End of times

I used the phrase, "End of times," casually, but been looking into it.

Supposedly Buddhism doesn't really use the phrase, but in the year 4300 Maitreya might be returning (Wikipedia), (Source) and (Digha Nikaya, 26).

The text then foretells the birth of Maitreya Buddha in the city of Ketumatī, in present-day Benares perhaps. Ketumati is associated with the city of Banaras in Uttar Pradesh, India. Looking, there are 20 temples in Benares on the Ganges River, often with national names like Tibet, Chinese, Sri Lankan, Bengal. Many are not nationally named, the 2 inside the city aren't, and one has a famous stupa. Varanasi is one of the world's oldest continually inhabited cities. India's oldest Sanskrit college, the Benares Sanskrit College, was founded during East India Company rule in 1791.

Dhamek Stupa is supposedly where the Buddha gave his first sermon and teachings to the 5 disciples Kaundinya, Assaji, Bhaddiya, Vappa and Mahanama. 

While visiting Sarnath in 640 CE, Xuanzang recorded that the colony had over 1,500 priests and the main stupa was nearly 300 feet (91 m) high (Wikipedia).

Wikipedia lists the mean high temperature over 100 for April, May and June in Benares. Looks like the coldest month January is the time to visit Varanasi or Benares, goes by 2 names.

"Note that no description of Maitreya occurs in any other sutta in the canon, casting doubt as to the authenticity of the scripture. In addition, sermons of the Buddha normally are in response to a question, or in a specific context, but this sutta has a beginning and an ending, and its content is quite different from the others. This has led some to conclude that the whole sutta is apocryphal, or tampered with." (Wikipedia)

The sutta that predicts 7 suns and holocaust: Aňguttara-Nikăya, VII 6.2 isn't easy to find, it's not included on online Pali Canon, probably rightly so. 

I looked in on the conditions of end of times in the Bible, and it seems like with war, earthquakes, duplicitous leaders, breakdown of order that we are indeed in the end of times. The article says end of times started around WW1. A Pew Research Center study found in 2022 that over 60 percent of evangelical Christians in the US believe we are living in the end times.

I haven't seen what the end of times means in Christianity, seems just like it's a motivation to get right with God. Difficult times call for increased spiritual effort perhaps. If you can really believe that belief and surrender to God makes you happy, then it's a self fulfilling prophecy, and if you can achieve that, more power to you. 

This subject is called Eschatology. The prediction of the end of the world. I feel like things are pretty chaotic with hurricanes, earthquakes, eclipses, social chaos and disorder, but I don't imagine my subjective feeling of the end of the world is the literal end of the world. It should more accurately be described as feeling uncertain and unsettled in chaos and change.

The 8fold Path

I'm not a teacher, not ordained, don't pretend any of those things, I blog as a record of my journey in the hopes it will be useful to others. I want to clarify and express the path to aid my own practice. I like to go from the whole to the parts sometimes and take the larger overview. 

Right view and understanding (Samma ditthi): One develops right view based on connection to sangha and fellowship, reading, reflection, meditation and study. The fantasy I have when I think about this is that I could get the right view and then everything would be downhill to attainment, but that's spiritual bypassing, and the truth is that right view is a dog fight, messy, irregular and isn't just an app you can download. Connection with teachers is difficult. Studying the right thing is difficult. Meditating frequently and consistently and in volume is difficult. Fellowship calls for intellectual humility and other personality traits to get along with others, compromise, flexibility and problem solving. There are lots of dead ends, and distractions. Life conditions are not supportive sometimes for developing right view, I need to work to develop better conditions, connections and support. In the combative land of social media, debates about right view can step on people toes. My experience of certain personalities that are more traditional and righteous is that right view can be a kind of theological grounds for calling people less than. You don't have right view, you are less than. You're not even a Buddhist. Obviously they're not supportive and not everyone is sunshine and roses, perhaps a fantasy about Buddhists.

Right thought (Samma sankappa): "Right thought denotes the thoughts of selfless renunciation or detachment, thoughts of love and thoughts of non-violence, which are extended to all beings." (Tricycle) Basically selfish thinking doesn't get you there, power grabs don't get you there, violence doesn't get you there. Ethical conduct is right action (Samma kammanta). Indra's net has jewels that shine and make all the other jewels shine, so all these aspects of the path will reflect off each other. Thinking is part of the path, but it's about the deep wisdom, maturity, sanity and concentrated thinking. There's also an aspect of not reactively grasping at compensatory pleasures, renunciation. It's not sticky generosity, with conditions, it respect the autonomy of others, not trying to manipulate them, and yet skillful means is not being perfect in getting some good lessons and results. Like all theachings that are dialectical and nondual, there will be contradictions, but I think Buddhism is more psychology than philosophy so you are allowed to push people in different directions. Just like all the other steps on the path, you could go on and on about this one. There are stages in the path where discursive unhelpful thinking is discouraged. They're not telling you not to think, just understand if your thinking is in service of neurotic unenlightened goals, which honestly is most of it.

Right speech (Samma vaca). One issue I've struggled with is whether swearing is emotionally truthful, or whether it's too dramatic, and offensive, distracting. I really like to swear. Not a lot but when I was around someone who didn't like swearing I would always say one swear during a conversation. In the age of the internet, you can justify anything and I've read some articles that people who swear are smarter and blah blah blah. Being truthful is very important to me in speech, so people who lie for political or financial gains are not being in harmony. They might feel they are in harmony in trying to resolve some psychic tension based on their selfishness, the desire not to support others and hatred of the free riders. I've learned a lot studying non-violent communication. Marshall Rosenberg created a kind of way of looking at how to communicate. You describe what you see, say how it makes you feel, express an emotional need, and make a request. I love the list of emotional needs. I got stuck on separating wants from needs, but emotional needs are to belong or feel safe, so it's not materialistic. Belonging is a need. I'm sure I could get better at communicating, I've always felt like people need to give me the benefit of the doubt, and that's just my laziness in needing to communicate better. I would also add that fighting isn't necessarily disharmony, it's more harmonizing not to hide. 

Right action (Samma kammanta). The ten precepts are great guidelines but there are lots of things to consider in ethics. For me being a kind positive ethical person supports fellowship, study, devotion and meditation. On the one hand I don't think you should be so precious about accidentally killing insects. On the other hand, there can be some amazing growth through ethical reflection about your impact on others. For me ethical thinking as led to veganism, and other practices. I think it's important to vote in a democracy, and educate yourself so that you're an intelligent voter. Supposedly plastic recycling isn't great, but other aspects of thinking about the environment are important. I've become interested in effective altruism.

Right livelihood (Samma ajiva). On the continuum on the one end you have illegal drug industry, butchers, arms salesmen and hitmen. Selling alcohol and legal drug business wouldn't be consider useful to others to gain insight. On the other end you have a monk. In my case, I have children so I need to care for them and be responsible. I've done a million jobs but I felt most supportive of others when I was a teacher and when I was a psychotherapist.

Right effort (Samma vayama). To progress on the path you're going to have to extend effort, mental energy, and not always gratify oneself with whatever, Netflix. The lute story is about a guy whose feet got all bloody from walking a lot, and you need to push hard, but not go crazy. Like tuning an instrument. Finding your natural exertion in the spiritual life is part of the journey. Right effort is about trying to right the ship and fighting off unhelpful mental states.

Right mindfulness (Samma sati). So what can you be mindful about? The Buddhist tradition tells you what to focus on. They tell you to focus on your body, feelings, consciousness and the Dharma (5 fetters, 5 skandhas, fetters, factors of awakening, 4 noble truths).

Right concentration (Samma samadhi): Wikipedia says, practicing meditation "which includes samadhi proper in the second stage, and reinforces the development of the bojjhagā, culminating into upekkha (equanimity) and mindfulness." This is about getting into the proper meditative states, and progressing in meditation. Notice this is the last step, and perhaps a meditation focused path might neglect the other aspects of the path. I always think about that sutra that lists the things to do to prepare yourself to be able to meditate a lot. And also carving out the space for retreat. 

Links to Wikipedia articles and sources from Pali Canon:

Noble Eightfold Path

The Longer Discourse to Saccaka (Source)

Setting the Wheel of Dhamma in Motion (source)

The Great Discourse on the Buddha’s Extinguishment (source)

World/Spirituality

There's an article about a sect of Buddhist monks in Thailand that is a grift. Reddit is going bonkers over it, so many people imagined Theravada was the holiest of the holies. 

The Dhammakaya tradition: It's a yogavacara tradition founded by Luang Pu Sodh Candasaro. You can watch a 10 minute video about him.

There's a page of articles in the Bangkok Post about the current leader Phra Dhammajayo "Luang Por Dhammajayo's approach to Buddhism seeks to combine the ascetic and meditative life with modern personal ethics and social prosperity." I guess you can go too far blending in with modern times.

Such a wide variety of reactions from "that's not Buddhism" to "yea, that shit happens all the time."

This always brought up the question: Is it not Buddhism if it's worldly? Do the crimes people commit as Buddhists stick to their non-Buddhist parts? That goes along with the idea that Buddhist's can't engage in war. If you were in Ukraine would it be right to fight tyranny over democracy? Or should you retreat further into the woods to meditate?

My take on whether secular Buddhism is real Buddhism.

I think this is a battle of worldviews, culture and the battles inside us.

In modernism, a modern view of the world takes up Buddhism, westerners are skeptical, scientific, often refuges from a Christianity that insists of belief. Seems like Buddhism doesn't have orthodoxy, but orthopraxy, where it's what you do that counts: Meditate, study, reflect, commune, be kind. With the perfection of wisdom tradition there's even a sophisticated almost postmodern viewpoint. A leading spokesman is Stephen Batchelor who broke with Tibetans and went to Korean Soen. He articulated it beautifully, but when he got more into the Pali Canon faltered a bit.

Then you have credulous traditional eastern Buddhist who are rightly twitchy about colonialism and people thinking they know better. They run into the western modernist and don't recognize the Buddhism that is deeply embedded in the culture they hope to preserve. They might insist on a more literal polytheistic worldview, maybe haven't read the perfection of wisdom tradition, and they can behave like an orthodox Christian who focuses on believing questionable metaphysical things literally, in this day and age. They go hard on right view and say modernism just isn't even Buddhism, too much syncretism. Are they protecting the tradition or gatekeeping and confused?

You're allowed to make sense of the tradition and think for yourself. I interpret the story where the Buddha whisks a monk off to the realm of 33 gods as a lovely mythological story that isn't literally true. When I called them the 33 Hindu gods, I was corrected, Hinduism didn't really exist then and they wouldn't have gone away in Buddhism, if you believe in them. I think the mythology of Avalokita and archetypal Bodhisattvas is beautiful and a Jungian could go nuts. So it's not like we're really stripping away that kind of thinking, it's just we don't think you need to pay some kind of belief price to enter. This makes a traditionalist uncomfortable, and the different ways of using language clash in a kind of misunderstanding that seems like there are two different ways of being, and the traditionalist can be persuasive to the insecure who distrust their thinking and want to be obedient. To the modernist it looks a lot by all the harping on obedience in Christianity, regardless of your own thinking.

Buddhism is rooted more in your experience because meditation is about your experience. Christians who went on long meditation retreats have said this is what spirituality is really about. We can't talk about the transcendental because it's beyond words, but I see all the God talk as trying to connect to the transcendental and the mysterious.

On top of that the Pure Land tradition smacks of a trying to get to heaven thing. I don't believe mappo, that the world has degenerated so that nobody can get enlightened any more. That seems like a statement that you can't prove, and a self fulfilling prophecy. I get it that it takes the foot off the pedal and you can just try for enlightenment in the next life, and it brings in more Buddhists. Pure Land is the most popular form of Buddhism. I love the Pure Land sutras, but I take them as inspiration to get on the cushion. And since USA is a Christian nation, Thich Nhat Hanh used to use Christian language to communicate the Dharma in English. To the anti-Christian that's hard to swallow.

Then to accuse the person who rejects the Christian power games, to be called a colonialist is quite challenging. I'm not trying to influence anyone's practice and I'm not a teacher, I'm just discussing how it all makes sense to me. I'm not going to get upset if you call me not a Buddhist. But I also don't think it's a philosophy, I do think it's a religion. And most secular Buddhists are folded into a traditional sangha, and just don't talk about that stuff.

Buddhism has interacted with Confucianism and Taoism in China, and it must interact with the modern world. It must stand the buffeting of ideas the Buddha never commented on, forms of government, scientific advances like DNA, and the rapid change due to technology, and social media. We can see through the patriarchal systems of power. A Buddhist informed westerner with a highly educated and sophisticated worldview is welcome in Buddhism I hope.

Some of the newer forms of Buddhism are marginalized because they try harder to modernize, and they have good teachings, but NKT and Triratna have been marginalized on this subreddit because there have been very human growing pains and abuses of power. There are other traditions that maybe should die because of the level of abuse. The very public scandals that are well documented show the abuse of power and exploitation, and traditional forms seem to do better in fighting an anything goes abuse of power, so there might be some wisdom in being a traditionalist.

Even if Chinese immigrants brought Buddhism to North America 500 years ago, Buddhism is very new in North America, and there are many things to figure out. Add to that in the USA we are battling a political worldview that spits personalities in half, those who want a minimalist government and those who want to try to ameliorate some of the systems that hurt people, modify capitalism into a kinder form. There is a lot of confusing manipulation to try to get their way, information wars. And the leave-me-alone ideology has won a lot lately, it's almost an anti-awakening movement. There is great turmoil in the USA at the moment, growing pains for a young nation. And traditionalism versus progress is part of that. Traditionalism isn't bad, my relatives who stayed in the church don't have drug problems, they build stronger families. And yet I've lost 40% of my friends lately because of politics and culture wars. America is deeply troubled and I almost could see mappo. The pandemic has been very stressful. Then look at what is going on in Ukraine.

There are still monasteries and great teachers who haven't been disgraced or abused power, and many foreign teachers who are willing to try and seed Buddhism in North America. America has an intellectual meditation focused Buddhism, but is weak on community because our society is so fractured at the moment, our rugged individualism, and traditional sanghas are foreign, cling to foreign culture. There is no true American sangha, except maybe new movements in a lay Theravadan tradition in IMS, where you're also allowed to have a secular bent. I have no wonder that traditionalist eastern Buddhist are shaking their heads at the wooly headed Americans. Meanwhile after years of horrible Civil War, Sri Lanka is on the brink of financial collapse. If only the chaos in my head and the chaos in the world would go away. And yet, that is the very mud for the lotus.

Eating

(Cori's plant based Thanksgiving)

When a man is always mindful,
Knowing moderation in the food he eats,
His ailments then diminish
He ages slowly, guarding his life

(402, 13 Kosaisamyutta, Sagathavegga (part 1), Samyutta Nikaya)

The king, who these verses were spoken to, then paid someone to say that to him before every meal. I suppose he could have just memorized that and done it himself, but maybe he was looking for a job for someone so he could employ them.

There was a list to avoid when eating (M 91, p 191 The Life of the Buddha), and one struck me, eating for embellishments. In food prep, embellishments are the garnishes, but they were not saying that the person eating was a garnish. I guess it means you don't eat so you look good. I'm pretty sure most people would say not eating helped you look good, but times change, and in times of hunger being fat is a desirable trait. Here is the quote:

"The food he takes has 5 factors: it is neither for amusement nor for intoxication nor for smartening nor for embellishment but only for the endurance and continuation of this body, for the ending of discomfort, and for the assisting the holy life."

Now this is advice for a monk and not a lay follower and king.

I've always thought that enjoying a well cooked vegan meal was a safe venture, because being vegan it minimized suffering in the world. That would contradict that amusement was a factor. I've always sort of felt like you "kiss the joys as they go by", that it's OK to enjoy these things. But there is a real ascetic streak he preaches for the monks. They are not to enjoy the sense.

I think this is at a crux of my question. I have the idea that moving towards enlightenment is to make a bigger box of mindfulness so that seeking out pleasure reactively doesn't happen. Does it help you to get there because you've suffered a bit.

I've always wondered if starving yourself to death and then eating enough to sustain yourself would be a better ramping up to the spiritual path, than say a middle class American trying to be "mindful when they eat", because that could be anything. Just don't go nutso. Like when I was at a end of the year cross country banquet, in high school, that was all you can eat, we did it competitively, trying to stuff as much food as we could to beat each other. In the end nobody was keeping track of food, we were just trying to push ourselves into discomfort to take advantage of the all you can eat. I'd say in general going to an all you can eat place is pretty diabolical. There's an all you can eat meat place on Northern Boulevard in Queens and my review calling it out as sick was put aside because I had an ideological idea against it. We're not far away from having a vomitorium so you could puke and then eat some more. I guess that would be even worse.

Being mindful of how hungry you are is important, and getting all the nutrients so you are healthy isn't a bad idea. Where does that put the cleaning your plate idea I got from my grandfather who survived the depression? You eat it all because you might not get food again. It turns out meals come about pretty regularly in my experience, though there were times I was poor and pretty hungry. But was it hungry like my 4 year old daughter, who is only really hungry for her preferred foods, but not starving hungry.

I also think about the richette principle. People who go on deprivation diets usually end up gaining weight, and the diets that work emphasize not deprivation but healthy choices like eating satisfying nuts more often.

Eating is such a complicated modern phenomenon. Theravadan monks will eat meat when it is given to them because they don't want to offend the giver, and probably because they also don't want to train people not to give them meat. I think a modern Theravadan should train the people who give them food to not give them meat. There's some weird kind of culture around not training donations to avoid meat, even though we know now that vegetarianism is good for you and helps the planet, and doesn't harm animals. Vegan is even better, but one step at a time training those who donate. The view from a vegan perspective is that being vegetarian is a walk in the park. They sneak milk or eggs into so many products you really have to read every label and question waiters at restaurants very closely. There was a big uproar that fast food places have been doing vegetarian burgers but they cook them on a grill that contains meat grease.

Poor cultures revere meat, because often people don't eat meat, and when poor immigrants come to America they tend to gain weight, and have terrible diets in the land of plenty, if they don't transcend their childhood conditioning. I live in an immigrant city and the love of meat is pretty strong, though of course suburbia can also be meat loving and ranches can be meat loving in rural areas. So in the end, I think cities hold out the best promise in the evolution of vegan culture.

I used to run so that I wouldn't feel like I had to limit my eating, that's how much I hate limiting myself. I get really nervous when my friend did a Master Cleanse fast. I could never do that, though I remind myself I'm not a fixed self, the future is unknown. I couldn't do it at present. I have experimented with intermittent fasting, and that is kind of natural to our ancestral environment. Eating disorders are no joke, body dysmorphia is nothing to play with the addiction to the pleasure of throwing up is also something to be wary of. In a way, my fervent hope parenting is that I don't give my children an eating disorder, though everyone has to own their own behavior.

In the end I like Sangharakshita's approach. We apply the principle of moderation to our modern existence. Really apply it. My fear is that leaves quite a lot of wiggle room to just indulge yourself, and we lose the tradition of the Buddhist monks expectations and live a Buddhist light lifestyle. And that means I needed to be vigilant with myself--the opposite of preaching to others. The older I get the more and more I realize how important vigilance is. Really committing to something and not just transciently thinking it's a good idea.

The initial quote is right though, I've seen research that people who eat reduced calorie diets do live longer. And heart disease is the number one killer in America. I sometimes wonder if the seriousness they have taken over the quarantine for Covid-19 were transferred to things like heart disease, or even gun control, we would have a more vigorous approach--though people don't like to be told what to do. Gun wielding protesters in Michigan, and a few of my Facebook friends have gotten twitchy about being told to stay at home, for their own good. Many people have pointed out the irony of people wanting others to go back to work so they can be served food or get a haircut. They want other people to go back to work so they can get services. In a way, everyone has had unique challenges to the quarantine based on their circumstances.

You can't feast every meal, but I'd say you can enjoy a family feast on a holiday, and tomorrow is Vesak Day! Happy Vesak day everyone!

Civilizations and seeing Buddhist art

Civilization has had an update, and Netflix has it in the USA. It's a show about the history of art through time. Civilizations has an episode on religious art and of course Buddhism is featured a little bit.  This BBC production changes the order in America, where it's the 3rd show, and it's the 4th show in England. It would be hard to not get some feedback on the project (Washington Post, Guardian, 2, 3). A gossipy Telegraph review suggest that American don't want to see an older woman presenting and emphasize Mary Beard (Who's SPQR is a lovely book about ancient Rome). If that's true, then that is a shame. I'm not sure whether I'm more offended by the edit, or by the British laughing at it when they are the ones who created it. Maybe I'm just cranky from working all night.

Anyway, saw some Buddhist art and I like to blog about anything Buddhisty that's going on with me. I've also pushed past my resistance, and meditate on my lunch break at 330am. It's not easy but I do feel energized after I do that.

Self defense versus aggression?

The question for me with Myanmar and the well documented (1, 2 ...) persecution and genocide of the  Rohingya Muslims, is how does one go defend oneself and what is worth defending? Many people in the USA military want to defend a country that doesn't have segregation, one that is more kind to it's citizens. Do we sometimes betray our ideals to "defend" ourselves? Is this a self defeating behavior?

On one level you could see the "Buddhist" majority, cultural Buddhists who don't see a contradiction in genocide. You are a Buddhist insofar as you partake in the ethos of Buddhism, and when you don't, then you are a cultural Buddhist, you have trappings of culture and you call yourself a Buddhist.

One could endlessly defend oneself against the encroachments of others. Walking down the crowded streets of NYC, you can bump into others and get upset that they did not respect your personal space. Or you could see it as a crowded city and that people are going to accidentally bump into occasionally because, you know, you can't be 100% vigilant about bumping into others all the time.

That's where you have to pick your battles. What is important to you?

I thought there should be no response to the felling of the Twin Towers. They got off a lucky pot shot. There's a pithy saying about giving up the victory in mind training. Anyone who's played sports knows you can't always win. I'd almost say that sports is all about having ambition to win and accepting that you lose and still trying hard. Living in an imperfect messy world when the black and white of winning and losing is appealing. You could let them have that basket, like the Knicks playing fairly even pace with the Golden State Warriors last night, but then in the 4th quarter they just crushed the Knicks.

It's an open question whether doing something actually improves the world. The unintended consequences of prohibition was to create elaborate criminal organizations with the violence and flouting of the rules. When the rules are too strict, people revolt, and make themselves into the outsiders. That is exactly Myanmar's failure--they were not inclusive--they created outsiders. They could not see the benefit of including another ethnic community. We don't usually have enough imagination and information to see all the consequences of their action. I hope this doesn't boomerang against the Myanmar people. They certainly are losing face as a Buddhist nation and in general. The United Nations has condemned them. They can try to change the name of the people to imagine they don't exist, but they do. We know that toddler trick.

I live in NYC where yesterday at the park with my daughter I met all kinds of immigrants and cultures. That white flight exists and I have friends who remember the houses going up for sale and moving to Long Island, the second most racially segregated place in America after Arlington Virginia, across the river from Washington DC. When given the choice people match up with their race and culture, but a move to New York City is the opposite of that trend. And living in the city is the most environmentally friendly thing you can do. The person who builds a house where there was not one before is ruining the environment, not loving it. But forget these paradoxes, I digress.

The political debate in America is what should the government do? Should we help each other out and support those who don't have strong families, treat everyone nicely. Or should we let people make their worlds in a free and fair society that gives everyone a chance. Trump is about taking a crap on the government he hates, that limits his freedom to be the beast he wants to be. That he gets the ire of progressive liberals is a bonus to his voters who hated the straw horses of who they imagine is liberal. I find political discussion in America often to be about an imagined foe, not real people on the ground.

(What are the unintended consequences of housing, feeding and educating the poor? Some think it's not fair to give away stuff to others, while some work. We've made sure the housing is ugly, food stamps are complicated and restricted, and the education is subpar. Most people don't know that and imagine the poor are welfare queens, living large, pumping out more babies to get more money. So called liberals can think that sometimes (I met a guy once). You don't give your child every little thing they want, you just make sure they have the basics.)

So what is the opposite of genocide? Learning about the Rohingya people. That's not easy. They are an ethnic group far away.

Speaking out about my vision of hoping we don't need to murder people for any reason, especially perceived self defense. That's my beef with the gun lobby and gun lovers in America. Where they see threats I see lost opportunities. Too optimistic? Maybe. That's the wolf I want to feed. And as always you live the questions, tolerate the negative feelings of ambivalences of not knowing.

The funny thing is that the monk who is agitating for perceived self defense is more like Mohammed, who was a general, a mayor of a city and a husband to multiple wives. Mohammed was the most worldly of the spiritual leaders. He was alternative for the tribes who were not Jewish or Christian, his was an act of cultural creation. We need more ways to make outsiders, insiders. In AA there is the gradual transition from thrill seeker to responsible meeting leader.

The Buddha when he came to a sangha that was fighting about a monk leaving a bowl in the wrong place, was to just realize he couldn't intervene to change things and he walked away and meditated. His actions were powerful, though, he wasn't about getting high and watching Netflix. He spent his whole life teaching and leading others. The first person he came across could not be persuaded to join him, so the Buddha developed his teachings to help others who were more sympathetic, the five ascetics who abandoned him after he found the middle way. Having insight into fixing things needs to be accompanied with the power to do so. You can begin to do so in a smaller community, in the spiritual community. Think globally, act locally.

That doesn't mean we can't be political and agitate for more kindness in our government. The Buddha converted a criminal and got him off the streets as a killer. The Buddha regularly counseled kings, and was a fierce leader of his own community. When a monk was sick, he chided his monk friends for ignoring him. Compassion is active.

Only you can get yourself enlightened or woke. To be sure you need other power and help from the spiritual community. One goes for enlightenment with everyone. You are included in others push for enlightenment. But it starts with your decision. I think that's why some Buddhists are conservative. This philosophy conflates the personal to the political--people need to make their own worlds, and not worry so much about others. Self reliance is a wonderful virtue.

The Myanmar government isn't going to make it's people enlightened. Individual effort is the root. But context matters. That's why I'm against the strict "pro-life" stance--to insist on bring a child into a world without supports--well, you might as well kill someone with educational neglect, housing neglect and food neglect, health neglect while they're alive. Not everyone has a family or strong community. Is that an essential trait to receive support?

So that begs the question, can someone become enlightened in Myanmar in the context of a governmental genocide? This is my ethical concern--when you do gnarly things or not act to prevent negative things, does that impact your meditation practice? I say yes. When I make ethical mistakes, it invades my meditation, and decreases my depth. You can't meditate in a vacuum.

video games

In our dada world, of intellectual overload, video games provide refuge for the cave man, or the problem solver, or the visually leaning mind.  Video games simplify the world, and like the Futurama episode where life is like a video game, the terms are much less ambiguous.  Even though we've had existentialism for over a century, we're still just as clueless on how to make meaning--soon cookie cutter religions that dispense other's revelations grow dull as they are not authentically ours.  Video games (or drugs or sex or materialism or career or subjugation to others needs) fill the void.  And yet they can't fill the void for long if you tune into yourself, and feel more void at your void erasing attempts.  So many heroes and heroines in literature look for solutions in the wrong place, desperately, frantically.  There are so many wrong paths.

I've enjoyed Sim City, and Civilization and visual games like tetras or bejeweled.  I had a PS for a while and did a snowboarding game.  I've been disgusted by Vice City type games, where the player is a criminal who has to accomplish criminal missions.  I have a friend who was in the Marines who can play combat games all day, even though he's a successful professional in perhaps the top profession.

At the moment I'm addicted to Edgeworld and MyTown2.  It seems I like building worlds and conquering worlds.  I'm Robert Moses and Genghis Khan.  In a way, I feel puny in this vast universe.  (That makes me think of the Monty Python skit.)

Video games are another kind of thinking, that I enjoy.  It's not intellectual wool gathering.  In a way it's a do nothing activity.  Sure, it expends energy and time, and what are the results.  "I'm up to level 42."  Is that good?  And yet there's a sense of accomplishment, pride in effort. In the grey world of existential wilderness, do I move up levels, do I win the day, do I defeat my opponents?  It's this simplification, this black and whiting of life that helps ease the existential tension.

I think the good news of Buddhism is that, yes there is a void, but we can come to understand it, and through altruism and personal effort, master it in a very satisfying way.  We can develop the grace to tolerate ambivalence, ambiguity, confusion and dispair, without hankering for limited solutions.

The Galaxy Song Lyrics:

Just remember that you're standing on a planet that's evolving
And revolving at nine hundred miles an hour,
That's orbiting at nineteen miles a second, so it's reckoned,
A sun that is the source of all our power.
The sun and you and me and all the stars that we can see
Are moving at a million miles a day
In an outer spiral arm, at forty thousand miles an hour,
Of the galaxy we call the 'Milky Way'.
Our galaxy itself contains a hundred billion stars.
It's a hundred thousand light years side to side.
It bulges in the middle, sixteen thousand light years thick,
But out by us, it's just three thousand light years wide.
We're thirty thousand light years from galactic central point.
We go 'round every two hundred million years,
And our galaxy is only one of millions of billions
In this amazing and expanding universe.

The universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding
In all of the directions it can whizz
As fast as it can go, at the speed of light, you know,
Twelve million miles a minute, and that's the fastest speed there is.
So remember, when you're feeling very small and insecure,
How amazingly unlikely is your birth,
And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere up in space,
'Cause there's bugger all down here on Earth. 

Just read Karmabandhu's essay

Here is an essay by Karmabandhu on the FWBO news web site.

Here is one quote from his essay, "Obviously, we can and indeed have to practise in any situation, but it would be obtuse to argue that it is going to be as easy to meditate with two children crawling around watching telly tubbies on the TV as it is with a couple of friends who are also meditating. Conditions can either help or hinder us. If they didn’t, what would be the point of ever going on retreat? We might just as well go down the pub."

My response to the above quote is that I had children before the dharma sank in enough for me to understand that. But I also don't see it as so black and white, that I absolutely love my boys, and don't really want to change things, even if I do feel this renunciant pull. I've always wanted life to be more easy. And I've chosen a harder path, perhaps. I suppose I have patience that when my children grow up, and if I'm lucky to still be alive, then I will have my opportunity. My life has a kind of momentum, and I really must honor the choices I have made.

My niece overheard me say once, in a moment of desperation, "The boys have ruined my life." She was horrified by the notion and talked to her mom about it. I have to admit that I have felt that way at times. Adjusting to parenting is very hard. Nobody can imagine how much energy and time it will take, before hand. And I have two children. But that's a moment of desperation. What about all the other moments? I have great moments of love, tenderness, pride, excitement to see little being grow and develop. I have wildly optimistic comments the other way as well.

There is one stark fact about children. No matter how many feelings you have one way or the other, once they are born, they are the parents responsibility, and you harm them by putting that responsibility on others. Others can support, but I feel it's best to have the biological mother and father as the leaders in parenting of their children. My fathers left, and I felt the loss. Am I OK now? Yes. I survived it. But I feel it is the defining mark of my life that I come from divorced parents. My stepfather is wonderful. My stepmother is wonderful too, for that matter. And I can't just smoosh my parents back together. But it's best to intentionally have children and then take care of them. That's self evident. We were trying for 8 years before we had children, so we were overjoyed. Nevermind that in that time I found Buddhism and my sensibilities began to turn in another direction. Life has a kind of momentum, and out of respect for myself, I want to stand by my choices, even if now I value free time and quiet in a new way because of the dharma. Out of respect for my children, I want to wholly embrace my choice. They do not deserve my ambivalence when things get rough for me. It's the first ethical principle, to try and do no harm and violence to others.

They deserve a wholly committed father, and that is what I'm committed to.

Reiki

I just experienced reiki for the first time. Didn't feel much, it was a short session, supposedly they're usually longer. But it was nice to lay down and relax.

The wikipedia article on it reports that scientific studies show it has no greater than a placebo effect, but I think that the placebo effect is worth something--the hope that something good happens is wonderful.

The instructions were, "imagine a white light coming into your head, and you breathing it out." So she put her hands on my shoulders, on my chest and stomach and then knees, and finally my ankles. She said she's tell me when she's done and she did.

She thought I was balanced, no anger pulling energy to my liver.

I'd say it can't hurt. I want to be open to things. There is a part of me that is curious about the scientific community, but there's a part of me that wants to be open to things outside my immediate experience. I have no problem that people make a living doing such things, there are lots worse things.

I like it that a Buddhist discovered Reiki, supposedly enlightened, but I'm also a bit wary. In my tradition, in so far as I understand it, these magical kinds of things are seen as nice, but not really the point. They can be a distraction. I don't have a formal sadhana practice but I'm going to ask for Avalokiteshvara when some day I hope to be ordained into the WBO. The woman who did Reiki on me today said she imagines Jesus Christ.

She talked about healing a woman's breast cancer, and her own heart problems. Of course anecdotal evidence doesn't prove anything, but it doesn't disprove anything either.

I imagine people pro-Reiki might dislike my not embracing it the way they do. I imagine skeptical people poo pooing it. I think people should try it if they can and I hope to try it again.