Climate Change and Death

I wrote this essay about two years ago, when I was thinking of getting it published in Beams and Struts, which has unfortunately since ceased ongoing publication...

Here it is now, with a few edits.

--

Climate Change and Death

Thinking about global warming and climate change.

Thinking about how I want to think about global warming and climate change.

What can I say that has not already been said? What can I write that hasn’t been elsewhere better articulated?

I grew up in urban Singapore; for me, it is important to see that human habitation and the Natural are not two separate things… Sustainability is possible not (only) from “returning” to some more “natural” (read: near subsistence-level) way of life, but also about investing in good urban infrastructure; where we can deliver resources to more people, more effectively.

But it is one thing to be motivated by contentment in the pursuit of "sustainability" in our current ways of living and being, as a species... It is another to be motivated, at this moment in global history, primarily by the avoidance of the seemingly inevitable calamity and catastrophe of anthropogenic climate change (indeed, already calamitous and catastrophic for many Pacific Islander people)…

I am curious about the fear of dramatic, human-induced climate change, the global warming that now threatens the very survival of our species. On “either side” of the debate around climate-change deniers and those who recognise the reality of climate change, I am interested in considering, from a civilizational perspective, the very real possibility of death of the human species.

I think this is one big, unanswered issue, climate-change or otherwise. 

My bias, clearly, in this article, is in an orientation toward viewing the world and the phenomena of human suffering through a Buddhist-lens. 

For the Buddha, it was not the avoidance of old age, sickness, and death, that led to his Enlightenment, but the full confrontation with the inevitability of aging, sickness, and death of the individual. What too, of our global collective, as a species?

Civilizationally, I am not convinced that even the most ardently engaged climate-change philosophers have fully accounted for the possibility that we are encountering, in our Way-of-Life, a civilizational Old Age, a civilizational Sickness, and civilizational Death.

One fear I have about bringing this up is that this train of thought has racist and classist implications. A disproportionately large number of deaths and calamities resulting from our ongoing global climate crisis happen to people from relatively impoverished countries, who may not have the political infrastructure nor the capital to avoid this calamity… “Making peace” with “their” death is hardly the sort of equanimity I am advocating.

This, of course, begs a larger question about the relationship between Buddhist equanimity and global justice... What does liberation from suffering look like? Whose old age, sickness and death is most tended to?

What would it mean to account for all of this? The death of our people, inclusive of and as indicated by the death of our globe’s poorest, the death of our most dispossessed. As an individual, I exist in a precarious bubble of geographic and class privilege, here in Melbourne Australia, and I am not convinced that it is enough to keep organising around climate change as if it is to avoid some impending disaster, when the disaster has already arrived, it is already here. 

As a species, people have already been displaced from their/our homes, from their/our livelihoods. 

Perhaps, as a species, we are already sick.
Perhaps, we are already dying.

What lessons might we learn from apprehending the phenomenon of global climate change in this way?

What is the morality that arises from assuming the inevitability of our extinction?

Need it be nihilistic?

Might it be Buddhistic?

a quote from "Other Power"

"It is notoriously difficult to give up smoking. Doing so requires persistence and, from a self-power perspective, one can say that what is needed is strong willpower. What actually motivates a person, however, is foresight. It is generally only when a person becomes strongly aware of the future consequences that he does something about the habit. Often this happens too late. If a person does not stop smoking until he has had one lung surgically removed, then we can readily say that he should have stopped earlier. Why didn’t he, and why can he do so now? One might say that it is because his fear is now strengthening his willpower. But what usually happens is actually the reverse: the evidence of surgery has brought home to the person the fact that he is mortal and that he cannot, by the power of self alone, defy natural processes. It is the realization that natural processes are stronger that paradoxically permits the person to do what he could not do before when his self felt more powerful. This is not a case of self-assertion but of self-diminishment; not one of achievement, but of submission.

Moral resolve is like this. A noble person does not do good because of willpower. She does it through a combination of, on the one hand, modesty about self, and, on the other hand, faith in a higher purpose, a higher meaning, in powers more potent than self-will. Such a person is not moral through gritted teeth. She is at ease in goodness.

Buddhism revolves around the idea of refuge. One takes refuge not from a position of strength but from a position that acknowledges weakness. Right-mindedness is self-diminishment plus gratitude for higher guidance and assistance. For a Buddhist, the source of guidance and assistance is the Buddha, the dharma, and the sangha. Since the dharma is the teaching of Buddha and the sangha is the community of Buddha, the core of refuge is the Buddha himself.

Other-power thus came to mean allowing Buddha to work in, on, and for us by reducing our self-estimation, willfulness, ambition, and conceit. The core attitudes here are gratitude and assurance: gratitude for the awakened one who “has-come-to-us” (Japanese, Nyorai; Sanskrit,Tathagata), and assurance that comes from confidence in the power and process that result from our taking refuge therein. From such gratitude the traditional virtues such as generosity, energy, patience, balance, foresight, and morality flow naturally without special effort. From such assurance flows a confidence that takes away the need to grasp at short-term personal gain or be ever vigilant in self-defense. In this way, right-mindedness naturally gives rise to right behavior. It is not a case of achieving morality by will-power as a necessary basis for mental cultivation—such a method is self-defeating and ignores the inherent weakness of the individual. In sutra after sutra, the Buddha tries to combat the folly of conceit. Conceit says, “I can do this; I am a special case; I will not reap the consequences that others reap.” Wisdom says, “I cannot do this by my own power; I am not a special case; I, like all others, am subject to suffering and impermanence; all dharma is non-self.” For one who has such faith, morality is not rule-keeping, it is naturalness."

- David Brazier, from his essay on Tricycle Buddhist quarterly, "Other Power: Why Self-Mastery is Self-Defeating"

A Meditation

Om namo Buddhaya
Om namo Dharmaya
Om namo Sanghaya
Namo Namah
Om Ah Hung

May all beings be free from suffering and the causes of suffering
May all conditions for freedom continue to ripen for all beings
In all realms, communities, countries
Across all colour lines and illusory boundaries
Within bodies and external to them
May we cease to cause others harm in our mistaken attempts to rid ourselves of our own pain
May we forgive those who have harmed us, regardless of how deep our wounds still run
No matter how much we still sting
May I be free from suffering
May you be free from suffering
May they be free from suffering
May we all be free from suffering

May I be inspired by the resolve of all the countless Buddhas, Bodhisattvas and Mahasattvas
To show up to the world, and see all beings as part of my Sangha
May I deepen and consistently renew my confidence in the Dharma.

One breath at a time.

reconnecting with Buddhist social justice

I am not other than the system. This is not to suggest that I am synonymous with the system, only that I am not other than it. Thus, to change myself is not other than to change the system.
Even as changing myself is not synonymous with nor sufficient to changing the system, it is also not other than these.

The system is expressed through my being, my actions...
The system is not other than the limits of what is actionable, not other than these actions and the fruits of these actions.

As I moderate my own expressions, I can highlight or modify aspects of the system that are being so expressed. As I challenge my own limitations, so are the system's limitations also challenged.

If the system privileges greed, then by uprooting greed in my own being and behaviour, I uproot some of the greed that the system demands.

There is now a gap.

What are my alternatives? What are the system's alternatives?

If I change, whether I will it or not, if change is the only certainty,
then the system will change, inevitably.

My role is mostly to seed,
till,
water,
rest.

the Four Brahma-viharas

This is a great list for me to keep in mind as I explore the contours of my spiritual and political explorations, commitments, and practices.



Four Brahma-viharas (Highest Attitudes/Emotions)

Heavenly or sublime abodes (best home).

"Near enemy" is a quality that can masquerade as the original, but is not the original. 

"Far enemy" is the opposite quality.

1. Lovingkindness, good-will (metta): 
• Near enemy – attachment; 
• Far enemy – hatred 
2. Compassion (karuna): 
• Near enemy – pity; 
• Far enemy – cruelty 
3. Sympathetic joy, Appreciation (mudita), joy at the good fortune of others: 
• Near enemy – comparison, hypocrisy, insincerity, joy for others but tinged with identification (my team, my child); 
• Far enemy – envy 
4. Equanimity (upekkha): 
• Near enemy – indifference; 
• Far enemy – anxiety, greed 

from:
http://www.insightmeditationcenter.org/books-articles/dhamma-lists/

(Buddhist) Meditation & Social Justice

The Buddhist Story

In the need to qualify the heading of this piece, I first admit that this is a response to the strange tendency toward a particular type of fundamentalism (partially a type of stereotyping), when we consider the extreme limitations of any group of people.

This piece is a response to a stereotypical, often middle class community expression of Buddhist meditation. I think of people who may be sitting serenely and calm, but who are simultaneously dis-engaged from the vissicitudes of life. In more extreme cases, communities of Buddhist meditators may espouse ideas which suggest the compulsive use of meditation as an excuse to deny the validity of political and social engagement entirely, citing as our gurus and teachers famous recluses, hermits, and renunciates such as Bodhidharma (the alleged, and mythical fore-patriarch of Zen) as our emblems of "correct" personhood.

Of course, Shakyamuni Buddha himself, in the totality of his personhood, was both "of the world" (as a prince) as well as a "renunciant" (when he left his palace walls to become a wandering ascetic)... At the same time, the hagiography of the Buddha always includes the fact of his disillusionment with both the extremism of mindless social conformity, as well as of mindless, self-mortifying asceticism (that, indeed, both are not so much "opposites" as mirrors of one another).

Nearing death from a harsh, self-imposed discipline of starvation and meditation, it was only after he accepted the sweet milk pudding of the village girl Sujata that he began his final journey to Awakening under the Bodhi tree.

And of course, the story does not end there:
Buddha Shakyamuni "returns" to the world, and famously begins all of the discourses which make up the classical and canonical stories of the Buddha, in service to the world.



The Limitations of the Buddhist Story

At the same time, what the Buddha was doing, in terms of assisting others in alleviating their suffering, does not exactly fit the idea of social justice as we may understand it coming from a post-Marxist tradition of rooting our awareness of suffering in material systems of extreme economic inequality. It is not enough to simply give a man a fish (as the Buddha himself would have done), nor even to teach the man to fish (as a classical well-meaning managerialism might suggest), for as David Loy has written in his excellent book The Great Awakening: A Buddhist Social Theory:

"The dismal record of the last fifty years of development reveals the cruelty of the usual slogan: when we have taught the world's poor to fish, the effect has often been that they deplete their fishing grounds for our consumption..."

We cannot, therefore, end our political consciousness at being "well-meaning", or through the immediacy of interpersonal action alone (giving a starving man a fish), without considering the systemic reasons which drive particular material forms of disenfranchisement and suffering of the people we want to "help".

But that's kind of my point. Because...



...Buddhism is more than Just Meditation...

In a sense, the Buddha himself wasn't "Buddhist".

"Buddhism" is a post-colonial invention, co-created by Asian Buddhists and their (our?) contact with European languages; we may trace our spiritual/religious practices and heritages to some supposed historical figure of Shakyamuni, but even then, not all Buddhists have done this, and many Buddhisms bear hardly a family resemblance to one another in the dizzying smorgasboard of practices and doctrines and cultural commitments.

Part of moving out of a hyper-relativistic and apathetic postmodernity then, is to consciously choose to step into the shoes of political engagement, without necessarily seeing that this is diametrically oppositional to the intrinsic relevance of meditative traditions in that very endeavour.

After all...



...Meditation is more than Just Sitting

My gorgeous friend Trish has written of this in her post Meditation as Political Activity, where she asserts:

"Profound political activity becomes more available to us by practicing... awareness of awareness, because those structures that had previously prevented our right action become more apparent to us, simultaneously evoking the possibility for their ultimate dissolution. The polarity which once had us in its grip no longer has such firm hold over our internal space or our interactions with others. We’re more easily able to discern the differences between opinions and truths, and understand outcomes and possible consequences of action, generating a deeper awareness of our own participation in causal processes in the world.

As we begin to transform ourselves, bringing contemplative awareness into every moment, an ever widening concentric circle of influence grows as we become active and set sparks amongst all folks with whom we are connected in our lives. Both subtle and direct positive influences rain equally upon all people with whom we come in contact, which helps to removing obstacles to communication between us, enriching a place where, with deepened discernment of each others needs a new type of flourishing becomes possible."


To return to the story of the Buddha, we remember that the fundamental power of his presence had not only to do with his meditative power or his immediate vocational capacity to ease the existential ailments of each person he came into contact with, but also that he is, in his very meditative presence, a catalyst in the transformation of systems.

The Buddha spoke to Kings, as much as beggars.
It matters not, in other words, if we are the King, politician, activist or beggar in the struggle to reform our political deadlocks.

It does matter if we can be an agent, in whatever way, to effect change within the hearts and minds of these very Kings, politicians, activists and indeed, even beggars. One of the ways in which we can do this, and indeed, one of the insights of postmodern relativism, is by noting that being a catalytic change agent can occur in some truly profound ways, whether we are the President, or the "wife" of the President.

Meditation seems like a training in pure, catalytic potential; one which can be in the service of justice or injustice (such as Japanese Kamikaze pilots ("suicide bombers") who did Zen meditations before flying off to suicidal and homicidal doom, all in perfect equanimity...).



Of the catalytic power of meditation, housed in a commitment to justice, a great case example is explored in this incredible essay here:

Meditation as A Subersive Act

The author, Sarah Coakley, is a White woman and Anglican priest who teaches at Harvard Divinity School. Her essay explores her experiences teaching meditation in a male prison mostly consisting of incarcerated men of colour, in Boston, Massachusetts. She explores meditation as an act of political subversion, as much as it is an act of alleviating the men's immediate experiences of suffering within the prison, subject as they are to their own interior mental turmoils, as well as being under constant surveillance and the threat of sexual violence. Coakley includes a critical inquiry into race and racism, sexual violence, and mental illness.

While Coakley specifically explores Christian meditation, I find her essay an especially good resource in thinking about meditation as being not-apart from justice and atonement... This is a language which Buddhism has unfortunately almost categorically lacked, but that I am nevertheless eager to find critical correlates for.

A Buddhist-Muslim prelude

The West imagines Islam.
Islam imagines the West.
We all live in the ghosts
of this delusional dream of
who we all are.

The West imagines Buddhism.
Buddhism imagines liberation from dualism.
We all live as ghosts
of what we have learned
from the soup of perspectives we swim in
And our mouths sing similar dreams.

How, as a Buddhist, do I imagine Islam?
How do Muslims imagine Buddhists?

Are these even meaningful questions outside of the context of what our languages tell us to perceive as the "Buddhist" and what "Islam" they are imagining, or as the "Muslim" and what "Buddhism" he or she is imagining?

To what extent are these perspectives that I am swimming in --> Islam = backward, violent, 'evil,' hate-filled
--> Buddhism = peaceful, non-violent, 'good,' meditative

actually limiting my ability to fully embrace
the true, lived reality of Muslims, Buddhists, and everyone else alike?


There is a weird 'privilege,' a sort of model-minority pressure, which comes from being perceived as 'safe' because I present myself as Buddhist in Melbourne. One of my best friends, who is Muslim, experiences a different pressure here: To downplay his Muslim background in the context of mainstream society for fear of subtle persecution...

I wonder of this, because we share in common humanity, both of us, in my humble perspective, fundamentally the same, because of our wish to end our common suffering, and to be of service to others.

Alms and Giving

(img from BeamsAndStruts.com)

Trevor Malkinson writes in his article "Give Alms to Everyone That Asks" about the practice of alms giving... The title was inspired by a line by Walt Whitman. The article is worth reading in its entirety.

Inspired by his article, I would like to reflect a little of my own some thoughts about almsgiving.

Like Malkinson, I have encountered the ethical dilemma for me of deciding on or deliberating over the decision of whether to give money to all folks on the street who ask for it.

Several thoughts, mostly privileged and presumptuous, come to my mind:
"What if they use it for something harmful or not useful for themselves or others?"
At the same time, "Who am I to deliberate on whether something is harmful or useful for somebody else?"
"What if this is a scam?"

These are not thoughts I am proud of, but they are there. I would like to look into them, for I think they reveal something about the way I have been conditioned to think of the world around me, and how I should behave as a citizen of it.


Something Harmful or Not Useful

I remember reading, in an admittedly American-centric version of political dualism, a few things about how our political leanings may also influence how we give:
--> Small-'l' liberal people tend to be better educated, and to favour the state as an apparatus of redistribution of wealth, but are also less likely to give generously in interpersonal interactions than...
--> Conservative people, who tend to be less well-educated, favour lowering taxes for the wealthy, yet are more likely to give to people interpersonally.
[I'd like to find this article where I first encountered this information, and post it here]


Other thoughts that arise: The feeling of scarcity (do I have enough change? Is it convenient for me to reach into my pocket right now to retrieve money? Don't I need this money for myself? Are there 'better' things to do with 'my' money?)

But then also, followed by...

...Who Am I...
... to make a decision on somebody else's life? To decide what is and isn't the 'right' thing to do with 'my' money? To decide what is helpful or harmful for others without consultation and communication? Is it not a violence to impose certain models of propriety onto others who haven't even consented to being roped into my constructions? Who am I to exert power over another, or for that matter, to withhold something that is in my possession when it is asked for by somebody else who needs it more than I? How do I use this power responsibly?

And in turn, what sort of power does this person have over me? In what sense does this power manifest? What does it look like? How does it feel in the body, in my gut, in my heart? In what sense is the information conveyed through this surveying of my sensations influencing the decision I make (spontaneously or after conscious deliberation)?


Scam?
The lust for authenticity, the assumption of the inherent badness of others, the fear of the Other, the Stranger...
...before allowing for the simple reality of their presence.

I want to reflect on Malkinson's idea of almsgiving as a type of spiritual practice in its own right, to move beyond the obsessive political posturing of small-l liberal avoidance (in other words, the thoughts that: Because I organise politically to prevent the arising of poverty to begin with, I am exempt from needing to engage directly and in person with those who experience the direct consequences of being victimised by a system whose rules I did not write), and into a space where my heart is completely broken open to receive the humanity of the Other who asks for alms...


No Giver, No Gift

I also want to reflect on the Buddhist conception:
Give without knowledge of giver, gift, or recipient

That ultimately, the notion of giving as a form of spiritual practice can itself be co-opted by egotism... That I might give, because I experience the joy of "being a giver," and that this can reify attachments to inflating the illusory sense of Selfhood (which is ultimately a form of suffering).

On the other hand, I must beware of the very FEAR of this co-optation, which leads to the AVOIDANCE of giving... In other words, because I am afraid of feeling the attachment to the joy that spontaneously arises from giving, I choose not to give! While this may seem a bit ludicrous at first, I suspect many of us have similar experiences, such as the red-facedness we experience when we are complimented, or regarded by others as 'good.'

For now, I am going to practice Giving Alms to Everyone That Asks. I am hoping it only begins as a practice, and that it will metamorph, over time, into a habit pattern that absents any obsessive deliberation by a hungry ego, and that what can truly emerge out of all of this is touching upon generosity as a very fundamental principle which nourishes my existence in the first place; that I am but a vehicle by which this universal principle is made manifest.

Weltschmerz and Compassion

Both forgiveness and compassion arise spontaneously with the opening of the heart. Somehow, in feeling our own pain and sorrow, our own ocean of tears, we come to know that ours is a shared pain and that the mystery and beauty and pain of life cannot be separated. This universal pain, too, is part of our connection with one another, and in the face of it we cannot withhold our love any longer.

Jack Kornfield, A Path With Heart, p 47.

Koans for the 21st century

What was on your original facebook profile before facebook was invented?

Is the bearded Bodhidarma's non-existent beard ironic?

What runs a search, the user or Google?

If a flash mob happens in downtown New York and nobody posts it on youtube, did it really happen?

What is the sound of no artist on pandora?

Clinging and Desire

The Distinction Between Clinging and Desire

"At a... conference in New York City... some-one asked the writer and Buddhist scholar Stephen Batchelor about this issue:
"I have no trouble understanding the idea of non-attachment in meditation,” the questioner said, “but when it comes to my marriage and family, I don’t get it. Why is non-attachment even a positive thing to aspire to?” Attachment, even desire, seemed to the questioner like something to be supported in the inter-personal realm, not something to be overcome.

Stephen motioned to his wife, Martine, who was just coming into the room. “My wife says it is like holding a coin,” he said, and he held out one arm with his palm up and his fist closed. “We can hold it like this,” and he emphasized the closed nature of his fist, “or we can hold it like this,” and he opened his hand to show the coin sitting in the center of his palm. “The closed fist is like clinging,” he said. “But with my hand open, I still hold the coin.” Buddhism, Stephen seemed to be implying actually imagines that desire can be held lightly. The distinction between the closed and the open fist is the distinction between clinging and desire."

- quoted from Mark Epstein's "Open to Desire"



Four Noble Truths

The Buddha's Four Noble Truths are:

1. Life is Duḥkha (suffering/unsatisfactoriness)
2. Duḥkha (Suffering/Unsatisfactoriness) is caused by Tṛṣṇā (thirst/clinging [to conditioned things])
3. The Cessation of Tṛṣṇā leads to the cessation of Duḥkha, and this Cessation is known as Nirvāṇa (extinction, as in a candle flame)
4. There is a Marga (path) that leads to this Cessation

Epstein's rendering of the term Tṛṣṇā requires a differentiation that we do not typically make: which is the distinction between Clinging and Desire.

Desire itself is not the problem, which is the argument Epstein makes in his book, and which I agree with. It is when desire itself cannot be lightly held, when it turns into a grasping, a clinging, that problems arise.


Instead of a Coin, A Butterfly

If it were, say, a butterfly instead of a coin in Bachelor's metaphor, any literal grasping would also be a literal death of the very object which we were attempting to possess. The butterfly is killed by our clinging.

On the other hand, to have open palms signifies both our capacity to receive, and is also itself an act of giving (of space, of freedom, of 'allowing'). It is in this open palmed version of beholding and apprehension, that the butterfly is not killed; it is free to come and to go, and we become but the temporary beholders and beneficiaries of its beauty, with nothing destroyed.

This is, to me, the basic building block of spiritual growth. We first apprehend our motivations, and our ambitions. This act of apprehension is itself the cultivation of the union of both wisdom and compassion. Simple as it is, it is a radical departure from the severe world-denying and beauty-shunning asceticism that characterises much of false and/or institutionalised spirituality...

Of course, it is understandable why this falsity exists in the first place.

After all, the act of apprehension itself is difficult. Far easier to have closed palms in the first place, than to have beauty settle upon then but to then be refused the opportunity to hold onto it. One cannot grasp the sublime, and so any beauty that can settle upon our own impermanent lives is tinged with sadness.

However, I believe that this is easily remedied.


Right Understanding

To take the analogy of the coin one step further: Many of us are afraid. Given our circumstances and our conditioning, perhaps we are even correct in assuming that if we opened our palms, all we have cultivated or earned would vanish from us, as in what would happen if we had our hands clasped tight with our palms faced down.

However, I believe that with Right Understanding, by 'holding' our desire correctly, palms faced up, with proper understanding of the distinction between craving/clinging and desire itself, it is like unclasping our hands, and noting with sure relief that the coin does not fall...

Religion 'versus' Rationalism

a Response to Sam Harris' piece "Killing the Buddha"


Creating a Kalachakra Sand Mandala in Kathmandu

Killing the Buddha requires us first to have a concept of "Buddha." While "Buddha" is expedient, tentative (like the raft we use to cross the river of suffering), and is yet another concept to be abandoned, it is nonetheless an important exercise in humility to pay homage to our teachers.

I must admit that I am ambivalent about the idea that we should abandon religion, or perhaps, more violently, 'Kill Buddhism,' in the way that Sam Harris has written about it. It is not that I do not find this metaphor powerful, compelling, perhaps even 'correct,' in its own way and on its own terms.

Rather, the problem lies precisely here: That I must accept these very terms... As Harris has written, "While it may be true enough to say (as many Buddhist practitioners allege) that “Buddhism is not a religion,” most Buddhists worldwide practice it as such, in many of the naive, petitionary, and superstitious ways in which all religions are practiced. Needless to say, all non-Buddhists believe Buddhism to be a religion—and, what is more, they are quite certain that it is the wrong religion."

There is a peculiar arrogance in assuming that all devotional practice or adherences to non-rational doctrines are somehow inferior in quality to the rationalist and materialist approach(es) espoused by Harris. It is also somewhat ironic (though completely understandable) that he is so pained by others' negative views of Buddhism because of its religious associations, given that he is so quick to eschew association with Buddhism itself, for the sake of a non-sectarian, rationalist project.

However, as per any discourse on the emancipation either of minoritarian, marginalised and/or misunderstood communities, is incredibly problematic to assume that, simply because "all non-Buddhists believe Buddhism to be a religion," that it is therefore somehow strictly Buddhists' responsibility to correct these (mis-)perceptions. To be sure, to the extent that there ARE misperceptions about the MANY presentations of Buddhism 'proper,' it should indeed be the co-responsibility of Buddhist and non-Buddhist persons alike to engage and disspell these misperceptions. One option, which is the one Harris is suggesting (wise on its own terms), is to disconnect Buddhism (or the Buddha's teachings) from "religion," thus killing "Buddhism" per se.

Another option, which is one I would like to propose, is to question the way that Harris erroneously attributes certain characteristics to "religion" itself: Dogmatism, close-mindedness, irrationality, naivete etc.

It seems to me that the problem with religions (including religious Buddhists) has more to do with grasping onto doctrines/ritualism as it has anything to do with what the doctrines/rituals are themslves. But this problem is as much rife in the cultures of religious traditionalists and tribal/mythic-membership cultures, etc. as it is in rationalist cultures (particularly the one espoused by Harris, and the one he most certainly belongs to) whose worldviews are rooted in in a post-Abrahamic, secular physics and cosmology (in this case, the doctrine of the world ONLY as material, without transcendental substrate, and the heavily policed, anti-phenomenological rituals of rational debate).

In response to this problem, I employ a quintessentially Buddhistic dialectic.
The Buddha may well have taught: For those attached to irrationality, I teach rationality.
For those attached to rationality, I teach Crazy Wisdom (or the employing of trans-rational means in order to jolt one into understanding, beyond rational argument).

(and, just for fun: For those attached to crazy wisdom, "Who is it who is attached to what wisdom?")

The distinction that Harris delineates, between contemplative science/rationality and religion, is illusory, particularly when we consider his criticism of religious people's/institution's dogmatism, a dogmatism shared by scientific materialist "leaps of faith", in the assumption that phenomenological events are reducible to material causes. At the height of a Buddhistic, "post-structuralist" rationalism, we can only conclude that all meditative/psychological/spiritual phenomena are at best, highly correlated with material conditions (rather than causes)... This is an important dialectical distinction which is, unfortunately by definition, absent from a reductive scientific materialist worldview... Many babies lost along with the bathwater here.

The distinction between science/rationality and religion is especially misleading when we consider Buddhism in its multiple forms, either preceding contact or contemporaneous with Western rationalism. This distinction may be especially dangerous if we consider the Buddhist goal of the emancipation of all living beings from suffering, a goal shared by Harris. I would agree that, given our current global cultural and historical climate, scientific and rational methodologies are some of the most superior (and indeed, powerful) ways of elucidating the truth of the way things are. I would suggest that all phenomena should indeed be subject to scientific methodological validation and rational scrutiny. However, I would simultaneously suggest that while scientific and material explanations for phenomena are important arbiters of any route to truth, they are methodologically distinct from the realm of ethics, phenomenology and hermeneutics, and that the conclusions derived from all the latter are best integrated into scientific study, rather than summarily dismissed. The dismissal would not be either the most effective, developmentally appropriate, nor wise way for all peoples at all times across all of history to engage the Truth of the way things are.

Sure, some folks may believe that Guru Rinpoche, or this or that Bodhisattva was literally born in a Lotus, and that these views may leave a whole lot to be desired... but 'literalism' is itself an invented demon of rationalism, perhaps a shadow of its own repressed drive to transcendence. It is important to note that a lot of secular, rational-minded folks also believe a whole ton of garbage from popular science writing, political manipulation, and unexamined privilege.

To reiterate: Dogma and ignorance are no more exclusively in the province of religious tribal/traditionalist/mythic-membership societies as they are in secular scientific/rationalist ones.

The problem here is Dogma itself, and the corrupt institutions that sustain dogmatism, in all their guises; Rationality is one of the best tools for slicing through dogma, of course, but it can sometimes also be one of the ways that we reify dogmatic and oppressive systems in the name of ideology, particularly when we lack psychological and spiritual insight (think: the ‘logic’ of free markets, the slavery that is demanded from an aggressive and unfettered global capitalism, the violent Communist regimes of the Eastern bloc, the racist rationalism underpinning Nazism, etc. etc.).

I see the kind of Rationality that Harris heralds as similar to Nuclear Power. Developmentally, it is AWESOME as the most sophisticated route to knowledge/power in the whole history of humanity. In a sense, it has ‘always existed’ as potential, but we have lacked the necessary social and cultural foundations for it to become far more normative.

However, just like for Nuclear Power, it will take a while yet before we will be ready to understand the implications of wielding the power of Rationalism.

Rationalist institutions are young. And their members, like many young people, are full of a vigour, intellect, passion, and vision that is as admirable as it is (apparently) unsurpassable. But, if we compare this membership to those of the many institutions such as Buddhist monastic sanghas, erected over hundreds of generations in the wisdom traditions, rationalist institutions are barely in their infancy.

To extend the metaphor, on the one hand, I am in favour of youth empowerment. On the other hand, as an adult, I also see the ways that young people need to be socialised into spaces which help generate their own inherent wisdom to become leaders of their communities. This process of socialisation MAY involve the abolition of superstructures created by generations of Adults. Just as plausibly, it will also involve collaboration, synthesis, and mutual growth... What eventuates, inevitably, in that collaboration which is the joint project of young people and adults, is an order that will likely look nothing like what either of them had envisioned.

So I agree: "Buddhists" would best let go of the "Buddhism" or "Religion" we once knew, in allowance of the tremendous power and growth potential enabled by scientific and rational thinking. But Harris might want to note that what eventuates from this historic encounter may not look anything like the dogma of Rationalism he clings so tightly onto either.

The Cleaning of Slates...

"Our body is the Bodhi tree,
Our mind is a bright mirror with stand,
Diligently we wipe them all the time,
And let no dust alight."
- Shin Shau

"There is no Bodhi Tree
Nor stand of a mirror bright,
Since all is Voidness,
Where can dust alight?"
- Hui Neng (6th Patriarch of Ch'an/Zen)


It is Hui Neng who becomes 6th Patriarch of Ch'an, Hui Neng whose explosive realisation cuts through Shin Shau's dualism. Yet Hui Neng's proposition (on Voidness) exists because of the form Shin Shau's proposition took...

Hui Neng's verse alone, un-juxtaposed upon the former verse which it is negating, is itself meaningless... Thesis, Antithesis, and the retrospective Synthesis of seeing both verses together... To see even the non-duality of Hui Neng and Shin Shau.

There remains:
The Dharma that is no-Dharma...
The realisation that is no-realisation...
No creed, nor point, nor path...
Nor any sentient beings to save

This elucidates precisely that which cannot be understood.
Further commentary is pointless.

creating change by transcending paradigms

beautiful passages from Donella Meadows, "Thinking in Systems" (2008).


There is yet one leverage point that is even higher than changing a paradigm. That is to keep oneself unattached in the arena of paradigms, to stay flexible, to realize that no paradigm is "true," that every one, including the one that sweetly shapes your own worldview, is a tremendously limited understanding of an immense and amazing universe that is far beyond human comprehension. It is to "get" at a gut level the paradigm that there are paradigms, and to see that that itself is a paradigm, and to regard that whole realization as devastatingly funny. It is to let go into not-knowing, into what Buddhists call enlightenment.

People who cling to paradigms (which means just about all of us) take one look at the spacious possibility that everything they think is guaranteed to be nonsense and pedal rapidly in the opposite direction. [...] But, in fact, everyone who has managed to entertain that idea, for a moment or for a lifetime, has found it to be the basis for radical empowerment. [...] It is in this space of mastery over paradigms that people throw off addictions, live in constant joy, bring down empires, get locked up or burned at the stake or crucified or shot, and have impacts that last for millennia.

...

The higher the leverage point, the more the system will resist changing it—that's why societies often rub out truly enlightened beings. [...] In the end, it seems that mastery [of creating systemic change] has less to do with pushing leverage points than it does with strategically, profoundly, madly, letting go and dancing with the system.