Into the Political and on to the Sangha…
Will Buckingham of thinkBuddha writes about politics, seeing it not as inimical to Buddhism, but very much an integral part, the third jewel.
“Aristotle says that every polis is ‘an association of persons formed with a view to some good purpose.’ This would serve as a good working definition of the Buddhist idea of sangha as well. The question we find ourselves asking is not just how we are to act as individuals, but how we are to act collectively or in relation to collectivities. It seems to me that, taking a view of politics from Aristotle, Buddhism recognises the centrality of politics in our lives.”In the comment stream, kindly Jayarava of The Jayarava Rave & Bricolage offers words that provide a counterview:
... The Sangha jewel is not the polis of Buddhists, nor the polis of the ordained. Strictly speaking the Sangha Jewel, the Sangha refuge, is the Aryasangha – those who have attained at least the path of stream entry. One cannot really go for refuge to ordinary people, nor to the collective of Buddhists.The question of “What does ‘sangha’ mean to you?” came up earlier this week in James Ure’s The Buddhist Blog. Quickly the issue becomes one of whether the makeup of the collection of folks and how they come together matters in determining if the group is satisfying the function, and creating the chemistry for a sangha. Writes James:
A long comment stream followed. While James finds he prefers an online connection with other Buddhists, Vis Voice finds a tangible community works better for him: “the inflection of a voice, the warmth of seeing a smile, the touch of a hand...” Dharmasattva wrote, “I seldom attend my local ‘physical’ sangha. … if a person can [better understand the dharma] from interacting with other practitioners online …, then one receives the benefits of the three refuges.”Traditionally [sangha] has meant the body of monks and not so much the laity. Even today in many eastern countries the laity isn't considered a part of the sangha. Here in the west the laity is a part of the sangha as much as the monk sanghas. Then [too] there are the online sanghas …
[And later…]
How can any of us judge which of the … options (or others not mentioned) is more "Buddhist" or "acceptable" then the other? Isn't the most important thing that people stay connected with other Buddhists and teachers one way or another??
The Stream, Part I
Michael of One foot in front of the other tells us his circle of friends with his rare form of cancer has increased by one member, to a total of three. More than offering camaraderie, the group can help each other in getting correct information about their disease. Michael tells us, “There's a lot of misinformation out there, more than you could ever imagine. In the case of parathyroid cancer, a little-understood disease, this is especially true. A lot of the information on the Internet is woefully outdated and doesn't reflect the latest data on surgical and pharmacological treatments.”
Gareth of Green Clouds cites a good read he found online -- "An Introduction to the Integral Approach." Integral Options Café and ~C4Chaos and Tom of Blogmandu among those who spurred his interest in Integral Psychology which meshes with Buddhism. In the comments thread, William Harryman of IOC has a piece he cites that can be found online about Spiral Dynamics – which is closely associated with the Integral approach.
Last week, B’du mentioned that Moose, The Contemporary Taoist, had an article that was to be published in LivingNow, an important Australian magazine. [A magazine, btw, with 400,000 monthly readers, twice the readership of America’s Tricycle] It seems that LivingNow's editors were so impressed they picked up our Moose as a regular, hardcopy columnist! And the name of the column? "The Contemporary Taoist." Writes Moose, “Needless to say I am quite happy with my lot at the moment. I have had a number of pots on the stove for some time, and despite the odd stretch where my cook-top flames have died down some, little bubbles are now starting to form. Over the next year you will see some significant output: books (I have written one and I am working on two more), new (better) music recordings and more frequent live shows, meditation and personal development classes (starting again in July for those in Melbourne), and some other wacky projects that I don't feel ready to mention yet.”
Zenmar, The Buddhist, writes about living within one’s means and quotes the Vyagghapajja Discourse [q.v., The Tripikata Network] in doing so. He adds, “[W]e shouldn't live beyond our income. The Buddha calls this leading a balanced life in which one avoids the excess of extravagance and poverty.”
JuBus
Mumon of Notes in Samsara seems right on in a post that questions the journalist skills of ABC's Bill Redecker who reported on JuBus on May 2.
A little history Redecker does get right [B’du confirmed this with wiki.]: “The moniker JuBus [pronounced ‘Jew-Boos’] has been around for a while but was popularized by Roger Kamenetz in his 1994 book, ‘The Jew in the Lotus.’” And from wiki, a definition: “A Jubu is a person with a Jewish ethnic and/or religious background who practices forms of Buddhist meditation and spirituality.” It is not considered to be a derogatory term.
Redecker’s piece is anecdotal, dotty and enriched by next-to-zilch research, based almost entirely on his reading a recent LA Times article by another journalist. Oy vey! Mumon writes, sarcastically, “Hahahahaha...those funny JuBus...don't they know their god is a jealous god? … They don't know "how many" JuBus there are...so this is newsworthy because you found a couple of 'em...?”
Mumon zeroes in. “You would ... think that [Redecker] would have at least gone to the trouble to go to the Tricycle website to find Bernie Glassman and get a quote from him...”
The long 5/2 latimes.com article “At One with Dual Devotion” by Louis Sahagun, that Redecker misuses, is rigorous and interesting, without pulling a Redecker and bloviating extemporaneously about the whole of the JuBu community/experience/phenomenon. Here’s a quote:
“Suffering is at the heart of the matter,” suggested David Gottlieb, whose autobiographical book “Letters to a Buddhist Jew” examines the life of a “Zen Jew” struggling to resolve his two identities. “Judaism, at its best, embraces suffering and, at its worst, enshrines it. Buddhism explicitly seeks to end suffering, and doesn't look to the past.”Christopher Baskin of PaperFrog, himself a JuBu, finding his Buddhist Passover piece of last month passed the cultural sensitivity smell test, posted “Sayings of Zen Judaism” this week, which pulls some jokes from the book “Zen Judaism: For You, A Little Enlightenment” by David M. Bader. Funny stuff! Here’s a couple from Baskin’s bounty:
- If there is no self, whose arthritis is this?
- Let your mind be as a floating cloud. Let your stillness be as the wooded glen. And sit up straight. You'll never meet the Buddha with such rounded shoulders.
The Stream, Part II
In Dan’s silent water the zen blog, in a post titled “Diamond Sutra online,” we are given links to “one of the oldest known printed texts of mankind [printed in China in 868 A.D.] … viewable online!”
TMcG, of the eponymous blog, practiced last year with Noah Levine – author of Dharma Punx – and is now looking forward to a documentary of his story, coming soon, titled Meditate and Destroy.
The 22-year-old blogger of That Was Zen This Is Tao had a crystalline thought, that there isn’t time. “There's so much I want to do in life before I die, so much I want to see and learn and create and discover, and there's just not enough time for all of it.”
Cliff of This is This begins a post this week, “Both my kids have normal colour vision. They think it's funny that I don't, and I think it's funny that they do, and they totally understand that red and green, to me, are a concept.”
Net Neutrality
Mumon of Notes from Samsara writes about the vital question of Net Neutrality [q.v., wikipedia ] Mumon is siding with The Big Boys (Amazon.com, Google, Yahoo, Intel and Microsoft), for now, at least, to allow them do their things in controlling how we see stuff on the Internet, if and until problems manifest. If I understand Mumon’s bulleted thoughts correctly [it’s a complex, multifaceted topic], he sees as the prime concern clogged pipelines on the Internet that the The Big Boys (possibly with US government envolvement) can address with technology deployment.
Thus, Mumon is an opponent of Net Neutrality since, in his view, it is likely to slow the coming vast and amazing technological future, with its remote disease monitoring and other telemedicine marvels that will save and improve lives and elsewhere bring efficiencies.
~C4Chaos, in his zaadz blog, ~C4Chaos blog, in a post titled “Net Neutrality Loses (for now)” seemed a tad upset that a Democrat House bill failed. But ~C4 may be confused [or I might be], since the bill was supported by The Big Boys and opposed by the libertarian Left and Right for not going “far enough to target possible errant behavior by AT&T, Verizon Communications and other broadband providers.” [quote from a WashPost article] Thus, the moderate-Dem bill was anti-Net Neutrality.
The Integral blog Craig Photography links to a video that explains the need for Net Neutrality.
We are all likely to hear a lot more about this topic and find that decisions made regarding Net Neutrality will be something we bloggers and blog readers will directly feel the effects from.
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