Tannishblog

Tonight’s quote comes on the heals of a discussion I had with a conservative friend at work today as he tried to illuminate me about progress and economics. I’ll save the details for another post. Suffice it to say I disagreed with some of his unstated assumptions which form his definition of progress.

As I peruse the Little Zen Companion, one of the books I use to find these tidbits, I connect this quote with the ramblings my brain produces in trying to frame a response to my friend’s comments.

The thing about Zen is that it pushes contradictions to their ultimate limit where one has to choose between madness and innocence. And Zen suggests we may be driving toward one or the other on a cosmic scale. Driving toward them because, one way or another, as madmen or innocents, we are already there.

It might be a good time to open our eyes and see.

– Thomas Merton

Of course I take the Zen approach (to my limited capacity) while my friend takes the more conventional tract. Time will tell which one of us has it right. Either way, it is indeed a good time to open our eyes and see what our "civilization" is up to lately.

To contrast all the interest in our next World War as it begins, fascination with biblical prophecy as it seems to pertain to current events, I would again like to show you an alternate view of "how the world works."

First, I offer another quote brought to us by the Dzogchen Organization.

Everybody has the beauty of enlightenment in his or her own mind. Buddhahood is within yourself. Wisdom is within yourself; it cannot be found somewhere else.

      ~ His Holiness the Twelfth Gyalwang Drukpa

While the Western world implodes from its own carelessness, bringing on war and environmental damage, a few quiet people around the world are devoting their lives to improve whatever will be left of the planet after Western ideals run their inevitable course. While other religious icons recline in riches accumulated over centuries, making pronouncements based on medieval practices, some people of modest means are living lives of compassion caring for others in need. From his web site:

Dear My Friends,
On this small planet, in the daily dreams of our life, beneficial deeds are always recommended, simply because we are all born to help each other.

By sharing our love with different expressions and through the practice of generosity, morality and understanding, we will then be fulfilling our purpose of being members of the human race.

How refreshing that a person take such a stance wholly unheard in our dysfunctional society. How rare is the individual whom advances the well being of others over himself? If, as is often quoted, the "meek shall inherit the earth," I dearly hope people like the Twelfth Gyalwang Drukpa survive to bring the dregs of humanity back from the ashes of our current conflagrations. 

With all the warfare happening today, I find an appropriate quote from the Tao Teh Ching:

In the army, the Lieutenant Commander stands on the left.
While the Commander-in-Chief stands on the right.
This means that war is treated in a par with a funeral service.
Because many people have been killed, it is only right that the survivors should mourn for them.
Hence, even a victory is a funeral.

There is nothing in warfare to gladden the heart. All eventualities express the frailty and the limitations of humanity. Whatever God you may worship, war is a failure of faith. In our current state of technological warfare, too easily can the situation get our of hand. While many bemoan the deaths of civilians caught in the crossfire, any whom ignore the violent among us is as culpable as if she pulled the trigger herself.

In light of our current focus on Israel and Lebanon (and our ignoring Iraq and Afghanistan), I bring to you, via my weekly email from Dzogchen.org , a Buddhist perspective on war. This may explain why I'm so "far-left" on the issue, or why there's never been a war to enforce or to indoctrinate people into Buddhism.

……. At the end of the talk someone from the audience
asked the Dalai Lama,
"Why didn't you fight back against the Chinese?"
The Dalai Lama looked down,
swung his feet just a bit, then looked back up at us
and said with a gentle smile,
"Well, war is obsolete, you know."
Then, after a few moments, his face grave, he said,
"Of course the mind can rationalize fighting back…
but the heart, the heart would never understand.
Then you would be divided in yourself,
the heart and the mind, and the war would be inside you."

 How refreshing!

Blogging on politics is playing hell with my Buddhist practice. I feel myself regressing into the angry man I want to overcome. sometimes, during my meditations, my thoughts latch into a point my subconscious brings to fore, and I try to phrase it into a coherent post. Then I realize what is happening, and I return to my breath, chagrinned at myself.

In the context of blogging, it is impossible to hold a conversation. Bloggers can only trade virtual punches through their posts, with a time lapse while the sparring partner takes aim. Such sparring is often without virtue. Anonymity make people tactless, bold and sometimes stupid. When I suffer from such ailments, I do so because I slip into familiar patterns I know are dangerous. I do so because I forget the Dharma.

I find reading the news causes frustration that turns into anger which, when the steam runs out, gives way to despair. I believe this is common. Much anger and disparagement is evidence in Blogopolis. I have a familiarity with anger and despair. They’re old friends. One on each shoulder, they’re sometimes mistaken for chips, sometimes for boulders. The very act of scrounging for content, tempting my muse, is my downfall.

There’s a saying in the Dharma which I’ve always liked: "Will it matter in one hundred years?" If the answer is "no," as it likely is, then the reasoning is that it doesn’t matter now. This works fine on a person scale, but with the confluence of crises happening in the world, I find it hard to answer "no" to that question. I cannot help but believe that what happens now will affect the next hundred years dramatically.

It’s hard to see the nation one lives in become an empirical war machine. People don’t want that. But in America, the average person has no say. Gone is the illusion of the power of individual vote. Gone is the fallacy of rule of the people.Gone is any say in the matter at all. We are told lies, spoon-fed fear, and condemned as traitors if we dare question. Karl Marx, Adolph Hitler, and George Orwell are all laughing in glee.

Humanity must turn away from this path. Between war, disease, hunger, pollution, religious conflicts, and the widening imbalance of wealth, the road before us is dark, indeed. I’ve heard much lately how my views are unrealistic or naive. I keep hearing the same thing from dissenters - that the world "doesn’t work that way."  These otherwise intelligent people miss how that kind of thinking is part of the problem, how by doing nothing to change the status quo they are enabling mankind to escalate atrocities. Acceptance of what many call "human nature" is a failure to understand that humanity must rise above the base instincts that we live under: murder; hatred; greed. Responding to our faults by reciprocating them is not the answer to our global issues.

To me this is obvious, to many it is not. As a result I despair, then I get angry, then frustrated at myself for internalizing such anxiety. The cycle repeats. As there seems no end to outward strife, there is also no solace from inward strife. The extremes are not reconcilable.

 I am sometimes paralyzed between seeking inner peace and the outer manifestations of conflict I read about daily. While I know that humans are intrinsically good beings, I cringe at what is going on in the world. Even as people profess to intimate knowledge of a loving God, they fire missiles at each other. While the affluent, educated minority of the world have an unprecedented technological power to aid the poor, feed the hungry, and heal the sick, instead they control government to find ways to hoard their wealth. Such is the dichotomy of our age.

I struggle to find peace within when there is none to be found without.This blog exacerbates my distress. It’s tempting to quit Tannishblog, re-bury my head as I did for many years, pretend nothing’s wrong and quietly age. Instead I speak out, try to turn a few minds, to enlighten however feebly, thereby doing what little I can to aid others to question the madness. If people cannot overcome our penchant for self-inflicted injury, then we are doomed. Until that is determined I will continue to offer an alternative. And you thought all we Buddhists did was navel-gazing…

Tonight' excerpt is from Steve Hagen's book Buddhism Plain & Simple. It begins his chapter on Wisdom.

Seeker: "Teach me the way to liberation."
Zen Master: "Who binds you?"
Seeker: "No one binds me."
Zen Master: "Then why seek liberation?"

Our prison, our dungeon, is within us. It's in our own mind, our own thinking. We strap ourselves into chains of our own making, and we do the same to each other. We train our children in the ways of bondage.

All this is based on ignorance. We don't see the way we are. We don't see our situation for what it is, nor do we see how to deal with it. As Yang Chu says, we pass by the joys of life without knowing we've missed anything.

As you read this, ponder on the many times you've become distracted, spaced out, or fallen into a reverie or daydream. The untamed mind does this repeatedly. The untrained person goes along unwitting, being dragged through emotive responses raised by rouge thoughts without knowing how to stop. In short, the mind controls the person.

Seen this way, don't you agree this is backward? Who is the master of an untrained mind, and who is the slave? Shouldn't the rolls be reversed?

Not only do we go through life senselessly emoting or reacting to mental contortions that have no basis in what is actually before us, we often miss chances to react to opportunities as life presents them. Our busy brains are filling our heads with static, as it were, drowning out the signal of our lives. A wise person would take control of the signal, reduce the static, and begin to view life with a clear and flexible, uncluttered mind. A wide person would become the mind's master.

If you think you are already master of your cognition, try sitting in a comfortable place in silence, ten or fifteen minutes would suffice, and just breathe. Don't try to think, don't try to not think, just watch the flow of brain activity while attending your breath. See if you can keep your mind upon the mechanism of respiration for the duration. If not, note where your thoughts take you. You'll be surprised at how far the mind travels while the body stays still.

"What comes around, goes around." or, "You reap what you sow." Two famous expressions we in the West have, which sums up the Eastern concept of Karma. The Matrix films called it "Causality," while interlacing Jewish and Biblical imagery, but I digress.

Most people would agree with the concept, whatever expression one prefers. This morning, as I fire up one of my favorite blog-watching sites, Blogsnow, I see karma in action.

Righty blogger of repute, Jeff Goldstein, was trolled by a "progressive blogger" who has some very nasty things to say. Details can be found in his post: More from the tolerant left. Black Five harps on it: BLACKFIVE: A New Low, deservedly. And the Wicked Witch of the Right fairly bubbles with vitriol. No doubt her army of salivating lap-dog pit bulls are Googling the perp’s address…

Even Liberal bloggers are flaming her comment pages in disgust.

The blogger in the cross-hairs, Dr. Debbie Frisch, a psyche professor at the University of Arizona until this blew up, deserves what she is getting. Ill intentions, beget ill deeds, resulting in unwanted consequences: It’s Karma, folks. Although I don’t wish her ill, and although I understand this is a learning experience that likely will change her demeanor and help her work out whatever issues caused this, I can’t help being amused by the whole thing. Can any Buddhist ask for a better Dharma lesson than this?

She has since recanted - South(west)paw: white flag - but words, once issued, cannot be retracted. As many from either side of the political fence extend the flame war by contacting her employer, she was forced to resign. As she puts it:

Jeff - I lost my job. You won. Could you call off the troops?

She hasn’t yet realized that the "troops" also consist of her readership and like-minded philosophers - like myself - who lost a great deal of credibility thanks to her lack of mindfulness. To be sure, the right suffers from it’s share of whackjobs, but that’s their mystique. They benefit from that, feed on it as Ms. Malkin frequently demonstrates. The progressives, however, by their self-chosen title and the label "Liberal," must hold to a higher standard of behavior at all times. Dr. Frisch blew it. And by doing so, took all of us lefties down with her, by the karmic convergence of ideological association.

This illustrates another Buddhist teaching of Interdependence: All things are connected. By shamelessly spouting her vile thoughts, Liberals and their ideas nationwide are discredited. I’ve never met the women, and likely never will, but I am affected by her senseless tirade, as much as any.

To Jeff Goldstein, to all conservative Americans, I extend a heartfelt apology from the Liberal sphere for Dr. Frisch’s words. Please refrain from the very human tendency to generalize all progressives by her actions. The vast majority of us know better. May you and your family live in peace.

Namaste.

What strikes me about Buddhism in general, and specifically Zen, is - to the Western mind - it seems to contradict itself. This is because we in the West tend to view the words as we view most things, as immutable. That is not the case. What the Zen beginner often struggles with, among other things, is a paradigm-shift in thinking hitherto stifled by Western mores; that words are insufficient to convey the ideas, but those are the best tools we have. As example, I give you two quotes below, seemingly contradictory, but in fact both statements are correct in the Zen view:

The willow is green; the flowers are red. 

and…

The flower is not red; nor is the willow green.

Have I lost you? These statements illustrate the fluidity of thought necessary to take the first steps in Buddhist thinking: While the first statement, verifying color of the objects, is obviously true - on a conventional level - the second statement reminds us that without the mind to interpret, compartmentalize, and aggregate concepts, neither the objects (the willow and the flower) nor their properties (their respective colors) can exist.

Why bother to differentiate this? Because the knowledge of mind as a necessary and inseparable factor in viewing our world leads to the understanding of how important it is for us to try to temper our minds. Adding the mind into our empirical equations reminds us that a calm mind produces better results than a turbulent mind; that our very perceptions can shift dramatically as our mental state changes. It is therefore our first priority to understand the workings of our minds.

How is this done? Sitting in meditation, without distractions, allows one to gain focus on how the mind's discourse can lead us, instead of us leading our mind. The results can be fascinating, but it takes perseverence - and a touch of courage. 

Regular readers (if any) will know I have the pleasure of a close, long-distance friendship with a righty blogger, Leucanthemum, who regularly challenges my temperament as I surely challenge hers. She writes a column for her local newspaper in Western Illinois, which she also posts online. I get her weekly email every Wednesday.

I also receive an email from the Dzogchen Foundation, founded by Lama Suryas Das. His goal, if I may paraphrase it, is to advance the teachings of the Dharma in the west, specifically in America, and bring compassion and reason back into our fractured, paranoid society. My weekly email is just one of the many ways he tries to improve humanity. Such are the Karmic convergences that I get both emails on the same day.

This week’s Dharma quote:

Johann von Goethe said that there were nine requisites for contented living:

Health enough to make work a pleasure. Wealth enough to support our needs. Strength to battle with difficulties and overcome them. Grace enough to confess your sins and forsake them. Patience enough to toil until some good is accomplished. Charity enough to see some good in your neighbor.

Love enough to move you to be useful and helpful to others. Faith enough to make real the things of God. Hope enough to remove all anxious fears of the future.

As you can see, he doesn’t always choose strictly from the Buddhist canon, which can be refreshing. Even for a dharma-phile, Buddhist texts tend to be obscure. Please re-read the above passage. We’re going to play compare-and-contrast.

Meanwhile in Friday’s Klips, my friend writes about gun laws around the world and emerging United Nations Policies. Please, read today’s offering. I could site the whole article, so concise is her writing, but instead I’ll snip the following:

While the rest of us were watching the brouhaha over the publication of classified information, while we were listening to high-ranking and high-visibility Americans “patriotically” insult their country, the United Nations had a major conference on gun control, claiming it was aimed “only at illegally owned weapons”, but not acknowledging that two of their primary humanitarian organizations, UNESCO and UNICEF have been actively campaigning — and funding campaigns — to outlaw firearms in the hands of law-abiding citizens in places like Brazil. This they do by changing the definition of “law-abiding citizen”. They have already succeeded in effectively banishing lawful possession of firearms in Kenya by making the licensing for it so expensive and restrictive that only the very few socially, politically and financially connected elite can afford to own one by law. And, with violence commonplace in outlying areas, a Kenyan without a gun is likely to die quickly and savagely, often at the hands of neighboring, non-law-abiding Kenyans or Ugandans…

She packs a lot in here, playing to her audience of God-fearing gun-toters. She alludes to the Liberal indignation over banking record- and phone call-monitoring, to the tradition of openly criticizing America in hope of a better future (a distinctly Democratic process many believe should only be practiced when agreeing with the incumbent administration), and to the unstated belief of most Americans, right or left, that we hold the Golden Key of TRUTH, and that the world should listen only to us – especially the United Nations. Then she goes forth to enflame a Righty fear of firearm confiscation, as if what is happening outside the US can be measured by the yardstick of our cultural biases. Or can be fairly represented by a 300-word essay. In this one powerful paragraph she fans the flames of derision, division, and fear.

I see no sign of “Love enough to move you to be useful and helpful to others”; No nod to “Faith enough to make real the things of God”; although I assume much of her readership considers themselves devout Christians; no allusion to “Hope enough to remove all anxious fears of the future”. Her stereotypical conservative view does very little to better the world, and much to fracture it.

What I’m trying to illustrate is the dichotomy of thought between modern American ideals and a suppressed religious (for lack of a better term) tradition older than Christianity that aims unerringly toward the betterment of humanity. They are literally worlds apart. While the first snippet reminds us that even in the West, attempts were made at compassionate thought, yet today, they have been thoroughly stifled.

On a person level, such disparity of messages causes many struggles in my mind: while my heart-and-soul – eternal bastion of the Liberal-minded, and endless target for derision by the Right – tells me that happiness lies in the well-being of others, I am constantly bombarded with hate-speak via inescapable media outlets of all camps. Some days I feel my head wanting to explode (figuratively speaking, of course).

Such is the dilemma of a 21st Century Dharma practitioner.

I begin to understand that after a grueling work week, the last thing we want to do is think in service to our blogging habit. Some counter this by quick posts or catblogging on Fridays, some have open threads wherein their readhership can entertain itself. I usually fail to post on Friday nights.

With the (hopeful) rejuvination of this blog, I propose a tradition I haven't yet encountered in the blogocube: Friday Night Zen. While my family celebrates Shabbot, I can also try to cleanse my spirit by reaquainting myself with the truly important - as I see it. (A week of reading the news can make one forget…) So without further delay, I offer a Zen quote for your enlightenement (pun intended.)

"In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert's mind there are few." 

– Shunryu Suzuki  

 Namaste