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Photos

 Where the Buddha may have been born and lived (Wikipedia)

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Wynn Alan Bruce

Wynn Alan Bruce self immolated himself on April 22nd 2022 in front of the Supreme Court in Washington DC. It was earth day.

The place where he did it was because of recent court decisions: In West Virginia versus EPA, the court's decision on the case could limit or revoke the ability of the United States Environmental Protection Agency to regulate carbon dioxide emissions, and the conservative majority on the court has indicated that they may do so.

A Buddhist and a climate activist, he earned a living with a photography studio in Boulder Colorado.

The people who marginalize his message, call him mentally ill, or as Sujato writes, "It tells us only of the nihilistic despair into which he fell." (Source) have been jammed up in just the way his message is supposed jam people up. Those who don't concern themselves with the gravity of climate change will wander off to condemn his act and dishonor it. 

There is a long history of self immolation in Buddhism, and a long history of people trying to downplay the messages that are sent through self immolation. The message of Wynn Bruce is simple. The government needs to stop getting in it's own way, and act more in it's own self interest. 

Now right there the polarizers are going to counterclaim I'm polarizing the issue, which means we can't even have a discussion of climate change with their dada communication style.

There is obvious and accumulating evidence that humans are having an impact on climate change, and that the right, in their infinite wisdom of always opposing the liberal imagination, just denies. We can do some things to curb the worst effects. People who aren't climate scientists deny that. The amount of climate scientists who deny that is insignificantly miniscule. The ideological denial of common knowledge is what makes these times feel so gaslit. The right has resorted to psychological and informational warfare. 

What will happen will happen and time will tell. Outside of political ideologies, which never seem to get it all right. That confirmation bias is a thing and people see what they want to see, we can go around in circles. One person’s modus ponens is another person’s modus tollens.

The polarization is a mental virus of the right in recent years, dastardly tactics, that history won't judge them well. We are entering an information age, we're just at the very beginning. Information is increasing and flowing more democratically, sometimes. That is not all good, people with proclivity to believe nonsense and malarkey are flipping the script and using intelligent sounding reposts for their conversation destroying nonsense. "Woke" and "virtue signaling" and other right wing buzz phrases are trying to be owned by the common sense people, but there's a real battle between what I consider to be the death instinct, and acting in our own best interest. 

I wish Wynn Bruce was alive, just like I wish we had a more pro-life world in the sense that people didn't see having children as a catastrophe because it would cost money, ruin careers and educations. I wish we didn't have weapons of mass destruction. I wish there was no war. I wish children didn't die in the USA for the ease at which people can get guns and misuse them. 

A utilitarian is pro-life, death is a bad result. But in the right's death cult, it's OK to be for the freedom to spread Covid instead of the freedom from Covid. To imagine guns are a right. They're flipping the script and accuse the left of being bad actors when that's all they do. 

They seem to have a sparse parsimonious approach to the world, but it's filled with abstract ideas and contradictions. Let's take a hard cold look at what's going on, and act in our own best interest, and not the best interest of the conservative imagination that has panic attacks about certain things, but what is really going on. 

The deSantos law to forbid gender discussion means elementary schools can't have gender names on the bathroom. Does that make sense? It's all ishkabibble. Their feeble minds only draw the conclusions they want it to. It's not reasoning, it's retroactive nonsense. 

Reason is public discussion of action. A powerful dictator or autocrat doesn't want discourse, he's just gonna do what he's gonna do. Maybe he'll poop out a justification. 

Use reason to create democratic public discourse, to act in our own best interest. That's all Wynn Bruce was trying to say, specifically about climate change.

The majority on the supreme court is unqualified ideologues that the right cheated to get onto the court. The court is a joke now. I'm not sure why more people aren't self immolating themselves, except the survival instinct is strong, and you might do more by being alive than a dramatic self immolation. It's a pretty blunt instrument. Wynn Bruce didn't even leave note as to why he was doing what he was doing. We can only guess from his Facebook posts that he was deeply upset about climate change, and his location tells us that he did not like the drift of the court decisions to neuter the government in climate change fighting. 

The idea that self immolation is not Buddhist is kind of funny. The glorious Buddhist movie Spring, Summer, Winter, Fall...Spring! has a self immolation scene in it. The Buddhist monks who did it during the Vietnam War of American Aggression. 

The amount of malarkey spouting from people is quite disturbing. It's not Buddhist? He was just mentally ill? People, use the principle of charity to assume the best line of reasoning. The supreme court just ruled that the EPA can't act to curb climate change. That's a disgusting result that needs to be overturned. Please think about it. Wynn Bruce did, and he is dramatizing our need to be just a little more aware, to act in our own best interest. 

I know I'm converting this blank into my own message. I'm aware of that. Still doesn't diminish the message. And I think I'm following reason and Buddhism (and utilitarianism and ethics....).

Just like meditation isn't just Buddhist, self immolation isn't just Buddhism protest. (See below.)

"This guy was my friend. He meditated with our sangha. This act is not suicide. This is a deeply fearless act of compassion to bring attention to climate crisis. We are piecing together info but he had been planning it for at least one year. #wynnbruce I am so moved." (Twitter Profile, actual tweet)

"Bruce’s act of sitting down and setting himself on fire was reminiscent of the events of June 11, 1963, when Thich Quang Duc, a Vietnamese monk, seated cross-legged, burned himself to death at a busy Saigon intersection. He was protesting the persecution of Buddhists by the South Vietnamese government led by Ngo Dinh Diem, a staunch Catholic." (Denver Post)

Also from Denver Post, quoting TTH, “To burn oneself by fire is to prove what one is saying is of the utmost importance. There is nothing more painful than burning oneself. To say something while experiencing this kind of pain is to say it with utmost courage, frankness, determination and sincerity.”

"The International Campaign for Tibet says 131 men and 28 women — monks, nuns and laypeople among them — have self-immolated since 2009 to protest against Beijing’s strict controls over the region and their religion."

What can we do? Margaret Klein Salamon suggest climate activism. She created Climate Emergency Fund. Here is another introduction.

There is also PAEAN from Thanissara.

Here is a list of climate change organizations.

Links:

Wikipedia: Self-immolation of Wynn Bruce.

Facebook page

NY Times Climate Activist Dies After Setting Himself on Fire at Supreme Court

Independent article

The denial of Sujato of his act being Buddhist. (Discussion on Reddit)

Buddhist Journal of Ethics: Buddhism and Suicide: The Case of Channa by Damien Keown

One poor person is questioning Buddhism (Reddit)

Rocky Mountain Ecodharma Retreat Center

14 year old girl self immolates in India over a reported threat to withdraw a rape allegation.

Flames of Prayer TTH's poem

Alejandro Alvarez's tribute on Twitter 

Climate change on NASA

Favorite tweet

Chapter 10

The middle period, chapter 10, has rapid fire stories in The Life of the Buddha. I can't help but think of that number Love Thy Neighbor from Prom, when you get to the monk who is abandoned, because he is of no use to his fellow monks when he's sick. 

There is the ancient epistemology tract in the Kalama Sutta.

"It is hard to know a man by his appearance

Nor can you judge him at a passing glance."

That's the upshot from the section where a leper becomes a stream entrant.

There is the bit where the Buddha doesn't want his teachings put into the formal religious language of the times. 

There is the bit about tuning the lute strings just right.

So many teachings.

I just downloaded the version of this book by Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu & Khematto Bhikkhu.

Bits and bobs

I watched all 4 Ip Man movies, and while the history of martial arts and Buddhism is mixed, what I like is that Ip Man is humble and doesn't want any special favors, doesn't want to shame anyone, and is patient. He believes in virtue and justice.

There was a discussion about Pema Chodron on Reddit.

I've completed my novella Robot Monk. I'm looking for readers for feedback.

One way to combat the wellbeing and perhaps inflated sense of self after meditation is to play a chess game. I always think I'm going to crush in a chess game and raise my rating, but I never do after meditation. It puts me in my place.

What to read

I began by reading the following books: Awakening The Buddha Within by Lama Surya Das, After the Ecstacy, the Laundry by Jack Kornfield, and Everyday Zen and Nothing Special by Charlotte Joko Beck. That gave me a Mahayana, a Theravada and a Zen perspective. Then I read the Dhammapada. 

After I started meditating, I read Sangharakshita, Thich Nhat Hanh, Ayya Khema, Jack Kornfield. Later I dug into the Middle Length Discourses, Long Discourses, Connected Discourses and the Numerical Discourses. Bodhicaryāvatāra is awesome. I read the Mahayana sutras and Ten Thousand Songs of Milarepa, Perfection of Wisdom texts. Lately I've been reading the Chinese hermit monks translated by Red Pine. The Eternal Legacy by Sangharakshita is an overview of Buddhist literature. If you're into Zen, I thought The Circle of The Way by O'Brian was interesting, helped me to realize some Zen writers I hadn't picked up yet. I love all the literature of Buddhism and it's quite a project to read it all.

I liked Living with the Devil by Stephen Batchelor. I like Great Faith, Great Wisdom by Ratnaguna. The fruitful darkness by Joan Halifax. I reread The Life of the Buddha by Nanamoli over and over. Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind is a classic. If you get into the Brahma Viharas I liked Boundless Heart (2017) by Christina Feldman. Breath by Breath by Goldstein is for anapanasati. Lokos has a good book on Patience. I had a great retreat once where I read the Therigatha. David Loy's Nonduality was intense. I got into Thai forest biographies for a while, really like Mae Chee Kaew and Ajahn Mun. I reread A Survey of Buddhism by Sangharakshita.

I personally don't read any Chogyam Trungpa, Reginald Ray or Pema Chodron any more because I see that line as producing problems in American Buddhism, what has come out from the consequences of Trungpa's crazy wisdom, though I read most of their books before finding out more. I don't read Alan Watts because he was a self described entertainer and didn't really take care of his 7 children, but many get excited by him.

Each sect would have a program of reading along with teaching, and I would learn from a sect for the first 10 years. I'd recommend Theravada sects to start out with to get a good foundation in the early teachings. What the Buddha Taught by Rahula tends to be their first recommendation. 

Ryokan

 

Ryokan Taigu was an unconventional monk in the Soto Zen sect. Born Eizō Yamamoto in Izumozaki in 1758. I've become much less enamoured with the chaos rule breakers but it's an interesting antidote to the asceticism and vastness of the amazingness of the Dharma.

Ryokan's poems

My Cracked Wooden Bowl

This treasure was discovered in a bamboo thicket --

I washed the bowl in a spring and then mended it.

After morning meditation, I take my gruel in it;

At night, it serves me soup or rice.

Cracked, worn, weather-beaten, and misshapen

But still of noble stock!

Children’s book

I got this book in the mail, not sure who it was from. But I like this folk tale.

This is a great story. Just when you think something bad happened, it turns out to be lucky.  It makes me think about how we often can't see the whole picture, and things that seem bad, might not be that bad. 

My daughter likes this book.

Happy birthday

 Every country celebrates the Buddha‘a birthday on different days. Today Japan celebrates.

Wikipedia 

Tiantishan Caves look like an amazing place

Happy Qing Ming

Qing Ming, a traditionally Chinese Buddhist holy day commemorates the dead by making offerings to those that have passed, are passing and will pass with tea and food (rice).  There are also sweets left as well as peanuts (far left, back).  This is also the day people will go to a cemetery and clean the tomb or tombstone of the departed.  This is also practiced throughout Asia and in the West for Buddhist practitioners.  While not strictly a 'Buddhist' practice in general, it is adopted as a very good mindfulness exercise of remembrance, compassion and respect.  May all beings be happy, may they be free from worry,  may they be free from affliction and violence, may they live happily. (Source)

Mara’s daughters

 

Longmen Caves, Luoyang, China

Travel is restricted right now, but the lowest flight from NYC is over $4K.