because they have always already occurred

the present is always already a state of anticipation.

"so, how is it that things happen? aren't we always just waiting for the--"

because they have always already occurred.

Mad Rush

I am pleased to share the work of talented pianist and eMedia artist, Alex Farren, who is graduating from our program this semester. This video pairs stunning time-lapse footage and an interview at a dharma center with his musical performance of a piece Philip Glass composed for the Dalai Lama. It's like a mini-Koyaanisqatsi, only beter.

#noyolo

I've been publishing a new photo series on Facebook since closing CCPCtW that picks up some of the theme (and at least a portion of the subject matter) of that early series. It was prompted by my recent sudden reunion with an old friend who I've missed quite a lot.

Trixie, demonstrating kitten-zazen.

#noyolo borrows the trope of the ubiquitous Internet cat photo and employs it in a kind of spiritual subterfuge, smuggling buddhist concepts into the cloud through this common image. The photos attempt to convey the bussho (inherent, original buddha-nature) of my 14-year-old tortoiseshell long-hair, Trixie. Upon coming back into my care (or I into hers), she immediately grew accustomed to my nightly practice of writing in bed, typing away at my laptop, propped up on elbows, while stretched out on my belly.

Recognizing this ritual, she has incorporated her own practice into it, a kitten-zazen, if you will. She will stand to my right on the bed, waiting for me to clear a path of sufficient space between myself and my laptop so that she can walk to the left side. There she waits for me to remove my left arm from the position that allows me to type and stretch it out on the bed, where she will plop herself down across the arm. I then type with my right hand as she sits, in her catness, or, sometimes, turns to her side and uses the arm to prop up her head.

This happens almost invariably every night, in the same spot, and with her at least starting in the same position each time. As soon as I recognized this corresponding ritual, I began to document it with my free hand using Instagram and posting the images simultaneously to Facebook. To some images, I add a buddhist-themed caption, but typically I allow the image to be read on its own. In many, the laptop or some portion of it has also been captured, marrying both of our rituals in the images.

I have chosen the title #noyolo because it is multi-valent in relationship to the images. It is a hashtag, used to associate a topic or keyword (or several) with a social media post. This allows, in many social networks, for users to search the posts for that keyword. The phrasing is an appropriation and a turning back on itself of an unfortunately popular current homophobic phrase (and frequent hashtag): nohomo. It's an abbreviated interjection used to disavow same-sex attraction when engaging in activities that might stereotypically draw speculation on one's sexual orientation, such as hugging someone of the same sex. yolo is an acronym, with cache in our current culture, for "you only live once." noyolo, then, is a play on this indicating that you don't only live once, but instead you live in a cycle of rebirths, either literal or figurative. noyolo seems especially fitting to me when referring to a cat, with its fabled nine lives.

Trixie and I have been reunited because she is nearing the end of this particular life, and as its close draws near, she has so much to teach and such little time in which to do it.

When wegos collide - 13 November 2007

Buddhist priests of the Big Asakusa Temple prepare for the Second Sino-Japanese War as they wear gas masks during training against future aerial attacks in Tokyo, Japan, on May 30, 1936. (AP Photo)

            Every war is a civil war.  We construct an illusory distance between ourselves and whomever we deem to be the enemy of the moment, polarizing them on the side of evil and us on the side of good.  President George W. Bush’s familiar rhetoric of the “axis of evil” used to incite and maintain the current state of war is an overt example of this distancing technique.  In truth, however, when we engage in any war, there are no clear-cut lines of good and evil; when we battle our “enemies,” we battle our friends and neighbors, our sisters and brothers.  Political, social, and economic allegiances are in a constant state of flux; we have all been allies at some point and will be reborn again as allies as our needs and attitudes shift over time.  In the meantime, we rend the very fabric of people’s lives in search of a victory that can never come.  No matter who wins the battle, we all lose when we fight in service of the monumental deception of selfhood.

The geopolitical borders of the nation-state are not physical walls built to keep our enemies out, but are manufactured conventions, no less fortified, which keep our fragile selves within.  The nation is not a physical reality but instead a conceptual construct we use to maintain the fallacy that we are separate from and superior to the other communities around us.  This convention is a projection of our collective egos, or our wego, as referred to by David R. Loy in his book, The Great Awakening.  Loy posits that just as we individually create and preserve a notion of self, we collectively create and maintain similar group “selves.”  This self-identification is inextricably bound up in the dualistic thinking we utilize in an attempt to stabilize an unstable existence.  Ironically, the very tool with which we are attempting to steady our world is one of the main causes of instability and conflict.  Dualistic thinking is one of the delusions that propagates war.

Peter Harvey, in An Introduction to Buddhist Ethics, cites delusion such as this along with anger and greed as the root causes of war.  These three seeds of unwholesome individual action are writ large on an international scale when our collective wegos engage in them.  Just as the individual can overcome these poisons by cultivating their opposites (wisdom, compassion, and generosity), so too can nations.  This is the Buddhist solution to war.  In practical terms, though, what does this mean and how can we apply it to contemporary global conflict?

Increasingly, I believe that justice may be, ironically, a hindrance to peace.  That is to say that our conception of “justice,” more akin to retribution, is a source of conflict.  In our democratic society, if an individual is wronged, that individual or the individual’s loved ones seek justice.  If property damages are involved, people seek to recoup at least the monetary amount of the damages and the costs of legal proceedings.  Many murder victims’ families seek the death penalty for those charged with the slaying of their loved ones.  We have an “eye for an eye” notion of justice.  On an international scale, we think in similar terms.  If we as a nation are attacked, our sense of justice will not be satiated until we strike back.  Justice, for us, is reactive, vengeful, and delusive. 

Although Buddhism generally does not discuss justice, we can apply Buddhist thinking to the concept to shift it from this harmful notion focused on consequences to a proactive, beneficial one focused on motivations.  What are the causes of our current conflicts?  What ill-will, greed, and delusion are we engaging in that may have led to conflict?  How are we responsible, even when we don’t want to admit any responsibility?  Instead of striking out, we may be able to avert conflict by looking inward.

If, instead, we do take aggressive action, we are submitting to another delusion—that we can alleviate our own suffering by causing others to suffer.  This idea is one which surfaces time and again in Harvey’s discussion of topics like euthanasia and abortion.  This fundamental delusion seems to inform much of our decision-making concerning ethical issues.  In our often-impassioned attempts to serve justice, we instead create a sustained cycle of suffering.  When we act to satisfy our need for justice, there is always the possibility that another group will view those actions as threatening to their wego and act, in turn, to satisfy their own need for justice.  This sounds very much like the perpetual revolution of the wheel of samsara. 

How are we to break such a cycle?  As individuals, in order to escape from the wheel of suffering, we must awaken.  With clear vision, we can see through the delusion and we can elect not to participate in our unjust system of justice.  That is not the same as “turning the other cheek” when we are wronged.  Instead, we should seek resolution over retribution, eliminate the causes of others’ suffering and we eliminate the causes of our own.  This is true justice, though it may sound like the converse of our current skewed concept of justice.  It may be bittersweet as we are forced to recognize our own responsibility, or at least our own complicity, in the processes that create conflict.  If we can make this kind of change on a personal level, we can then effect change on the institutional, national, and global levels.

At the most basic level, this is just another call to give up our illusory sense of self and to stop acting in ways to protect that delusion at the expense of others.  This sounds more difficult than it really should be because our society has been built around the glorification of the individual; we are taught from an early age just how to maintain the sense of self.  Even our most conformist of institutions, the military, recruits with slogans like “be all that you can be” and “army of one,” again glorifying the individual while simultaneously conditioning soldiers to sacrifice that individuality for the larger wego.  We must indeed sacrifice our selves, but not to be replaced by larger, institutional bodies which would lead to a totalitarian state.  We must sacrifice our selves for one another, regardless of nationality or other superficial differences like gender, skin color, sexual orientation, religion, or political beliefs.  Sacrificing our selves need not mean sacrificing our lives or the lives of others, just sacrificing our misperceptions.

Thich Nhat Hanh’s description of our fundamental relationship with all things is “interbeing.”  This is more than a series of cause and effect relationships or links in a chain of being, but an inextricable interpermeation of all beings, each dependent upon all others.  In order to successfully coexist with one another, we must awaken to the understanding of this concept.  Just as our individual egos collectively form ever-radiating circles of wego based on our self-identification with various groups like families, states, and nations, we have to recognize the multiple layers of the web of interbeing affecting those groups.  Our beliefs and actions cannot be separated from those of other individuals, families, states, and nations, again each dependent upon all others.  When we strike others, we strike ourselves.  When we save others, we save ourselves.  We will never alleviate suffering by causing more suffering, we will never achieve justice through retribution, and we will never achieve peace through violence.

Toppling the Tower of Self-Gratifying Economics

Like Rapunzel, I am kept alienated from others in the topmost chamber of a lofty tower, so high above the ground that I can see neither the tower’s foundations nor its exit.  Just like the heroine of that tale, I let down my proverbial hair to admit my heart’s desires, whatever those might be at the moment, in hopes that one will finally free me. My hair is always down, netting more and more pleasures and hoisting them up for my own greedy, isolated consumption in my misdirected search for liberation. Unlike the princess of the classic fable, I have erected this tower myself and I am both prisoner and warden within it.  An even more apt description would be to say that I am the tower itself: an edifice of ego built to protect an ever-craving fragile sense of self.  The tower and the system of acquisition and consumption I have constructed allow me to enjoy virtually limitless pleasures without being bothered by the “hows” and “whoms” of those pleasures’ manufacture.  My sense of identity is inextricably bound up with the consumer capitalist system in which I am complicit; my tower is built upon the backs of working women and men.

* * *

It may seem quite a reach to begin a theory of Buddhist economics with a Western fairy tale; however, as Western Buddhism emerges and develops in contemporary consumer capitalist economies, it becomes apparent that this ancient way can flourish today by appropriating familiar elements of those cultures.  Just as historically Buddhism has been able to adapt and spread through some degree of syncretism with already-inculcated belief systems across Asia, its chances for survival today in the West may depend on its ability to infiltrate existing religious, social, political, and economic institutions.  For many people in this predominately Christian society, Buddhism appears to be a mystical and exotic religion, foreign and esoteric without any relevance to the contemporary West.  If the majority was to start taking it seriously as a viable alternative, not just to Christian thought but also to capitalist thought, it suddenly becomes a foreign threat, a seemingly open attack on our values and the foundations of our society.

Buddhism, however, is not just a religion or philosophy, but a practical path for living, and it is this facet of Buddhism that may be most appealing to the pragmatic West.  A Buddhism that does not openly conflict with Christianity, a “safe Buddhism” with the aura of psychology or self-help that might augment our current systems is one that could easily be accepted in the West and incorporated into our existing traditions. The danger, I fear, in this subtle approach is that the bottomless pit of our consumer capitalist economy will swallow up such a “safe Buddhism.”  Is a watered-down application of popularized Buddhist precepts really going to be effective in changing the direction of a society that is so essentially off-course?  As the old axiom goes, “desperate times call for drastic measures.”  Buddhism has the power to be a drastic measure—it can be a vehicle for tearing down the buttresses of what we think we know to be true.

Key to the success of the penetration by “drastic Buddhism” of our economic system is a shift away from our often rigidly dualistic way of thinking.  We habitually construct fragmented and exclusive vantages from which to perceive our world.  One example is the conventional conceit that economics is some unified object of examination, separate from us and from other elements of our culture.  We distance the object from ourselves, giving us an illusory sense of mastery over it.  In reality, economics is just another facet of our constructed identities of self and community, one which, in deluding ourselves that we have control over it, we have let master us.  It is a self-constructed tower that traps us, all the while maintaining the delusion that it protects and serves us.  We must awaken to the fact that our economic system is a reflection of the way we view the world and others, and that viewpoint is fundamentally flawed.  It is dukkha.

Our economic viewpoint is largely a consequence of our attitude toward the natural world as “resource,” and therefore tied to ecology in ways we can’t even begin to imagine.  David Loy, in the chapter “Loving the World as Our Own Body” from his book The Great Awakening, discusses our present exploitative and delusional relationship with the natural world and the alternatives Buddhism, Taoism, and Deep Ecology present. As Dr. Loy notes, religion and social theory are tangled into our knotted relationship with nature.  Whether one subscribes to Christian creationism or understands Darwin’s Origin of Species to place humanity at the apex of evolution, the role of the natural world has been perceived as being to serve humans.  Politics, too, is bound up in this complex interrelationship, with geo-political borders demarcating what is “ours” from what is “theirs.”  Central to all of these attitudes is the objectification of the natural world and a sense of self that is separate from it.

Other people, too, become merely resources in our present economic system—rather than humans, they are “labor,” serving to produce the goods with which we attempt to quench our never-ending thirst for sense-pleasures.  Humanity has become objectified in our contemporary view of the world, not just because of an impersonal system that uses people as dispensable resources, but also because of other humans who, as both consumers and profit-makers, do not value the humanity of those who serve them.  The basic flaw of our economic system is rooted in our blindness to our shared kinship with “resources” and “labor.”  Such language codifies the dualistic thinking that allows us to maintain the illusion of distance from the natural world and from other people.  These notions are the bricks of our individual tower-prisons.

Extending this fairy-tale analogy, it is easy to see corporations as collective prison-towers.  In this case, like distancing consumers from the realities of production, the corporation shields shareholders from responsibility towards resources and labor.  It enables people to collectively maintain the illusion that they are not individually exploiting the natural world and their fellow humans for their own profit, their own consumption.  In “Can Corporations Become Enlightened?” also in The Great Awakening, Dr. Loy notes that the corporation does not share accountability in the way it superficially shares profit amongst its members.  Instead, the corporation is a fictive body that serves as scapegoat for the “sins” of the individuals who act in their own interests to maximize return.  Our whole economic apparatus is designed to perpetuate these fictions and maintain our illusionary identities as bodies and as individuals.

The non-dualistic approach to thinking that Buddhism brings to the West is a major tool with which the dismantling of this apparatus can begin.  When management understands that they are not separate from employees, consumers realize that they are no different from the workers who serve and produce for them, and we all recognize that by exploiting our non-renewable natural “resources” we are using up ourselves, our prison-towers will begin to crumble.  The structural and social verticality we have each erected to distance ourselves from one another becomes level ground;  hierarchy becomes an equality in which we all share and true democracy has a fertile ground in which to sprout among the ruins.  Ironically, it seems that a path that some Westerners view as a foreign threat may just be the tool we need to return to our original ideas of democracy.  Even a measure as drastic as Buddhist re-thinking is not in conflict with our society’s foundational institutions.  Infiltrating them and working from within, Buddhist concepts might become effective tools in reshaping the parameters of thought and action currently inscribed by those institutions.  In a Western sense, our traditional institutions, such as economics, may become more just and in a Buddhist sense, they may become less ego-centric when dualistic misperception gives way to the recognition of the interpermeability of all things.

In conclusion, let’s revisit our fairy-tale…

* * *

            One morning, Rapunzel awakens to find her tower chamber empty.  She realizes that no Prince Charming will ever scale the tower to rescue her and so cuts off her hair.  The witch-warden who has been keeping her fades from view, a hallucination she has created for herself in order to cope with her own limitations.  Even the walls of the tower begin to fade to reveal the same phenomenon happening to similar towers all around her, each with their own erstwhile inhabitants rejoicing in freedom together, no longer self-imprisoned captives.  For this princess, and millions of other people like her, liberation begins with awakening.

Nothing is Consistent in Buddhist Social Ethics

            One of Buddhism’s greatest strengths, and perhaps the quality that will ensure its survival in the contemporary West, is also one of its greatest weaknesses—adaptability.  As the Dharma spread from India throughout Asia and the rest of the world, Buddhism not only informed the cultures it encountered but became informed by them, resulting in a plurality of “Buddhisms” rather than one monolithic, consistent tradition.  Therefore, the forms of the Dharma as practiced in Japan are very different from those practiced in Tibet and, indeed, quite different from one another even within the same country.  The various sects of Buddhism and the diverse societies in which Buddhism has been adopted provide differing perspectives on social issues, many conflicting with one another.  Nowhere more visible are these inconsistent perspectives than in relationship to ethical issues, which inform Buddhism in practice, not just theory.  As there is no single Buddhism, there can be no single code of Buddhist ethics.  For many in the West, this is problematic; conditioned by dualistic thinking, we expect consistency, even if it is simply to determine what Buddhists “do not believe.” 

            For example, if one were to posit the question, “Do Buddhists support abortion?”  no single consistent answer would emerge.  First, the phrasing of the question provides room for inconsistency in that Buddhists, or practitioners of Buddhism, are a group of individuals and their personal beliefs may be inconsistent with the teachings as recorded in the texts.  Even were we to rephrase the question as, “Does Buddhism support abortion?” we would be narrowing the possibilities only slightly, given the proliferation of forms of the tradition.  As investigated by Peter Harvey, in An Introduction to Buddhist Ethics, Buddhist attitudes toward abortion are not entirely consistent, even given the first precept of not intentionally harming any sentient life.  The crux comes, as in Christian and secular Western attitudes toward abortion, with the defining moment of life.  One predominant Buddhist attitude defines life at the moment of conception, and thus abortion would be considered as a breach of the first precept.  What if, however, the pregnancy causes the mother suffering, harming her life?  Thus begins an unreasonable exercise in weighing one person’s dukkha against that of another.  Abortion, for some Buddhists, becomes a permissible option if it relieves more suffering or prevents more harm.

            Another example of Buddhist inconsistency in social ethics is the tradition’s multiplicitous attitudes toward gender relations.  The Buddha seems to have been influenced by the culture of his time in initially not allowing women to enter the sangha.  As discussed by Dr. David Loy in his essay, “What’s Wrong with Sex?” there were practical reasons that can be attributed for the Buddha’s reluctance, such as the concern that allowing both sexes to intermingle in the sangha would make sexual activity more likely, which would be a hindrance to enlightenment.  However, even after having been persuaded to allow women to join, the iniquities in the monastic codes for men versus women show how the cultural patriarchy of India at the time was reinscribed in the Dharma.  Because of the complex interrelationship between issues of biological sex, gender, and sexual orientation, that patriarchy and male privilege present in Buddhism from the beginning continue to inform Buddhist attitudes toward a number of related social issues such as prostitution and the ordination of homosexuals.

Depiction of a hell in Sri Lankan Buddhist temple.

            Possibly the most distressing inconsistency exhibited by the Dharma is that, even though widely understood as a religion that abhors violence and promotes peace, there have been those people throughout history who have exploited Buddhism’s flexibility in order to promote violence and to justify participation in warfare.  This seems profoundly oppositional to the core teachings of Buddhism, and yet adaptability can be considered to be one of those core teachings.  This example shows the hazard of adaptability taken to the extreme.  Buddhism can be what we want it to be as much as what historically it has been shown to be; its malleability in the hands of those with unwholesome motivations could prove dangerous.  Therefore, it is very important that we seek to establish some guiding discipline in shaping Buddhism today.

As the Dharma continues to take form in the contemporary West, one is tempted to survey the vast historical depth and geographical breadth of the tradition and cobble together a new practice from the best parts of everything that has come before, discarding those which do not agree with our current socially-conditioned attitudes.  For example, if we are troubled by something written in later Mahayana commentaries, we might look back to the “original” Pali texts for a “definitive” word on the issue or even limit our investigation to what has been recorded as the words of the Buddha, himself.  This is often the approach currently taken in Christianity, by fundamentalists and liberals alike, in the attempt to “get back to” what Jesus “really” taught.

This methodology is inherently fallacious; we can never know what the Buddha or Jesus really said and so we are left with the texts written around them--artifacts that must be recognized as the fallible word of humankind.  Doing so provides even greater impetus for a “shopping-cart” Buddhism, which dismisses any teaching that does not agree with our own prescriptive understanding of the Dharma.  If we consciously choose to distill Buddhism, however, we risk homogenizing the teachings into a consistent, exclusive, and inflexible religion, like so many others being practiced today.  For many in the United States, Buddhism is attractive precisely because they perceive it as not being the rigid, hellfire-and-brimstone Christianity of our Puritan foreparents.  If Buddhism were to lose its inconsistency, it may very well lose its viability.

On the other hand, we cannot just accept everything written about Buddhism without question.  Such an approach contradicts core teachings of the Buddha that almost everything about the practice is provisional.  He viewed the Dharma as a raft used only to take us from one shore to the other.  Another helpful analogy might be to think of Buddhism as a toolset, not a goal in and of itself.  From that set of tools, an individual must choose those she or he recognizes as appropriate to the job.  If the tools do not fit the task, then they can be discarded or modified.  Thus, Buddhism should take on an individualized form necessary for the practitioner to reach enlightenment, perhaps the root of the Dharma’s inherent inconsistency.  The Buddha himself is said to have adjusted his teachings or withheld certain teachings based on his particular audiences and their needs, presenting the Dharma in various forms as necessary.  The Buddha’s teachings, therefore, appear fluid and viable, qualities that paradoxically have the possibility of changing Buddhism into something rigid and dead.

What is to keep contemporary Buddhism in the West from befalling such a fate?  Cultivating the wholesome qualities of wisdom, compassion, and generosity, beneficial in and of themselves, will also develop our faculty for upaya, or “skillful means” in applying the Dharma.  Upaya ensures a critical response to the teachings, giving one an informed context from which to choose the right tools for awakening.  This is different from a “shopping-cart” approach to Buddhism, in which one’s constructed ego, subject to selective perception, is allowed to determine which teachings should be retained and which dismissed.  Instead, with ego extinguished, upaya permits such decisions to arise naturally and situationally as a consequence of one’s Buddha-nature. 

Through upaya and the nurturing of wisdom, compassion, and generosity, one might begin to see inconsistency as one of the Dharma’s most consistent qualities—it is consistently inconsistent.  By accepting ambiguity as a norm, one can revel in Buddhism’s inconsistent texts, attitudes, and practices, which allow paradox, sustain reversals of belief and opinion, and permit the inclusion of the greatest number of people in the path to enlightenment through whatever means necessary.  I would argue that practice will take us a step further than recognizing the Dharma’s inconsistencies as consistent, to the point where we truly understand nothing to be consistent.  This is not simply an act of creating semantic nonsense to excuse Buddhism’s shortcomings, but instead a shift away from dualistic thinking.  The language of “consistent” and “inconsistent” reinforces a faulty binary of thought privileging an ego-constructed delusion of permanence.  Any judgments about consistency are made from a self-imposed distance between the thing being evaluated and that doing the evaluation.  Awakening means overcoming this divide, recognizing the complex interpermeation of all things, and exposing the insufficiency of language to describe our existence, thus ultimately discharging the need for terms like “consistent” and “social ethics.”

The ego is a clock

Charles Naughton and Ray Milland in a promotional still for one of my favorite films noirs,
The Big Clock (1948,  dir. John Farrow)

In the PBS series, The Power of Myth, in talking about the Buddhist tradition with Bill Moyers, Joseph Campbell succinctly states the first Noble Truth as: "All life is sorrow."

He elaborates by placing this assertion in the context of temporal culture: "All life is sorrow because life is temporal. Life is loss." We live in the passing moment, the present always just slightly out of reach because in the time it takes to point to it, to assert that we have found it, the present has passed already.

We live not in the present, but in the past perfect tense-- "has passed," as above. Time is the measure of loss associated with a life lived in the past perfect tense.

Perhaps we can counteract time and stay this loss, help alleviate suffering, by giving up our position in the past perfect and living in the ever-present moment. We might try to stop grasping toward the present, since it has already slipped behind us in the time taken to reach out, and instead just live the present tense. "Live" instead of "have lived." Do that which should be done right now.

The ego is a clock. It is the device which discerns time, points to its passing. Destroy the clock, destroy the measure of time, leaving only the awareness of now.

Christianities and Buddhisms, or Christianitiesandbuddhisms

Helena Bonham-Carter in the film adaptation of Howard's End (dir. James Ivory, 1992)

“Only connect.” ---  Howard’s End (1910), E.M. Forster

            While it would be unfairly reductive to discuss the teachings of “Buddhism” as though the system were a monolithic, consistent religion with unchanging, definitive characteristics, one must find some way of making general comments.  To put the religion in a comparative context with another worldview, like Christianity, can help us to become aware of the general characteristics shared by the many “Buddhisms.”  Perhaps this plural is a more fitting way of talking about the proliferation of sects stemming from the life and teachings of the historical Buddha, Siddartha Gautama.  But if we are to discuss “Buddhisms,” we must also discuss “Christianities” in similar terms, for the differences within each tradition can be as great as those between each.  I will instead rely upon conventional use of the singular in the following comparative analysis, but with the caveat that no single, definitive tradition could readily be approximated with either religion.  Such a comparative undertaking seems a daunting task; with so many varieties of these two major worldviews, how can our comments fairly represent the scope and subtlety of each?  Also problematic is the employment of a comparative methodology, which defines a thing as much by what it is not as by what it is.  Using this approach, then, Buddhism in simple terms is not-Christianity.

            From the outset, we are beginning to utilize a system of thinking to define Buddhism that is in conflict with one of its core beliefs, non-duality.  In dualistic thinking, we create rigid mental structures of concepts in opposition with one another and then try to filter our experience into one of the two opposing categories.  Traditional science tells us that a thing cannot be in two places at the same time and conversely two things cannot occupy the same space.  This is an axiom that we are apt to apply to our beliefs, senses, thoughts, actions, emotions, intentions, and responses, as well, not just to concrete physical objects.  It is human nature, we commonly assume, to assign clean, succinct labels in order to make sense of the world.  This, too, is a reinforcement of dualistic thinking—to set humans in a privileged place apart from the world.  We feel we must be separate from the world in order to view it as subject.

            Christianity appears to have developed in accord with dualistic thinking and may be the major force in maintaining such a mindset.  For example, the creation story in the book of Genesis is a series of separations and namings:  light from dark, earth from heavens, animals from man, woman from man, good from evil, sin from paradise, creation from God, etc.  Jacques Derrida’s concept of deconstruction tells us that in any set of oppositions such as these, one of the pair is the more privileged, so built into a dualistic mindset is an inherent imbalance.  In such a way, many people have used Christianity to reinforce ideas they have found to be preferential in this system of polarity and to make strong, exclusive value judgments in relationship to those preferences.  For example, God is above creation, therefore anything of this world is inherently sinful; we must strive to not live in this world, but instead keep our eyes and thoughts on God.  Is this an accurate representation of reality?

Mara's armies attack the Buddha.

            In many respects, Buddhism’s perspective on the same example is not unlike Christianity’s.  Mara, the personification of existence, is illusory, deceptive, and tempting and represents a turning away from the spiritual.  In order to defeat him, we must stick closely to the spiritual path.  Summing up the many Buddhist traditions’ views on existence in this way provides those of us in the West with a neat oppositional pair that mirrors Christianity’s concerns with the spiritual overcoming the worldly.  Yet, to get a more full Buddhist perspective, we have to ask ourselves is Mara something separate from ourselves?  Any path we follow, spiritual or otherwise, is a path through our current existence.  It is in the world, not apart from it.  We are, in fact, what we are trying to overcome.

            This statement does not fit neatly into our Western dualistic worldview, and therefore may be difficult for many Christians to wrap their minds around.  It is much more comfortable for us to envision a Satan, responsible for evil and opposed to God, but most importantly separate from ourselves.  We can feel guilt and shame on a personal level, but conveniently ultimate blame is placed on Satan as the root of those things.  In this way, we can divest ourselves of responsibility.  To be fair, there are Buddhist traditions that present Mara as just such a devil figure, also providing a convenient scapegoat for our sins.  It is perhaps unjustified to pick the best of Buddhism and the worst of Christianity for our comparisons, but this has all really just been an exercise to provide another example of dualistic thinking, even in trying to deconstruct dualistic thinking. 

In a discussion of a contemporary understanding of karma, Dr. David Loy emphasized how the Buddha’s innovative approach to spiritual development was couched in ways of thinking that were deeply engrained in the society around him:  rebirth and karma.  The Buddha’s original teaching (his dharma) is inextricably bound up in terms and beliefs of the Vedic religion, and yet it is more than a reaction to them.  Anchored in his immediate context, the Buddha’s dharma should perhaps be viewed less as a vehicle for the individual to move forward out of his or her current state of existence, and instead as a method to move existence itself forward.  In this way, Buddhism overcomes the limits of dualistic thought; individual and society are not separate, old religions and new coexist simultaneously.

Although my intentions in this essay were to describe the teachings of Buddhism in relationship to another worldview, in the course of writing, I found the need instead to attempt to employ those teachings, particularly the concept of non-duality.  Any descriptive analysis has an inherently prescriptive nature--- I have already admitted to choosing the best qualities of Buddhism in order to show it in a favorable light over those few selected qualities of Christianity I have chosen to discuss.  Although I would not go so far as to prescribe Buddhism as an antidote to the ills of contemporary Christianity, I would argue that Buddhism has many things to teach people who call themselves Christian, not the least of which is how to dismantle our dualistic structures of thought. 

The qualities of compassion, loving-kindness, and wisdom, so integral to Buddhism, are not foreign to the West or to Christianity specifically, but perhaps they have historically been defined and taught in much different ways.  While those on the bodhisattva path of Mahayana Buddhism concerns themselves with saving all sentient life around them, the Christian looks to be saved through the grace of God.  Salvation, in the broadest of terms, is central to both, but what that term means, who provides the salvation, and how it is achieved appear to be distinctly different.  The Christian who realizes her role in her own salvation and her irreversible need to save others may come closest to the bodhisattva ideal.  If she realizes that to save others means to save oneself, that there is no difference between self and other, that salvation is not possible unless all are saved, then she is both Christian and not-Christian.  She is not-Buddhist and Buddhist.

In closing, I would like to return to the epigraph with which I opened this paper, Edwardian author E.M. Forster’s brief statement from his novel of 1910, Howard’s End:  “Only connect.”  Forster, having spent several years in colonial India, wrestled with stepping outside of his own experience and really trying to understand the cultures that were being subsumed by Imperial, Christian Great Britain.  In another of his novels, A Passage to India from 1924, he dealt specifically with Islam and Hinduism in conflict with the worldviews of the occupying British.  In Howard’s End, though, no overt mention is made of Eastern religions or philosophies and the action takes place between native Englanders entirely in English locales.  What relationship, then, can his words have to this discussion?

Just as the Buddha was limited to describing an innovative approach to living and dying in the context of his immediate culture, I think Forster was attempting to couch the concept of non-duality in terms with which he and his readers were already familiar.  The “only” implies a diminutive act, something small, but contained within this idea is the greatest thing we can do for ourselves and for others.  To “connect” is to bridge the illusory, ego-created divide between self and other.  Forster, in two words, is reminding us that all people want freedom and contentment; to withhold those states intentionally from another is only to hold ourselves back.  He is, in his own words, telling us to become Buddhists.

Buddhism and Liminal Sexuality

Tilda Swinton as the eponymous character in the film adaptation of Orlando (dir. Sally Potter, 1992).

The trumpeters, ranging themselves side by side in order, blow one terrific blast:—“THE TRUTH!”  At which Orlando woke.  He stretched himself.  He rose.  He stood upright in complete nakedness before us, and while the trumpets pealed Truth!  Truth!  Truth!  we have no choice left but confess—he was a woman.

-- Orlando, Virginia Woolf, 1928

            At the beginning of Virginia Woolf’s novel, Prince Orlando is a sixteen-year-old boy in Elizabethan England, but midway through the story, Orlando wakes up to find that he has become a woman.  For many Western, male readers at the time of the book’s publication, the story must have seemed much like Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis, in which the protagonist wakes one day to find himself transformed into a giant insect.  Given the lower social status of most women in the West from the Elizabethan period to the Modern, the notion of a change in physical sex would have been very frightening and akin to that of becoming vermin.  Losing maleness would mean losing power.  In her novel, Woolf dealt with some of the aspects of historical male privilege which her protagonist must concede when he becomes she.  For example, upon becoming an unmarried woman, Orlando has no right to property and must give up her land and home—the same possessions that were rightfully hers as a man.  Woolf imaginatively draws attention to the arbitrary nature of physical sex and the privilege produced from the power imbalance inherent in a binary understanding of physical sex.

            One might postulate that in a culture where biological sex was thought to be capable of naturally changing during the course of one’s lifetime this male privilege would not exist.  India at the time of the Buddha was one such culture, as evident in the early Buddhist texts, and yet women still did not enjoy the same status as men.  To complicate matters, there is no clear distinction at the time of the Buddha between biological sex, gender, and sexual orientation.  The latter two are modern developments in thought, stemming from psychology and describing behavior rather than what is physically apparent.  Instead, the early Buddhist texts conflate what was viewed as biological deformity, sexual dysfunction, and “non-normative” sexual behaviors and gender roles into a single term: pandaka.  As Buddhism moved into various cultures such as China, Japan, Korea, and Tibet, each seems to have had its own difficulty in untangling the knot of meaning in pandaka and has thus interpreted, glossed, and commented in different ways.  Peter Harvey in An Introduction to Buddhist Ethics relies heavily on the work of Leonard Zwilling and José Cabezón in attempting to unpack this confusing term for the West, but, at best, comes up with only a metaphorical meaning as a male who lacks the “normal” characteristics of maleness.

            Given Western dualistic thought, this can only mean a male who acts as a woman:  an effeminate man or perhaps even a transvestite.  In the West, too, these kinds of gender behaviors, however inaccurately, are conflated with issues of sexual orientation.  At least one study (Docter and Prince, 1997) found that the majority of cross-dressers are, in fact, heterosexual.  We prefer, however, to operate on our religious- and socially-conditioned assumptions about sexuality and gender, which reinforce a clear binary pair of categories:  man and woman.  Every person must fit into one of those categories and must perform the gender roles assigned to that category.  Any proposed liminal state of sexuality conflicting with those categories makes many people uncomfortable, just as the pandaka did in pre-modern India.  This problem is so fundamental and so powerful that historically even Buddhism, with its methodology to overcome dualistic thinking, has not been able to overcome the divide between masculine and feminine.  Thus, the Buddha barred the pandaka from ordination, and most cultures into which Buddhism migrated adopted the term and its subsequent stigmatization for people of more liminal sexuality within those cultures.

            How is it that Buddhism has served to reinforce, rather than break down the deceptive duality of sexuality?  As David Loy has argued in his article “What’s Wrong with Sex?”  Buddhist attitudes toward sexuality developed out of a concern for the effective maintenance of the monastic sangha.  This required celibacy and stringent rules against all sexual activities.  With no effective contraception at that time, heterosexual activity could produce children, the raising of whom would reduce the time needed for spiritual development.  Prohibitions also arose against oral, anal, and manual sexual activity, also precluding homosexual activity, so the possibility of producing children was not the only concern.  Anything which distracted from the pursuit of enlightenment was to be avoided.  How practical is such avoidance for laity, however, both then and today?  In our more sexually permissive culture, are we then to just ignore Buddhist writings on sexuality as historical socio-cultural artifacts with nothing to say about our contemporary lives?  Dr. Loy suggests that Buddhism can be useful in helping us to find a Middle Path between outmoded attitudes toward sexuality and our current seemingly endless pursuit of sensual pleasures.  The Buddhist emphasis on non-attachment draws attention to obsessive behaviors, like sexual addiction and co-dependent relationships, and provides a methodology for overcoming them.

Jakucho Setouchi, a contemporary Buddhist nun from Japan.

            In the past, though, Buddhism appears to have done little to overcome the basic dualism of masculine and feminine.  While it is true that the Buddha, after the encouragement of his trusted friend Ananda, allowed women to establish a separate monastic order, they were still not seen as equals.  Monastic rules were different for the two sexes and nuns were still subject to the authority of the monks.  In effect, while offering liberating alternatives to women not available to most lay women, Buddhism has still maintained the dualism of male and female.  This duality is at the core not only of relations between men and women, but also the other conflated issues of gender roles and sexual orientation.  For, in any duality, there is an inherent imbalance of power as one of the pair is given preference over the other.  In order for true equality to exist, that pair must be pre-empted by a concept that is neither masculine nor feminine but encompasses both.  In so doing, other related dualistic pairs of self-constructed or externally imposed identity will break down, such as hetero- and homo-sexuality. Buddhism has the power to deconstruct these dualities, but has thus far not been effectively used to do so.

            As Buddhism infiltrates the West, we have a new opportunity to call it to task for its past iniquity in dealing with the dualisms of sexuality.  Sexual orientation and gender are just constructed categories of identity used to maintain ego—either through self-identification (in order to try to understand our illusionary “selves”) or through imposition upon others (in order to separate “them” from “us” and impose illusionary control over others.)  In relying upon these lexical and conceptual categories, we are maintaining a delusion that keeps us from liberation.  This may seem counter-intuitive for those of us who self-identify as gay or lesbian.  We think we have been liberated by being able to come out as such; the greater visibility of liquid and liminal sexual identities by those who have openly self-identified as gay, lesbian, and bisexual has eliminated much social dukkha, as noted by Dr. Loy.  These terms, though, are still categories of identity and may be doing as much harm in maintaining the illusion of individual egos as good.  Indeed, many Westerners of liminal sexuality have attempted to diminish this effect by appropriating an all-encompassing term, “queer,” to pre-empt binary thinking about the categorization of individual sexual orientations.  Until “queer” is a self-identifying term employed by “straights,” as well, the delusive binary is maintained.  How many people who consider themselves predominately heterosexual today are willing to self-identify as “queer” in order to help eliminate the dukkha of others?

            To stop coming out as “lesbian” or “queer” runs the risk of losing the ground we have gained in the fight for equality, a frightening prospect for those of us who have suffered due to difference.  We seem to be caught in a paradox, encouraging separate identities while attempting to overcome the illusion of separateness.  Dualistic thinking is at the core of such paradox.  Until we gain some insight into the complex interrelationship of all things, we will remain troubled by this apparent paradox.  Although Buddhism does not seem to have yet provided answers to the problems at the heart of sexual identity, it should not be dismissed as a tool in the journey to find those answers.  Already, many gay Westerners are calling upon prominent Buddhist figures to clarify their positions on sexual orientation in an attempt to understand how practice can improve their lives and relationships.

            The Dalai Lama has thus far espoused a position unsatisfactory to many queer Buddhists, citing monastic prohibitions against “non-normative” sexual activity and yet denouncing violence against others due to sexual orientation.  He has, however, stated that a consensus among the current sangha could change the direction Buddhism has historically taken in relationship to sexual orientation.  I would argue that we will never reach such a consensus until we realize the inextricable nature of the interrelationship between sexual orientation, gender roles, and biological sex.  This is not to say that one determines any of the others in a cause and effect relationship, as has been commonly misperceived.  Instead, if we work to eliminate the dukkha others experience when privilege is afforded to one aspect of these constructed intertwined pairs, we work to eliminate the dukkha associated with the others.  Our society devalues homosexual men because it associates homosexual men with femininity.  It devalues femininity because it devalues women.  It devalues butches because it cannot accept women who it perceives to have "appropriated maleness."  And so on. These relationships continue to multiply and cross one another and endless others with no clear beginning and no clear end; it seems the only means we have to eliminate suffering, then, is to work on all fronts simultaneously.   How can we do this without exhausting ourselves?  Exhausting our “selves” is just what we must do:  eliminate our egos and we eliminate the conflicts that arise from ego.

The House of Usher

The ego is an exitless, windowless room in which I can move about freely, to a point. I have built it brick by brick through a million interactions over time. Each brick is a response: to my environment, to my fears, to threats, to education, to discourse, to beauty and ugliness, to prop up my own failings.

It's a room of my own construction, built not just to contain my self but to keep everything else out. No stormy weather, but also no light is admitted, no fresh air. I've been in the room so long that I no longer notice that it's there and I no longer remember what is outside... or what's within, for that matter. I just assume it is and always has been.

This understanding of the ego as a room is what allows me to analyze my self. It's apart from me, contains me, but also limits and constricts me. It is the I that thinks about me.

It is only when I move closely to the walls, and discover their limits, that I begin to see fissures. There are cracks that I suddenly find my self digging into with bare hands. There are loose bricks that, with a gentle push, fall away from the wall, letting in beams of light that expose other loose bricks and fractures.

Once I've started the process of demolition, it's easy to second-guess my self. Destroying my protective space admits risk. Is the risk worth it? Will the whole thing fall on my head and destroy me with it?

But, the more light I admit and can see the contents of the room, I see that the ego is not a room that contains me. It is me. The room itself is empty. If I am the room, then I am destroyed when it is destroyed, and doesn't that frighten me?

Only if I believe the room is all there is of me. What if I'm not just the room, but the house the room is in? And the neighborhood the house is in. The city that the neighborhood is in. The state that the city is in. The nation that the state is in. The continent that the nation is in. The planet that the continent is in... If I am everything, then I am no one thing.

The ego is a House of Usher that, with some work, crumbles under its own weight.  With its destruction, the illusions of my self as both contents and container are shattered.

The thing that I have learned to call me is but a tiny light particle in a vast, fiery sun that, once contained by the ego I built, has come to believe that it is something else.

I am the room. I am the cracks. I'm the darkness of the room and the light entering through the cracks. The foundation of the house. The smoke of its chimney. The air into which the smoke rises.

If I can just eliminate me, I could be so much more.

Bionic Guānyīn - Musical Détournement I

Please watch my musical video rumination on the construction of gender in media and technology.

The Precepts

Takes me two and a half years to commit to the third precept, and one evening to commit to the fifth.

I'm becoming small

on Facebook. Very small.

Risky and Wreckless

My online self takes more risks than my real-world self. Has that part of my self absolved its self of responsibility? Not very enlightened. To be a node on Indra's net means to be engaged in a relationship with every other node of the web simultaneously.

Taking risks for me risks others.

Have to shed more attachments.

One attachment at a time.

Shedding likes is like shedding the ego.