Take Heart
Jeff of ZenDiary rereads Sheng-Yen’s There is No Suffering: A Commentary on the Heart Sutra and then applies the wisdom there – to not cling to either the negative or the positive – to his job as a schoolteacher who dearly wishes success for his students. Writes Jeff, “‘Work with what you have, and do not resist change.’ I’m surprised by how idealism is often an insidious form of a resistance to change, a resistance against going with the flow, seeing situations clearly, and then acting according to what the situation calls for.”
The Stream
Michael of One foot in front of the other has decided he doesn't want to know The Number that comes from his frequent blood tests that tells him his current blood calcium level. “I've had results before that indicated the cancer was gaining the upper hand. ... I've also had results that have been good, all things considered, and I rode a wave of euphoria until the next test yielded discouraging numbers. ... I'm sick of fixating on numbers.” He ends his post excitedly checking his lottery ticket numbers, but we readers worry, hoping the blood-test numbers, known to him or not, pay off with good longterm results.
Quoting from TNH's Old Path, White Clouds, Justin of American Buddhist Perspective tells us Buddha's perspective on governance. In the Buddha's words: “If you practice the Way, you will increase your understanding and compassion and better serve the people. You will find ways to bring about peace and happiness without depending on violence at all. You do not need to kill, torture, or imprison people, or confiscate property. This is not an impossible ideal, but something which can be actually realized.”
Matthew of freedomforall.net wrote on Buddhism and politics, too, this week, saying, “Buddhism teaches that it would be better to spend our energy on solving problems than waging war. It teaches us that peace is a real and virtuous and available place, personally and politically.”
In just the fifth entry in a new blog begun on Feb. 20 [found by way of Mugo's Moving Mountains], Zennist Techiepig writes about participation in a Parinirvana festival, commemorating the Buddha's death, in his Techiepig's discourse on everything: “What really helps in these situations though is to simply key into something deeper. In other words, just be there. ... It just means that when it does go wrong I just note what I did and carry on to the next bit instead of tripping myself up at that point and being completely off balance for the rest of the ceremony. When it works right (and it doesn't always) the whole thing just seems to flow.”
Qalmlea, A Musing Taoist, offers “Thoughts on Freedom.” “Without a rope, people bind themselves,” she tells us. “When based on compassion, this can be a good thing. Though I may feel anger at someone, I do not loose that anger. Though, at times, violent thoughts may arise, I do not act on them. ... When based on fear, or craving, the binding is harmful. It traps us.”
F. Kwan is having a rough time living, stuck in the middle of Texas. She writes in foot before foot: the photoblog, “I couldn't stand one minute more of being inside the trailer, which no longer feels like any refuge to me, so I thought, surely, I can deal with being Out in the Street. It was time to face the music, yellow slicker, rebaldened head and all. Maybe I could just ignore the folks asking me if I needed a ride.”
William of Integral Options Cafe writes of love and respect for mountains, and in particular of the tallest one close to his home, Greyback. “I feel the magic of that mountain in my life to this day. I have taken the only three women I have deeply loved to that place so that, by knowing the mountain, they may know me better.”
Johnny Newt of The Invisible Cat writes about vibrations and the temple bell at Zenko-ji. “One could feel the bell resonating deep within [one's] center. Dwelling upon those Buddhas that have walked here before me, just for a moment they again were present, resonating within the fading tones.”
A Buddhist Atman
Last week’s B’du post cited an explication in Dark Zen mystic Zenmar’s The Buddhist of the Nirvana Sutra – which Z tagged as “dangerous” for materialist, nihilist Buddhists. Z’s post and the issues that the Nirvana Sutra roused were further explored in a thread titled “Oooh!” in the group blog Flapping Mouths. A comment in the thread by Justin [solo-blogger of Ordinary Extraordinary] shows that Buddha’s words in the Lankavatara Sutra explicitly dismiss the idea of a Devine Atman [a near-tangible soul or Self]. All this raises an issue that strikes at the heart of philosophical Zen [but, then, many would consider the phrase ‘philosophical Zen’ to be oxymoronic]: Is there any there there? What is Buddha-nature if not something, or, at least, some no-thing? B'du is following this issue with interest as discussion courses through the blangha. As another in the “Oooh!” thread points out, wikipedia offers some guidance: Nirvana Sutra [qv]; Tathagatagarbha doctrine [qv]; Buddha-nature [qv]. Zenmar has posted again on this Buddhist Atman this week, quoting the Nirvana Sutra: “The atman is the Tathagatagarbha. All beings possess a Buddha Nature: this is what the atman is. This atman, from the start, is always covered by innumerable passions (klesha): this is why beings are unable to see it.”
LATE UPDATE: Justin over at American Buddhist Perspective has waded into the Nirvana Sutra waters, somewhat -- carrying with him Sartre's Being and Nothingness. If we can stop being between the rock of our past and the hard place of a future we foresee for ourself [a place that Sartre calls 'Bad Faith'], can we reach our authentic self, something Sartre alludes to only in a footnote in B&N and in an earlier work? Writes Justin, "Sartre at least for a moment held a nugget of very profound wisdom. Yet his work focuses ad nausium on the inadequacies of the common man rather than our most brilliant achievements, the lies we tell ourselves rather than our moments of truth..."
Buddhism, Products and Advertising
Buddhist Superhero Cliff Jones takes on a mighty opponent, Kleenex, in three posts this week in This is this. There is a TV commercial playing in the UK [see it here] that shows a Zen monk asking forgiveness after using a virus-killing Kleenex tissue on his nose. Cliff first shines his bloglights on how Buddhism is batted around by Western cultural jocularity and lists problems with the ad in how it misrepresents Buddhism. In his second post, Cliff hears from one of the tissue manufacturer's marketting people who writes, “The guru character in the ad represents a gentle, compassionate person and is not in any way a commentary on any specific culture, religious faith or belief.” In his third post, Cliff posts pictures of the character in the ad and a Buddhist monk, leaving it to readers to find differences. [B'du suspects Cliff's text in this third post is dripping with sarcasm.]
Amadeus in Dharma Vision finds a new product, Zen Green Tea Liqueur, in a favorite club. “Just when I thought I'd seen it all, I quickly discover I haven't.” he writes.
Jonatin of emptiness, in a post “Commercialization of Buddhism” writes, after opening the latest copy of Shambhala Sun:
Half of the magazine is advertisements for “mountain getaways,” namaste rings, or household items! The articles are certainly worth reading, but what’s the message the magazine is sending to people who are less familiar with buddhism? That buddhists are asian fetishists that take new-age seminars for $285 for one day or $435 for the whole three-day weekend.Other ads in recent years past that unkindly Osterize Buddhism with confused stereotypes of liberal-loving whatnot: Yoplait [from a post in richmackin’s blog in livejournal]; Zen milk [from BuddhaWatch blog]; Buddha Bars [from TricycleBlog].
It’s hard for someone to take seriously a magazine with articles about saving the world when it’s interspersed with advertisements for “Astrological buddhism.”
J’Accuse!
In a hammerslam, an upset victory turned rout – the equivalent of Jamaica winning all the medals at the Winter Olympics – Joanna of Hummingbirds Don’t Sing fricasseed the Times of London after a little googling on her part proved, absolutely, that there will be blonde women in earth’s future. Joanna: You have done for the men of earth what Zola did for Dreyfus [ie, saved us from worries].
Blogisattva Awards Announcements Come Tomorrow, March 5
Anticipation is high for the announcement of the First Annual Blogisattva Awards which will come tomorrow, before the beginning of the live Oscars telecast. No, Joan Rivers won’t be announcing the winners on TV, but you can find the list of winners in Blogmandu at that time. [You can find the list of nominees here.]
Wrote Will of thinkBuddha, up for the award Blog of the Year, Svaha!, “Forget the Oscars. The BAFTAs are small-fry. Don’t bother with the Golden Globes. The real media event of the year is the Blogisattva Awards … I’m up for a party. So on the 5th of March, when the winners will be announced, I’ll be cutting out a red carpet from crepe paper to unfurl in my hallway, putting on my bow tie and settling down with Bodhicattva, the thinkBuddha cat (similarly attired I hope) to give the results, whatever they are, a hearty cheer.”
It is interesting to find, in a post in Pearl Bear’s Blog – the latest installment of the Progressive Faith Blog Carnival – that an organization of Unitarian Universalist bloggers recently had the 2nd annual UU Blog Awards. And, that progressive Muslim bloggers had their 2nd annual Brass Crescent awards. The Buddhist Blogisattvas are late arrivals to the religious blog awards scene.
[UPDATE: THE WINNERS HAVE NOW BEEN ANNOUNCED]
I Want to Live Forever
George P. Dvorsky of Sentient Developments, in a post titled “Superlongevity is coming and it will be good,” supports the findings of transhumanist philosopher Mark Walker, who predicts that dramatically longer life – even infinite life – will soon become possible. Says George, “Walker cites the philosophical perspectives of both welfarists (Bentham and Mills) and perfectionists (Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Kant, and Marx) to demonstrate that life extension is desirable to achieve both happiness and greater achievements.”
But a commenter to the post brings problems to the fore. Yve writes, in part:
The article implies that everybody will live forever and that it will be perfect.. What about the psychological effects on the human mind? What about the side effects? No more children allowed, no new blood in a given organisation, where would new perpectives come from? CIO staying in power for 100 years, no hope left for those enslaved in alienating jobs, the end of the belief in an afterlife, insane fear of death (since it would be then unnatural and totally alien to the common man experience), what about the effect on the economy? Insane wealth accumulated by one lone individual, never to be split amongst children... I could go on.Integral Buddhist Vince Horn of Numinous Nonsense also posted optimistically on a future with “radical life extension,” linking to a conversation between Ken Wilber and Andrew Cohen on the topic.
Here are some early words of Wilber’s, taken from the What is Enlightenment? magazine transcription:
Let me briefly give an overview of what we're talking about in terms of these realms—the body, the soul, and the spirit—and then we can focus on whether we mean physical immortality or the immortality of the soul or the immortality of spirit.Coolmel of www.coolmel.com took the baton from here and after approving some of what Wilber & Cohen said [such as what’s quoted, above] went into Sci Fi Uberdrive, lauching into criticisms of Wilber and Cohen and bringing in the concept of Technological Singularity [qv], an event horizon where quickly the impossible becomes easy. [Think Staples’ “Easy Button” commercials.] All our anxieties get smoothed away by marvelous robots frantically upgrading each other and everything else such that the capacity to quickly fix absolutely everything is achieved. Writes Mel: “…the Law of Accelerating Returns, will make it possible for consciousness to ‘develop into higher levels’ at an ‘exponential’ rate. Even hyper-speed doesn't quite cut it. We've all seen Dark City, and The Matrix where Neo learned all the cool stuff in one sitting.”
Human beings want immortality in a bodily realm because they intuit something deeper that's not bodily. …When most people think about immortality, they're thinking about some variation of overcoming time. And in the physical domain you overcome time by living forever. …
Immortality for the soul is usually thought of as reincarnation. The soul is immortal because it never dies. … It's as if the soul takes off one coat and puts on another…
For the realm of nondual spirit, immortality doesn't mean living forever. It means the experience of timelessness; it means a moment of pure timeless presence, not going on forever in time. …
So you can have eternal life by simply and fully being in the timeless present with spirit, now. And whether your body lives for a million years or not, you are still eternal. It doesn't mean you live forever; it means you're not in the stream of time. So all of time arises within the awareness or spaciousness that you are in this timeless present. The “I AMness” that you are is radically without time. So it's eternal in its fullness right now.
[LATE UPDATE: Coolmel responds to the above paragraph with a post in his blog, most of which appears as the first comment to this here Blogmandu post.]
