 50 per cent, in the last days of fighting. The tiny bomblets, effectively small land mines, were left littering south Lebanon after the UN-brokered ceasefire, and are reported so far to have killed 30 civilians and wounded at least another 180. Israeli commanders have admitted firing 1.2 million such bomblets, while the UN puts the figure closer to 3 million.

Hezbollah too was guilty of war-crimes, cited by Human Rights Watch, such as loading rockets with ball-bearings. If the Israeli assault was a hundred times more murderous, it was only because they had the superior killing technology. There are no good guys in any of these awful wars.

In fact, a huge part of the problem is the simplistic tribal mentality that divides the world into "good-guys" (us and people who look and think like us) and "bad-guys" (people who live over there, eat weird food and worship weirder gods) This simplistic mentality makes it possible for the elites to justify their resource-wars as moral crusades. But no amount of lip-stick can hide the ugliness of that particular pig.

As a species, we ought to have grown out of this baboonish territoriality long ago. I think it was Kurt Vonnegut who pointed out that war was the single most entropic activity of the human species. In other words, it is destruction, death and chaos. We can no longer afford to be killing each other, we have pressing issues to attend to if civilization is to continue.

--------------------------------------

POST-SCRIPT

Looking for signs of sanity is hard, but finding public voices that are stark raving mad is easy. Here are two of the scariest articles I've seen in ages. Scary because there are people out there who think like that;

This guy wants to nuke Iran, and sees "no moral dilemma."

And these guys want Bush to be President-for-Life (after killing all the Iraqis)

But some other folks, bless them, are trying. Here's the kind of thing that might actually be very helpful in letting us learn to see each other as human beings;

The Peace-Maker Game, a Middle East simulation available in English, Hebrew and Arabic versions. I guess you would call it a First Person Don't Shoot 'Em