Saturday, February 11, 2006

Roundup for Feb 5 - 11, 2006

Another great week in the Buddhaland of Blogs. Big topics this week include having an opinion and those Danish cartoon. Also, because of the rocketting blogosphere, a new regular feature: A weekly blog harvest.

The Not-So-Funny Cartoons

Kelvin Wong in Salt * Wet * Fish makes the following point with regard to the cartoons in the Danish newspaper controversy:
When the Talibans bombed the groin of the Buddha statue in Bamiyan and subsequently destroyed it [, did] the Buddhist community threaten to kill any arabs or Muslims they see? Where is the Muslim community to criticise this blasphemous act towards the Buddhists when that happened? Doesn’t it sound hypocritical that the greater Muslim community has been silent when insults towards other religions like the Jews and Buddhist were happening?
I never knew Mohammed was such a riot
In Dave Bonta's blog Via Negativa, there is a frequently appearing cartoon, Words on the Street, which shows Diogenes with his placard. [The cartoon above appears here in accordance with Dave's Creative Commons license.]
Mumon of Notes in Samsara in a post on the topic last week wrote, “I've said it before, if I can't ridicule my religion, or yours, or none at all, it's not my religious freedom.”

This week, he jumped on political pundit Charles Krautheimer for his call for more courage from American media in the furor. Writes Mumon, “It's quite apparent as to why a CNN or a Washington Post might not publish ‘those cartoons.’ They've got potential hostages in places of the world, and it's bad PR for them to say, ‘We're not going to publish those cartoons, because of our potential hostages.’”

Dan of Notes From Along The Way writes, “… as irresponsible as it may have been to reprint the cartoons, I find any sympathy I had for those offended washed away in the violence being committed. This is not the way to make people understand your offense or get your message across. It's also, I'm afraid, quite hypocritical - Muslim press is often filled with anti-Jewish mockery, after all.”

Trey Smith of The Rambling Taoist is perhaps ignorant of the venomousness of much of the Arab press. He writes, “If an Arab newspaper had published cartoons depicting Jesus in a less than positive manner, there would be the same kind of furor, only that the critics and supporters would switch roles. ... Truth and perception are relative.”

tinythinker of peaceful turmoil tries to find a way back to calmer waters. “It isn't about not having the right to be offended, it is about what is and isn't acceptable in responsing to such offenses, and this is the real point of departure between certain manifestations of Islamic culture and the West. I applaud those on both sides of the issue who have urged respect and restraint, especially those Muslims who have called for calm and reason. This issue will be a test case for the future of relations between the West and Muslim nations, and it isn't a test we can afford to fail.”

Stripping Meditation of “Buddhism”

Sam Harris is the author of The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason. In the December issue of Atlantic Magazine a quote from his book says wonderful things about Buddhism in an article by Paul Bloom called “Is God an Accident?”-- “it is the most complete methodology we have for discovering the intrinsic freedom of consciousness, unencumbered by any dogma.” In stark contrast are these words of Harris's in his Huffington Post blog:
Needless to say, any truths uncovered about the human mind through meditation cannot be “Buddhist.” And if meditation ever becomes widely adopted as a tool of science, it will be quickly stripped of its Buddhist roots. There are, after all, very good reasons we don't talk about “Christian physics” or “Muslim algebra.” Physics and algebra are genuine domains of human inquiry, and as such, they transcend the cultural conditions out of which they arose. Today, anyone emphasizing the religious roots of these intellectual disciplines would stand convicted of not understanding them at all. In the same way, if we ever develop a scientific account of the contemplative path, speaking of “Buddhist” meditation will be synonymous with a failure to assimilate the changes that will have occurred in our understanding of the human mind.
[Update 2/25/06: William of Integral Options Cafe discusses his "own private war" against Sam Harris and his effort to take religion out of Buddhism in a 2/25/06 post.]

Relinquish All Views?

In Mike Cross’s The Middle Way a post begins with these lines:
I pay homage to Gautama
To he who out of compassion
Taught the true Dharma
As the relinquishing of all views
Intrepid translator that he is, Mike chased down the source of the quote, the last verse in Nagarguna’s Mulamadhyamakakarika [MMK]. And from here, he lurches into a frequent recent theme, the bitter taste of a translation project that went awry. With some irony, he concludes his post with a verse of repentance for a translation of his of the MMK that will not be.

Without apparent cross-fertilization, there were posts in different blogs this week that focused on opinions/views and the merit and demerits of not having them.

James of The Buddhist Blog writes, in response to some other of Buddha’s words, “one can not find liberation from spouting off a bunch of flowery, philosophical speech.” In another post, he quotes Lama Zopa Rinpoche: “Leave the mind in its natural, undisturbed state. Don't follow thoughts of ‘This is a problem, that is a problem!’”

Jeb of Wondering on the Way begins a post “In a recent Dharma talk, a monk talked about ‘not having opinions’ as if they were some disease of the mind to be avoided whenever possible.” Jeb goes on to discuss the difficulties of opinions and the relief of not feeling compelled to have opinions on nearly everything. He begins his concluding summation paragraph with these words, “’Do not cherish opinions.’ That seems much sounder advice. That I can see. People, including myself, have a tendency to define themselves by their opinions, and then hold fast to them because either they love the image they’ve created, or they experience discomfort about who they are if they let them go.”

Gareth of Green Clouds wrote in a post a few weeks ago, “the thoughts I collect and the stories I create have very real effects on the actions I take, the things I say and do to the people around me. … The collision between fantasies and reality causes suffering, often because of the vast difference between the two, and sometimes because I’m paying more attention to the former instead of the latter.” More recently, in a post that was subsequently deleted, he wrote, "R. A. Wilson has some understanding of emptiness, or appears to. In one of his texts he suggests changing your mind for a while, taking a walk in someone else’s shoes…subscribe to a neo-fascist magazine, try and agree with them, he suggests."

The Burgeoning Blogosphere

Vincent Horn of Numinous Nonsense posts on the exponential growth of the Blogosphere and has a graphic that shows the number of existant weblogs doubling every 5 ½ months!

With this in mind, Blogmandu feels it must quickly add to its “closely watched” blogs or it will be left in the flame-spray of the fast-climbing rocketship that is the Buddhoblogosphere. Here are some new blogs [to B’du, at least] that merit attention:

  • The Invisible Cat: A great find! Johnny Newt blogs from Zenkoji Temple in Nagano, Japan. He describes himself as “A simple man looking for the path he is standing on.” The blog, started last September, is written very ably with Johnny's thoughts on his life, Zenkoji Temple, and differences between Japan and America. I thank kim of this life [formerly, this zen life] for this B’du find, snatched from her blogroll.
  • Creating Peace: Bonnie’s ‘big picture,’ mostly political, compassion-oriented blog deserves our attention. The blog has been up since August with a very modest three to five posts per month. The blog won’t be winning any design awards soon – no offense, Bonnie, but what color is that? – but her thoughtful posts are insightful fun reading.
  • The Goodness Blog: A five-person multiblog that shares short posts of good news of different sorts. Up since October, it hasn’t been very active as yet. One of the contributors is kimberly/kim/haiku, well known to readers of B’du for her robust, much- heralded personal blog this life [formerly, this zen life].
  • Togo of Grand Smials: This blog has me flummoxed -- but I sometimes consider that to be a good thing. I'm just not sure if this is one of those times. hfx_ben has a lot going on in this LiveJournal blog of multi-dimensions. Interesting it is, certainly.
  • Mind and Reality: Indo Tibetan mind science in the 21st Century. A sweet, scholarly blog with lots of kindly links. Lay friendly with attractive design. Blogged by Christopher D. Kelly, who is now completing a PhD in Indo-Tibetan Buddhism at Columbia.