Day three in LA, finally catching my breath

dragonfly flits, body iridescent blue
rests in bright sun on stem of green hue
flags blow gaily in warm summer breeze
clouds form and dissipate above ironbark trees
 --- Lee Emmett, from his poem "Atisha Buddhist Center"

Photo from Yogananda's Self Realization Fellowship center here in LA.

Myself and the great Rev. Danny Fisher at University of the West. (photo by Corrine Hinton)

Palm trees and a few stars above L.A. from my sister's apartment in Culver City.

Three days in LA. So far, so good. 

After an uneventful flight in from Missoula, my sister, Eve, picked me up at LAX and took me immediately to her favorite Mexican restaurant, Paco's Tacos. After filling up on beans, rice, and fresh tortillas (probably not vegetarian, but we'll let that slide for now), we made our way to a little bar near her apartment called "The Cozy." The place and its patrons could have been taken right out of Missoula.  It's a mix of Charlie B's and Als and Vics with the addition of a beautiful shuffleboard table, which kept us occupied until the wee hours.

Sunday, Eve and I hiked up Topanga Canyon north of Santa Monica. There we found some great views of the smog - I mean city - to the south. Then it was off to the very beautiful and serene Self Realization Fellowship center; essentially a man-made oasis in the midst of L.A.'s man-made chaos. There one finds extraordinary gardens filled with wildlife and flowers along with shrines devoted to each of the major religions.  We ended the night at a very cool cafe, "The Wood," near her apartment where I continued work on my presentation for Monday at UWest. 

Monday started early for me (6am, which for me is early). I had to catch a bus at 7:30 which would eventually - 10am according to the plan - drop me near UWest to meet up with Danny, check out the campus, and still have some time to finish preparing for my talk. 

As I told Danny, I have a love-hate relationship with giving talks and writing papers. I love it because it's just amazing to be able to share the work I love. But I hate it because I'm both a perfectionist and a procrastinator, so I want all of my work to be just right, but I don't want to start working on it until tomorrow.

Anyhow, buses being buses and me being me, I got a tiny bit lost on the one connection I needed to make along the way.  Using my horrible Spanish skills and relying on the not-too-shabby English of a woman at the bus stop I was waiting at, I discovered that my stop was on "el otro lado de la freeway." Oh. So I made my way to the freeway (the Santa Ana) and got further instructions - more "otro lado" kind of stuff. I eventually made it almost to my stop when I made the mistake of calling Danny and getting directions from him, "get on the 62 to the 287 and then the (I don't remember after that)..." 

I got on the 62 and asked the driver where to get off for the 287 and with wide eyes she shook her head and said, "I don't know about that..." Then she had me call 1800-commute. The operator there immediately redirected me off the 62, back onto another 62 (going the opposite direction) and onto the Montebello 20, which I was supposed to be on in the first place. That one brought me close enough to UWest that the very kind Danny and his wonderful coworker Corrine could come pick me up.  All in all it was a 3 and a half hour adventure of buses, wandering around East LA, and speaking Spanglish with kind old ladies.

After a tour of the UWest campus and lunch, I hunkered down in the library to finish up my talk. The talk itself went very well. The small audience was mostly monastics of varying traditions, so the Q and A brought many great insights. And thanks to Bill at UWest, the talk was recorded and should pop up on their website and here in the coming weeks.

Post-talk and discussion Danny and I had a bit to eat and then I was back on the bus heading West into LA's purple hued sunset.  Two hours later, at last, I was back in Culver City with Eve.

All in all, it's been great. I've been a witness to far more generosity than I ever would have expected in a big city like LA. It has been wonderful to catch up with my big sister, who I typically see only about twice a year these days. And Danny and everyone else at UWest have my sincere gratitude. Oh! And the photos! These and many more are due to the wonderful generosity of the ever-lovely Julie who entrusted me with her amazing camera.

Buddhist Ethics and Kant

In preparation for my upcoming lecture at UWest (my father gave me lectures a lot, I prefer to think of myself as giving talks...), I'm working on further clarifying the similarities in Buddhist and Kantian Ethics.

We can begin with the question of "what?" What do I mean by Buddhist and Kantian Ethics? Since I'm speaking at a Buddhist University and most readers here are well-versed in Buddhism, I can skip the five-minute introduction to Buddhism lesson. It's old, Indian, adapted to cultures throughout Asia, made its way to the West, and focuses on suffering and the end of suffering.

But what about Kant? Or, more precisely, "Kantian." As mentioned in this review and elsewhere there is an important difference:

The former is answerable to "textual accuracy or exegetical standards of Kant interpretation" and the latter is answerable to "the standards for thinking philosophically about ethical theory," while also being formulated in "the basic spirit" of Kant (p. 1).

Those of you who know the Mahayana claim to have created new scriptures "in the spirit" of the Buddha's teachings will appreciate my use of Kantian ethics rather than Kant's ethics. Kantian ethics are rooted firmly in Kant's works, but rely on insights and discoveries of the past two centuries to iron out inconsistencies and correct Kant's mistakes.

Our next question is "why?" Why try to show similarities and parallels in two ethical systems so far apart, both geographically and chronologically?

The first reason is that I found myself, some six years ago, reading and appreciating the works of both and, on a very clouded and basic level, seeing each as saying much the same thing. The second reason is that as I began reading academic accounts of Buddhist ethics, I found repeated misrepresentations of Kant. Based on these misrepresentations, Kant was dismissed as a potential interlocutor with Buddhist ethics.

Finally, for now, we can ask "How?" How can we even begin to compare these systems? That brings us to the above image.

I'll begin with "mapping" Buddhist ethics on it. The circle represents Buddhist cosmology, or view of the world or world-system. In the middle is humanity. Moving upward are various sorts of gods, and above the circle is awakening/bodhi. Down below the middle line are the hell-realms.

The next thing we find in reading Buddhist ethics is a variety of teachings and stories showing beings development or decline within that system. E.g. So-and-so, as a human, did such-and-such bad deed and thus wound up in this hell or that. Other beings in lower realms are described rising up to the human realm and above. It's important to note that rising into heaven realms or falling to hell realms does not require death and should not be taken in a strictly literal sense. The key is simply that one's actions lead to progress toward or falling away from the goal of awakening.

Karma is the mechanism that ensures the connection between good deeds and good outcomes.

~

For Kant, humanity is also positioned in the middle, with heteronomy - a fancy word meaning ruled from outside oneself - at the bottom and autonomy, self-rule, at the top. For him, outside the system would be holy beings, those who have no external pressures. To explain what Kant meant by heteronomy, we can look at various reasons for not killing (an innocent). One might be, "because I'll get in trouble." This is heteronomous because it is based on fear of external retribution. Another reason could be, "because my religion says it's wrong." This is also heteronomous, because it relies on the external authority of that religion. For Kant, the autonomous reason for not killing is that it is simply wrong. And how do we know it is wrong? The Categorical Imperative gives us a process for thinking through such things.

1. First, is it universalizable? If I say yes in this case, I must also accept that I am saying that killing ME would be okay.
   

   1b. A variation of this is that we think of our reasons becoming natural laws - meaning that we think of the regularity and overall harmony of the natural world and consider whether our actions are similar.

2. Next, does it treat the other as an end, not merely a means? This one is very often overlooked when people speak of Kantian ethics. To treat someone as an end means to act in such a way as to encourage and elicit his/her moral or rational faculties. Killing a person obviously cannot do this.
   
3. Third is to treat all beings as autonomous, meaning that while we understand that we are all pushed an pulled from outside forces, we also have to hold people responsible for their actions. Only in doing this can we acknowledge the possibility of progress on their parts. If we treat everyone as if they are merely products of their past, or society, or biology, we are denying all morality because nobody would actually be responsible for anything.
   

   3b. A variation on this is the idea that we consider all beings as a kingdom of ends. For Kant and fellow Christians this would mean thinking of all people as citizens of heaven already, consider them acting as they would in heaven, free of avarice and greed. With this thought in mind, we treat all people seeing their goodness as most fundamental and their flaws as temporary problems to be overcome.

The more we can think through these things and treat people accordingly, the more autonomous we become. And with this we are both more rational and moral. The orderliness of natural laws are used as an analogy (with God as a final resort) to ensure that good acts bring good results. Morality is not willy-nilly. Be good, follow the above, and your life will get better. Both systems rely on after-lives to solve the theodicy problem.

That is a bit more content than I had intended to write about today, but hopefully the structure is still clear. Below, perhaps helpful and perhaps not, is a graph I included in my 2005 M.A. dissertation:

So to return to the question of how, we see that beginning with a broad cosmological approach shows a striking similarity in these systems of ethics. Starting here, we can begin to fill in the content to bring these systems into dialog with one another...

(with a few minor grammatical corrections at 11pm)

Summer Poems and Photos

Two poems by Rengetsu:

Moon in the Summer Trees

What a delight--
Leaves hide my little hut
From the hot sun by day;
At night, moonlight
Filters through the trees.

Early Summer Breezes

Abundant clouds,
A few lingering blossoms,
Fresh summer mountains,
Fragrant green leaves,
And gentle cool breezes.

photos are from a weekend camping/hiking trip to Lolo Peak with Julie, Blake, and Joe.

Kant Party! Reason #238 that I live on the wrong continent

While we are never short of excuses for a party in Montana, and indeed the US (two days after the 4th of July), rare it is that we celebrate philosophy. 'Tis something I should perhaps look into fixing around here...

Here's the full announcement, for those who might be near Angus, Scotland this month:

Kant and Reid Reading Party

Burn House, Angus, Scotland

27 – 30 July 2009

The aim of our Kant and Reid Reading Party is to bring together students and staff who are interested in Kant’s and Reid’s philosophy. We want to discuss selected texts of these two enlightenment thinkers in detail and offer graduate students the opportunity to present papers.

Readings

Kant, Paralogisms (Critique of Pure Reason, A 341-405, B 406-31);

Reid, ‘Of Memory’ (Essays on the Intellectual Power of Man, Essay III)

Graduate Presentations

Ralf Bader (St Andrews)

‘Self-knowledge in §7 of the Transcendental Aesthetic’

Response: Anna Tomaszewska (Kraków)

Ruth Boeker (St Andrews)

‘Reid’s theory of memory and the self: Does Reid offer a coherent alternative to Locke’s account of personal identity?’

Response: Martin Brecher (Bonn)

Toni Kannisto (Oslo)

‘The Inevitability of the Illusion in the Paralogisms: A Survey on Subjective and Objective Necessity’

Response: Giuseppe Motta (Mainz)

Fees

£80 Students (unwaged)

£120 Staff (waged)

The fee includes full boarding at the Burn House and transport from St Andrews to the Burn House and back.

Organisers

Ruth Boeker and Jens Timmermann, Departments of Philosophy, University of St Andrews.

In co-operation with the Evangelisches Studienwerk Villigst and St Leonard’s College, St Andrews.

Please contact Ruth Boeker (rb294@st-andrews.ac.uk) for registration and any further information.

We gratefully acknowledge the support of GRADskills, the School of Philosophical, Anthropological and Film Studies, St Leonard’s College (all St Andrews), the Evangelisches Studienwerk Villigst, the Scots Philosophical Club, and the UK Kant Society.

http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/philosophy/events/?eventid=78

--

Ruth Boeker

PhD Candidate

Department of Philosophy

University of St Andrews

The University of St Andrews is a charity registered in Scotland: No SC013532.

Upcoming Talk

The word is out: http://bit.ly/UWest (thanks Danny!) - If you're in the L.A. area Monday, July 13, come to the University of the West for a talk by yours truly.

On a side note, going back to my New Year's resolutions, I see that this fulfills number 5, being my third talk (one in Cheltenham, UK - many thanks to Dave there - and another here at UM - my thanks to Dane at the Center for Ethics), with a fourth upcoming in Montreal in November.

I suppose early July is a good time to check in on all of my resolutions:

1. Get back into shape: a December filled with travels, bad weather and great food gives me a little work to do. Done, I'm running 20-30 miles a week now and should be ready for a marathon before fall.
   


2. Get 200 pages of my thesis written. I'm wayyyy behind on this; I'm maybe around 40 or 50, but definitely need to focus. But with the presentations, China trip, and Pali language study, I do feel like I'm back on track to finish in a reasonable time-period.
   


3. Keep working on book side-projects if and when time allows. Yada yada yada.
   


4. Spend plenty of time in nature - preferably with friends and family (& camera!). I'm doing pretty well thus far; tonight I'm off for a hike and camping with Julie, Blake, and Joe and hopefully still more in the fall.
   


5. Give 3-4 presentations on Buddhist Ethics (2 already scheduled, this month and April). Done!


6. Get an article published. Ohh, important. Hmm...
   


7. Meditate a lot, with 14 days (minimum) in retreat. Daily practice is still not in place, but a strong weekly practice is there; 5 down in retreat, nine to go.


8. Continue to build and strengthen the campus and other Buddhist communities in and around Missoula. To be reengaged with in August and September.


9. Find more creative and inspiring ways for us (as Sanghas) all to give back to our community. Hmm... I still need to get on this one too.
   


10. Rebuild my vision board with these and other visions I plan to bring about in the next 12 months (I already see the perfect spot). I'm in a new place now and need to pursue this again.
    

Heaven, or Summer in Montana

Finish this Haiku:

In Heaven one finds
Sunsets, meadows, and baseball

Setting the Conditions for Productivity

We all know Buddhism talks about conditionality:

Imasmim sati idam hoti
Imassuppada idam uppajjati
Imasmim asati idam na hoti
Imassa nirodha idam nirujjhati |

When this is, that is
This arising, that arises
When this is not, that is not
This ceasing, that ceases.

To put it in the common sense language of one of my father's life lessons: "when you're swimming in shit, things don't smell too good."

The idea is that the conditions around us pervade or make up our lived experience. If we work with jerks, our own propensity to complain or be unkind arises. When we are surrounded by wonderful people and feel supported, the very best in us quickly shows through.

This idea has come up in my own life in countless ways, and I'm sure in yours too. For running, it helps me to tell people, "I'm running 7 miles today" in order to really push myself to do it. It also helps to have good shoes, a pedometer, and a beautiful community in which to run (thank you, Missoula). All of these are conditions. Other conditions include mental states of dedication, having a goal, having confidence in myself, even the worry of letting others down - a loose and partial translation of hiri-ottappa -helps to get the desired results.

So too in so much of our lives.

At certain times in my life I have inadvertently set the absolute wrong conditions for running, academic progress, etc. You name it, I've probably set poor conditions for it in one way or another.

Responding to my troubles in London 18 months ago, one friend said to me, "I thought a Buddhist could find peace in any situation." Yea, right. Unless we're enlightened, or relatively close, we need the right conditions. For meditation we need calm around us, we need personal safety, we need support from others. It was after my time in London, and more so the few months I spent in DC, that my father offered the above advice.

So we know we need the right conditions.

The next fact is that we often invite destructive conditions into our lives without knowing it. Sometimes we walk into insanity with the best of intentions... More on that another time.

For now, here are some recommendations I found via Dr. Mercola's newsletter on killing distractions. Some I use already, some don't really apply (I don't IM or use Growl) and others are great suggestions for me getting more done with this wonderful, precious time I have...

Quick and (Almost) Painless Ways to Kill Distractions

Are you spending more time dealing with emails, IMs, phone calls, and random stray files than actually working? Here are ten actions you can do right now to kill distractions and get back to work:

Put headphones on

Wearing headphones is the universal sign for “do not disturb.” To make it obvious, choose big clunky ones instead of those tiny invisible earbuds. Even if you’re not listening to music, blocking out ambient noise will help you focus and stay on task.

Check email twice a day

If your email program checks for new email automatically and periodically, make it stop. Instead, manually check your email twice a day.

Tell everyone

To cut down the deluge of office emails, tell everyone in the office via email that you’re only checking email twice a day. This will train your coworkers to reconsider before sending you trivial messages.

Turn spam filtering on

Even with legislation, spam is never going away. You can eliminate this major distraction by turning on spam filtering.

Banish Growl

System-wide notification systems such as Growl are tiny distractions forcing you to log and consider each alert in your mind. You don’t need random reminders to plague your mind while you’re trying to concentrate.

Create IM office hours

Instant messenger programs are a distraction, but it has useful benefits for collaboration and keeping in touch with faraway loved ones. Create IM office hours -- short blocks of time where you’re available for chats.

Silence your phone

Your phone is an electronic dog leash. Release yourself from phone slavery and turn off the sound AND vibrate when you’re working. Your phone is only convenient if you’re in control of it.

Eat lunch out of the office

Eating lunch in the office makes you wide open to interruptions. Let yourself enjoy lunch away from work.

Become an early bird

No one likes to come in to work extra early in the morning. Use this trend to your advantage, and arrive at work before everyone else. Since no one is around, you’ll have fewer disruptions like phone calls and morning chatter.

Clear your desktop

Having tons of icons and files littering your desktop is like having a million squawking baby birds begging for your attention all the time. Clear your desktop now. While you’re at it, tidy up your real desk too.

A Buzzing Blooming Confusion

That title started out as something closer to "Busy, Beautiful Montana" but took a decidedly Jamesian turn well before the typing began.

Some random notes on life of late. I completed a 26.7 mile week last week with four runs: 5, 4.3, 4.3, and 13.1 miles respectively. Now I'm on a four day break.

I suppose tomorrow I'll get started on the next increment, something like 6.5, 5, 5, and 15 miles. Eesh. The half-marathon (13.1 m) kicked my butt; I can only imagine what 15 will do. But then as we know, it's all conditioning. I condition my body to run insane distances, and by golly, it will. The constraints of reality might kick in in terms of an injury, but I'm doing fine so far.

~

Pali studies are going great. I'm now about 40 pages into my book and can easily say intelligent things like:

Darakaa adarena janakaya odanam pujenti = Children offer rice to the father with care.

Kassako manche supati = The farmer sleeps in the bed.

And so on. After a while I'm sure I'll reach the official 1st grade reading level. 'Till then, sweet dreams, farmer.

~

Thesis work is there, up in my head, ready to be done. When exactly that'll happen I'm not sure, but soon. I'm currently working on a post and some readings on moral realism, trying to figure out why people would think Buddhism is not morally realistic (more on that in a coming post). Then some writing must be done.

~

Then reading for China (we have a bibliography of suggested readings that I have yet to dive into).

~

But first: I'm taking an ethics teaching course called TASET: Theory and Skills of Ethics Teaching with an outstanding professor, Deni Elliott. She founded the Ethics Center here at UM before taking an endowed Chair position in Florida but still lives here as much as she can (for obvious reasons). And pretty much every year she teaches this amazing course, mostly to ethics professors who come from around the country to develop new skills, but also to professional ethics officers and grad students who deal with issues in teaching ethics. And this year I finally managed to wriggle my way in.

More on that soon.

More important matters like homemade ice-cream and meditation demand my attention...

A return

So much can be said about the return from a retreat. While every retreat is different, each for me has been a wonderful escape from the daily routine and an always-fresh and new inward journey. This is from my comment on my last post, but it's worth reposting:

I agree that we all need to work harder to find peace right where we are. I think retreats serve as a wonderful crutch, or rocket booster, for our meditations and peace-seeking. It gives us a break from our reactive/conditioned minds, hopefully deepening our insight into life, providing a gift we can bring back and give both to others and to ourselves each day.

In truth this was more of a working-retreat for me than a meditative one. That is a mixed blessing. I'm not as blissful as I would be had I meditated more, but I did get some much-needed momentum on my thesis. So, all-in-all I am deeply grateful for the time, the opportunity, all those who have supported me and helped me along, both in studies and meditation.

There were 3 birds like this one living in a birdhouse at one edge of the property. They constantly flew in intricate circles around the yard (catching bugs I assume, or just playing dare-devil), chasing one another, coming perilously close to the cabin and trees. Even when I stood in the middle of the yard they continued, flying directly at me at times and veering off just short of collision.

Bird of prey over the river.

For some reason the butterflies loved the ashes. They flocked there in the dozens.

A little bunny who lived in the trees beside the cabin.

The big dipper over the cabin.

Constellation unknown.

Back to the great mystery which is life itself.

But first, some sleep.

May you all find the peace you seek.

On Retreat

Photos from a retreat just over a year ago; Camp Child Montana.

I'm heading off to a friend's cabin in the woods northeast of Missoula today, after some running around for Father's day. I'll spend six nights there, alone, meditating, reading a bit, writing (no computer, no cell phone).

I am long overdue for a 'long' retreat, which for me is anything over four or five days. I have found that that is about how long it takes for the mind to let go of the clutter of daily life and actually settle into the present. That shift, when it occurs, is amazing. I would love to spend more time there, ten days, two weeks, perhaps more. But for now this will do. The leash of life is not severed.

Speaking of which, I will be taking along a section of the Ugra Sutra, actually the Arya-ugra-pariprccha-nama-mahayana-sutra, or the Noble Mahayana Sutra entitled, "The Inquiry of Ugra." It is a teaching devoted to the practices of the lay bodisattva and is one of the earliest known Mahayana texts. The earliest Chinese copy dates to 181 CE and it is believed to have been in existence orally for around 200 years.

Chapter four is called "The Filthy House." Here even the layperson, or householder, is exhorted to abandon the house, to seek out solitude where he can free himself of the fetters of worldly existence, gain true bodhicitta, and then return to help all beings.

"Living at home" is declared to be the place of all painful things. It is the place where the roots of goodness that one has previously cultivated are impaired. Therefore it is called "living at home."

I probably won't quite reach the stage of "irreversible from the attainment of Buddhahood" anuttarasamyaksambodhi-niyama (Skt.), but I do plan to come back more focused, relaxed, joyful, and calm.

A question for you: if you consider yourself in the Mahayana, how deeply does the bodhisattva vow resonate in your daily life? (here's the version from the Ugra Sutra):

The unrescued I will rescue.
The unliberated I will liberate.
The uncomforted I will comfort.
THose who have not et reached parinirvana
I will cause to attain parinirvana.

I know there was a time in my life when I took it very seriously. And I am very grateful for that period (about 5 years ago and again 2-3 years ago), and I think the practice and intention bore great fruits. Perhaps it's time to reengage in that intention.

Anyhow - I've written too much. I should be off, meditating!

Best wishes to all. If you feel spontaneously happy some time in the next week, it could be me, kicking ass in the metta bhavana :)