Reggie Watts

This Man.
no. words.

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.

Dear Students of the Revolution

Dear Students of the Revolution,

the post-orgasmic haze of too much theory-jerk
waking up in the arms of comrades whose names we cannot remember
because we never bothered to ask
we do not remember one another's names
because we have forgotten even the tasks
we set out to accomplish with one another.

zombies now, slits slashed across one another's throats from
nails sharpened by keyboard strokes,
filed by anxious teeth, bitten and bitter,
our minds are still young, our
fingers still point at the moon, our
tears come so easily still, even as our
eyes remain affixed on outrage,
every smart essay democratising offence
like left-wing porn for atomised proletariat
staring at flatscreens,
lonely and wanting to connect.

there will be no revolution without lovers.

yet, we are already loved,
we are already the Beloved,
there is no more fighting left to do, just
build and build homes for one another, just
build and build homes for one another,
I know that am tired
from being so long, homeless.

I hope you feel the same way too.

Yours, sincerely,
Me

heroism

the problem with valorising heroes
may be the unwitting complicity in maintaining the conditions
in which heroism becomes necessary

my gnosis

I'm not self-hating, nor self-abnegating
I'm mostly just
self-agnostic,
that is,
my gnosis belongs to no one in particular.

This Easter, may I not be myopic.
May I learn the right lessons of history to dream more loving, compassionate, wise and sustainable futures
into each arising moment.

May all living beings be free from suffering and the causes of suffering.
May all living beings be liberated by insight, foresight and action.

Offence

One can cause offence
without intending offence.

Offence can be based on incorrect interpretation of intent
or it can be based on the problems and ignorance implicit in the content
of its Utterers

To be offended is neither noble nor ignoble... this extends to when I am legitimately offended by hateful or willfully ignorant remarks.

In these latter two senses, I say that my being offended is neither noble nor ignoble
because nobility arises dependent on how I respond to my own having been offended.

I can blame the Other who has offended me, and attribute 100% of responsibility upon them to change their behaviour, apologise to me, or express a deep remorse... And this may be a justifiable response to those of us who have been hurt by racist malice, privileged ignorance, and so on.

But I cannot pretend that this is noble:
My resilience cannot rely on others changing.

Misunderstandings are a necessary by-product of civic development, even as they are unpleasant and often, retrospectively, "unnecessary"...

They are necessary in that all action and orientation toward cultural innovation involves risks. Risks that are sometimes dangerous enough to warrant our expulsion from the very polities in which we took them, if we fail.

When our racist ignorance has cost people their jobs or their opportunity for home and food, this is unacceptable and must be held to account.

At the same time, this holding to account cannot detract the "holder" from a firm conviction in our own Wholeness, already... in particular, our inseparability from the Offender who is being held to account.

Let me not be myopic.

Australia's rapidly degenerating relationship to asylum seekers
does not begin with the current government,
nor the one just prior,
nor the ones prior to that.

It does not begin with the Stolen Generation
nor the White Australia policy

It does not begin with European settlement and colonisation of this land
nor with the British Empire
nor with feuding Aboriginal nations

It does not begin strictly with autopoietic human folly
nor with Divine improvidence.

Let me not be myopic.

Degeneration comes in forgetting
that there are futures
we once knew how to dream

Discomfort #2

Just because something is uncomfortable does not make it true.
Just because something is uncomfortable does not make it untrue.

Discomfort is not the same as pain.
Causing discomfort is not the same as causing suffering.
Causing pain is not the same as causing suffering.
Suffering can be triggered even without a resultant experience of discomfort or pain, or at least, without a resultant experience that may be languaged as such.
Suffering can be in compulsivity, petulance, aggression.

Just because I cause you discomfort or pain does not mean that I have caused you suffering.
Where suffering lies is in the razor-thin line between what my actions may have triggered for you (by way of discomfort / pain), and how either of us then chooses to respond to what has arisen.

This does not mean that I choose to intentionally cause pain/discomfort (this would be Malice),
but only that I do not allow the fear of causing pain/discomfort distract me from the quest to Truth, a deep interrogation, as well as a deep listening for Truth.

Truth will liberate.
And what it liberates may be very, very painful.

Ideally, truth is multifaceted enough
that, coupled with loving and compassionate intention,
that its liberation will come not only with the pain, but with its wisdoms for Resilience.

Discomfort

Reading my old post below about Yin deficiency, and "cuntic" energy.

Feeling into the rage of that post, that, regardless of the truth of the admonition,
it is also about thwarted masculinity.

And this is why I feel so uncomfortable. Not that she did no wrong (she did, and it was gendered, and it was problematic, etc. --> all still true), but that this wrong hit at a particular expectation I have in me... not that powerful women should not exercise their power, but rather, that I should be a "good man" and somehow live up to some expectations of myself that refuse to see the gendered nature of that abuse toward her (in this case male) subordinate.

That I should somehow "neutrally" experience this as a "neutral" abuse of power that is pathological regardless of the gender of the people involved (either the perpetrator or the subordinated).

This is what was discomforting...
That I experienced the sharp, glass-like gendered nature of this, reminding me that I am not "above" this level of observation. That I am not so feminist as to forget the suffering that some women uniquely catalyse, that I am not so "enlightened" that I would forget my own timidity, my own faggotry, that I am, at heart, sometimes, still a lonely teenage gayboy, wanting to do good, but chronically afraid of being told that I do not matter.

The pressure to choose

As per this Calvin and Hobbes strip, I suggest that the terms of a conflict, that is, the way that a conflict is described, is actually a composite part of the conflict itself.

For example:

To describe a conflict as, say, having to choose between condemning homophobia (and thus alienating a swath of, hypothetically, more sexually-conservative Muslims) or condemning Islamophobia (and thus alienating a swath of atheist or anti-religious gays).

The above description in itself invites the reader into identifying with variations of the "Good and Ethical Subject".

I am either the Good and Ethical Subject who sides with the gays,
or the Good and Ethical Subject who sides with the Muslims.

It is not enough either, to propose the following rhetorical alternative to this conflict, which is the existence of the gay Muslim (who acts as a mediator between the aforementioned parties).

i.e. "What about gay Muslims?!"

Those who are invested in the terms of the conflict will bear no such thing.

"He has to choose!" both fundamentalists will proclaim,
"He has to choose between his homosexuality and his Islam!
Homosexuality or Islam!
He cannot do both!"

**

In a way, both the gay Islamophobe and the Muslim homophobe are caught in the same ideological trap: of Ethnocentrism, or the belief that it is my own collective (which absents the ideological Other) that is more worth protection from intrusion or harm than yours or more accurately, theirs.

In other words, it is not that Muslim homophobia or gay Islamophobia should be uniquely addressed as issues (true as this assertion may be in particular contexts), but that they are both expressions of a common commitment to ethnocentrism, a universal human propensity that, while developmentally appropriate in certain contexts, becomes dangerously pathological when mired in an inability to be creative in an increasingly pluralist and diverse world... Ethnocentrism must be adequately attended to across the board, in all of its variations. 

Part of dealing with this is to actually notice the ways that organising around minoritarianism (i.e. identification with the oppressed minority) is always contingent, in part, on an unwitting capitulation to the terms of this disenfranchisement. 

Far from blaming the victim, I intend to point this out as a route to true freedom. As a gay man, the way for me to truly eradicate homophobia is not only to target it and address it in others (e.g. the homophobic Muslim), nor even only to address it in myself (i.e. dealing with my own internalised homophobia), it is to also truly cultivate the possibility for a larrikin betrayal of my own identity, a sincere abandonment that intends no nobility but can simply bear a privileged and detached witness to the categorical lie.

My true freedom, as a gay man, is in my ability to cease to be a gay man.
Not in ceasing to desire other men, or having sex, but in ceasing to allow these particular desires or actions over-determine the formation of my personhood, at the same time that I would advocate it should not be over-minimised or repressed either.

Incidentally, of course, this is an incipient narrative in the evolution of gay discourse, as it evolves its own "queer" trajectories, its postmodern leanings toward the blurriness of sexual categories (not only of homosexuality and heterosexuality, but also of manhood or womanhood, of the boundaries between what-is-sex and what-is-not-sex). In this case, going more deeply into my "gay-ness" can actually present the means by which I can reject its original terms and liberate new possibilities for coalition and freedom.

Note:
This strategy is not the same as the abandonment of commitment to people or communities, but only an abandonment of the drive to see people, including our own people, only as variations of "Self" or "Other".

Perhaps, to radically re-envision people as always "Both Self And Other"...?

"I am a gay man and not a gay man. I am homophobic and not homophobic. I am not Muslim... and I am Muslim!"

Or perhaps, more accurately, "Neither Self Nor Other"...

"I am neither a gay man nor not a a gay man. I am neither homophobic nor not homophobic. I am neither not-Muslim... nor am I Muslim!"

And this is what liberates me to be free to be contextually and communally relevant, as new and emerging forms and definitions of community are constantly defining and redefining what it means to be a People...

...I radically embrace my brethren, through my abandonment of "brethrenism".

***

To put it another way, freedom can be liberated not in the attempt to answer seemingly irreconcilable situations or bridge seemingly irreconcilable communities (e.g. between the Islamophobic gays or the homophobic Muslims), but, as per the Calvin and Hobbes strip, to deny all terms and conditions.

Every ideology and every community can be a straw target for intellectual game-playing...

I suggest a form of a-politicism (i.e. "this is meaningless and impossible to answer"),
an abandonment of identity politics...

...to embrace the impasse,
the impossibility,
the irreconcilability,
the restless nature of the dualism,
to reject its ideological premises,
to make room for something quiet and more enduring to take its stead...

...Relationship. Friendship. Comradeship.

Class struggle.

Decolonisation.

***

I look forward to that time when we have the strength, the conditions, and the collective will to properly reject even this aforementioned claim, to liberate more inventive, relevant inquiries and insights.

a Pattern

someone I disagree with, either in opinion or in method.

they become "a type of person who is disagreeable".

all their future actions are stained not only by the memory of their previous errors, but by their entire Being-in-error

thus gives rise to the birth of the prejudicial epithet (e.g. "fag", "cunt", "slut")

in time, it is simply forgotten what actions this person may or may not have engaged in, nor what opinions they may or may not have espoused

all their positive actions will be exceptions to the rule that is their Being-in-error
all their mistakes will confirm my bias

some of the thoughts of the moment

Queer asylum seekers
Women and Islam
Is anyone ever silent?
Is silence always disempowerment?
Who gets to speak?

I am welling up with tears.

All the American artists of colour traveling to Australia riding on the wealth of a global hegemon built by slavery and genocide
and I get to gasp in awe.

The stone temples of Angkor in Cambodia
which inspire pilgrims and tourists thirty for the sacred
were commissioned by monarchs
that worked their slaves to skin and bones and death
to build their religious empire...

Now every liberal multiculturalist wants to say that they have been.

I have been, brought to my knees

I am welling up with tears.

The world is a strange place filled with strange travellers
who come from here and there and that
who master thoughts and concerns I could never even imagine
and I am one of them for You and You and You
and I am one of You for Them and Them and Them.

Studying Chinese Medicine

Studying Chinese medicine is kind of like studying poetry, more than like studying medicine...

And, like studying poetry, it can be extremely medicinal.

5 of Pentacles

Kidney Yang deficient?
Po-cu

There is shelter, still, close by.

Just because you are cold, or worn down,
does not mean you are not still resilient.

Just organised my desk

Turned out,
I don't need more things per se...
I need more tools to organise the things I already have...

Like goes with like.

So today, I got stationery holders, mini table drawers, lightweight stackable shelving, etc.

My life feels better already.

Could you embrace that?

Could you Embrace That

by Thomas Aquinas

"I said to God, ‘Let me love you.’
And he replied, ‘Which part?’
‘All of you, all of you.’ I said.
‘Dear’ God spoke, ‘You are as a mouse wanting to impregnate
a tiger who is not even in heat. It is a feat way
beyond your courage and strength.
You would run from me
if I removed my
mask.’
I said to God again,
‘Beloved I need to love you – every aspect, every pore.’
And this time God said,
‘There is a hideous blemish on my body,
though it is such an infinitesimal part of my Being-
could you kiss that if it were revealed?’
‘I will try, Lord, I will try.’
And then God said,
‘That blemish is all the hatred and
cruelty in this
world.’

a blessing

"May God bless us with discomfort at easy answers, half-truths, and superficial relationships, so that we may live deep within our hearts.

May God bless us with anger at injustice, oppression, and exploitation of people, so that we may work for justice, freedom, and peace.

May God bless us with tears to shed for those who suffer from pain, rejection, hunger, and war, so that we may reach out our hands to comfort them and turn their pain into joy.

And may God bless us with enough foolishness to believe that we can make a difference in this world, so that we can do what others claim cannot be done, to bring justice and kindness to all our children and the poor."

- a four-fold benedictine blessing - sr. ruth marlene fox, osb - 1985