Slow bloggin, road trips, more photos

It'll be thesis, thesis, thesis for the next month or so, and then a trip to England to defend a bit of it - so blogging will be a bit sparse.

This weekend, Julie and I and a couple friends took a road trip to Jackson, MT, population 37, for a dip in their famous hot springs. The area around Jackson is a gorgeous, though desolate, piece of Montana. Situated on a high plateau, roughly around 6000 feet, they receive only 30 frost-free days a year. It felt great to escape from the city for a while, experience the great expanses of people-free land, and breathe the cold, clear air. In the clear air the temperature drops fast at night, and it was down well below zero Fahrenheit during our night there. It's the kind of open space, cold air and blue skies I grew up with in Helena, MT; something that's changed noticeably in the last 15 years with population growth and global warming.

It's good to know such places still exist.





Wishing peace to all beings.

And to the Rushing Waters speak: I am

Joanna Macy at Bioneers 2009 from Defend theCommons on Vimeo.

Buddhist ethics and the evolution of consciousness

I'm slowly but surely working my way through Destroying Mara Forever: Buddhist Ethics Essays in honor of Damien Keown, and came across this thoughtful gem by Peter Harvey:

... Human freedom of will is of a variable nature, increasing with mindfulness and wholesome actions." p.50

I've written before about my theory of "nested causality" in Buddhist thought, represented by the image above. It's not a prominent or well-formulated system in early Buddhism, and citta (mind) and kamma (action/moral) even swap places in some accounts. But it can be used to show a sort of Buddhist path, or evolution of consciousness.

In the Aggañña Sutta (DN 27) [my quotes are from the Walshe translation] a reverse evolution is described, beginning with a contraction of the world (think "big-crunch") and beings mostly being born in a high godly realm, the "realm of devas of streaming radiance." But then the world begins to expand again (big bang?) and those beings begin to be reborn in this world. Now these beings are not ordinary every-day beings, mind you. But instead they are said to "dwell, mind made, feeding on delight, self-luminous, moving through the air, glorious."

"At that time there was just one mass of water and all was darkness, blinding darkness." Interesting. There was no sun or moon, and only after a while did earth appear. But it was not ordinary earth; it was "the color of pure ghee... and sweet, like pure wild honey." So we have self-luminous beings floating in the air over this tasty land. Just guess what happens next. One of these beings, stricken with greed, decides to taste the earth, "and craving arose in it [this being]."

So we have a moral tale about the origin of craving - the second Noble Truth. Over time the beings grew greedier, ate more, got ugly, grew legs; grew different in appearance, "the good-looking ones despising the others," and so on for a long time. The food disappeared, new stuff arose, the beings changed more, grew sex-organs and now lust developed and soon sexual activity ensued. This made the lust-free beings very angry and they cast out those who had had sex, who then built houses "so as to indulge under cover." From here all goes to hell (metaphorically - literally a bit later), as people steal land, practice poor agriculture and ultimately elect a leader in hopes that this will calm things down.

And so, with a king, people see that things are a mess and decide to "put aside evil and unwholesome things" which, says the Buddha, is the origin of the name, "Brahmin." The other castes likewise get their names from their original activities. And just so, it is one's moral activities that determine one's future life and/or awakening. The one who has done the moral work of eliminating the greed, hatred, and delusion borne of our current state is to be considered "chief among men in relation to the Dhamma."

~

So this gets me back to my little diagram. The story of the Aggañña Sutta tells us of a fall away from Dhamma, through citta (which is often called "self-luminous"), negative kamma, concerns for bija (crops), and ultimately utu - inorganic matter, representing concerns for housing, a final divorce from the natural world around them. [note here I use the swapped ordering of citta & kamma] Returning then to Harvey's quote:

... Human freedom of will is of a variable nature, increasing with mindfulness and wholesome actions." p.50

With increasing mindfulness, we move out of the house, so to speak, through the fields, toward a cessation of kamma, the re-purification of mind/citta, and release to the Dhamma. It is like weaving a spiral path through the diagram.

As I mentioned recently, narratives like this tend to be problematic. First of all, they are easily misunderstood - especially as they are divorced form their original context. Richard Gombrich, an eminent British Buddhologist, argues that this "myth" is foremost a comical critique of the Brahmanic origin myth, not to be taken seriously. This may be correct. But I am convinced by such scholars as Rupert Gethin, another great British scholar, that we are wise to take a second look and see what meditative value such an odd story might have.

In this light it seems clear that the hearer, if not laughing over witty references to Brahmanic stories, would reflect upon the nature of his/her own motivations and the results thereof. Anyone who has meditated much knows the sense of freedom, lightness (self-luminosity? floating through air?), etc that comes with a good meditation or retreat. And likewise we know how our mind can get preoccupied with fine food, possessions, the opposite sex, and so on. And we know that all of these are disastrous! Well, maybe not so fast. But for the monks listening to the Buddha they would have been.

So the tale is a moral one, to be meditated on, for the sake of an evolution of consciousness, a development of free will.

Destroying Mara Forever

- a festschrift for Damien Keown,

has finally arrived. It's a good one... I'm just getting started on it, but the contributors list alone makes it a must-have for everyone interested in contemporary Buddhist studies and ethics.

A quick quote from the prologue (describing Professor Keown's Ph.D. days):

"The two areas where Buddhism had invested virtually all of its intellectual energy, it seemed to Damien, were psychology and metaphysics, subjects reflecting the central Buddhist preoccupation with the nature of reality and the individual's response to it." (prologue, p.xv)

It's true. And it makes the job of the contemporary Buddhist philosopher all the more dicey. We have to pick and choose the ideas (and stories) that will form a structure of Buddhist ethics; just as Buddhist philosophers of past days did with psychology and metaphysics. We have to systematize and order in our contemporary age just as they did (see especially the Abhidhamma) so long ago. It's tricky - but, oddly, fun.

As an aside, I cannot count how many times I've heard or read that Buddhism or the Buddha wasn't interested in metaphysics, followed by a re-telling of the "man and the arrow" story:

"It's just as if a man were wounded with an arrow thickly smeared with poison. His friends & companions, kinsmen & relatives would provide him with a surgeon, and the man would say, 'I won't have this arrow removed until I know whether the man who wounded me was a noble warrior, a priest, a merchant, or a worker.' He would say, 'I won't have this arrow removed until I know the given name & clan name of the man who wounded me... until I know .... The man would die and those things would still remain unknown to him.

"In the same way, if anyone were to say, 'I won't live the holy life under the Blessed One as long as he does not declare to me that 'The cosmos is eternal,'... or that 'After death a Tathagata neither exists nor does not exist,' the man would die and those things would still remain undeclared by the Tathagata.

But in reading this (and elsewhere in the Pali texts) it is clear that the set of pointless philosophical pursuits is somewhat limited.

Most philosophy that I've come across, East and West, thankfully falls within the Buddha's constraints.

Narrative verses Awareness in Buddhist Ethics

While I was in China this summer I tried to explain my ph.d. thesis to one of my travel mates.

"I am examining the underlying structure, philosophically speaking, of Buddhist ethics. I seek first to understand the Buddhist worldview or cosmology -based roughly in the dualism of samsara and nirvana- and then spell out the various injunctions found in the texts that purport to lead one from the former to the latter."

"That doesn't seem to have much to do with people's lives... or ethics," he replied, obviously a bit disappointed.

I realized then that my doctoral thesis will leave out a potentially significant source of Buddhist ethics, namely narrative. If I had said something like, "I'm going to study why Buddhists in Sri Lanka justify war or what the stories of the Jatakas tell us about morality," I have a feeling he would have been more satisfied. This snippit from a recent BBC article about politics helps show why:

Stories not facts

In his book The Political Brain, psychologist Drew Westen, an exasperated Democrat, tried to show why the Right often wins the argument even when the Left is confident that it has the facts on its side.

He uses the following exchange from the first presidential debate between Al Gore and George Bush in 2000 to illustrate the perils of trying to explain to voters what will make them better off:

Gore: "Under the governor's plan, if you kept the same fee for service that you have now under Medicare, your premiums would go up by between 18% and 47%, and that is the study of the Congressional plan that he's modelled his proposal on by the Medicare actuaries."

Bush: "Look, this is a man who has great numbers. He talks about numbers.

"I'm beginning to think not only did he invent the internet, but he invented the calculator. It's fuzzy math. It's trying to scare people in the voting booth."

Mr Gore was talking sense and Mr Bush nonsense - but Mr Bush won the debate. With statistics, the voters just hear a patronising policy wonk, and switch off.

Unfortunately for me, I love Al Gore - and numbers, and structures, and metaphysics. Stories and sound bytes tend to bore me, especially when they tend toward mere gratification of the speaker or listener. There are of course plenty of exceptions: I do love Buddhist stories and sound bytes like "just let go" or "return to the breath" can be quite powerful when properly applied.

I think my distrust or dislike of narrative comes from how easily it can be misapplied and/or distorted. So when we wish to examine the potential distortion of Buddhism or Buddhist ethics, perhaps narrative is the place to look, as in In Defense of Dharma: Just-war Ideology in Buddhist Sri Lanka. By Tessa J. Bartholomeusz.

In Chapter 1, "Narrative, Ethics and War," Bartholomeusz follows Stanley Hauerwas's approach to ethics, focusing on the power of religious narratives to shape individual moral decisions. She finds his approach highly appropriate for Sri Lanka, where she finds religious stories take a prominent place in public debate due to a type of "Buddhist secularism" that interweaves religion and politics.

(reviewed by Annewieke Vroom)

Facts, on the other hand, tend to be pretty stable. Sure you can argue them, or push them this way or that, but fundamentally they do not lie.

When I think of "just the facts" of Buddhism, my mind immediately goes to the three marks of existence, the ti-lakkhaṇa: impermanence, not-self, and dissatisfactoriness. It is these three that we seek to "see" clearly or awaken to via insight meditation. The fact that we do not see these (experientially, not intellectually) is what keeps us trapped in samsara. Awareness is the path and the practice and the goal.

This may, however, be an extreme interpretation of Buddhism.

The other extreme would be to say that whatever Buddhists do or say is de facto "Buddhist." If Buddhists justify a war, then the war is "Buddhist." If Buddhists say you don't need to meditate or that there is a permanent existing Self, then these ideas are also "Buddhist." In this extreme there is no legitimate ground for saying a Buddhist has misunderstood "Buddhism" or that this or that Buddhist's practices are in fact not "Buddhist." All forms of criticism (read "critical thought") and that dualistic thing called logic are thrown out the window.

Taṃ kiṃ maññatha, majjhimo maggo hoti?

What do you think, is there a middle path?

A day out in Missoula

As mentioned in my last post, it was yet another beautiful (though cold) day in Missoula, MT and I decided to add about 3o minutes of walking into my afternoon Pali studies.

I'm very happy and lucky now to live just 3 blocks from the "hip strip" and 5 from downtown (with the Clark Fork river constituting the dividing line). Here are some photos from the journey to and from my Pali study spot in downtown Zoo town.

The Clark Fork - about as low as I've ever seen it. Facing east with Mount Jumbo and Mount Sentinel in the distance.

The historic Florence Building (and me) in a reflection from the new First Interstate Bank building, downtown.

Now on the way home, about 30 minutes before sunset. Crossing the bridge over the Clark Fork again. Now looking west.

Interesting color splats on the once-serene white snow and ice over the Clark Fork.

Sunset in Sepia.

I loved it when I zoomed in and thought for a moment that I could see stars reflected in the water near the bottom. Only to find out they were... Well, see for yourself.

The beauty here each day is amazing. Even when it's cloudy one just has to remember that clear skies can be found amongst the great mountains in all directions. Which, hopefully, is where I'm headed on Sunday....

Life, and all that jazz

Another quick shotgun blog as the sun arcs its way into my office and across my desk. We've had 3 straight sunny days in Missoula, which is unheard of in the winter - of course the forecast is for a prompt end to all that.

I took advantage on Wednesday by going out for a run along the snowy and icy river trail. It's hard to believe this was me (finishing my marathon) just four months ago. I guess being in shape is anicca (impermanent) just like everything else. I made it just 2.5 miles before needing to walk, then another half mile in fits and starts. Perhaps I could blame it on the icy trail or the cold, but I think 3 months of holidays and laziness is the true culprit. Oh well, training for the marathon in July - the best marathon in America - starts now.

Yesterday - still loving the sunshine - I rode my bike downtown for Pali, again finding myself more winded than expected. Then, capping off my outdoor-exercise-no-car days, I walked down to Posh Chocolate where I met with Dani to study Spanish and help him with his English pronunciation.

Tuesday, via an invitation from Dani and his wife, Marga, Julie and I saw a touring group of Chinese dancers. It was a bit surreal, at times an odd mix of Aaron Copeland music and Swiss/German looking outfits. Their portrayal of "ethnic minorities" in China reminded me of old American films in which white actors would caricature Native and African Americans. It was nothing like what I saw in the real China.




In other randomness-of-life writing; I'm due back in England in 2 months to defend a section of my thesis. That's scary, given how little I feel I've accomplished. I work best under pressure though, so here's some pressure.

In very good news, as of last July, the government has a new "Income-based-repayment" plan for student loans, meaning I won't be saddled with horrific payments once I start working. Basically the plan is simple: if you owe more than you earn in a year you pay just 15% of your disposable income for 25 years and the remaining debt is forgiven. For me, depending on how much I earn, this could mean that as much as half of my outstanding student loans are canceled in the end. God Bless America - and Obama. God help us if the Republicans decide to try to take this clearly socialist unAmerican program away... In Obama's SOTU speech he suggested we make it 10% and just 20 years - woo-rah!

Buddhist Basics Resources

Know of any great sites for resources on Buddhist basics? I'm especially interested in printable charts, graphs, and the likes similar to those at the bottom of this page (I would have posted them here as I think they're great and well worth spreading, but the author explicitly asks that content from the site not be used elsewhere).

I've just stumbled across a great one that seems to be a hidden gem: http://www.aimwell.org/

There and a host of books, sutta translations, images and chants. Check it out.

China revisited

In the mix of ancient cultures of central China outside of Xi'an we find this map: Pulpit one way, Alchemy kiln the other.

The pulpit is actually the remnants of a stupa and little else, allegedly from Nestorian or Syriac Christians. The Alchemy kiln is from the Daoists. It was at this temple that Lao Tzu (Laozi) wrote the Dao De Jing.

Subjects for frequent reflection

Five Subjects for Frequent Recollection

(LEADER):

Handa mayaṃ abhiṇha-paccavekkhaṇa-pāthaṃ bhaṇāma se:
Let us now recite the passage for frequent recollection:

(ALL):

Jarā-dhammomhi jaraṃ anatīto.
I am subject to aging. Aging is unavoidable.

Byādhi-dhammomhi byādhiṃ anatiito.
I am subject to illness. Illness is unavoidable.

Maraṇa-dhammomhi maraṇaṃ anatiito.
I am subject to death. Death is unavoidable.

Sabbehi me piyehi manāpehi nānā-bhāvo vinā-bhāvo.
I will grow different, separate from all that is dear & appealing to me.

Kammassakomhi kamma-dāyādo kamma-yoni kamma-bandhu kamma-pa.tisaraṇo.
I am the owner of my actions, heir to my actions, born of my actions, related through my actions, and live dependent on my actions.

Yaṃ kammaṃ karissāmi kalyāṇaṃ vā pāpakaṃ vā tassa dāyādo bhavissāmi.
Whatever I do, for good or for evil, to that will I fall heir.

Evaṃ amhehi abhiṇhaṃ paccavekkhitabbaṃ.
We should often reflect on this.

* from here with some diacritical clean-up.

This is the latest of my memorization projects. It is also available, with Pali and English, in Bhante Gunaratana's Vandana book, available in full in pdf. Still working on the 8-fold path... Ahh, the joys of Pali...